Tuesday, September 13, 2016

give simplicity "side of" complexity

I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.

And variants (care not a bit; nickel | right arm, anything I have, everything I have | far side; etc., etc.).


     Oliver Wendell Holmes (Jr.)?  I have my doubts.  I wasn't able to turn up so much as a promising initial clue via a Google Books search stripped down to the following:  give simplicity "side of" complexity.  Indeed, it raised suspicions the moment I first encountered it.  Published attributions I've seen alternative to Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and Jr. (cumulative):  Albert Einstein and George Bernard Shaw.

     Update, 20 May 2020:  the only hit on the phrase "other side of complexity" in the Hathi Trust Digital Library prior to and including 1935 (the year Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. died) is this one, on Benjamin Jowett, in the words of C. G. Montefiore.  And in the earliest viewable Hathi Trust hit on that same phrase after 1935, dated 1976, it (or something very like it) is attributed to George Bernard Shaw.  Nor did I have any luck before 1935 with just "side of complexity", though I checked, of the 90 or so hits on that, only those that actually looked promising.  I'm starting a timeline that could be supplemented with a search of, say, 19th-century full-text:

  • 1900:  "it was a simple Theism.  But it was simplicity with a difference.  It was the simplicity which, so to speak, lies on the other side of complexity" (C. G. Montefiore on Benjamin Jowett, Jewish quarterly review 12 (1900):  301).
  • 1968 March & November:  "Again we borrow, this time more directly, from [Stanford religious (i.e Hebrew) studies] Professor [Edwin] Good['s Founder’s Day Address of March of 1968]:  'I have not been able to ascertain the source of a remark that I believe is a profound one:  "I do not care a fig for the simplicity that lies on this side of complexity; but I would put my life at the service of the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity."  That, I suggest, is the long-range goal of the enterprise in which we are all engaged.'  We agree" (The study and its purposes, The Study of Education at Stanford.  Report to the University, November 1968, p. 11).  This was the earliest version of the full quote (with that "do not care a fig for"-"would put my life at the service of" element) that I was seeing via Google Books Advanced Search on 20 May 2020.
  • 1976, at the link above.

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