3. Occam's bloody razor

Image from Wikimedia Commons

This is William of Occam. It's the best selfie I can find of him. It was taken in the dark ages, when decent lighting wasn't much of a priority.

William was both a philosopher and theologian. Just one of these would have been sufficient, but no - he had to be both. Because he was a philosopher (and a theologian) he spent a lot of time thinking. Eventually, he invented a way of determining the value of an argument or idea.

We call it Occam's razor, because it cuts through all crap and leaves only the bare essentials.

Now before you ask, Occam's razor would not have been allowed into a football match, and William would probably have been arrested in a stop and search. His razor would be considered a dangerous weapon that could cause a lot of damage if it fell into the wrong hands. It might not be as dangerous as Chekhov's gun, which would have to go off, but you wouldn't want to mess with it.

But it turns out that Occam's razor is actually quite useful. If used appropriately, it helps us realise that we should always choose the explanation that has the fewest possible clauses, factors, or variables. It shouldn't be used as an arbiter between competing theories or ideas, but is best used as a tool to select the theory or idea with the least number of assumptions. Bottom line: simpler theories are more preferable to complex theories because they are more testable. Sharp eh?

One final thought. What if William of Occam had possessed an electric razor? Would he.... but of course that would have been too complicated for him... he demanded simplicity.

Next time: 4. Schrödinger’s undead cat

Previous posts in this series:
1. Pavlov's drooling dog
2. Chekhov's smoking gun


Occam's bloody razor by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Posted by Steve Wheeler from Learning with e's