Simplifying complexity explores how to eliminate ignorance which in the view of the author is
the purpose of the sciences and technologies and their consequent developments. More
specifically the book deals with the plurality of the sciences and technologies. It is about
the way in which each of them develops around the prosthetics of printed languages and the
models used as visual aids to help us create new modes of communication to understand and solve
human problems. Consequently the task is to simplify the complexity that we find in different
sciences both social and physical. In his collection of essays George E. Yoos surveys a
number of different models that have evolved from the innate biological forms of grammar
logic and modes of orientation. He investigates the evolution of socially constructed systems
of numeracy and measurement that have evolved and developed in different languages for the use
in scientific and technological communication. He identifies methods derived from three
distinct personal experiences: the use of types of prosthetic mnemonic and attention
controlling devices in order to yield simpler perspectives of complex states of affairs.
George E. Yoos emeritus professor is a legend in the field of rhetoric. Founder and editor of
the Rhetoric Society Quarterly [1972-1985] author of Reframing Rhetoric [2007] Politics and
Rhetoric [2009] and fellow of the Rhetoric Society of America.
