It's not we exactly "simplicity". If you have two explanations arriving at identical results, take the one with less assumptions. It's helpful to look at it th

It's not we exactly "simplicity". If you have two explanations arriving at identical results, take the one with less assumptions. It's helpful to look at it the other way around. Thomas Aquinas worded his version of it: > it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. There's a subtle difference, and that's probably why we see it called the parsimony principle instead of the simplicity principle. The point being not to have nonessential crap hanging off your theory -- provided you've established that it's genuinely nonessential.