Simplexity : the word I thought I’d coined already existed

For a few weeks now, I’d been walking around with a small, secret pride. I had, or so I believed, put my finger on a word the French language was missing: “simplexity.” That quality of things that look simple but conceal, underneath, a perfectly tamed complexity. The interface you grasp without a manual. The tool that does exactly what you expect, no more and no less, even though it took an enormous amount of work to get there. I had my column, and I could already picture myself writing it, naturally, with all due simplexity.

Just to be safe, I checked. So much for that.

Not only does the word exist, it has a pedigree that puts my modest little coinage to shame. Simplexity has its book (Alain Berthoz, La Simplexité, Odile Jacob, 2009), its author (a physiologist at the Collège de France and a member of the Académie des sciences), its English translation (Simplexity, 2012), and even its own conference volume at the Collège de France. While I fancied myself a trailblazer, an entire library was lying in wait for me.

Worse, or better: Berthoz didn’t coin it either. The word had been kicking around for ages, and the English “simplexity” actually predates his French. In other words, I “discovered” a continent that was already mapped, already settled, and equipped with a tourist office. At this point, humility is no longer a virtue; it’s just a statement of fact.

What the Word Actually Means

But here’s the best part, and this is where my little piece finds its moral. For Berthoz, simplexity is not simplicity. Simplicity flattens, abridges, ends in caricature. Complexity, for its part, crushes and paralyzes. Simplexity is the third way: the set of simplifying principles that living organisms have devised in order to act quickly and well despite the complexity of the world. Not shortcuts, but elegant detours. Making things simple, as he puts it, is never easy.

So what exactly happened to me? I went looking for a simple word and stumbled onto a complexity that was already organized, deep, refined. My little misadventure is, quite literally, an exercise in simplexity: behind the apparent obviousness lay an entire structured world. I set out to name the thing, and the thing ended up naming me.

I Should Have Known Better

I, of all people, should know this idea by heart. It’s literally my job. The whole craft consists in making a website, a tool, an integration feel to the client as though “it was simple,” precisely because someone absorbed the complexity on their behalf. The feat isn’t to hide the work; it’s to make it invisible. And a good sentence, when you come down to it, works the same way: limpid to read, devious to write.

So there it is. I didn’t coin “simplexity.” I’ll keep using it anyway, now with a footnote and a touch of academic caution. After all, the best ideas are usually the ones you’re convinced you had first. And if someone corrects me in the comments, I’ll know exactly what to say: I didn’t copy Berthoz, I merely practiced a little simplexity.