What is Ockham's Razor?

[Terry Martin]

Tom Cloud wrote:
> 
> >> Terry Martin wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Fuel injection is one of those concepts that make you go DOUGH! However,...
> 
> >Michael McBroom wrote:
> >>
> >> Thank you for that, Terry.  Now go away.  And start practicing what you
> >> preach from now on.  Pedal your blinkety-blink bicycle to work.
> 
> and Terry retorted:
> >Hmmm. Methinks you didn't. I also posted this.
> >
> >Yeah, I would be impressed if the carburetor by itself could do 100mpg.
> >According to my weed eater, you can carry it and it gets about 4mpg.
> 
>    [ snip ]
> 
> >doesn't cover himself in the entrapments of heat engines. With a gallon
> >of gas, he probably wouldn't make it back to the car without a Coke.
> >
> >Terry
> 
> Terry, you appear to be a very smart man .... perhaps you
> don't belong here   ;-)   .... one very redeeming item though,
> you did mention Coke and not Pepsi   8^)
> 
> I would like to interject a couple of things
> 
>  1 - I'm not a very smart man (thought I'd clear that up
> right away  8^)

Define "smart"

> 
>  2 - I have a major in Philosophy and Greek ... don't
> remember nothin'  'bout nobody's razor

See below
> 
>  3 - following your logic, walking must be the least
> efficient form of energy, since it was "accidental"  (well,
> I guess crawling is mebbe even less efficient)

Walking is probably one of the least efficient modes of movement,
particularly if you try to emulate the efficiency of an organism with a
machine. Hence we have wheels.
> 
>  4 - I sincerely respect your thoughts on the energy thing
> but, when will we get that the global warming crisis is
> a bunch of crap (a 1 degree rise during the short time we've
> measured temps is nothing to a planet that has experienced
> some pretty serious warming/cooling trends long before
> anyone ever heard of R12 -- in fact long before there
> WAS anyone !!  ).   I look forward to the development
> of something not nearly so crude as a reciprocating
> engine or the burning of petroleum products to power it,
> and I concur that it will happen some time, but ....

Oh, I'm not so worried about global warming as I am nuclear war over
control of the resources, air pollution, and other bothersome irritants. 

> 
>         I remember when I was in elementary and junior
>         high looking at the Popular Science mags (this
>         was back in the 50's) .... there was lotsa
>         articles on anti-gravity devices and nuclear
>         power and much discussion about how we were
>         going to have problems controlling the airways
>         since EVERYBODY was going to have a personal
>         flying saucer (or something like that) -- sorta
>         a George Jetson kinda world.  And this was pre-
>         dicted to happen in less than 20 years  .... it's
>         been over 40 years and I haven't seen any movement.
>         My 1949 Ford and my '52 Studebaker Champion are
>         not far removed from the technology of today,
>         as also the aeroplanes (well, there has been
>         some major movement in turboprops and jets)

You haven't looked under the hood of a late model GM for instance. They
have a neural network. Vehicles are "smarter" than humans in given
instances.
> 
> I guess what I'm saying is that (a) I (honestly) recognize
> the intelligence of our list members -- and of yourself
> but (b) I don't see us moving away from the reciprocating
> engine and fossil fuels in the near future (no, not even
> during the lifetimes of our children) unless forced to do
> so by an international nanny (read UN) run by people who
> know oh-so-much-better than the rest of us low-life slugs.
> 
> Tom Cloud

If we don't, with the near future now being much nearer than anyone had
anticipated with the invention of the piston engine, we collectively are
stupid, forget smart. The doom & gloom crowd tend to detract from the
immediacy of the problem, simply because they are extremest. The nirvana
is here bunch tend to detract from the immediacy of the problem, by
simply saying there isn't one. Do the read below, and apply Ockham's
Razor to the middle position, and fiqure out for yourself what's most
likely to be true.

Ockham's Razor (Occam) is a bit of logic that was apparently first made
mainstream about 1300AD. In folk talk it means the less assumptions you
make in a statement the more likely you are to be right, or, for those
like lawyers, that don't get that, the more times you flip a coin, the
less likely you are to keep coming up with the same side. It sounds
stupidly simple, however, that is just an appearance as a result of the
characteristics of simplicity and elegance, basic properties of the
truest scientific principles.

Here's a snippet from Encarta '95, (who said WIN95 was dumb?)

Ockham or Occam, William of (circa 1285-1349?), known as Doctor
Invincibilis (Latin, “unconquerable doctor”) and Venerabilis Inceptor
(Latin, “worthy initiator”), English philosopher and Scholastic
theologian, who is considered the greatest exponent of the nominalist
school, the leading rival of the Thomist and Scotist schools. See
NOMINALISM; SCHOLASTICISM.
Ockham was born in Surrey, England. He entered the Franciscan order and
studied and taught at the University of Oxford from 1309 to 1319.
Denounced by Pope John XXII for dangerous teachings, he was held in
house detention for four years (1324-28) at the papal palace in Avignon,
France, while the orthodoxy of his writings was examined. Siding with
the Franciscan general against the pope in a dispute over Franciscan
poverty, Ockham fled to Munich in 1328 to seek the protection of Louis
IV, Holy Roman emperor, who had rejected papal authority over political
matters. Excommunicated by the pope, Ockham wrote against the papacy and
defended the emperor until the latter's death in 1347. The philosopher
died in Munich, apparently of the plague, while seeking reconciliation
with Pope Clement VI.
Ockham won fame as a rigorous logician who used logic to show that many
beliefs of Christian philosophers (for example, that God is one,
omnipotent, creator of all things; and that the human soul is immortal)
could not be proved by philosophical or natural reason but only by
divine revelation. His name is applied to the principle of economy in
formal logic, known as Ockham's razor, which states that entities are
not to be multiplied without necessity.

Contributed by: 
Rev. W. Norris Clarke


"Ockham," Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994 Microsoft
Corporation. Copyright (c) 1994 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation. 

(You really have to stretch to fit this into the subject matter of this
group. :-)