Occam's razor
For the "House" television show episode called "Occam's Razor", see Occam's Razor (House episode) Occam's razor (sometimes spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness"): which translates to: This is often paraphrased as "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one," or alternately, "we should not assert that for which we do not have some proof." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood.
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Occam's Razor
<
philosophy> The English philosopher, William of Occam (1300-1349) propounded Occam's Razor:
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
(Latin for "Entities should not be multiplied more than necessary"). That is, the fewer assumptions an explanation of a phenomenon depends on, the better it is.
For example, some claim that God caused himself to exist and also caused the universe to exist - he was the "first cause" - whereas Occam's Razor suggests that if one accepts the possibility of something causing itself then it is better to assume that it was the universe that caused itself rather than God because this explanation involves fewer entities.
The negation of Occam's Razor would suggest that an arbitrarily complex explanation is just as good as the simplest one. (E.g. God and his cat created a robot called Sparky who built the universe from parts bought from a shop in another dimension).
See also
KISS Principle.
(1995-11-09)
(c) Copyright 1993 by Denis Howe
Occam's Razor
Noun
1. the principle that entities should not be multiplied needlessly; the simplest of two competing theories is to be preferred
(synonym) Ockham's Razor, principle of parsimony, law of parsimony
(hypernym) principle, rule
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