APAD: Simple but not too simple
最西边的岛上
楼主 (文学城)
Some say the phrase came from Albert Einstein: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" which is often used as an appeal to make a subject as easy as possible to understand, though of course not so easy that it becomes meaningless.
It’s not hard to understand why this quote is so often attributed to Einstein, whose theories are (rightly) famous for their breath-taking economy and the astonishing simplicity of their founding principles. The quote is also exactly the kind of rhetorical ear-candy for which Einstein is known, short and informal, yet affecting a casual profundity with its little antithetical twist.
But in fact, there is no record of Einstein saying the words above. Though, he is on record as saying, "the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.”
For Einstein, simple does not (necessarily) mean simple to comprehend. Einstein uses simple in the sense of pure, unalloyed and elementary. Far from just grabbing hold of Ockham’s razor and hacking our subject down to something our minds can finally digest with ease, Einstein is telling us to grapple with the full complexity of our subject, but to build our understanding using as few and as simple elements as possible.
------------------------------------------------------- As I am so far far away from Einstein, I prefer simplicity (ie. no scheming), and simpler is even better ;-). So I present you some simple pictures I took yesterday with my simple (= Wilbur and No P图) 8 yrs old iPad. Note the baby carrots in the first picture came with singles (sorry one has been eaten), twin, triple,quadruple, all made by Nature herself, how wonderful! Happy Sunday to you all!
1. veg bought from the farmer's market.
2. peony in back garden 
3. Iris in front garden 
It’s not hard to understand why this quote is so often attributed to Einstein, whose theories are (rightly) famous for their breath-taking economy and the astonishing simplicity of their founding principles. The quote is also exactly the kind of rhetorical ear-candy for which Einstein is known, short and informal, yet affecting a casual profundity with its little antithetical twist.
But in fact, there is no record of Einstein saying the words above. Though, he is on record as saying, "the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.”
For Einstein, simple does not (necessarily) mean simple to comprehend. Einstein uses simple in the sense of pure, unalloyed and elementary. Far from just grabbing hold of Ockham’s razor and hacking our subject down to something our minds can finally digest with ease, Einstein is telling us to grapple with the full complexity of our subject, but to build our understanding using as few and as simple elements as possible.
------------------------------------------------------- As I am so far far away from Einstein, I prefer simplicity (ie. no scheming), and simpler is even better ;-). So I present you some simple pictures I took yesterday with my simple (= Wilbur and No P图) 8 yrs old iPad. Note the baby carrots in the first picture came with singles (sorry one has been eaten), twin, triple,quadruple, all made by Nature herself, how wonderful! Happy Sunday to you all!
1. veg bought from the farmer's market.
2. peony in back garden 3. Iris in front garden 