The identity of every phenomenon, and every cause, is its otherness from every other, including the very system in which it is embedded. In scientific inquiry, we simplify our models of changes in the phenomenal world by focussing on one causal factor at a time.
The practice of changing one variable at a time while holding others constant is important, but it is incomplete. Additional investigation is required, both to show how a causal factor is coupled in a system of causes and to reveal the ways in which these links change over time. It does not require considering everything at once, as some seem to fear, but can be done by coordinating diverse investigations.
— Oyama, Griffiths and Gray (2001, 4-5)
Lotman likewise points out the limitations of ‘the scientific practice which dates from the time of the Enlightenment, namely to work on the “Robinson Crusoe” principle of isolating an object and then making it into a general model.’ This accounts for the ‘transmission’ model of communication, which takes the sender, the message and the receiver as separate units. This practice is also incomplete, because a working semiotic system has to be ‘immersed in semiotic space’ – in the semiosphere, ‘the semiotic space necessary for the existence and functioning of languages’ (Lotman 1990, 123).
According to Lotman (1990, 104), ‘symbols with elementary expression levels have greater cultural and semantic capacity than symbols which are more complex.’ The simpler an utterance seems to the interpreter, the less semiotic energy he has to put into interpretation, and the more it seems to mean in itself. But when it comes to language, observes Northrop Frye (1982, 211),
there are different kinds of simplicity. A writer of modern demotic or descriptive prose, if he is a good writer, will be as simple as his subject matter allows him to be: that is the simplicity of equality, where the writer puts himself on a level with his reader, appeals to evidence and reason, and avoids the kind of obscurity that creates a barrier. The simplicity of the Bible is the simplicity of majesty, not of equality, much less of naïveté: its simplicity expresses the voice of authority. The purest verbal expression of authority is the word of command … The higher the authority, the more unqualified the command …
Pragmatically, obedience to the voice of authority simplifies guidance, makes an ethos “elementary” – but also incomplete, as a guidance system.