Starting from the working hypothesis that both physics and the corresponding
mathematics have to be described by means of discrete concepts on the
Planck-scale, one of the many problems one has to face is to find the discrete
protoforms of the building blocks of continuum physics and mathematics. In the
following we embark on developing such concepts for irregular structures like
(large) graphs or networks which are intended to emulate (some of) the generic
properties of the presumed combinatorial substratum from which continuum
physics is assumed to emerge as a coarse grained and secondary model theory. We
briefly indicate how various concepts of discrete (functional) analysis and
geometry can be naturally constructed within this framework, leaving a larger
portion of the paper to the systematic developement of dimensional concepts and
their properties, which may have a possible bearing on various branches of
modern physics beyond quantum gravity.Comment: 16 pages, Invited paper to appear in the special issue of the Journal
of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals on: "Superstrings, M, F, S ... Theory" (M.S.
El Naschie, C. Castro, Editors