Simplicity Is the Ultimate Sophistication

In the winter of 1945 and 1946 Pablo Picasso made a series of eleven lithographs of a bull. The first was a richly shaded and muscular animal drawn in detail. In each following state, he removed something, a shadow, a texture, a curve, and the animal became more abstract. The last image is a handful of lines, and yet it is unmistakably a bull, alert and powerful. The series shows what the topic claims, that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. The final drawing looks like the easiest of the eleven, and it is the hardest to make.

The phrase became familiar in 1977 when Apple used it in an early brochure, and it is often attributed, without evidence, to Leonardo da Vinci. Whatever its origin, it expresses an idea held in many cultures. The French aviator and writer Antoine de Saint Exupery wrote in 1939 that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add but when there is nothing more to take away. The architect Mies van der Rohe said less is more. The designer Dieter Rams called his philosophy less but better. Japanese aesthetics prize ma, the meaningful emptiness between things, and the haiku makes seventeen syllables carry a world.

Simplicity is sophisticated because it presupposes understanding. To remove the inessential, one must know which parts are essential, and that knowledge is acquired only through mastery. A beginner clutters because he cannot tell what matters. An expert cuts with confidence because he knows what the thing is for. Mathematicians prize a short proof for this reason, since it shows that the person who found it saw further into the problem than those who needed ten pages. The ease of the finished product is a measure of the labour behind it.

The principle is visible in design and technology. A well designed tool feels obvious to use because a great deal of complexity has been absorbed into its construction. The search page of Google, a white screen with a single box, concealed some of the most complex software in the world. India's Unified Payments Interface lets a person pay a vegetable seller by scanning a code, a gesture of the greatest simplicity that rests on layers of banking regulation and engineering. Simplicity for the user is bought with complexity for the maker.

Simplicity for the user is bought with complexity for the maker.

It is also a moral and spiritual ideal. Gandhi reduced his possessions to a few items and made the spinning wheel the symbol of a movement. His central principles of truth and non violence could be stated in a sentence. The Buddha's teaching of the Four Noble Truths is a model of compression, and the Sermon on the Mount, delivered in a few minutes, remains one of the most influential texts in history. Simple lives and simple creeds can carry great weight because they have been stripped of what distracts.

Writing offers a clear case. George Orwell's rules for plain English, set out in 1946, advised that a writer should never use a long word where a short one will do and should cut out any word that can be cut. Plain style is not easy, and a writer who produces it has revised many times. Blaise Pascal apologised in a letter for writing a long letter because he had not had time to write a short one. A clear sentence is the result of work that the reader does not see.

Traditional Indian arts know the principle. The kolam drawn at doorsteps in Tamil Nadu is a pattern of dots and unbroken lines, made in minutes each morning, whose beauty comes from its economy. Classical musicians spend decades perfecting a raga that may be sung with a few notes, and the listener hears only calm. The Isha Upanishad runs to eighteen verses and is held to contain the seed of a whole metaphysics. Cultures that prize simplicity tend also to prize the long apprenticeship that makes it possible.

But simplicity has an imitation which should not be confused with it. A simplistic idea is one that omits what is essential and so falsifies. The claim that crime is caused by bad people, that poverty is caused by laziness or that a complex economy can be run by a slogan is simple, and it is wrong. Einstein is often quoted as saying that everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler. The qualification is crucial. The sophistication lies in finding the point at which a thing is as simple as it can be without losing truth.

Politics shows the danger vividly. Demagogues offer simple stories of villains and saviours, and their appeal is that complexity is exhausting. The real work of governance involves trade offs, delays and uncertainty that cannot be reduced to a slogan, and a citizenry that demands simplicity may be rewarding the wrong qualities. Forms, laws and regulations suffer from the opposite fault, an accumulated complexity that nobody dares to prune, so that a farmer needs an intermediary to apply for a subsidy. Reform that truly simplifies is rare because it needs both understanding and courage.

How can one tell the difference between true and false simplicity? A useful test is whether the simple thing can be unfolded. A good simple explanation can be expanded, on request, into the detail on which it rests, and remains consistent with it. A simplistic one collapses when questioned. Another test is whether it works across cases, as the equations of Newton do for apples and planets alike. Real simplicity has the compactness of a theory that has survived many attempts to break it.

The topic's paradox is that the sophistication it praises is hidden. A person who sees a perfect drawing, a clear paragraph or a graceful machine does not see the eleven stages, the revisions and the failed prototypes, and may conclude that it was easy. Those who achieve this hidden effort may never be thanked for it, since the better they succeed, the less visible it becomes. It is a curious fate for the highest art that it succeeds only in proportion to its ability to conceal the work that made it possible.