Occam’s Razor: The “Bad Guy” Always Triumphs
Why Complexity Won Out Over Simplicity in Our Search for Truth
Over two decades before, there had been a club member who was standing in a presidential election. Candidate A had an “innocent Bambi” look. Still, the kind of gaze Eastern movie-goers had come to associate with villains from Westerns. He was known to hang around with shady characters. He had three children from previous marriages after being involved in several fraud and thievery cases.
The other candidate was a friend of mine, a university associate professor with respectable academic attainments behind him, still unmarried at 30 and taking Mass every Sunday.
It’s not hard to guess who won this election or what kind of “air” how the club filled the atmosphere with its bankrupt approach.
Plain Isn’t Always Best: A Challenge to Occam’s Razor
Occam’s Razor, named after the fourteenth-century philosopher William of Ockham, states that the simplest explanation is usually the most accurate. He put it: “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate.” In other words, we should look for truth by stripping away the excess baggage and simplifying things until we are left with nothing but proven facts. Here is a guiding principle from…
