CONCLUSION

For a conclusion there is one last fallacy -- oversimplification. In #3 the example contained the statement, "Increased armaments appear as one of the major causes of European wars." Robert Thouless calls this sort of thesis "tabloid thinking," and analyses it as reducing a complex situation to a simple statement which is inaccurate. False generalizations are often a result of crudely simplifying concepts, but oversimplification is a fault of the explanation. The situation reveals a beautiful complexity, but for purposes of explanation to the uninformed -- a fifteen minute radio talk on quantum physics for the layman -- it has to be caught up into a vague phrase or two and often tied in with something utterly different or analogous only in a crude way. "Freud teaches that everything is sex." "The atom is a little solar system." "Virgil's Aenetd is just a long patriotic hymn to Augustan Rome."

The error is difficult to avoid. In the first place, time generally makes it impractical to elaborate all qualifications. Moreover, in many discussions full exposition of detail would obscure the subject rather than clarify it. For example, textbook writers habitually wrestle with the dilemma of whether to make statements which are, though not wholly accurate, yet clear and serviceable enough for students, or whether to incorporate all the qualifications necessary for accuracy -- and drown the student in details. The problem here is to achieve simplification without oversimplification.

In the second place, when the speaker does not possess a detailed knowledge, the very lack of familiarity with the complexity of the subject is apt to increase his confidence in what are his mere "tabloid" thoughts about it. A superficial knowledge may make a complicated situation appear quite simple, like a wide patch of brambles seen from the air. And everybody has to be content with a superficial acquaintance with most subjects. Finally, even where we are well aware of the existence of complexities, we may be tempted, in "the human quest for certainty," as John Dewey argues, to try to cut through them and to set up an oversimplified system with everything tidy and neat.

So, we see, oversimplification produces a sort of false clarity which misrepresents the real nature of the problem. As authors of this book, we hope that our descriptions of common fallacies have not often fallen short of a proper balance between directness and accuracy in explanation. And we are sorry for any statements which make the error of oversimplification.

This book began by quoting a cynical sentence or two from Schopenhauer. The authors should like to end it by quoting a sentiment which seems to come from another world, the world of John Henry Cardinal Newman. On defining a gentleman, Newman says, "He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out." This noble disputant, Newman continues, acts towards an enemy as if he were one day to be a friend.

He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. ... If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy or better, perhaps, but less educated minds; who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they find it.

Cardinal Newman

It is the "blundering discourtesy" of minds that leads to oversimplification. And Newman is right; it is a paradox of bluntness and dullness that they leave the question more involved than it was to start with. Only the clear-thinking and well-informed mind can cut through complexity and achieve something of the true simplicity that mathematicians call elegance.