Ockham's razor A principle attributed to the fourteenth-century English philosopher William of Ockham. For example, Max Planck interpolated between the Wien and Jeans radiation laws and used Occam's razor logic to formulate the quantum hypothesis, even resisting that hypothesis as it became more obvious that it was correct. [63] This is also the doctrine of Gordon Clark's presuppositional apologetics, with the exception that Clark never thought the leap of faith was contrary to reason (see also Fideism). In biogeography, parsimony is used to infer ancient vicariant events or migrations of species or populations by observing the geographic distribution and relationships of existing organisms. 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. APA Fradet, P.-A. To Ockham, science was a matter of discovery, but theology was a matter of revelation and faith. Later utilitarian writers have tended to abandon this idea, in large part due to the impracticality of determining each alleged criminal's relative sensitivity to specific punishments.[65]. Évènements. William of Ockham (circa 1287–1347) was an English Franciscan friar and theologian, an influential medieval philosopher and a nominalist. Even other empirical criteria, such as consilience, can never truly eliminate such explanations as competition. Les hypothèses ad hoc ne sont pas nécessairement fausses , mais dans le doute, on privilégie l'explication la plus simple. Le rasoir d’Ockham ou principe de parcimonie est le modèle mental selon lequel « les hypothèses suffisantes les plus simples sont les plus vraisemblables. The Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) states that "it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many." Systematics is the branch of biology that attempts to establish patterns of relationship among biological taxa, today generally thought to reflect evolutionary history. "[60] Ockham believed that an explanation has no sufficient basis in reality when it does not harmonize with reason, experience, or the Bible. This ultimate arbiter (selection criterion) rests upon the axioms mentioned above. Le rasoir d’Ockham (1) : le principe de simplicité septembre 3, 2015 Jean-Pierre LUMINET 8 commentaires Au XIV e siècle, le philosophe franciscain Guillaume d’Ockham (1280-1349) écrivit : « il est inutile d’accomplir par un plus grand nombre de moyens ce qu’un nombre moindre de moyens suffit à produire. PDF | On Jan 1, 2007, Gernert and others published Du rasoir d'Ockham et de son usage inadéquat | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate [31], Ernst Mach formulated the stronger version of Occam's razor into physics, which he called the Principle of Economy stating: "Scientists must use the simplest means of arriving at their results and exclude everything not perceived by the senses. Since failing explanations can always be burdened with ad hoc hypotheses to prevent them from being falsified, simpler theories are preferable to more complex ones because they are more testable. [66][67], One possible conclusion from mixing the concepts of Kolmogorov complexity and Occam's razor is that an ideal data compressor would also be a scientific explanation/formulation generator. Other methods for inferring evolutionary relationships use parsimony in a more general way. Pour accéder à toutes les fonctionnalités de ce site, vous devez activer JavaScript. "[32], This principle goes back at least as far as Aristotle, who wrote "Nature operates in the shortest way possible. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle which is nature; and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle which is human reason, or will. Marcus Hutter's universal artificial intelligence builds upon Solomonoff's mathematical formalization of the razor to calculate the expected value of an action. Marcus Hutter has used this consistency to define a "natural" Turing machine of small size as the proper basis for excluding arbitrarily complex instruction sets in the formulation of razors. In doing so he is invoking a variant of Occam's razor known as Morgan's Canon: "In no case is an animal activity to be interpreted in terms of higher psychological processes, if it can be fairly interpreted in terms of processes which stand lower in the scale of psychological evolution and development." » 1 En d’autres termes, lorsque l’on est face à plusieurs hypothèses, il est préférable de privilégier celle qui … The model they propose balances the precision of a theory's predictions against their sharpness, preferring theories that sharply make correct predictions over theories that accommodate a wide range of other possible results. 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. For example, Newtonian, Hamiltonian and Lagrangian classical mechanics are equivalent. "[64] Though some points of this story illustrate Laplace's atheism, more careful consideration suggests that he may instead have intended merely to illustrate the power of methodological naturalism, or even simply that the fewer logical premises one assumes, the stronger is one's conclusion. That would be an example of regular natural selection – a phenomenon called "the selfish herd". Le rasoir d'Ockham ou rasoir d'Occam est un principe de raisonnement philosophique entrant dans les concepts de rationalisme et de nominalisme. Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.”, Plurality is never to be posited without necessity.”, Eine Mehrheit darf nie ohne Not zugrunde gelegt werden.”, Il est inutile de faire avec plus ce qui peut être fait avec moins.”, Abonnez-vous à la Citation du Jour par email. [11] William of Ockham's contribution seems to restrict the operation of this principle in matters pertaining to miracles and God's power; so, in the Eucharist, a plurality of miracles is possible[further explanation needed], simply because it pleases God. Zoology provides an example. Science often does not demand arbitration or selection criteria between models that make the same testable predictions.[7]. Given the phylogenetic tree, ancestral population subdivisions are inferred to be those that require the minimum amount of change. Of course, the choice of the "shortest tree" relative to a not-so-short tree under any optimality criterion (smallest distance, fewest steps, or maximum likelihood) is always based on parsimony [58]. variance minimization) and underfitting (i.e. is that it's possible, given Berkeley's position, to find solipsism itself more in line with the razor than a God-mediated world beyond a single thinker. One potential problem with this belief[for whom?] "[61], St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica, uses a formulation of Occam's razor to construct an objection to the idea that God exists, which he refutes directly with a counterargument:[62]. Philosophe, logicien et théologien anglais, membre de l'ordre franciscain. [14] Robert Grosseteste, in Commentary on [Aristotle's] the Posterior Analytics Books (Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libros) (c. 1217–1220), declares: "That is better and more valuable which requires fewer, other circumstances being equal... For if one thing were demonstrated from many and another thing from fewer equally known premises, clearly that is better which is from fewer because it makes us know quickly, just as a universal demonstration is better than particular because it produces knowledge from fewer premises. 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. Engaging in this behavior would be favored by individual selection if the cost to the male musk ox is less than half of the benefit received by his calf – which could easily be the case if wolves have an easier time killing calves than adult males. Anti-razors have also been created by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), and Karl Menger (1902–1985). "[39] The use of "sharp" here is not only a tongue-in-cheek reference to the idea of a razor, but also indicates that such predictions are more accurate than competing predictions. [6][7][8], When scientists use the idea of parsimony, it has meaning only in a very specific context of inquiry. Eliminativism is the thesis that the ontology of folk psychology including such entities as "pain", "joy", "desire", "fear", etc., are eliminable in favor of an ontology of a completed neuroscience. "Nos vies formidables : contre le rasoir d’Ockham." "[29], Prior to the 20th century, it was a commonly held belief that nature itself was simple and that simpler hypotheses about nature were thus more likely to be true. c.-à-d.: Il ne faut pas multiplier les entités sans nécessité. Le rasoir d'Ockham (ou Occam), connu aussi sous le nom de principe de simplicité, principe d'économie ou de principe de parcimonie est un principe de raisonnement, énoncé par le franciscain d'origine anglaise Guillaume d'Ockham (1285-1347), selon lequel il ne faut pas multiplier les entités (les hypothèses, les notions) sans nécessité. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. It is among the cladists that Occam's razor is applied, through the method of cladistic parsimony. ", https://web.archive.org/web/20140204001435/http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.185.709&rep=rep1&type=pdf, "Bayes not Bust! His popular fame as a great logician rests chiefly on the maxim attributed to him and known as Occam's razor. Introduction The Myth of Ockham's Razor. Aussi appelé « principe de simplicité », « principe de parcimonie », ou encore « principe d'économie », il exclut la multiplication des raisons et des démonstrations à l'intérieur d'une construction logique. The basis for Williams' contention is that of the two, individual selection is the more parsimonious theory. Some attempts have been made to re-derive known laws from considerations of simplicity or compressibility. The procedure to test the former interpretation would compare the track records of simple and comparatively complex explanations. The bias–variance tradeoff is a framework that incorporates the Occam's razor principle in its balance between overfitting (i.e. Podcast. Ockham's Razor is an important method of improving this knowledge acquisition . The general principle of science is that theories (or models) of natural law must be consistent with repeatable experimental observations. 2, K). might say) even more extremist anti-razor is 'Pataphysics, the "science of imaginary solutions" developed by Alfred Jarry (1873–1907). Altruism is defined by some evolutionary biologists (e.g., R. Alexander, 1987; W. D. Hamilton, 1964) as behavior that is beneficial to others (or to the group) at a cost to the individual, and many posit individual selection as the mechanism that explains altruism solely in terms of the behaviors of individual organisms acting in their own self-interest (or in the interest of their genes, via kin selection). In penal theory and the philosophy of punishment, parsimony refers specifically to taking care in the distribution of punishment in order to avoid excessive punishment. We don't assume that the simpler theory is correct and the more complex one false. Cladistic parsimony (or maximum parsimony) is a method of phylogenetic inference that yields phylogenetic trees (more specifically, cladograms). Induction: From Kolmogorov and Solomonoff to De Finetti and Back to Kolmogorov JJ McCall – Metroeconomica, 2004 – Wiley Online Library. To understand why, consider that for each accepted explanation of a phenomenon, there is always an infinite number of possible, more complex, and ultimately incorrect, alternatives. This was the stance of Søren Kierkegaard, who viewed belief in God as a leap of faith that sometimes directly opposed reason. ", "Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler", "Verification, Validation, and Confirmation of Numerical Models in the Earth Sciences", "Accurate prediction of HIV-1 drug response from the reverse transcriptase and protease amino acid sequences using sparse models created by convex optimization", "Statistical consistency and phylogenetic inference: a brief review", "Obsolescence and Immanence in Penal Theory and Policy", "A short introduction to Model Selection, Kolmogorov Complexity and Minimum Description Length", "A formal theory of inductive inference. There is also Crabtree's Bludgeon, which cynically states that "[n]o set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation, however complicated. Since it is absurd to have no logical method for settling on one hypothesis amongst an infinite number of equally data-compliant hypotheses, we should choose the simplest theory: "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.".[44]. la Rasoir d'Ockham (Rasoir d'Ockham) Est une pierre de touche de la philosophie de la science.Guglielmo di Occam Il a suggéré que, parmi les diverses explications d'un phénomène naturel, vous étiez à préférer que pas multiplier les entités inutiles, dit en latin entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.Le moine anglais n'a pas formulé la définition efficace de … Compte rendu de [Nos vies formidables : contre le rasoir d’Ockham]. Thus, complex hypotheses must predict data much better than do simple hypotheses before researchers reject the simple hypotheses. Ernst Mach and the logical positivists rejected John Dalton's atomic theory until the reality of atoms was more evident in Brownian motion, as shown by Albert Einstein.[54]. [12][13] Aristotle writes in his Posterior Analytics, "We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [other things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses." » Séquences : la revue de cinéma, numéro 320, octobre 2019, p. 22–22. "... and that's not me on the film; they tampered with that, too") successfully prevent outright disproval. It is said that in praising Laplace for one of his recent publications, the emperor asked how it was that the name of God, which featured so frequently in the writings of Lagrange, appeared nowhere in Laplace's. He concludes 1. This endless supply of elaborate competing explanations, called saving hypotheses, cannot be ruled out – except by using Occam's razor. "[33], Beginning in the 20th century, epistemological justifications based on induction, logic, pragmatism, and especially probability theory have become more popular among philosophers.[9]. Francis Crick has commented on potential limitations of Occam's razor in biology. If one accepts the first interpretation, the validity of Occam's razor as a tool would then have to be rejected if the more complex explanations were more often correct than the less complex ones (while the converse would lend support to its use). The philosopher of science Elliott Sober once argued along the same lines as Popper, tying simplicity with "informativeness": The simplest theory is the more informative, in the sense that it requires less information to a question. In response he devised his own anti-razor: "If three things are not enough to verify an affirmative proposition about things, a fourth must be added, and so on." Hypothèse plus probable imposée par le rasoir d’Ockham: cette citation est un faux stupide. He invoked Occam's razor against materialism, stating that matter was not required by his metaphysic and was thus eliminable. [39] They state, "A hypothesis with fewer adjustable parameters will automatically have an enhanced posterior probability, due to the fact that the predictions it makes are sharp. In his article "Sensations and Brain Processes" (1959), J. J. C. Smart invoked Occam's razor with the aim to justify his preference of the mind-brain identity theory over spirit-body dualism. Until proved otherwise, the more complex theory competing with a simpler explanation should be put on the back burner, but not thrown onto the trash heap of history until proven false. Proc. bias minimization).[40]. This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions,[3] and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions. 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. [26][71], According to Jürgen Schmidhuber, the appropriate mathematical theory of Occam's razor already exists, namely, Solomonoff's theory of optimal inductive inference[72] and its extensions. This is considered a strong version of Occam's razor. In the 25 papers with quantitative comparisons, complexity increased forecast errors by an average of 27 percent.[37]. An often-quoted version of this constraint (which cannot be verified as posited by Einstein himself)[51] says "Everything should be kept as simple as possible, but not simpler. Similarly in natural science, in moral science, and in metaphysics the best is that which needs no premises and the better that which needs the fewer, other circumstances being equal."[15]. [34][35][36] A study of the predictive validity of Occam's razor found 32 published papers that included 97 comparisons of economic forecasts from simple and complex forecasting methods. Occam's razor has met some opposition from people who have considered it too extreme or rash. There are various papers in scholarly journals deriving formal versions of Occam's razor from probability theory, applying it in statistical inference, and using it to come up with criteria for penalizing complexity in statistical inference. ", 6.363 "The procedure of induction consists in accepting as true the simplest law that can be reconciled with our experiences. 243. 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." Dawkins argues the way evolution works is that the genes propagated in most copies end up determining the development of that particular species, i.e., natural selection turns out to select specific genes, and this is really the fundamental underlying principle that automatically gives individual and group selection as emergent features of evolution. George C. Williams in his book Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966) argues that the best way to explain altruism among animals is based on low-level (i.e., individual) selection as opposed to high-level group selection. Similarly, in science, Occam's razor is used as an abductive heuristic in the development of theoretical models rather than as a rigorous arbiter between candidate models. Il recèle donc une idée plus précise que la simplicité : il s’agit de calculer, de décompter dans le détail des éléments afin d’économiser ceux qui ne sont pas indispensables. Ad hoc hypotheses are justifications that prevent theories from being falsified. However, science has shown repeatedly that future data often support more complex theories than do existing data. 8th International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AI+STATS 2001), Key West, Florida, U.S.A., Jan. 2001 Page(s): 253–260, light behaves like waves and like particles, Solomonoff's mathematical formalization of the razor, "SUMMA THEOLOGICA: The existence of God (Prima Pars, Q. [5] There are, however, notable exceptions where Occam's razor turns a conservative scientist into a reluctant revolutionary. Variations on this theme were subsequently explored by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges in his story/mock-essay "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius". In this case, as it turned out, neither the wave—nor the particle—explanation alone suffices, as light behaves like waves and like particles. They must both possess the same logical (mathematical) multiplicity (cf. Although there have been a number of philosophers who have formulated similar anti-razors since Chatton's time, no one anti-razor has perpetuated in as much notability as Chatton's anti-razor, although this could be the case of the Late Renaissance Italian motto of unknown attribution Se non è vero, è ben trovato ("Even if it is not true, it is well conceived") when referred to a particularly artful explanation. Noté /5. Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. The only assumption is that the environment follows some unknown but computable probability distribution. that simple accounts are more likely to be true than complex ones. Ockham rasoir Un principe attribué au quatorzième siècle philosophe anglais Guillaume d' Ockham. [clarification needed] The reasonableness of parsimony in one research context may have nothing to do with its reasonableness in another. [10] Ockham stated the principle in various ways, but the most popular version, "Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity" (Non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate) was formulated by the Irish Franciscan philosopher John Punch in his 1639 commentary on the works of Duns Scotus. c.-à-d.: Il ne faut pas multiplier les entités sans nécessité. also Correlation does not imply causation). APA Fradet, P.- In an article published in Mind 27 (1918), 345-353, William Thorburn gives convincing evidence that what is now called 'Ockham's Razor', the principle that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity, is a 'modern myth'. Le rasoir d’Occam ou rasoir d’Ockham est un principe de raisonnement que l'on attribue au frère franciscain et philosophe Guillaume d'Ockham (XIVe siècle), mais qui était connu et formulé avant lui : « Les multiples ne doivent pas être utilisés sans nécessité » (« pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate »). may have no non-circular answer, the same may be true of the question 'why should simplicity be considered in evaluating the plausibility of hypotheses?'"[43]. Et c’est le cas. Cladists hold that classification should be based on synapomorphies (shared, derived character states), pheneticists contend that overall similarity (synapomorphies and complementary symplesiomorphies) is the determining criterion, while evolutionary taxonomists say that both genealogy and similarity count in classification (in a manner determined by the evolutionary taxonomist).[55][56]. This, again, reflects the mathematical relationship between key concepts in Bayesian inference (namely marginal probability, conditional probability, and posterior probability). 2)", "ad hoc hypothesis - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com", "Simple versus complex forecasting: The evidence", "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content? However, unlike many theologians of his time, Ockham did not believe God could be logically proven with arguments. Dualists state that there are two kinds of substances in the universe: physical (including the body) and spiritual, which is non-physical. Ptolemy (c. AD 90 – c. AD 168) stated, "We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible. Ici, le rasoir d’Ockham incite à "couper" cette hypothèse ad hoc car on peut expliquer la situation tout aussi bien sans : la personne n’a pas de don de voyance. Cladograms are branching, diagrams used to represent hypotheses of relative degree of relationship, based on synapomorphies. Therefore, to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes. Cladistic parsimony is used to select as the preferred hypothesis of relationships the cladogram that requires the fewest implied character state transformations (or smallest weight, if characters are differentially weighted). This is so because one can always burden a failing explanation with an ad hoc hypothesis. It is thus very rash to use simplicity and elegance as a guide in biological research. Le rasoir d’Ockham est un concept en philosophie des sciences qui stipule qu’entre deux hypothèses concurrentes et non prouvées, il vaut mieux préférer la plus « simple » à la plus « compliquée ». Citations. "[14], Phrases such as "It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer" and "A plurality is not to be posited without necessity" were commonplace in 13th-century scholastic writing. [5], Appeals to simplicity were used to argue against the phenomena of meteorites, ball lightning, continental drift, and reverse transcriptase. ", This page was last edited on 23 February 2021, at 22:59. In the same way, postulating the aether is more complex than transmission of light through a vacuum. [b] Furthermore, it may be used to prioritize empirical testing between two equally plausible but unequally testable hypotheses; thereby minimizing costs and wastes while increasing chances of falsification of the simpler-to-test hypothesis. For example, in the Kolmogorov–Chaitin minimum description length approach, the subject must pick a Turing machine whose operations describe the basic operations believed to represent "simplicity" by the subject. [16] Hence, Aquinas acknowledges the principle that today is known as Occam's razor, but prefers causal explanations to other simple explanations (cf. It is, however, often difficult to deduce which part of the data is noise (cf. Pour mieux la lire et la comprendre, il convient donc de la resituer dans l'œuvre et la pensée de l'auteur ainsi que dans son contexte historique, géographique ou philosophique. In the utilitarian approach to the philosophy of punishment, Jeremy Bentham's "parsimony principle" states that any punishment greater than is required to achieve its end is unjust. Bentham believed that true parsimony would require punishment to be individualised to take account of the sensibility of the individual—an individual more sensitive to punishment should be given a proportionately lesser one, since otherwise needless pain would be inflicted. 1 citation pour Guillaume d' Ockham “ Les multiples ne doivent pas être utilisés sans nécessité. Guillaume d'ockham rasoir Le rasoir d'Ockham 1000 idées de culture général . 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. 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. [11], 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), Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253), Maimonides (Moses ben-Maimon, 1138–1204), and even Aristotle (384–322 BC). Likewise, there is no demand for simplicity principles to arbitrate between wave and matrix formulations of quantum mechanics. In the related concept of overfitting, excessively complex models are affected by statistical noise (a problem also known as the bias-variance trade-off), whereas simpler models may capture the underlying structure better and may thus have better predictive performance. David L. Dowe (2010): "MML, hybrid Bayesian network graphical models, statistical consistency, invariance and uniqueness. Here is a paper that deserves to be better known. [6][7][8] As a logical principle, Occam's razor would demand that scientists accept the simplest possible theoretical explanation for existing data. Certains sites donnent cependant une source: « The psychiatry of enduring peace and social progress » écrit en 1946 par Chisholm.
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