Lecture
Okkam's razor (sometimes Occam's blade ) is a methodological principle called the name of the English Franciscan monk, the nominalist philosopher William Occam (Eng. Ockham, Occam ; Latin Gulielmus Occamus ; ca. 1285–1349). In short, it reads: “One should not multiply existing without need” [1] (or “New entities should not be attracted unless absolutely necessary” ). Ockham himself wrote: [1] "What can be done on the basis of fewer [assumptions] should not be done on the basis of the larger" and "Diversity should not be assumed without the need." This principle forms the basis of methodological reductionism, also called the principle of thrift , or the law of economy (Latin lex parsimoniae ).
What is today called “Occam's razor” was not created by Occam, if we keep in mind the basic content of this principle. The fact that under the conditions of the Proto-renaissance formulated Occam was known, at least since the days of Aristotle.
The principle of "Occam's razor" consists in the following: if a certain phenomenon can be explained in two ways: for example, the first - by attracting entities (terms, factors, facts, etc.) A, B and C, or secondly - by entities A, B, C and D, and while both methods give an identical result, the first explanation follows. The essence of D in this example is superfluous: and its attraction is redundant.
It is important to remember that Occam's razor is not an axiom, but a presumption, that is, it does not prohibit more complex explanations in principle, but only recommends the procedure for considering hypotheses, which is optimal in most cases.
The Latin maxim “ Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem ” (“Do not multiply entities without need”), which was so well-known and popular among modern scholars, was first called “ Occam's Razor ” by William Hamilton, the professor of logic and metaphysics of the University of Edinburgh, in his book “Conversations on Philosophy and literature ", published in 1852 [2] .
The term was a kind of anglization of the Latin “ Novaculum Nominalium ” - “blade of nominalism”. In turn, the Latin term was a literal translation from the French witty expression of the philosopher Étienne Condillac - “ Rasoir des Nominaux ”, thus christening this Latin expression in the work “The Origins of Human Consciousness”, published in 1746 [2] . Upon further investigation, it turns out that maximal in the proper sense of the word maxim is very conditional.
With nominalism (but not with Ockham!), The expression was first associated with a young German scientist GV Leibniz, in his own way interpreting the works of his teacher Jacob Tomazius, in his famous dissertation published in 1670. Due to the popularity, Leibniz’s dissertation was reprinted several times, along with a new look at nominalism, imperceptibly spreading his new “axiom” [2] .
However, none of the significant medieval authors (not only nominalists) in this form formulated an axiom. Literally, in precisely this word order, it appeared in print for the first time only in 1654 in the book of the German scientist Johann Clauberg “Logic. Old and New ”(“ Logica vetus et nova ”, Groningen, 1654); even earlier, in 1639, close to the Clauberg variant, the axiom was formulated by the scientist monk John Punch (John Punch), a teacher of philosophy at the Roman Franciscan College of St. Isidora, an Irishman, is a "little-known man, of great talents and very independent views" [2] . In the comments to the new edition of Duns Scott's Opus Oxoniense, this scientist wrote that the expression " non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate " is "a common axiom often found in scholastics ." And this is the earliest expression of the Latin maxim, later known as "Occam's Razor".
Just half a century after the first mention, in the universal encyclopaedia Britannica, the term Occam's Razor was noted as a full-fledged synonym term Law of Parsimony, the formulation of which was attributed to Occam's Encyclopedia [3] . However, already in 1918, in the popular scientific journal Mind, published in Canada by the University of York and devoted to questions of philosophy, an article entitled The Occam's Razor Myth was published. The author, after at least three years of research, came to the conclusion that the expression, known as "Occam's razor", does not belong to Occam. As, by the way, the statement of the “Law of Economy”, designated by Aristotle in his “Physics”, but “completely and completely” described by “the greatest of medieval thinkers”, Ockham's teacher, by Duns Scott [2] .
A typical case of the Stigler's Law, which states that no scientific discovery is named after its discoverer [4] .
In the later encyclopedias, dictionaries and publications of a philosophical nature, instead of the originally given maxim “ Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem ” (“It is not necessary to multiply entities without necessity”) that are not related to Occam, they indicate two other formulas that are actually found in his works. So, in the modern thorough edition of Ockham in English - “Ockham. Philosophical Writings. A Selection Edited and Translated by Philotheus Boehner ”(New York, 1957) - Philotheus Boerner, an expert on medieval philosophy, pointed out that“ Occam's razor ”is often implied by the author in an implicit form, but more clearly and often expressed in formulas:“ Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate ”(“ The set should not be approved unnecessarily ”) and“ Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora ”(“ Needless to explain through much what is possible through less ”) found in different places of his reasoning. In one of these places, for example, Ockham says:
... multiplicity should never be considered unnecessarily ... [but] everything that can be explained from the difference of matters for a number of reasons - the same can be explained equally well or even better with the help of one foundation.
Occam's maxims in its imaginary and real forms may seem similar to indistinguishability, but only in the eyes of a man, far from the heated debates of the theologians and philosophers. So, back in 1915, in the same journal “Mind”, with the inherent journalism, it was thoroughly proved that “Occam's Razor”, taken according to Hamilton, simply cannot be Ockham's dictum, since it contradicts his whole philosophy [2] .
Ockham himself, of course, did not suspect about any "Occam's razor". And he did not consider himself a nominalist, since nominalism was officially recognized as a heresy in 1092. Acquainted with the works of Aristotle, medieval thinkers spent a lot of ink to assimilate his legacy, coordinating it, as far as possible, with the religion of Revelation. One of the controversial, “hot” questions of the time was the question of “universals” - whether they have their essence . The answer to this question gave rise to a lot of new questions, such as, for example, “Did Jesus have an angel?” Or “Who arranged more complicatedly, an angel or an archangel?” - which became, roughly speaking, the main content of those who broke up in the Late Middle Ages and Proto-renaissance discussions.
Occam, as follows from his cautious maxims, developed separate intuitions of Aristotle, criticizing, like him, the “redundant” “world of ideas,” insisting that there are universals only in thinking, but not in reality, and relying on the formulated by his teacher. The law of economy. His predecessors, in addition to Duns Scott (1265-1308), well-known commentators of Aristotle - Robert Grossetest (1175-1253) and Maimonides (1138-1204).
However, it should be remembered that the “Law of Economy”, is “an effective tool against Platonism” [5] , according to Ockham, is applicable only in the field of logic, which he tried to separate from ontology with all the forces of his mind: after all, recognizing simplicity is a priori more perfect complexity ( “The simpler, the better”) you can first quickly come to the exclusion of the dual nature of Christ, then the trinity of God, and then - God himself. What was for the Franciscan monk most terrible dream. But it happened. - Actually, by virtue of logic so beloved by Ockham. A few hundred years after his death.
In modern science, Occam's razor is usually understood as a general principle, stating that if there are several logically consistent explanations of a phenomenon that explain it equally well, then all other things being equal, the simplest of them should be considered true. The content of the principle can be summarized as follows: it is not necessary to introduce new laws to explain some new phenomenon, if this phenomenon can be exhaustively explained by the old laws.
Attention should be paid to the “equally good”, “ceteris paribus” and “exhaustively” speeds used above: Occam's razor requires to prefer a simple explanation only if it explains the phenomenon no less accurately than the complex one, considering all known moment of an array of observations, that is, if there are no objective grounds for preferring a more complex explanation to a simple one.
Occam's razor is logically based on the principle of sufficient reason introduced by Aristotle, and in the modern form formulated by Leibniz: it is possible to assert the existence of an object, a phenomenon, a relationship, etc., if there are grounds, that is, facts or logical conclusions from facts confirming it is a judgment. Considering simple and complex explanations from the point of view of this principle, it is easy to see that if a simple explanation is complete and exhaustive, then there are simply no sufficient grounds for introducing additional components into the reasoning. On the other hand, if there are such grounds, then a simple explanation is no longer complete and exhaustive (since it does not cover these grounds), that is, the conditions for using the Occam's razor are not met.
In philosophy, the term "razor" refers to a tool that helps throw away (shave) unlikely, implausible explanations. And since the razor blade (razor) is a shaving tool, the same name was transferred to the truth tool.
Examples of other "razors": The principle of falsifiability Popper, razor Hanlon, Hitchens razor.
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Models and research methods
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