Is Ockham's Razor Bullshit?

[Torin]

There are a couple of fun facts about Occam's razor I mention whenever it comes up for discussion. First, it was originally propounded on theological grounds. The idea was that God is omnipotent and has free will (a premise accepted on faith), so we have to be very careful to stick to our evidence since we have no way of predicting what God has created past it. Second, the three foundations it originally permitted claims to be based on were (from memory) self evident truths, observations, and revelation.

 

[Tharmas]

To dig back in the thread a little, this comment surprised me Poli. Perhaps it is merely an exaggeration for effect. I have strong memories of the pleasure I had when first read Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions back about fifty years ago. He made the point that some of the major revolutions in science such as the Copernican revolution in astronomy or Dalton's creation of the atomic hypothesis in chemistry, not to mention Darwin, succeeded, not because they were necessarily more accurate than their predecessors they displaced, but because they were simpler and more direct. The Copernican system, for example, couldn't make truly accurate predictions until modified by Kepler's observations confirming that planetary orbits were ellipses. Yet the Copernican system won converts from the start because of its elegant simplicity.

And didn't Feynman write somewhere about elegant simplicity being a criterion for judging mathematical models, or am I confusing him with someone else?

Feynman can find the universe elegant and beautiful all he likes, I do not object to finding aesthetic beauty in science. But such beauty is not the basis of science. If you are saying Copernicus' model of the solar system was correct because it was elegant...

No, I'm not saying that exactly. I'm saying it was correct because it was "simpler and more direct" to quote myself. It elegantly explained the apparent retrograde motions of certain planets in a way much simpler than could be done with the Ptolemaic "wheels within wheels."

...and that he used Ockham's Razor to decide which idea was more elegant-ish,

Now you're putting words in my mouth. I would suggest that its simplicity was a great part of its appeal.

I fundamentally disagree with you. Not just aesthetic but, beyond any shadow of a doubt, political and religious tensions strongly influenced the popularity of Copernicus' work and its circulation among the esoteric set in Reformation-era Europe, but that did not make it any more or less correct as a description of the Solar System. Indeed, most scientists were not as enamored of heliocentrism until nearly the 18th century, ...

Yes there were scientists who resisted the new theory, but that resistance is a main point of Kuhn's book, as I am sure you are aware, and has to do with the nature of Kuhn's "paradigms". I don't know exactly what the vague "Reformation tensions," you refer to were, but many of Copernicus' champions, including Galileo, were good Catholics (including Copernicus himself for that matter).

after many of the necessary corrections had been made...making for a much less elegant systematic description.

By "many of the necessary corrections" I presume you mean Kepler's finding that orbits were elliptical and the confirmation of that fact through Newton's mathematical analysis. That doesn't seem like "many corrections" to me, and indeed has the smack of elegance about it. But as I pointed out the simplicity and explanatory power of the theory is what created adherents, even when many of its predictions were less accurate than the Ptolemaic system's.

We have a model of the solar system now that I would not call especially elegant. The system is quite lopsided, those nasty planets making NO effort to coordinate or generate perfect geometric shapes or even distances, always moving and shifting and messing around with each others' orbits, birthing and swallowing other celestial bodies, running into things. I find the system beautiful in its way, but I would not call our current, more accurate model more simple or direct than what Copernicus proposed. His model wins on both fronts. It just doesn't describe reality. Which, in my opinion, is much more important.

You've completely lost me here. Are you seriously suggesting that the increase in accuracy of observations in the last four or five hundred years negates the heliocentric theory? Remember, Ockham's razor doesn't suggest that simple explanations are the best, only the simplest that fit the facts.

 

[skepticalbip]

I fundamentally disagree with you. Not just aesthetic but, beyond any shadow of a doubt, political and religious tensions strongly influenced the popularity of Copernicus' work and its circulation among the esoteric set in Reformation-era Europe, but that did not make it any more or less correct as a description of the Solar System. Indeed, most scientists were not as enamored of heliocentrism until nearly the 18th century, ...

Yes there were scientists who resisted the new theory, but that resistance is a main point of Kuhn's book, as I am sure you are aware, and has to do with the nature of Kuhn's "paradigms". I don't know exactly what the vague "Reformation tensions," you refer to were, but many of Copernicus' champions, including Galileo, were good Catholics (including Copernicus himself for that matter).

There is a bit missing here as to why there was resistance. Most astronomers at the time were members of the clergy plus the inquisition had issued a declaration in 1616 that the heliocentric model was a heresy. Many liked it quietly but denied it openly to avoid scrutiny by the inquisition (like Galileo faced) and maybe a few to avoid hell.