>>>>> "MA" == Michael Atherton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
MA> Jason Goray wrote:
>> >> Occam's Razor - the simplest explanation is mostly
>> >> likely the correct one.
>> >
>> > Not! Occam's Razor suggests that an equally
>> > accurate, but simpler explanation is preferable to a
>> > more verbose one.
>>
>> Occam's Razor infers both statements:
>> http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/OCCAMRAZ.html
MA> I think that you've misread the definition. There's
MA> nothing in formal logic (which the definition is based on)
MA> that implies that a shorter definition is more likely
MA> to be correct than a longer one. Perhaps you can
MA> quote the particular part of the reference that supports
MA> your conclusion?
Ockham's razor is really a heuristic. The closest I could find to an
exact citation is the following:
Ockham's Razor is the principle proposed by William of Ockham in the
fourteenth century: ``Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate'',
which translates as ``entities should not be multiplied
unnecessarily''.
It's not exactly right to say that this is based on formal logic in
any sense that we would understand that term today. Today formal
logic is a branch of mathematics, and mostly concerned with the syntax
of deductively correct arguments (i.e., arguments that can be
determined to be correct on the basis of form, without attending to
their meaning). Formal logic in the fourteenth century was a very
different affair!
Actually, I say this is a heuristic because it has been generally
found that the simpler argument IS more likely to be correct. You
would have to ask a philosopher of science to explain why (and I'm
sure you'd only get MORE questions than you started with, and no new
answers if you did).
I think a canonical example of Ockham's razor would be the preference
for sun-centered models of the solar system over the earth-centered
one. A sign of difficulty in the earth-centered model, by the time it
tried to assimilate telescopic observations, is that it required the
theory to be inelegant, and feature all kinds of excess entities such
as retrograde motion, and epicycles, to explain things that were much
more simply explained by elliptical movement around the sun.
My handy web source
(http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node10.html) offers
the following additional example:
"Consider form example the following two theories aimed at describing
the motions of the planets around the sun
* The planets move around the sun in ellipses because there is a
force between any of them and the sun which decreases as the
square of the distance.
* The planets move around the sun in ellipses because there is a
force between any of them and the sun which decreases as the
square of the distance. This force is generated by the will of
some powerful aliens.
"Since the force between the planets and the sun determines the motion
of the former and both theories posit the same type of force, the
predicted motion of the planets will be identical for both
theories. the second theory, however, has additional baggage (the will
of the aliens) which is unnecessary for the description of the
system."
Note that my presentation of Occam's razor differs some from his
(mine's a little stronger).
Sorry to take us so far off topic, but I majored in philosophy and now
work with logic, so you tripped my switch with that query....
--
Robert P. Goldman
ECCO
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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