»[24]. It was hypothesized that a universal aether was such a medium and much effort was expended to detect it. Tel est le sens de la devise d'Occam. Many artificial intelligence researchers are now employing such techniques. Dans la même veine, Eugene Koonin, dans The Logic of Chance[27], précise que : « Le principe de parcimonie est contestable parce qu'il existe de nombreux arbres [phylogénétiques] qui sont seulement à peine moins parcimonieux que le meilleur mais qui présentent une topologie différente. It argues that behavior cannot be understood in terms of the components that make them up. The cladists hold that genealogy alone should determine classification and pheneticists contend that similarity over propinquity of descent is the determining criterion while evolutionary taxonomists claim that both genealogy and similarity count in classification. If we fail to justify simplicity considerations on the basis of the context in which we make use of them, we may have no non-circular justification: Just as the question 'why be rational?' ', ["But Ockham's razor does not say that the more simple a hypothesis, the better. ». William H. Jefferys and James O. Berger (1991) generalise and quantify the original formulation's "assumptions" concept as the degree to which a proposition is unnecessarily accommodating to possible observable data. 352-3; Kneale and Kneale, 1962, p. 243. Ockham did not invent this "razor," so its association with him may be due to the frequency and effectiveness with which he used it (Ariew 1976). L'énoncé Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, littéralement « Les entités ne doivent pas être multipliées par-delà ce qui est nécessaire », est une variante souvent attribuée à Guillaume d'Ockham, sans cependant qu'il y en ait trace dans ses écrits. Occam's razor is also known as the law of economy or the law of parsimony (frugality). In science this principle is used a heuristic (or discovery) tool that guides scientists for the development of scientific models. [pas clair]. Biologists or philosophers of biology use Occam's razor in either of two contexts both in evolutionary biology: the units of selection controversy and Systematics. « de multiplier les êtres sans nécessité et d'inventer une nouvelle espèce de corps inconnue à tous les hommes », Induction: From Kolmogorov and Solomonoff to De Finetti and Back to Kolmogorov, Foundations of Occam's razor and parsimony in learning, from ricoh.comD Stork - NIPS 2001 Workshop, Occam’s razor as a formal basis for a physical theory, from arxiv.orgAN Soklakov, Foundations of Physics Letters, from uclm.es J. Hernandez-Orallo - Journal of Logic, Language, and…, On the existence and convergence of computable universal priors, from arxiv.org M Hutter - Algorithmic Learning Theory, Notices dans des dictionnaires ou encyclopédies généralistes, Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes, Mythe de l'utilisation incomplète du cerveau, https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rasoir_d%27Ockham&oldid=182108778, Article contenant un appel à traduction en anglais, Page utilisant le modèle Citation avec un retour ligne, Article contenant un appel à traduction en allemand, Page pointant vers des dictionnaires ou encyclopédies généralistes, Article de Wikipédia avec notice d'autorité, Portail:Sciences humaines et sociales/Articles liés, Portail:Scepticisme rationnel/Articles liés, licence Creative Commons attribution, partage dans les mêmes conditions, comment citer les auteurs et mentionner la licence, l'hypothèse d'un contrôle divin permanent sur les mouvements célestes paraît, à première vue, plus, le même principe est utilisé pour affirmer que la sélection naturelle est plus simple pour expliquer la vie que l'existence d'un dieu, selon. Inductive justification for Occam's razor being a dead-end game, we have the choice of either accepting it as an article of faith based on pragmatist considerations or attempting deductive justification. Les théories calculables les plus courtes ont un plus grand poids dans le calcul de la probabilité de l'observation suivante, en utilisant toutes les théories calculables qui décrivent parfaitement les observations précédentes. This, again, reflects the mathematical relationship between key concepts in Bayesian inference (namely marginal probability, conditional probability and posterior probability). L'Etranger d'Elée, bouche de Platon dans le dialogue, cherche à convaincre Socrate le Jeune que les arguments accumulés dans la discussion, sans un rapport direct avec le sujet, ne sont pas « inutiles » et surérogatoires (283b) : « XXIV. William Ockham (c. 1285–1349) … is remembered as an influential nominalist, but his popular fame as a great logician rests chiefly on the maxim known as Occam's razor Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem or "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." There are many different ways of making inductive inferences from past data concerning the success of different theories throughout the history of science; inferring that "simpler theories are, other things being equal, generally better than more complex ones" is just one way of many, and only seems more plausible to us because we are already assuming the razor to be true (see e.g. For instance, Classical physics is simpler than subsequent theories, be preferred over more complicated theories but should not be preferred over them because it is demonstrably wrong in some respects. However, there is more to the scientific method than analyzing data - processes of collecting data, pre-existing mind frames, well-accepted hypotheses and even axioms that may or may not actually correspond with reality, and the vague nature of scientific community consensus all play a very significant role in the process of scientific inquiry, perhaps more significant in practice than many of the finer points of inductive logic (Thomas Kuhn outright rejected induction as the main driving force of the scientific method altogether in favor of paradigm shifts). Il existe de nombreux principes similaires, par exemple : Le rasoir d'Ockham est connu au-delà des cercles scientifiques au travers de divers supports de la culture populaire. By definition, all assumptions introduce possibilities for error; If an assumption does not improve the accuracy of a theory, its only effect is to increase the probability that the overall theory is wrong. 11/2/2017. I am a software engineer so I look for places where mental models can help me {Armstrong David M. Les Universaux (trad. In other words, a simple theory applies to more cases than a more complex one, and is thus more easily refuted. Therefore, according to the principle, a simpler but less correct theory should not be preferred over a more complex but more correct one. Le terme vient de « raser » qui, en philosophie, signifie « éliminer des explications improbables d'un phénomène » et du philosophe du XIV siècle Guillaume d'Ockham. « Nous ne devons admettre comme causes des choses de la nature au-delà de ce qui est à la fois vrai et suffisant à en expliquer l'apparence » (Isaac Newton). Though such a compressor does not seem practical to manufacture in the foreseeable future, the implications of its conception would be dramatic. Postulating extra entities may allow a theory to be formulated more simply, while reducing the ontology of a theory may only be possible at the price of making it syntactically more complex. », « Les multiples ne doivent pas être utilisés sans nécessité », Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, Quaestiones et decisiones in quatuor libros Sententiarum cum centilogio theologico, Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, « Les entités ne doivent pas être multipliées par-delà ce qui est nécessaire », « Il vaut mieux prendre des principes moins nombreux et de nombre limité, comme fait. This is often paraphrased as "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one." Anti-razors have also been created by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), and Karl Menger (1902-1985). One possible conclusion from mixing these concepts - Kolmogorov complexity and Occam's Razor - is that an ideal data compressor would also be a scientific explanation/formulation generator. Beginning in the 20th century, epistemological justifications based on induction, logic, pragmatism, and probability theory have become more popular among philosophers. ». For a full treatment of cladistic parsimony see Elliott Sober's Reconstructing the Past: Parsimony, Evolution, and Inference (1988). One intuitive justification of Occam's Razor's admonition against unnecessary hypotheses is a direct result of basic probability theory. "Today, we think of the principle of parsimony as a heuristic device. This is an example of kin selection. Another contentious aspect of the Razor is that a theory can become more complex in terms of its structure (or syntax), while its ontology (or semantics) becomes simpler, or vice versa. The second problem with the "simplest is best" equation is that Occam's razor never claims to choose the 'best' theory, but only proposes simplicity as the deciding factor in choosing between two otherwise equal theories. On ne doit donc pas s'émouvoir de l'accumulation des hypothèses : le risque du principe de parcimonie est d'affecter l'inventivité de l'auditeur (287 a-b) : « – L'ETRANGER : [...] Car nous n'aurons nul besoin d'ajuster la longueur de nos discours au désir de plaire, sinon accessoirement, et quant à la manière la plus facile et la plus rapide de chercher la solution d'un problème donné, la raison nous recommande de la tenir pour secondaire et de ne pas lui donner le premier rang, mais d'estimer bien davantage et par-dessus tout la méthode qui enseigne à diviser par espèces, et, si un discours très long rend l'auditeur plus inventif, de le poursuivre résolument, sans s'impatienter de sa longueur ; et sans s'impatienter non plus, s'il se trouve un homme qui blâme les longueurs du discours dans des entretiens comme les nôtres et n'approuve point nos façons de tourner autour du sujet, il ne faut pas le laisser partir en toute hâte et tout de suite après qu'il s'est borné à blâmer la longueur de la discussion ; il lui reste à faire voir qu'il y a des raisons de croire que, si elle eût été plus courte, elle aurait rendu ceux qui y prenaient part plus aptes à la dialectique et plus ingénieux à démontrer la vérité par le raisonnement. Paul Churchland (1984) cites Occam's razor as the first line of attack against dualism, but admits that by itself it is inconclusive. The term razor refers to the act of shaving away unnecessary assumptions to get to the simplest explanation. Jerrold Katz has outlined a deductive justification of Occam's razor: If a hypothesis, H, explains the same evidence as a hypothesis G, but does so by postulating more entities than G, then, other things being equal, the evidence has to bear greater weight in the case of H than in the case of G, and hence the amount of support it gives H is proportionately less than it gives G. Richard Swinburne argues for simplicity on logical grounds: [...] other things being equal -- the simplest hypothesis proposed as an explanation of phenomena is more likely to be the true one than is any other available hypothesis, that its predictions are more likely to be true than those of any other available hypothesis, and that it is an ultimate a priori epistemic principle that simplicity is evidence for truth. There are two senses in which Occam's razor can be seen at work in the history of science. Altruism is defined as behavior that is beneficial to the group but not to the individual, and group selection is thought by some to be the evolutionary mechanism that selects for altruistic traits. Contre une maladie de ce genre, si par hasard elle te prenait par la suite – et il n'y aurait à cela rien d'étonnant –, je vais te soumettre un raisonnement applicable à tous les cas de cette sorte. », « une activité comportementale ne doit en aucun cas être interprétée comme la conséquence d'une faculté mentale élaborée, si la même activité comportementale peut être conçue comme le fruit d'une activité mentale moins élevée, « la maxime méthodologique suprême lorsqu'on philosophe », « Si un signe n'a pas d'usage, il n'a pas de signification. One reason for doing so is that considerations of parsimony and of elegance typically pull in different directions. L'opposition de Platon au principe de parcimonie érigé comme fin suffisante du discours se retrouve dans ses nombreuses digressions dans ses différents dialogues, digressions qui, chacune, sont en fait d'une importance capitale en ce qu'elles « ouvrent le Logos à une autre dimension, comme si, en "évoluant" autour d'un objet, la pensée prenait de la hauteur. Lloyd Morgan's Canon is fashioned from the same material as Occam's Razor. The aforementioned problem of underdetermination poses a serious obstacle to applications of the scientific method. Originally a tenet of the reductionist philosophy of nominalism, it is more often taken today as a heuristic maxim that advises economy, parsimony, or simplicity in scientific theories. Or pour Wittgenstein, ce n'est certainement pas une maxime que l'on peut se proposer d'utiliser (parce qu'alors on pourrait la refuser) : c'est bien une « devise », elle s'applique d'elle-même : L'induction de Solomonoff est une formalisation mathématique et une preuve[17],[18],[19],[20],[21] du rasoir d'Ockham, sous l’hypothèse que l'environnement suit une loi de probabilité inconnue mais calculable. Simpler theories are preferable other things being equal. For example, if a hypothetical patient's immediately apparent symptoms include fatigue and cirrhosis and they test negative for Hepatitis C, their doctor might formulate a working hypothesis that the cirrhosis was caused by their drinking problem, and then seek symptoms and perform tests to formulate and rule out hypotheses as to what has been causing the fatigue; but if the doctor were to further discover that the patient's breath inexplicably smells of garlic and they are suffering from pulmonary edema, they might decide to test for the relatively rare condition of Selenium poisoning. ...either science is irrational [in the way it judges theories and predictions probable] or the principle of simplicity is a fundamental synthetic a priori truth.". Leibniz's version took the form of a principle of plenitude, as Arthur Lovejoy has called it, the idea being that God created the most varied and populous of possible worlds. Information and translations of occam's razor in the most comprehensive dictionary definitions resource on the web. In my family we’re no longer ashamed to be seen associating with mental health therapists. endowed it with a sui generis existence), when it has meaning only when embedded in a specific context (Sober 1992). Russell, Notre connaissance du monde extérieur), qui nous autoriserait de pourchasser les entités surnuméraires. The origins of what has come to be known as Occam's razor are traceable to the works of earlier philosophers such as John Duns Scotus (1265–1308), Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274), and even Aristotle (384–322 BC) (Charlesworth 1956). – SOCRATE LE JEUNE : Pour moi, étranger, je ne vois rien d'inutile dans ce qui a été dit. Dr. Amit Goswami, a physics teacher and author of numerous books, including The Self Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World, argues that "consciousness is the ground of all being.". », « Pourquoi se compliquer la vie à faire simple quand il est si simple de faire compliqué ? We are apt to suppose that a word like "paternity" signifies some "distinct entity", because we suppose that each distinct word signifies a distinct entity. Dualists claim that there are two kinds of substances in the universe: physical (including the body) and mental, which is nonphysical. », « Tout doit être le plus simple possible, mais pas plus simple que ça, « Nous ne devons admettre comme causes des choses de la nature au-delà de ce qui est à la fois vrai et suffisant à en expliquer l'apparence », Des avatars modernes du rasoir sont les mesures d'information du type, « Monsieur de Laplace, je ne trouve pas dans votre système mention de Dieu. Neuroscience & Psychology; Genetics; Ockham’s Razor and Christianity . This as an example of a behavior by the males that seems to be altruistic. If the male musk ox runs off, leaving his offspring to the wolves, his genes will not be propagated. Occam's razor is now usually stated as follows: Of two equivalent theories or explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred. There are three primary camps in systematics; cladists, pheneticists, and evolutionary taxonomists. The behavior is disadvantageous to them individually but beneficial to the group as a whole and was thus seen by some to support the group selection theory. This leads to all sorts of absurdities, such as "a column is to the right by to-the-rightness", "God is creating by creation, is good by goodness, is just by justice, is powerful by power", "an accident inheres by inherence", "a subject is subjected by subjection", "a suitable thing is suitable by suitability", "a chimera is nothing by nothingness", "a blind thing is blind by blindness", " a body is mobile by mobility". The most-cited version of the Razor to be found in Ockham's work is Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate or Plurality ought never be posed without necessity. Zoology provides an example. recommendation of the simplest theory come what may[1]. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness"): entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. The Turing machine can be thought of as embodying a Bayesian prior belief over the space of rival theories. [4] The theory of relativity is often given as an example. One involves a discussion of combustion and how its effects are transmitted to the wheels. Occam's razor is not an embargo against the positing of any kind of entity, or a Une formulation plus moderne est que « les hypothèses suffisantes les plus simples doivent être préférées ». Le rasoir ne prétend pas désigner quelle hypothèse est vraie, il indique seulement laquelle devrait être considérée en premier[1]. In particular, it shows that 'simplicity' must first be defined in some way before the razor may be used, and that this definition will always be subjective. The principle is most often expressed as Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, or "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity", but this sentence was written by later authors and is not found in Ockham's surviving writings. française), Les Editions d'Ithaque, Paris 2010. p. 35}. His variant short-circuits the need for sophistication by equating it to simplicity. Occam's razor is not equivalent to the idea that "perfection is simplicity". "While these two facets of simplicity are frequently conflated, it is important to treat them as distinct. Oc′cam's ra′zor. Occam’s razor, principle stated by the Scholastic philosopher William of Ockham (1285–1347/49) that ‘plurality should not be posited without necessity.’ The principle gives precedence to simplicity: of two competing theories, the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred. Occam's razor has met some opposition from people who have considered it too extreme or rash. I’ve been seeing a shrink about a year now to work through a few issues. ». Ockham's Razor and Bayesian Statistics (Preprint available as "Sharpening Occam's Razor on a Bayesian Strop)", Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms, An Introduction to Comparative Psychology. Notamment le rasoir d'Ockham peut souvent inviter à négliger la différence entre causalité et corrélation. In the former case the following are examples of reduction by elimination: The impetus of Aristotelian Physics, the angelic motors of medieval celestial mechanics, the four humors of ancient and medieval medicine, demonic possession as an explanation of mental illness, phlogiston theory from premodern chemistry, and vital spirits of premodern biology. Definition of Occam's razor : a scientific and philosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities »[23], Le critère ici avancé par Platon contre le principe de parcimonie est donc sa nuisance à l'inventivité de l'auditeur et, plus largement, à l'exercice de la dialectique (285d). He famously invoked Occam's razor against Idealism's metaphysical competitor, materialism, claiming that matter was not required by his metaphysic and was thus eliminable. Erwin Schrödinger wrote that "Consciousness is the singular for which there is no plural," thus placing consciousness first and everything, including the physical universe, within the realm of consciousness. ». Thus, complex hypotheses must predict data much better than do simple hypotheses before researchers reject the simple hypotheses. », « Quand j'entends les battements de sabots, je ne pense pas licornes, je pense chevaux. It has inspired numerous expressions including "parsimony of postulates", the "principle of simplicity", the "KISS principle" (Keep It Simple, Stupid), and in some medical schools "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras". Des avatars modernes du rasoir sont les mesures d'information du type AIC, BIC ou DIC (en) où des mesures de pénalité de la complexité sont introduites dans la log-vraisemblance. NIPS 2001 Workshop "Foundations of Occam's Razor and parsimony in learning", "We Must Choose The Simplest Physical Theory: Levin-Li-Vitányi Theorem And Its Potential Physical Applications", Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms, "Message Length as an Effective Ockham's Razor in Decision Tree Induction", 8th International Workshop on AI and Statistics, http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/Occam%27s_sword, Simplicity at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor?oldid=171928, In the first example, the Copernican model is said to have been chosen over the Ptolemaic due to its greater simplicity. Perhaps the ultimate in anti-reductionism, Pataphysics seeks no less than to view each event in the universe as completely unique, subject to no laws but its own. This rephrasing has several faults, the worst being that Occam's razor is only supposed to be used to choose between two scientific theories which are otherwise equally predictive. Also called law of parsimony. Holism is often referred to as Gestalt psychology. Philosophers, he suggests, may have made the error of hypostatizing simplicity (i.e. n. the principle in philosophy and science that assumptions introduced to explain a thing must not be multiplied beyond necessity, and hence the simplest of several hypotheses is always the best in accounting for unexplained facts. In science, it is getting rid of all the assumptions that make no difference to the predictions of the hypothesis. Walter Chatton (de) était un contemporain de Guillaume d'Ockham qui contestait la théorie de ce dernier et proposa son anti-rasoir[25], en expliquant que la quantité des moyens de vérifier une proposition ne doit être épuisée qu'une fois que l'on s'est bien assuré d'avoir fait le tour du sujet : « Si trois choses ne sont pas suffisantes pour vérifier une proposition affirmative sur des choses, une quatrième doit être ajoutée, et ainsi de suite. A restatement of Occam's razor, in more formal terms, is provided by information theory in the form of minimum message length An underlying general principle thus offers a much simpler explanation, without retreating to special principles as group selection. In the latter case there are three examples from the history of science where the simpler of two competing theories each of which explains all the observed phenomena has been chosen over its ontologically bloated competitor: the Copernican heliocentric model of celestial mechanics over the Ptolemaic geocentric model, the mechanical theory of heat over the Caloric theory, and the Einsteinian theory of electromagnetism over the luminiferous aether theory. Kant felt a need to moderate the effects of Occam's Razor and thus created his own counter-razor: "The variety of beings should not rashly be diminished." (Summula Philosophiae Naturalis III, chap. En réalité, on n'a, jusqu'à présent, jamais trouvé l'adage écrit dans l'un des ouvrages du philosophe[3]. 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