The world is as simple as rocket science

November 28, 2017

A few weeks ago, I listened to a very informative and impressing interview with Prof. Dr. Ing. Robert Schmucker (-> Wikipedia), a worldwide well-known expert and scientist on rocket science, space technology and terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. I can really recommend to listen to this entertaining interview, although it’s only available in german. See (hear) here: http://www.ardmediathek.de/radio/…

During this interview, there was one statement, which still keeps in my mind:

The world is not complicated. It’s simple. It must be simple, because if the world would be complicated, it wouldn’t work.

If you think this a bit further, this leads to the assumption, that if the world is simple, everything on this planet must also be simple. In context of rocket science - this also must be simple! Rocket science is simple.

So, why we are saying “this-and-that is no rocket science!” if we want to express when things are not complicated, when rocket science itself is simple!? Especially we IT people often use this sentence.

Perhaps we should assume more often, that things MUST be simple to get them work in correct manner. If things are (too) complicated, they can’t work properly and most often we are doing something (completely) wrong, or worse, the completely wrong thing.

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