Could we please change the terminology????
The "less is more" discussion is going off the rails.
-- Less than how much of what?
-- More than how much of what?
The phrase "less is more" makes a fine witticism if your
name is Mies van der Rohe and everybody knows exactly
what you mean.
I believe that most of the current thread revolves around
breadth versus depth, and the discussion would be clearer
if more-expressive terminology were used.
Obviously it is possible to go too far in the direction of
breadth at the expense of depth. Obviously it is possible
to go too far in the opposite direction. All the interesting
action is in the middle. We need ways of discussing shades
of gray. We need ways of expressing
-- how many topics, and
-- how much depth to a given topic.
Otherwise it's just a bunch of slogans that communicate nothing,
because they mean different things to different readers.
I don't think it is possible to just "count topics" in the
abstract sense, because what is considered multiple topics
by one person might be considered one big topic by another.
Possibly constructive suggestion: It might make sense to
collect some example syllabi, discuss them, and see if any
consensus emerges as to which ones have too much breadth and
which ones have too little.