Ockham's Razors: A User's Manual

by Elliott Sober

Ockham's razor, the principle of parsimony, states that simpler theories are better than theories that are more complex. It has a history dating back to Aristotle and it plays an important role in current physics, biology, and psychology. The razor also gets used outside of science - in everyday life and in philosophy. This book evaluates the principle and discusses its many applications. Fascinating examples from different domains provide a rich basis for contemplating the principle's promises and perils. It is obvious that simpler theories are beautiful and easy to understand; the hard problem is to figure out why the simplicity of a theory should be relevant to saying what the world is like. In this book, the ABCs of probability theory are succinctly developed and put to work to describe two 'parsimony paradigms' within which this problem can be solved.

Genres: Philosophy, Logic, Nonfiction, Science, Mathematics

317 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 31, 2015

Reviews

[Lucille Nguyen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Philosophical overview of Ockham's Razors, excessively wordy and most major insights are hidden behind lots of digressions.

[Michiel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some genuinely interesting insights can be found here about how we build models. The chapter about probability was likely the most interesting one (it mainly considers how Frequentist and Bayesian models incorporate evidence). Sober also considers model selection in evolution, psychology, and philosophy. The digression about the role of parsemony was rigorous, if a bit lengthy. It missed a bit the point of the psychology chapter (which mainly addressed whether chimps can mind-read), but that might be a limitation on my end. The philosophy chapter was also a bit technical and hard to follow.

[Patty]

Read during the strangest neurological week of my life thus far. Wordy