The minimalist beauty of equations

On scientific jargon, minimalist art and the compression (and lack thereof) from equations.

In language: where a complex word or compound phrase most effectively captures or articulates a specific question, solution or description of an actual state of affairs in the world, its effective use in message transmission is dependent upon a variety of factors. The intelligence and vocabulary of the intended receiver of the message generally has to be assumed or taken for granted, albeit true that writing to a more general audience usually implies the use of simple words and many more sentences to convey the same message that complex words and clever idioms or motifs might achieve in less overall message information-complexity and string-length.

The use of specialist vocabularies and contextual knowledge allows for message compression, but at the apparently mandatory cost of displacing the complexity elsewhere: into assumed knowledge, specialist technical skills, cultural contexts or extensive experience and (again) into an implicit, certain assumed level of intelligence in the message recipient or target audience.

It seems to the mathematically unitiated that advanced physical equations are a little like this minimalist enigma. That the reduction to short strings of symbols and mathematical relationships inversely displaces vast swathes of assumed or required knowledge elsewhere such that, while I acknowledge and deeply respect the beauty, depth and explanatory power of mathematics in physical theory, the view from here is that the relative simplicity of an equation is always implicitly dependent upon a complex network of assumed or implied information and knowledge external to it, a theoretical context perhaps but not necessarily limited to this as full comprehension clearly requires more than mere generalised insights or intuitions.

https://daedeluskite.com/2018/07/21/on-equations-art-and-information-compression/