How documenting the intellectual process preserves rigor without falling into hermetic jargon
Rigor is not a synonym for obscurity. This essay examines a simple idea: whoever documents their own intellectual path — the questions, the sources, the discarded hypotheses, the reasons behind each choice — produces a text that is more rigorous and, at the same time, more readable than one who hides behind jargon.
The thesis seems obvious, but it runs against an old habit. In many fields, and in Law in particular, a text's difficulty is still taken as proof of depth. Writing hermetically works as a password of belonging: those who understand are inside; those who don't are outside. The problem is that this code protects sound thinking and fragile thinking alike — and so it protects nothing.
The false dilemma between rigor and clarity
It is commonly assumed that there is a trade-off: to be clear, the author must simplify; to be rigorous, they must accept density. This trade-off is largely illusory. What makes a text difficult is rarely the complexity of the idea. More often, it is the omission of the steps that led to it.
Rigor, in the strong sense, is the possibility of verification. Karl Popper located scientific objectivity not in the researcher's conviction but in the possibility that others can test their claims (POPPER, 1972). An argument is rigorous when the reader can retrace the path, check the premises, and locate where they would disagree. And that requires exactly the opposite of hermeticism: it requires the path to be in plain sight.
Impenetrable jargon, in this light, is not an excess of rigor. It is a lack of it. By preventing verification, it turns the argument into an act of authority. The reader is not persuaded; they are intimidated.
Documenting the process: an old tradition
The idea of exposing one's own method has a respectable lineage. Descartes did not present his conclusions as revelation: he narrated, in the first person and in the vernacular, the doubts and rules that led him to them (DESCARTES, 2001). Choosing French over the scholars' Latin was itself a gesture against hermeticism.
In the twentieth century, sociologist C. Wright Mills turned this attitude into a craft. In his essay on intellectual craftsmanship, he recommended that researchers keep a personal file — notes, stray ideas, abandoned projects — and reorganize it often. For Mills, this record was not bureaucracy: it was the very place where thinking happens and corrects itself (MILLS, 2009).
Niklas Luhmann took the practice to the extreme with his box of interlinked notes, the Zettelkasten. He described it as a communication partner, capable of surprising its own author with connections he had not planned (LUHMANN, 1981). Sönke Ahrens popularized the method decades later, insisting on a decisive point: writing notes in your own words is the most honest test of understanding (AHRENS, 2017).
Umberto Eco, in his handbook on theses, follows the same trail. Reading cards, precise recording of sources, and defining technical terms the first time they appear are, for him, conditions of scholarship — not ornaments (ECO, 2010).
The common thread is clear. Documenting the process forces the author to make explicit what would otherwise remain implicit. And the implicit is precisely where jargon hides.
Why hermetic jargon is not rigor
We must distinguish a technical term from hermetic jargon. A technical term precisely names something ordinary language cannot reach: “preclusion,” “res judicata,” “general repercussion.” It saves words and reduces ambiguity. Hermetic jargon does the opposite: it uses difficult words where simple ones would do, piles up abstractions, and hides who did what.
George Orwell pointed out in 1946 that vague and pretentious language is not just a flaw of style: it corrupts thought, because it spares the author from knowing exactly what they mean (ORWELL, 1946). Schopenhauer, a century earlier, had been more acerbic: whoever writes obscurely usually does not know clearly what they think (SCHOPENHAUER, 2005).
Howard Becker, a sociologist and writing teacher, observed that many researchers adopt inflated prose out of fear — of seeming naive, of not being taken seriously. The cure he proposed was practical: rewrite, cut, replace the abstraction with the example (BECKER, 2015). Michael Billig went further and showed how the social sciences turn processes into abstract nouns, erasing the agents and making claims immune to checking (BILLIG, 2013).
The extreme case is parody. Alan Sokal published in an academic journal a deliberately meaningless article, stuffed with fashionable terminology, to show that hermeticism can conceal a complete absence of content (SOKAL; BRICMONT, 1999). If an empty text passes for profound, jargon has ceased to be a quality filter.
Steven Pinker sums up the diagnosis with a useful image: good writing is a conversation in which the author helps the reader see something they have not yet seen. Bad writing suffers from the “curse of knowledge” — the author forgets that the reader is not inside their head (PINKER, 2016). Documenting the process is the direct antidote to that curse.
The case of Law: giving reasons is documenting
Brazilian law has already turned this idea into a legal duty. The Constitution requires judicial decisions to state their reasons, on pain of nullity (art. 93, IX). The Code of Civil Procedure went further: art. 489, § 1, does not consider a decision reasoned if it merely cites, reproduces, or paraphrases a rule without explaining its relation to the case, nor if it uses indeterminate legal concepts without saying why they apply there (BRASIL, 2015).
In other words, the law requires the judge to document the intellectual process. The conclusion is not enough; the path is required. And that path only serves its purpose if the parties can read it and, if need be, challenge it.
A Law No. 15,263 of November 14, 2025, which established the National Plain Language Policy, points in the same direction for the entire public administration. Among the techniques that art. 5 requires in texts addressed to citizens are short sentences in direct order, one idea per paragraph, and the use of synonyms for technical terms and jargon — or their explanation within the text itself (BRASIL, 2025).
Note the detail: the law does not ban technical terms. It requires that they be explained. This is the same distinction made above between precision and hermeticism. Plain language is not poor language; it is language that does not leave the reader outside.
Practices for documenting without obscuring
From the tradition reviewed above, I draw a few practices that I use and recommend:
- Write down the question before the answer. State, in one sentence, what you want to find out. If it doesn't fit in one sentence, the problem is not yet clear.
- Take notes in your own words. Copying passages feels like studying; rewriting proves understanding.
- Keep what was discarded. Abandoned hypotheses and rejected sources, with the reason, show the reader that the conclusion withstood alternatives.
- Define the technical term the first time. It stays in the text, but stops being a barrier.
- Say who did what. Prefer “the court decided” to “it was decided.” The active voice returns the agent to the sentence and makes checking easier.
- Show the exact source. Article, paragraph, item, page. A vague citation invites distrust.
- Test with an outside reader. If someone intelligent but lay can't follow the reasoning, the flaw is almost always in the text — not in the reader.
None of these practices reduces content. All of them increase the surface for verification. That is what makes them rigorous.
Conclusion
Hermetic jargon promises authority but delivers opacity. Documenting the intellectual process does the reverse: it gives up the pose and gains verifiability. The text grows longer in steps, but shorter in mystery.
From Descartes to Luhmann, from Mills's file to art. 489 of the Code of Civil Procedure, the lesson repeats. Thinking well and writing clearly are not separate tasks. Whoever shows the path invites the reader to walk it — and the trust that follows is worth more than any impression of depth.
References
AHRENS, Sönke. How to take smart notes: one simple technique to boost writing, learning and thinking. North Charleston: CreateSpace, 2017.
BECKER, Howard S. Truques da escrita: para começar e terminar teses, livros e artigos. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2015.
BILLIG, Michael. Learn to write badly: how to succeed in the social sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
BRASIL. Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil de 1988. Brasília, DF: Presidência da República, 1988.
BRASIL. Lei nº 13.105, de 16 de março de 2015. Código de Processo Civil. Brasília, DF: Presidência da República, 2015.
BRASIL. Law No. 15,263 of November 14, 2025. Establishes the National Plain Language Policy. Diário Oficial da União, Brasília, DF, Nov. 17, 2025.
DESCARTES, René. Discurso do método. Translated by Maria Ermantina Galvão. 2nd ed. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2001.
ECO, Umberto. Como se faz uma tese. Translated by Gilson Cesar Cardoso de Souza. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2010.
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ORWELL, George. Politics and the English language. Horizon, London, v. 13, n. 76, p. 252-265, Apr. 1946.
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SCHOPENHAUER, Arthur. A arte de escrever. Translated by Pedro Süssekind. Porto Alegre: L&PM, 2005.
SOKAL, Alan; BRICMONT, Jean. Imposturas intelectuais: o abuso da ciência pelos filósofos pós-modernos. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 1999.