The real world is complex. We do need complex idea to convey this complexity. But we don’t need complicated language to convey the real world, since it’s already complex without us trying to make it more complex than it really is.

What we need to convey the complex ideas of the real world is two ways of using language; of which you can choose one or the other.

  • Abstraction is to concisely convey the real world using abstract terms.
  • Art is to convey the real world using a lot of simple words that is easy to understand.

If you choose both of them, what you get won’t be a useful description of complexity. What you’ll get is a complicated art review laden with the noise of abstract word.

And, no. You can’t give a short and easy to understand description (having both the good of abstraction and the good of art) since the real world is complex and trying to compress the complexity too much will result in simplistic description.

So, it’s wise to choose between abstraction and art when trying to explain things.

Of course, you can make two description of the real world. Yes, you can make a short, abstract description, and then make another simple, beautiful description.

The question is: will it be a wise use of your time and effort to do it?

Consider this:

The person who already understand the abstract description will recognize the artful description. And the person who understand the artful description only need to reach for a dictionary to recognize the abstract one (or you just need to give them the definition of the abstract terms you used to explain things).

But, the person who don’t understand the abstract description won’t understand the artful description either. Both abstraction and art are used to explain ideas. And a person can only understand an idea once he have the prerequisite ideas to construct this new idea you’re trying to explain.

So, it’s wise to choose between abstraction and art when trying to explain things.