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Ockham’s Razor is the principle proposed by William of Ockham in the fourteenth century: ``Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate’’, which translates as ``entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily’’.
In many cases this is interpreted as ``keep it simple’’, but in reality the Razor has a more subtle and interesting meaning. Suppose that you have two competing theories which describe the same system. If these theories have different predictions, then it is a relatively simple matter to find which one is better: one does experiments with the required sensitivity and determines which one gives the most accurate predictions. For example, in Copernicus’ theory of the solar system, the planets move in circles around the sun; in Kepler’s theory they move in ellipses. By measuring carefully the path of the planets, it was determined that they move on ellipses, and Copernicus’ theory was then replaced by Kepler’s.
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My compliments to you for the above. Too bad you are no longer on this site. I like educated and intelligent people who take a realistic stand between PROOF and THEORY. Anyone else stumbling across this shold feel free to contact me.
Occam's razor (sometimes spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness"): "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem", roughly translated as "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity".
This is often paraphrased as "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood.
Originally a tenet of the reductionist philosophy of nominalism, it is more often taken today as a heuristic maxim (rule of thumb) that advises economy, parsimony, or simplicity, often or especially in scientific theories.