William of Ockham appears to have been an interesting fellow, but I'm not especially fond of his razor. The following is from A.Word.A.Day:
Ockham's razor states that "entities should not be multiplied needlessly". It's also called the principle of parsimony. It's the idea that other things being equal, among two theories the simpler one is preferable. Why razor? Because Ockham's razor shaves away unnecessary assumptions. Ockham's razor has applications in fields as diverse as medicine, religion, crime, and literature. Medical students are told, for example, "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras."
Why?
Why is the simpler explanation preferable? What is 'logical' about such an arbitrary judgement? And what is meant by 'simpler', anyway? William of Ockham was a Christian monk, but his razor is generally used today in the service of materialism. If we take that razor to the possibly tedious question of how the univers began, which is the simpler explanation, that God made it, or that it expanded more or less spontaneously from an infinitely dense concentration of matter about 13.7 billion years ago? Honestly, I don't know which is the simpler explanation. What are the criteria for simplicity?
As to the maxim, "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras", this, of course, seems to assume that zebras don't even exist. Personally, I despise this kind of thinking. Some people live where zebras are more common than horses. Horses aren't the centre of the universe, you know.
