Following my recent post in which I offered one of my own quotes (about another layer of simplification having been added to a process where I work), I came across the following from Julian Huxley (1887-1975).
Good writing, he suggests, ought to demonstrate "simplification without distortion".
So should a lot of things. Occam's razor (that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected) is in the same vein.
Today, I start some marking of academic work. For this I had to go for training in how to use a new computerised submissions system. When I suggested a simplified approach that I had used in the past and intended using this time, the person in charge of this system was rather indignant and quite insistent that I do it in a specific (more complex, less easy) way and to fit in with the way the computerised system had been set up and not do what was best for me.
