Interesting post with an intriguing challenge: "If you disagree, please send me a counterexample in the form of an organizing principle that does not invoke things (i.e., nodes) and relationships (i.e., links)." Well, now... how about piles of sand? People standing beside each other? Mist swirling around to form a cloud? Atoms? The solar system? (So what's happening here? If you think of 'link' as some kind of linguistic property, or a description of some relational quality (F(ab)) then, yes, everything can be described as 'things and relationships', and hence, as 'newtworks'. If, however, you think of a 'link' as something that must change the state of the second entity (as I do) then not everything is describable as a 'network'). I think of networks as an organizing principle, not the only one - which is how I can distinguish networks from other things (like, say, groups). Related: The networked nature of information.
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