  The wholeness, conceived and developed by Christopher Alexander, is what
exists to some degree or other in space and matter, and can be described by
precise mathematical language. However, it remains somehow mysterious and
elusive, and therefore hard to grasp. This paper develops a complex network
perspective on the wholeness to better understand the nature of order or beauty
for sustainable design. I bring together a set of complexity-science subjects
such as complex networks, fractal geometry, and in particular underlying
scaling hierarchy derived by head/tail breaks - a classification scheme and a
visualization tool for data with a heavy-tailed distribution, in order to make
Alexander's profound thoughts more accessible to design practitioners and
complexity-science researchers. Through several case studies (some of which
Alexander studied), I demonstrate that the complex-network perspective helps
reduce the mystery of wholeness and brings new insights to Alexander's thoughts
on the concept of wholeness or objective beauty that exists in fine and deep
structure. The complex-network perspective enables us to see things in their
wholeness, and to better understand how the kind of structural beauty emerges
from local actions guided by the 15 fundamental properties, and by
differentiation and adaptation processes. The wholeness goes beyond current
complex network theory towards design or creation of living structures.
  Keywords: Theory of centers, living geometry, Christopher Alexander,
head/tail breaks, and beauty
