> It seems to me that a good way of selecting one idea over is competition is > Occam's razor
I've seen this and variatiants thereof several times on this list. Occam's razor is all very well when you have two theories which equally save the phenomena; but in physics it is generally extremely difficult to find even one theory which agrees with all that is known experimentally. In other fields, philosophy and psychology, it seems that there are multiple theories which apply to the same observed phenomena, but the phenomena are so complex and incompletely known and the theories so imprecise that it is impossible to really know that the theories are consistent with all the phenomena (this seems to be the state of the multi-verse hypothesis) and which theory is really 'simpler'; consequently Occam's razor is not so useful. Brent Meeker
