Make things as simple as possible, but not any simpler.
> Make things as simple as possible, but not any simpler.
> — Albert Einstein
It can scarcely be denied that 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.
アインシュタインの元の文章は難しいので広まらず、他の人が「シンプル」にしたものがアインシュタインの発言として広まった
これがsimplerにしちゃってないのかどうかはアインシュタインの方の原文を読んでないのでわからない
基本的にはオッカムの剃刀的なことを言いたかったんだと思う
理論は現象を説明できる最小限のシンプルなものであるべきだが、それよりさらにシンプル(つまり現象を説明できないもの)になってはいけない、的なこと
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from Quote Investigator
>The New York Times published an article by the composer Roger Sessions on January 8, 1950 titled “How a ‘Difficult’ Composer Gets That Way”, and it included a version of the saying attributed to Einstein [AERS] :I also remember a remark of Albert Einstein, which certainly applies to music. He said, in effect, that everything should be as simple as it can be but not simpler!
>Alice Calaprice the editor of “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein” presented the following 1933 precursor quotation and comment in her reference work [UQUE] :> It can scarcely be denied that 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.
>
> From “On the Method of Theoretical Physics,” the Herbert Spencer Lecture, Oxford, June 10, 1933. This is the Oxford University’ Press version. The words “simple,” “simplest,” and “simplicity” recur throughout the lecture. The version reprinted in 1954 in Ideas and Opinions, 272, is a bit different. This sentence may be the origin of the much-quoted sentence that “everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler,” and its variants.
>QI thinks that the existence of this quotation supports the plausibility of the hypothesis that Roger Sessions did read or hear something from Albert Einstein that catalyzed the dissemination of the maxim.
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"Engineer's way of creating knowledge" the English version of my book is now available on [Engineer's way of creating knowledge]
(C)NISHIO Hirokazu / Converted from [Scrapbox] at [Edit]