"Complicate" = "elucidate the complexity of"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Einstein was sooooooo twentieth century.

Besides which, he was a scientist - not a cultural theorist.

JL

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 10:22 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "Complicate" = "elucidate the complexity of"
>
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>
> At 10:03 PM -0400 3/22/11, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >From an announcement of a forthcoming Newberry Library
> >Eighteenth-Century Seminar presentation by PROFESSOR DENA GOODMAN:
> >
> >Professor Goodman seeks to complicate the picture of
> >nineteenth-century reactionary aristocrats and modern republicans by
> >bringing an eighteenth-century perspective to bear on French
> >revolutionary and post-revolutionary culture and society.
> >
> >I think I'll skip this -- historical life is complicated enough as it is.
> >
> >Joel
>
> Isn't this what used to be called (in the good old days)
> "problematizing" an issue rather than complicating it?  Maybe, since
> "complicate" has another, somewhat less complicated, use, the term of
> art should be "complexitize".  Or "compleximatize".
>
> Perhaps Professor Goodman follows the old adage, not quite due to
> Einstein, dictating that everything should be as complex as it can
> be, but not more so.
>
> LH
>
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