"It’s not that theory should be as simple as possible. But it is true that we can often make a lot more progress than you’d think when we simplify things in slightly absurd ways."<p>Sociologists insisting on greater nuance in new theories is analogous to archaeologists demanding that more detritus be thrown on the artifacts they are carefully attempting to reveal.<p>In any area of thought, premature nuance is the root of all evil. First find the simplest thing that works. You will get all the nuance you could wish for as your original clear idea inevitably branches out into a combinatorial explosion of edge cases and qualifications. Eventually, some vivid idea may unify all of this complication, but this will only come about if you value simplicity in the first place. Certainly complexity is a distinctive characteristic of any mature area of thought, but this comes about as an emergent side effect of exploring it. If you are content to wallow in complexity, even to the point of seeing it as desirable and a sign of sophistication, then you will neither search for nor find that unifying idea.