Ockham's Razor

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William of Ockham did not invent the principle that bears his name, but he used it with unusual discipline. Do not multiply entities beyond necessity. If two explanations both account for the facts, prefer the simpler one. This sounds modest, but the implications ran deep. Ockham used the razor to strip away layers of metaphysical machinery that scholastic theology had accumulated — intermediary beings, abstract essences, Platonic forms inhabiting reality alongside physical things. His targets were often theological: he argued that appeals to divine simplicity meant God's existence could not be proven by reason, only held by faith. The razor was not mere laziness about ideas. It was a demand for accountability — every entity introduced into an explanation has to earn its place. Scientists, philosophers, and skeptics have been borrowing it ever since.