IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-137-40386-5_9.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Complexity, Ockham’s Razor, and Truth

In: Modes of Explanation

Author

Listed:
  • Kevin T. Kelly
  • Konstantin Genin

Abstract

Ockham’s razor says: “Choose the simplest theory compatible with the data.” Without Ockham’s razor, theoretical science cannot get very far, since there are always ever more complicated explanations compatible with current evidence. Scientific lore pretends that reality is simple—but gravitation works by a quadratic, rather than a linear, law; and what about the shocking failure of parity conservation in particle physics? Ockham speaks so strongly in its favor that demonstrating its falsity resulted in a Nobel Prize in physics (Lee and Yang 1957). So why trust Ockham?

Suggested Citation

  • Kevin T. Kelly & Konstantin Genin, 2014. "Complexity, Ockham’s Razor, and Truth," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Michael Lissack & Abraham Graber (ed.), Modes of Explanation, chapter 0, pages 121-131, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-40386-5_9
    DOI: 10.1057/9781137403865_9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-40386-5_9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.