IUBio

The fatal nicks in Occam's Razor

meron at cars3.uchicago.edu meron at cars3.uchicago.edu
Fri Apr 17 17:36:02 EST 1998


In article <3537caa7.0 at news.netway.com>, "Etherman" <etherman at mdc.net> writes:
>
>John M Price wrote in message <353643cc.0 at calwebnnrp>...
>>And history is a humanities, not a science.
>>
>>And you still fail to grasp the concept of necessity.  Of course, your
>>straw Occham is a lot simpler than the real one, so I can understand your
>>mistake.
>
>One problem I see is as follows: How do you know what's necessary?
>
In a most limited version you cauld say "if the theory fails to 
explain what we already know, then it doesn't have all that's 
necessery".  

>Sure, we can think of trivial examples that look something like this:
>X or X plus some untestable hypothesis.  Obviously the former is
>favored because the untestable hypothesis is unnecessary. But
>what if you have two theories that come at the same phenomena
>from completely different directions? Perhaps they both have
>the same number of hypotheses, so the doctrine of "use only
>what's necessary" isn't of any use.
>
Indeed.  Occam's razor isn't an infallible tool for picking the "True 
One" out of a bunch of competing theories.  It is but a pragmatic 
decision making rule for the cases when a decision is needed.  One 
should always bear in mind that "unless a decision is necessery, it is 
not necessery".  In a case like the one you mention above, when two 
quite different but equally simple theories explain same phenomena 
equally well, The natural thing to do would be to pursue both 
directions and search for a possible hidden isomorphism or for 
something deeper underlying both.

>Other criteria would have to be introduced.  For example, how
>well do the theories fit with the rest of science? 

Consistency.  Yes, very much so.


>I would also think that a theory that can be generalized easier would 
>also be preferred.

Yep.  But that's usually not easy to judge.

Mati Meron                      | "When you argue with a fool,
meron at cars.uchicago.edu         |  chances are he is doing just the same"



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