3 ms·

Is that a rhetorical question, or do you really not know?

by Retra 8y ago

sgt101 8y ago
I have strong ideas that are somewhat better informed than most people I talk to, but then again I am probably talking to the wrong people. As far as I know Occam's Razor was invented 800 years ago to solve the problem of the holy trinity. Basically medieval philosophers were stumped by the number three - one was fine; unity was perfection... but more than one was a problem - why would god have a certain number of aspects? So school of Scotus formulated the idea that the number of entities was necessary; just right because God knew what was up with the universe and therefore would produce aspects to necessity. This brought in the idea that there were elegant and sufficient numbers of things in nature which was quite contrary to the old way of looking at the infinite and mystical aspects of the world, inspired by ideas of real numbers and right angled triangles with length 2 hypotenuse. This idea has been a handy heuristic for science (not maths) ever since, but it has no actual basis apart from avoiding getting put on a bonfire if you were a Christian philosopher in the thirteenth century ( I think that William of Occam was nearly burned in Avignon, but talked his way out of it).
- im3w1l 8y ago
  When people use Occams Razor today they typically mean "prefer the simplest, most elegant explanation". The reason we have it is that for any kind of observation you can make there are an infinite number of different theories that could explain your observations. So we need some kind of rule that tells us which of these theories we should prefer.
- Retra 8y ago
  It's not only a heuristic though. If you have a scientific theory modeling 10 parameters, but a theory modeling the exact same phenomena can be formed using only 7 parameters, the 7 parameter theory is preferable for a number of very rational and non-aesthetic reasons.

3 ms·

Is that a rhetorical question, or do you really not know?

by Retra 8y ago

Is that a rhetorical question, or do you really not know?

sgt101 8y ago
I have strong ideas that are somewhat better informed than most people I talk to, but then again I am probably talking to the wrong people. As far as I know Occam's Razor was invented 800 years ago to solve the problem of the holy trinity. Basically medieval philosophers were stumped by the number three - one was fine; unity was perfection... but more than one was a problem - why would god have a certain number of aspects? So school of Scotus formulated the idea that the number of entities was necessary; just right because God knew what was up with the universe and therefore would produce aspects to necessity. This brought in the idea that there were elegant and sufficient numbers of things in nature which was quite contrary to the old way of looking at the infinite and mystical aspects of the world, inspired by ideas of real numbers and right angled triangles with length 2 hypotenuse. This idea has been a handy heuristic for science (not maths) ever since, but it has no actual basis apart from avoiding getting put on a bonfire if you were a Christian philosopher in the thirteenth century ( I think that William of Occam was nearly burned in Avignon, but talked his way out of it).
- im3w1l 8y ago
  When people use Occams Razor today they typically mean "prefer the simplest, most elegant explanation". The reason we have it is that for any kind of observation you can make there are an infinite number of different theories that could explain your observations. So we need some kind of rule that tells us which of these theories we should prefer.
- Retra 8y ago
  It's not only a heuristic though. If you have a scientific theory modeling 10 parameters, but a theory modeling the exact same phenomena can be formed using only 7 parameters, the 7 parameter theory is preferable for a number of very rational and non-aesthetic reasons.