Tharmas
Veteran Member
PZ Myers over on Pharyngula has an interesting blog piece about Occam’s razor.
The linked article is quite lengthy, and I’ve only skimmed it, but it essentially makes the point that Occam’s Razor (simplicity of theories), while it may be useful, is tricky to justify philosophically.
It's also true that, as PZ notes, simplicity is not the sine qua non of scientific theories and hypotheses.
I’m working on the final exam for my introductory biology course which is laced with Darwinism, but also with the philosophy of science, and early on I’d introduced them to Occam’s Razor. I’d tried to explain to them then that while it’s a useful operational tool in designing appropriate experiments, it’s almost never true that the simplest answer is the correct answer, at least not in biology. And then I stumbled across this article on Simplicity in the Philosophy of Science by Simon Fitzpatrick that summed up that same point nicely.
The linked article is quite lengthy, and I’ve only skimmed it, but it essentially makes the point that Occam’s Razor (simplicity of theories), while it may be useful, is tricky to justify philosophically.
… very many scientists continue to employ practices and methods that utilize notions of simplicity to great scientific effect, assuming that appropriate solutions to the philosophical problems that these practices give rise to do in fact exist, even though philosophers have so far failed to articulate them.
It's also true that, as PZ notes, simplicity is not the sine qua non of scientific theories and hypotheses.