The Ockham razor principle

The Ockham razor principle is a widely used technique For detectives to solve complex cases and crimes. This premise is used for centuries and can be applied to many areas. Let's look better what this philosophy was developed and how.

What is the beginning of the Ockham razor

First, let's see what is the beginning of the Ockham razor. For this, it is necessary to go back several centuries, when this term was coined for the first time by an English.

The explanation of the Ockham razor principle is very simple and is summarized in the following words: on equal terms, The simplest explanation is usually the most likely. These words summarize quite well what you want to convey the beginning of the Ockham razor.

Therefore, of these words The following deduction can be extracted: When two theories on equal terms have the same consequences, it will be the simplest theory that is more likely to be correct.

On many occasions to achieve the solution to a problem we usually give a thousand laps to the possible causes. It also usually happens that we fall into strange and too convoluted conjectures that do not have much reason to be.

In the case of the Ockham razor principle, this idea would be discarded, because what he states is that we must preferably choose the simplest explanation. This has much more likely to be than the most complex explanation that can occur to us.

The principle of Ockham razor is used in many areas. One of them is for research. So much so, that detectives usually apply it very often to respond to cases that can apparently be complicated.

For example, the principle of the Ockham razor is used to determine who is the culprit of a crime, so that before such an event they always investigate the closest environment in the first instance.

It is something that doctors also do to diagnose a disease. What the technique does is find a solution to a problem, for which all the elements that are not needed.

History of the Ockham razor principle.

But, Where does the name of the Ockham knife come from? His name is taken by Guillermo de Ockham U Occam, born in England of 1280. He died in 1349 in the Franciscan convent of Munich because of the black plague.

His life was marked by extreme poverty, although he received a Franciscan education and became a friar of this order. He was also a scholastic philosopher and had some problems with the justice of the moment.

In fact, studies about his figure show data as he was accused of heresy by Pope John XXII in 1327. Ockham fled the papal court towards Pisa with Miguel de Cesena other friars, and achieved the protection of Luis IV of Bavaria.

For this reason, the friar was excommunicated, but his philosophy was not officially convicted. During his life he wrote a lot about political matters and also about philosophy, being the pioneer of criticism of Platonism, which is called nominalism.

Your thinking revolves around to the idea that individuals only exist within the human mind. Therefore, he argues that abstractions exist as ideas or concepts in the mind, something that had not been thought so far.

His theory of the Ockham razor principle was a contribution that he made to science and that was based on a theoretical reasoning. Through this premise he faced many theses maintained by scholasticism.

However, the Ockham razor principle also has, as is natural, its detractors. The problem is that some people use this theory to test a hypothesis and disapprove another, which does not always give good results.

This is however it is not correct, because it should only be a guide and it is not demonstrated that it works on all the occasions in which it is applied. The first conflict is to determine whether something is simple or not something subjective, so it has no scientific basis. In this way, it is clear that there is no evidence that the simplest is the right thing to be.

Conclusion

Thus, the Ockham razor is an idea that emerged in the thirteenth century And that even today lasts and can be applied to many areas, especially to the resolution of problems, conflicts and enigmas. Of course, we must bear in mind that it is not an exact science, but a reasoning that can serve us to guide us.