tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Dec 16 10:49:24 1998
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Re: Problem Words
: As Granny
: on the Beverly Hillbillies once said "Maybe the moon will come down and
: kiss you on the forehead, but it ain't likely." For years drawings and
: schematics that released by paramount on starship design have cited nuclear
: fusion as the source of power for impulse drive. This is hardly an
: intuitive leap, it's simply achum's [sp?] razor. The simplest explanation
: tends to be the best.
:
: SuSvaj
>From the Britannica Online:
http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=micro/434/46.html
Ockham's razor
also spelled OCCAM'S RAZOR, also called LAW OF ECONOMY, or LAW OF
PARSIMONY, principle stated by William of Ockham (1285-1347/49),
a scholastic, that *non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter
necessitatem*; i.e., entities are not to be multiplied beyond
necessity.
The principle was, in fact, invoked before Ockham by Durand de
Saint-Pourçain, a French Dominican theologian and philosopher of
dubious orthodoxy, who used it to explain that abstraction is the
apprehension of some real entity, such as an Aristotelian cognitive
species, an active intellect, or a disposition, all of which he
spurned as unnecessary. Likewise, in science, Nicole d'Oresme,
a 14th-century French physicist, invoked the law of economy, as
did Galileo later, in defending the simplest hypothesis of the
heavens. Other later scientists stated similar simplifying laws
and principles.
Ockham, however, mentioned the principle so frequently and employed
it so sharply that it was called "Ockham's razor." He used it, for
instance, to dispense with relations, which he held to be nothing
distinct from their foundation in things; with efficient causality,
which he tended to view merely as regular succession; with motion,
which is merely the reappearance of a thing in a different place;
with psychological powers distinct for each mode of sense; and with
the presence of ideas in the mind of the Creator, which are merely
the creatures themselves.
_________________________________________________________________________
Voragh "Grammatici certant et adhuc sub judice
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons lis est." Horace (Ars Poetica)