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if you've ever spent any time arguing on the internet you've likely come across a
philosophical principle known as occam's razor along with ad hominem attacks and comparing
people you don't like to hitler occam's razor is a favorite argument of keyboard warriors
everywhere most often understood as meaning the simplest argument is often the correct one but
where did this strangely name principle come from and does it hold as much rhetorical weight
as many seem to think that it does or rather is it just something people use in order to sound
a bit smarter and win an argument to begin with a backstory occam's razor is named after william of
arkham an english franciscan friar and theologian who lived during the 13th and 14th centuries
born in the town of ochem in surrey in 1258 little is known about occam's early life prior to his
joining the franciscan order at the age of 14. as we'll soon see his choice of monastic order
would have a profound impact on his philosophical views and the theological controversies in which
he would later become embroiled occur began his education at the london convent for the franciscan
order studying the usual scholastic topics such as logic natural philosophy and theology from 1310
to 1317 he studied theology at oxford university and began lecturing on bishop peter of lombard's
four books of sentences the standard handbook of theologians at the time it was occam's lectures
and commentary on the sentences which first landed him in hot water with the catholic church on
philosophical and theological grounds as a franciscan occam was theologically at odds
with the dominant dominican order whose views at the time were epitomized by the writings of saint
thomas aquinas among the many issues over which the franciscans and the dominicans disagreed was
whether jesus and his followers owned property saint francis of assisi the founder of the
franciscan order had concluded that jesus did not own property and modeled his own monastic order
on this example requiring his monks to take out of poverty and rely on the charity of others for food
shelter and other necessities he even went so far as to tear down a brand new home specially built
for his order ochem passionately upheld these views and in 1324 a rival at oxford reported him
to the pope john xx who summoned arkham to the papal court at that time it was based in avenue
in france for a hearing ochem saw the catholic church's vast accumulation of wealth and power
as antithetical to jesus's teachings and even went so far as to declare the pope a heretic and call
for his abdication for the next four years ockham lived in avignon as the hearings dragged on and
the conflict between the dominicans and the franciscans grew ever more heated until finally he
made his escape in 1328. he traveled around italy and germany for a while before settling in munich
where he lived out the rest of his life before dying in 1347. much of arkham's philosophical
career was devoted to metaphysics and logic and it is from this work that we get his famous razor
the school of medieval philosophy in which arkham worked is known as scholasticism and it was quite
different from our modern conception of philosophy and logic being heavily centered on theology and
the writings of aristotle the focus on theology in particular can make scholasticism seem very alien
to modern philosophy and it's given the discipline something of a bad reputation the reality however
is rather more complicated than the work of william of arkham serves as a good's case study of
how scholasticism helped lay the groundwork for modern-day empiricism and analytical philosophy
much of occam's scholarship dealt with the problem of universals entities which exist in relation to
other entities and which unite similar entities as general properties for example according to
his framework chairs owe their existence to the property of chairness which informs what
in the physical world can and cannot be a chair competing schools of philosophy differ on whether
universals are independent of the objects they signify or a fundamental property of the objects
themselves occum as a nominalist did not believe that universals actually existed for him
a chair was just a chair not part of a universal metaphysical property but rather simply a mental
concept used to describe a group of related objects although a chair shares features with
other individual chairs the similarities are in the mind of the observer not a fundamental
property of the physical world while all this may seem like well esoteric naval gazing occam's
rejection of the more metaphysically extraneous aspects of older aristotle and philosophy
including the concept of universals led to the development of a simpler more stripped down
metaphysical worldview that would later evolve into empiricism and the scientific method it also
directly informed the principle known today as occam's razor occam's razor is typically stated as
entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity in other words when comparing two arguments all
other things being equal the simplest explanation is most likely to be the correct one while this
principle is today widely associated with william of arkham hocking himself never stated his famous
razor in its modern form in any of his known writings indeed the basic idea of arkham's razor
known as the principle of past money actually predates occam by centuries first appearing in the
works of aristotle quote nature does nothing in vain but always does what is best from among the
possibilities for the substantial being of each kind of animal the principle of past money also
appears in the works of dozens of hellenic jewish muslim and christian european philosophers prior
to the 14th century so why is it most commonly associated with william of arkham the most cold
theory is that the principle was attributed to him later by scholars like theologian and astronomer
leibert frodmons who in his 1649 book on christian philosophy of the soul wrote i call this axiom
occams and the normalist's razor because they used it to trim and shave off all distinct entities
leaving a plurality only of names whatever its origin or specific historical formulation
the basic principle of occam's razor remains the same as theories are intended to explain
natural phenomena the fewer assumptions and convolutions a theory has the stronger
it is likely to be or as doctors are often advised when making diagnoses when you hear hoof beads
think horses not zebras this principle became especially important as western philosophy moved
into the enlightenment and old ideas about the universe began to be challenged for example for
thousands of years philosophers believed that the earth was at the center of the universe and
that the cosmos revolved around it however this theory was of course fundamentally flawed
that certain celestial objects known as planets appeared to periodically stop in their tracks and
reverse direction a phenomenon known as retrograde motion indeed the word planet is derived from the
greek word planetary meaning wanderers in order to resolve this apparent contradiction in the third
and second centuries bce greek philosophers parkers and ptolemy devised a model of the
universe in which the planets not only revolved around the earth but also around similar objects
known as epicycles the combination of which accounted neatly for retrograde motion however
as astronomers discovered evermore apparently contradictory celestial phenomena the ptolemaic
model grew into a cumbersome convoluted mess of circles within circles by contrast the geocentric
model championed by nicholas copernicus and galileo galilei which placed the sun and not
the earth at the center of the universe provided a far more elegant explanation for retrograde motion
according to this model phenomenon was the result of planets orbiting the sun at different speeds
causing certain planets to periodically overtake each other and create the illusion of reversing
motion in the absence of other evidence the copernican model was eventually accepted as
more likely to be accurate as it explained the same natural phenomena with fewer assumptions and
convolutions but while occam's razor is a useful tool when comparing competing theories it is not
the be-all and end-all rule as it is so often made out to be after all the simplest explanation is
not always the correct one especially in science for example aristotle believed that all objects
have a natural tendency to fall towards the center of the universe as the earth was believed to be
the center of the universe this philosophy neatly explained the phenomena of gravity later however
isaac newton demonstrated that gravity is in fact an attractive force produced by all objects with
mass while later still albert einstein revealed that gravity is the result of the mass of objects
distorting the fabric of space-time in each case the explanation for the force of gravity grew ever
more complicated while simultaneously allowing natural phenomena to be modeled and predicted
to an ever increasing degree of accuracy indeed the simplicity of a scientific theory has really
little bearing on the likelihood of it being true all that matters is whether said theory can
accurately predict the outcomes of an experiment this demonstrates the vital importance of the
caveat all things being equal in the traditional formulation of occam's razor in the vast majority
of cases competing theories do not stand on equal ground one will always have a large body
of empirical evidence backing it up rendering the application of occam's razor moot however occam's
razor does have its applications in science particularly in relation to a principle known
as falsifiability first introduced by austrian philosopher karl popper in his 1935 work the logic
of scientific discovery the falsifiability principle was inspired by what poppa saw
as a fundamental difference between the physical sciences and other scientific fields specifically
between einstein's theories of relativity and freud's theories of psychoanalysis popper
instinctively viewed the former as inherently more scientific than the latter but initially could not
exactly articulate why he later realized the difference laying the ability of each theory
to be disproven through experimental evidence psychoanalytic theory he observed was incapable of
being disproven if an observed behavior was found to contradict one of freud's theories then another
was immediately offered up to explain the discrepancy a practice known in science
as an ad hoc hypothesis even though it was impossible for every theory to be correct
at the same time there was no mechanism to determine which theory was in fact the correct one
einstein's theories by contrast were inherently riskier in that it was possible to disprove them
through experiment for example general relativity predicted that the gravity of the sun would
deflect the light of distant stars by a certain amount in a man which differed from that predicted
by newtonian mechanics thus if this deflection were to be measured as it was by physicist arthur
eddington in 1919 there would be two possible outcomes one which supported einstein's theories
and one which falsified it the upshot of all this is that counterintuitively a theory which
explains everything and cannot be disproven is in fact an inherently weak theory and belongs in the
realm of pseudoscience thus applying a form of occam's razor a strong theory is one which
includes the smallest number of assumptions and ad-hoc hypotheses and is fundamentally testable
and most importantly falsifiable on a more basic level many philosophers have argued
that the over-use of occam's razor can stifle creativity and lead to overly narrow-minded
thinking bolter chat and a contemporary of william of arkham even put forward his own anti-razor also
known as the principle of plentitude whenever an affirmative proposition is apt to be verified of
actually existing things if two things are not able to suffice without another thing
one has to posit another thing similarly german philosopher emmanuel kant stated
the variety of entities should not be rashly diminished surprisingly the razer and anti-razor
do not actually contradict each other but rather act as safeguards against extremes in thought when
formulating theories with the raids or opposing the unnecessary addition of complexity and the
anti-razor opposing the unnecessary elimination of complexity in philosophy and science as in
all things moderation rationality and careful thought are the key to uncovering the truth
thus holcomb's razor is much like its physical counterpart you can get a nice close shave just
be careful you don't cut too close so i really hope you found this video interesting if you did
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