Ockham’s Razor: What It Is And How It Is Used In Scientific Research
Ockham’s razor or principle of parsimony is a principle that prioritizes the simplest explanations of all possible ones to explain an event.
It seems simple, but this concept, coined already in the 16th century, has accompanied human reasoning for hundreds of years in fields as diverse as medicine or statistics, including psychology, biology and music, among other disciplines.
Athough it does not seems, People inherently apply the principle of parsimony almost at all times without realizing it For example, when a person is not at home when we wake up, we think that he has gone out to buy something, instead of rambling about whether he has traveled to another country in search of a new life.
As much as it requires an exercise in abstraction and observing the term “outside of oneself”, we can see that Ockham’s razor, or rather, the simplification of thought, is a characteristic that defines the human being in many moments. If you want to know more about this fascinating topic, continue reading.
William of Ockham was a pioneering scholastic philosopher who lived from 1286 to 1347 To save ourselves a history lesson, we will limit ourselves to saying that at this time the thoughts of Ancient Greece had been recovered through Al Andalus (Spain), which influenced various thinkers and philosophers in their postulation of methods and theories.
In addition to the golden rule of Ockham’s razor or principle of parsimony, which is that the simplest explanation is usually the most probable, William of Ockham also He was governed by four iron dogmas in his work:
Although we have presented these principles to you as a rudimentary translation from Latin, the general idea is clear. According to the principle of parsimony, in most cases less is more. It is necessary to highlight that, even so, this application does not defend tooth and nail that the simplest hypothesis has to be true in all cases Rather, he argues that this is the most probable and that among a set of theories to explain a fact, the best starting point is the simplest of all.
Although this methodological principle can be very useful to lay the foundations on which to build knowledge, it is clear that it is not infallible. Various sources refute this, because no matter how obvious it may seem, sometimes reality cannot simply be reduced to the simplest processes. Below you can see examples of the use of Ockham’s razor in various areas
1. Parsimony and evolution
In the world of phylogenetics (the branch of science that is responsible for exploring the relationships between species and taxa of living beings) the principle of parsimony is widely used.
When creating phylogenetic trees, that is, detecting the ancestors and the branching of species from them, In most cases the best hypothesis is the one that requires the least evolutionary changes Let’s take an example:
If we look at insects and the presence or absence of wings in the different taxa, we can digress about various evolutionary mechanisms that explain this difference. Two of them could be the following:
The first is that the common ancestor for all of them had wings. Fossils show that at a certain evolutionary moment insects lost them, therefore, at some point certain taxa recovered them again. This would involve three steps (wings-no wings-wings again).
The second is that the common ancestor for all of them did not have wings. Fossils show that at one time no insects were winged, but throughout evolutionary history, some developed them from primary structures. This would involve two steps (alas- no alas).
According to the principle of parsimony or Ockham’s razor, The second option is the most probable, as it requires fewer steps to explain the current evolutionary situation Of course, these postulations are merely speculative to explain the principle presented here and at no time do they adjust to reality. We are simply trying to simplify the complexity that this method entails.
2. The razor and creationism
Just as this principle has been widely used to generate evolutionary trees, Creationist branches of thought have historically appropriated it to refute natural selection postulated by Darwin.
After all, according to various theologians, assuming the existence of an omnipotent force that creates a whole is a simpler explanation than trying to understand a force of biological selection that modulates the adaptation of all living beings over the centuries. .
In counterpoint to this thought, zoologist Richard Dawkins postulates that if the universe has been created by a God, this must also be explained. An entity capable of creating the universe must be infinitely more complex than the universe itself Therefore, explaining this is a much more difficult task than understanding the origin of life without its intervention. This, as you may have guessed, would violate the principle of parsimony.
3. Parsimony and chemistry
In chemistry, The principle of parsimony can be applied by taking into account that the minimum “metabolic pathway” between the precursor compounds and the products of a reaction is the most probable for obtaining said products.
This principle can be interpreted in places as bizarre as the chemical compounds industry. For example, a paint manufacturer is more interested in following the minimum number of steps necessary to obtain a specific color, as this reduces costs, time and labor.
Even so, It is necessary to recognize that Ockham’s razor does not apply to many physiological chemical pathways at all, since the obtaining of many compounds in the human body and the environment can manifest themselves in different routes. For example, the synthesis of some boron compounds shows at least three different chemical routes with the same purpose. This reality violates the principle of parsimony, since in this case a more complex explanation dominates the set of reactions.
Again, this reductionist principle can be applied, with caution, in psychological and medical settings. In psychology, this methodology is frequently used to opt for the simplest description of the processes underlying a task.
Even so, you have to be careful, because the lack of knowledge about the mechanisms and the lack of objective criteria about why one thought is simpler than another can provide an intuitive and biased approach to the subject
In medicine, the razor is used in a heuristic procedure, that is, doctors and professionals must explain the patient’s symptoms in the simplest way and thus achieve clinical reasoning under the bases of heuristics (concrete things).
Conclusions
As we have seen, Ockham’s razor or the principle of parsimony is a principle that has been with us for hundreds of years to simplify the tremendously complex world that surrounds us. To understand, in many cases, reducing is the first step, even though we omit essential information in this process. You can’t start building a house from the roof, right?
Still, despite all the uses we have seen for it, this principle cannot explain, by any means, all the events that occur on Earth. Complexity is also the basis of modern society in its own way, therefore, not everything can be reduced to “a single, simple explanation.”
