What is Ockham's razor principle??

Issue #3

Apr 4, 2021

In this issue, I have come up with the topic of Ockham’s razor principle.

Ockham’s razor principle, also called Occam’s razor principle is named after the philosopher Wiliam who was born in Ockham. It puts forward the theory that in most cases, the simpler solutions are more likely to be correct. It puts forward the fact that if two arguments are equally likely to be true, then consider the one with fewer conditions. Removing unnecessary explanations or conditions is the main idea of this principle.

The principle is also expressed as “Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.”

There is ‘n’ number of examples, where this principle comes into play. Two of which are:

Eg: 1) Copernicus proposed the Heliocentric Model which is simple as compared to the geocentric model which was widely believed at his time.

Eg: 2) Basic probability theory also is based on Ockham’s razor principle. We know that every assumption introduces a possibility of an error. So if an assumption does not increase accuracy, then it increases the error rate.

It is still an effective way of reasoning in both everyday life and science.

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