WEBVTT - From the Vault: Occam's Razor 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.680 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:07.720 --> 0:00:10.920 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:10.960 --> 0:00:13.040 Time to go into the vault for a classic episode 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:17.680 of the show. This one originally published on February and 0:00:17.760 --> 0:00:21.119 it's about Acam's Razor. Yeah, this one, this one is 0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:22.759 a lot of fun we get into. You know, we 0:00:22.840 --> 0:00:27.040 discussed scientific thinking and speculative thinking. Uh, we discussed the 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:29.880 name of the rose a little bit for obvious reasons 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:32.640 that this one was fun. There's some some history, some science. 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:39.400 Everything you want. Dr wonderful. Welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:39.440 --> 0:00:48.640 your Mind, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Work. Hey, 0:00:48.760 --> 0:00:50.479 welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:53.880 Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're going 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:57.160 to discuss a problem solving principles that many of you 0:00:57.160 --> 0:01:00.440 have probably heard of and that we've we've definitely referenced 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:03.680 on the show before, and that is Acom's Razor. That's right, 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:05.760 it's it's one of the classics, one of the hits 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:08.800 of like the Skeptical tool Kit, and uh, I think 0:01:08.800 --> 0:01:10.880 it's a really good one to get into because it's 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:14.400 something that is widely known, but in different ways and 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:18.399 often uh. To whatever extent it actually does have value, 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:21.720 it often gets deployed in ways that do not actually 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:25.120 make use of its value, right, Like like an actual 0:01:25.240 --> 0:01:29.200 razor blade may be misused from time to time. Now, 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:31.280 one specific place that I know we've talked about it 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:34.680 before is that is in the context of Carl Sagan's 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:39.640 recommendations for the tools of skeptical thinking. Uh. He lays 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:43.040 these out, and one of them is Occam's razor. He writes, 0:01:43.120 --> 0:01:46.720 Occam's razor. This convenient rule of thumb urges us, when 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:50.559 faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well, 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:53.800 to choose the simpler. Okay, Now, why do we end 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:56.040 up talking about this today. We were in the studio 0:01:56.120 --> 0:01:59.480 the other day, uh, discussing upcoming episodes, and you said 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:02.000 that Seth mentioned this, our our producer, Seth. Yeah. I 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:05.400 was in here and Seth Nicholas Johnson was working on 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:08.440 a crossword puzzle. Was it the New York Times? He 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:10.680 tells us it was The New York Times? Uh, And 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:12.800 he he asked me how to spell okam is an 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:16.600 Ockham's razor? And I took a guess. At it and 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:18.880 I can't. I can't remember I was correct. I was 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:21.440 probably wrong, but also probably hit one of the multiple 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:25.760 acceptable spellings for Ockhams raiser um. But anyway, we started 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:27.120 talking about it and I was like, oh, yeah, we 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:29.639 could do that as an episode, and so here we are. 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:31.480 I'm very glad we picked this because I think one 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:35.520 of my personal favorite genres of critical thinking is is 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:39.240 being skeptical about the tools of skepticism. You know, is 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:43.040 sometimes people who identify as skeptics can can I get 0:02:43.040 --> 0:02:45.000 a little cocky? You know, they get a little too 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:48.200 sure of themselves about what the reasoning tools they use, 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:50.839 and it's worth putting those tools to the test, giving 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:54.080 them a closer look. Yeah. Absolutely, Now I have to 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:57.000 say that I definitely remember the first time I encountered 0:02:57.000 --> 0:02:59.360 the concept of Ockham's raz or, at least the first 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:01.560 time I encounter unded it, and it on some level 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:04.359 stuck with me. And that was when I view the 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:10.680 film adaptation of Carl Sagan's novel Contact. The movie I 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:14.040 can't watch without crying. Oh yeah, yeah, well why does 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:18.359 it make you cry? Oh God, there's no no, It's 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:21.920 just it's pointed, like especially the first part where you know, 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:23.919 it zooms out from the earth and you're hearing the 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:26.680 radio signals go back in time, and then and then 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:29.360 it shows the young Ellie air Away experimenting with the 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:32.119 ham radio and her dad's helping her, and I get 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:35.520 so emotional. I don't know, yeah, yeah, it's it's been 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:37.760 a very long I haven't seen it since it initially 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:40.960 came out, And in fact, the main thing I remember 0:03:41.120 --> 0:03:44.600 from it is this scene in which Jodie Foster's character 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:49.680 Eleanor air Away has having this conversation with Matthew McConaughey's character. 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:52.360 Who how old was Matthew McConaughey at this point, I 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:54.120 don't even know how old he is now he's just 0:03:54.240 --> 0:03:57.640 like this ageless demon. But anyway, he has his character, 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:00.840 he's playing his character named Palmer Joss. Uh huh. And 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:04.320 in the scene in question, Foster's character brings up Acam's 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:07.800 raiser in a discussion on the nature of God. She 0:04:07.800 --> 0:04:11.640 she says, well, which is ultimately the simpler hypothesis than 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:15.360 an all powerful God exists or the human beings made 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:18.600 God up in order to feel better about things, and 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:21.279 then this ultimately comes back around is kind of flipped 0:04:21.320 --> 0:04:23.839 on her later on in the film regarding her characters 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:28.000 encounter with an extraterrestrial intelligence. Right, is it more likely 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:30.480 that she really had the experience she thinks she had 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:33.960 with with all these aliens or that she like hallucinated 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:37.039 something that would give her emotional closure. Yeah, and so yeah, 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:38.680 I think I was in high school at the time, 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:41.159 so it was It was an interesting concept, especially in 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:45.680 the context of atheism versus you know, faith in a 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:49.000 creator deity. Uh. To to suddenly have this tool from 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:51.359 the chest of skeptical thinking just thrown up on the 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:55.320 table and you and seemingly used by both sides. Well, yeah, 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:57.360 I think this is funny. This is a great example 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:00.040 because it highlights some of the most common features of 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:04.080 Occam's razor as it is actually used, Like it's often 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:07.400 invoked in a kind of fuzzy way, like without an 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:11.880 objective measure, uh, just kind of invoked to back up 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:15.760 your intuitions about the probability of something. Right. But another 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:18.680 thing is that this example shows how it's not always 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:21.760 easy to find a way to compare the simplicity of 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:25.719 two different propositions, like is the existence of God a 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:29.120 simple hypothesis or a complicated one that I think that 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:32.240 really depends on kind of how you feel about it, 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:34.760 like like what kind of objective measure can you come 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:37.360 up with to evaluate that question? Right, It's going to 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:40.360 depend so much on your like your background, your culture, 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:43.800 what you grew up with, and just how you how 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:47.120 you've come to view the possibility of of of God's existence. 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:49.680 Is it just kind of the bedrock of your your 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:53.160 worldview or is it this thing from the outside that 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:55.840 you are contemplating. And also how do you view it, 0:05:56.200 --> 0:05:58.359 like the coherence of the idea. Do you view it 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:01.160 as something that's like, uh, that's full of all these 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:05.000 little kind of ad hoc accommodations, or something that is 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:09.719 a holistic, coherent sort of like fact about nature, you know, 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:13.279 it's I think this is a perfect example that shows 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:16.400 like when people use the idea of Okham's razor in 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:19.320 a way that is not helpful and doesn't really it 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:22.039 doesn't really get you any closer to figuring out what's true. 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:24.599 Now if you're one, If if you're still questioning like 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:28.080 what the concept really means, don't worry. We will get 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:31.039 to some I think some some very understandable examples of 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:35.760 how it can be used properly and used improperly. But 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:39.000 let's go ahead and to start about the concept itself 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:43.720 the word acum uh. And you know where this comes from. 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:46.800 We'll get to the origins of akamas razor. So Acam's 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:50.080 razor is also known as the principle of parsimony, and 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:55.240 parsimony means a tendency toward cheapness or frugality. So I 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:57.359 like that. It's like the principle of parsimony is like, 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:00.760 you want to be cheap with your with your logic, right, yeah, 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:03.640 I don't need more than two steps of logic between 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:06.080 me and the solution. Uh. You know, don't give me 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:08.800 one with four or five uh. And it was named 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:12.360 after the medieval English philosopher William of Ockham, of course, 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:15.560 William of Ockom Uh. So he he lived in the 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:18.920 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, from twelve eighty five to either 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:21.960 thirteen forty seven or thirteen forty nine. I've seen different 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:25.800 death dates given for him. I've seen different birthdates as well. 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:28.400 At twelve eighty seven or twelve eighty eight, That's what 0:07:28.480 --> 0:07:30.840 I was looking at. That's interesting. So he was a 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:34.800 prolific scholar Franciscan friar. We'll get more into his ideas 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:37.080 in a minute. You know, one thing I've always wondered 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:39.720 is where the heck is Ocum. I've never heard of that. Well, yeah, 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:41.400 because the words sound it has kind of like a 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:44.880 remoteness to it. It sounds alien in some ways. Akom 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:47.600 is very much a real place. It is a rural 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:50.520 village in Surrey, England. You can look it up online. 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:54.080 You can find out the website for the church in Ocum, 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:57.920 for example. And this area has been occupied since ancient times. 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:01.440 It's about a day's ride south best of London, and 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:05.000 it was the birthplace of the individual who had come 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:07.600 to be known as William of Ockham. Now beyond that, 0:08:07.720 --> 0:08:10.800 beyond the fact that he was born here, we don't 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:14.360 know a lot about William's life. Uh. We don't know 0:08:14.440 --> 0:08:17.520 what his social or family background was, or if his 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:21.600 native language was French or Middle English. As Paul Vincent 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:25.680 Spade explains in The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, he was 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:28.640 likely given over to the Franciscan Order as a young 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:32.360 boy before the age of fourteen, and here Latin would 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:35.520 have quickly become his language of of of not only writing, 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:39.520 but also just conversation. Gray Friar's convent in London was 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:44.400 likely his home convent, but later he traveled. He visited Avignon, 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:47.440 he visited Italy, and he lived the last two decades 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:53.160 of his life in Germany. Now, philosophically, William was a nominalist, 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:56.360 and Spade writes that the two main themes of this 0:08:56.520 --> 0:09:01.679 for William were the rejection of universals and ontological reduction. 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:05.600 And these two themes are are not necessarily interconnected, like 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:07.600 you can you could, you could believe in one but 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:11.120 not the other, you know, and vice versa um. But 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:15.560 basically let's let's get into what these means. So the first, 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:19.679 the rejection of universals is perhaps best considered, and this 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:23.679 is very brief and broad. Certainly you can find so 0:09:23.760 --> 0:09:27.040 much written and set on this topic, but basically, think 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:29.760 of it as a rejection of the Platonic idea of 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:33.080 the realm of forms. So that idea that all chairs 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:35.720 that we might make, the whom I design and carve 0:09:35.800 --> 0:09:38.600 and a symbol are an attempt to create the perfect chair, 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:41.600 which doesn't reside in our world, but only resides within 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:45.000 this realm of forms. So all chairs that we create 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:47.760 are like an aspiration for the ideal chair. Another way 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:49.880 I've thought about it, at least as I understood it, 0:09:49.920 --> 0:09:52.680 was that nominalism is kind of the idea that there 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:55.400 is no such thing as a chair. There's only this 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:58.560 chair and that chair and this chair over here. There 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:01.679 is no chair right like this. This is the kind 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:04.199 of the situation one gets it too when you get 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:09.120 into like the genre classifications of say albums, artists or 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:12.319 movies that you care a great deal about, and someone 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:15.280 tries to limit it to a classification and say, oh, well, 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:18.040 that's classic rock or that's alternative rock, and you're like, no, no, 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:20.880 no, no no, no, you don't. Don't try and fit that. 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:23.920 There is there is. These categories do not apply. There 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:26.079 is There is only you know, whatever your band of 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:28.160 choice happens to be. That, there is only tool, There 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:30.800 is only primus or whatever. Right there, Yeah, there there 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:34.079 is only things, not categories. Now let's move on to 0:10:34.200 --> 0:10:38.839 the second theme here, ontological reduction. This is, as Britannica 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:42.840 defines it, quote, the metaphysical doctrine that entities of a 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:46.800 certain kind are, in reality collections or combinations of entities 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:50.679 of simpler or more basic kind. I think your classic 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:56.280 example here is molecules atoms. Yeah. So another example here's 0:10:56.600 --> 0:11:01.400 while our Aristotle defined ten categories of objects that might 0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:04.480 be apprehended by a human mind, and these would have 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:08.000 been uh translations, very on on how you wanted to 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:13.760 find these. But substance, quantity, quality, relative place, time, attitude, condition, action, 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:18.640 and affection. William cut these down to two substance and quality. 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:20.960 He's really getting in there. That's the razor. That's what 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:23.959 a razor does. It just it slices away, It cuts 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:27.720 off the fat and gets down to the meat. Spade writes, quote. 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:31.640 Although these two strands of Acam's thinking are independent, they 0:11:31.640 --> 0:11:34.720 are nevertheless often viewed as joint effects of a more 0:11:34.800 --> 0:11:40.120 fundamental concern, the principle of parsimony, known as Acam's razor. Okay, 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:42.680 so we're getting to the razor here. Yeah. So William 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:46.840 devoted a lot of energy to arguing against what Spade 0:11:47.080 --> 0:11:52.320 calls the bloated ontological inventories of his contemporaries, and he 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:56.120 became well known to his peers for this as such, 0:11:56.520 --> 0:11:59.360 either towards the end of his life or shortly after 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:03.520 his death, a kind of Greatest Hits album came out 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:08.120 on his Thoughts and Ideas titled on the Principles of Theology. 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:11.360 Now it wasn't actually by William of Ockham, but it 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:15.280 featured his doctrine as well as verbatim quotes. There was 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:19.120 no ascribed author either, so later generations would often just 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:22.200 attribute it to him um as well as the notion 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:27.040 of Akham's razor. Uh. However, this specific phrase was apparently 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:30.440 never actually used by him. He never said Ackham in 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:32.280 the house, I'm going to get the razor out and 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:36.240 start carving on some uh some some some some ideas here. No, 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:39.760 this is something that is attributed by others to his work. Yeah, 0:12:39.800 --> 0:12:42.960 Okham's razor is a is a name for this principle 0:12:43.200 --> 0:12:46.199 that is supposed to be kind of a summation of 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:50.160 several different thoughts he articulated in different ways. Yes, yeah, 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:53.480 he summed it up in different different manners. Uh. In 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:55.960 Spade includes includes a few examples of this in his work. 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:58.920 For instance, here, here's some quotes from Akam. Beings are 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:03.719 not to be multiplied beyond necessity or plurality, is not 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:07.800 to be a positive without necessity or what can happen 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:11.720 through fewer principles happens in Vain through more and there 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:14.640 are other there are other examples of this as well. 0:13:14.720 --> 0:13:18.080 We're basically saying the same thing, but maybe like it 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:20.520 just comes off a little flower at least in translations. Yeah, 0:13:20.559 --> 0:13:23.280 I think the the simple version you could get to 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:27.640 the summarizing some of his abuse here, like, uh, don't 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:32.000 make assumptions you don't have to, don't pile on explanations 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:35.480 that are not necessary. Yeah, and also just don't take 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:37.599 more steps they are necessary to get from point A 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:40.920 to point B than your reasoning and in your hypothesis. 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:44.480 And the way this usually gets translated into modern thinking, 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:46.960 as we've talked about before, is that when you've got 0:13:47.000 --> 0:13:51.200 competing explanations, it's better to tend towards the simpler one, 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:54.040 the one that makes fewer assumptions, rather than the more 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:57.880 complicated one that makes more assumptions. Now here's another fun 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:01.679 fact about William of Aucham. William Ackom is key to 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:06.120 Elmberto Echo's excellent novel The Name of the Rose. Uh. 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:09.160 This was a novel that was published in nineteen eighty. 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:12.040 Many of you may be familiar with the certainly the 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:16.640 the film adaptation that starred Sean Connery, f Murray, Abraham Um, 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:19.480 Christian Slater in a host of wonderful character actors. And 0:14:19.520 --> 0:14:22.520 then there was there's a more recent mini series adaptation 0:14:22.520 --> 0:14:25.320 with John Taturo that I have not seen, but I 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:27.880 should probably see at some point or another. But anyway, 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:32.120 the main character in Echoes novel is William of Baskerville, 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:35.560 who is in many ways similar. He's a Franciscan friar. 0:14:35.880 --> 0:14:39.840 He's got a kind of empirical streak. Yeah, he's basically 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:43.720 a mash up of William of Ockam and Sherlock Holmes, 0:14:43.760 --> 0:14:48.280 thus the Baskerville alluding to uh Hound of the Baskerville's. 0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:52.080 Then the title itself, the Name of the Rose, has 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:56.400 has been interpreted as being a reference to Acom's uh nominalism. 0:14:56.440 --> 0:14:59.080 There is no one rose. There is only the Name 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:02.160 of the Rose. But they're also other I think interpretations 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:03.800 on it, and it's meant to be kind of cryptic. 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:06.720 Now according to I was reading more about this, and 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:08.560 it's been been a little while since I've read In 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:10.040 the Name of the Rose, you've read it more recently 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:12.360 than yes, Because we were misremembering. We were thinking, now 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:14.360 was it was? Was it the case? In the book 0:15:14.400 --> 0:15:17.640 that William of Ockham was supposed to be this fictional 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:20.560 main character's mentor. I somehow had that in my mind 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:24.440 as well. No, instead it was another medieval scholastic thinker. 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:28.480 It was Roger Bacon. So so yes, Roger Bacon was 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:32.160 William of Baskerville's mentor, as opposed to William of Acham, 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:35.400 who I do not believe as Ackam is actually mentioned 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:39.040 in the novel. So I was reading a little bit 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:41.480 more about this. There was a two thousand eighteen article 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:45.400 that came out in Philosophy Now by Carol Nicholson titled 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:48.960 Acam's Rose, and she pointed out that Echo had apparently 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:52.480 explored the possibility of simply using Ackam as his main 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:56.960 character in in this novel, but he ultimately quote did 0:15:57.000 --> 0:16:00.920 not find him a very attractive person. And therefore, I mean, 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:02.840 did that makes sense right? If you're it's like, you 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:05.160 can either lean on a historical figure, or he can 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:07.640 do something a little more fun and do a mash 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:12.040 up of ACoM and the Great Detective And ultimately, I mean, 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:14.200 that's one of the fun things about the novel is 0:16:14.240 --> 0:16:16.640 that is that you do have these elements where it's 0:16:16.680 --> 0:16:19.920 a it's Sherlock Holmes going up against bores, you know, 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:22.720 that kind of sort of thing. She writes, Uh, this 0:16:22.760 --> 0:16:25.480 is interesting as well, just to draw the parallel between 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:28.480 William of Baskerville and William of of Olcom. She writes, 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:31.240 quote in thirty seven, the year in which the name 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:35.160 of the Roses set, ACoM faced fifty six charges of 0:16:35.200 --> 0:16:39.040 heresy and was excommunicated after escaping the protection of Emperor 0:16:39.040 --> 0:16:42.280 Louis of Bavaria. This put an end to his academic career, 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:43.800 and he spent the rest of his life as a 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:47.400 political activists, advocating freedom of speech, the separation of church 0:16:47.400 --> 0:16:50.920 and state, and arguing against the infallibility of the pope. 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:54.240 She also points out that Ackom, like the fictional William 0:16:54.240 --> 0:16:58.600 of Baskerville, likely died of the plague. Alright, on that note, 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:00.080 we're going to take a quick break, but when we 0:17:00.200 --> 0:17:03.760 come back we will continue our discussion of Acams razor. 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:09.280 Thank alright, we're back, all right. So we've been talking 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:13.280 about this principle known as Akam's razor that we've described 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:17.280 already as the idea that simpler hypotheses are better than 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:19.639 more complex hypotheses. There are a number of ways you 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:22.320 can formulate it. But it's a principle that's been referred 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:25.760 back to actually since probably before William of Akam. It is, 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:29.320 I think, a principle that somewhat predates him in intellectual history, 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:32.600 right right, He did not. He did not create something 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:36.000 that was not already utilized by other thinkers of the 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:39.639 day and thinkers before him. One great example of somebody 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:43.240 not before William of Acham but later articulating similar ideas 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:46.560 is Isaac Newton in his great work The Principia Mathematica. 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:51.320 From Newton writes, quote, we are to admit no more 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:55.040 causes of natural things than such as are both true 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:59.679 and sufficient to explain their appearances. Uh So, a similar 0:17:59.720 --> 0:18:03.520 idea is there's no need to add extra explanations when 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:07.240 you already have an explanation that is number one true 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:11.240 and number two explains everything you see. Right. So, an 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:14.960 example of this might be why do the planets orbit 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:17.040 the Sun? This would be something that Newton would be 0:18:17.119 --> 0:18:19.680 concerned with. Newton would say, okay, we know of two 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:24.440 forces that explain what we see, gravity and inertia. Inertia 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:27.160 is the tendency of an object in motion to stay 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:31.200 in motion. Gravity is the mutually attracting force between two 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:35.359 objects with mass. So, because of inertia, the planets flying 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:37.920 through space want to keep traveling in a straight line 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:41.280 at a constant speed. And because of gravity, instead of 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:44.439 traveling in a straight line, their path bends around towards 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:47.880 the Sun as they travel. And so that those two 0:18:47.920 --> 0:18:51.080 things are both true, and they explain everything we observed, 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:53.560 not now, actually not quite everything, but they were good 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:58.040 enough for Newton's time explaining everything. You might also say, though, 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:01.200 that maybe in addition to gravi d and inertia, there 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:04.640 are angels that guide the planets in their orbits because 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:08.040 those elliptical pathways are pleasing to the Lord. But if 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:10.960 somebody proposes that, you're you're kind of stuck. Because there's 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:14.280 no way to prove the angel hypothesis wrong. You can't 0:19:14.359 --> 0:19:18.280 say there aren't invisible angels guiding the planets. But pretty 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:20.840 much everybody today, I think, even people who believe in 0:19:20.880 --> 0:19:24.439 angels in some sense, would not see any reason to 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:28.159 believe that there are angels doing that, because there are 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:31.399 other explanations which do all the explaining that needs to 0:19:31.440 --> 0:19:34.120 be done. Right, Yeah, I mean, once you drag angels 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:36.000 into it too, it it opens up the door for 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:39.720 just a never ending list of reasons why the angels 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:42.200 can't be detected or why the you know, well, why 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:44.719 the angel wanted why the planet seems to be behaving 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:47.680 this way. It's in accordance with these known laws rather 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:51.919 than the machinations of a divine being right, And you 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:54.560 don't need to appeal in any way to the additional 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:57.360 plausibility of angels or not. Like the reason I said 0:19:57.359 --> 0:20:01.119 that even people who otherwise believe in angels don't say 0:20:01.160 --> 0:20:03.480 that they're guiding the motions of the planets is you 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:06.160 don't need them to explain that. And you've just got 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:09.320 basic laws of physics that explain what the planets are doing. 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:12.440 There's no reason to add an angel's explanation. It doesn't 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:14.880 do anymore work. Yeah, it doesn't even help angels out. 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:18.399 I mean, yeah, it's there. There's just no point in 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:20.359 it now. Of course, sticking on the theory of like 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:22.240 the motions of the planets for a minute, of course, 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:24.320 we would have to later come up with a more 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:27.400 refined theory of gravity for those rare cases where Newton's 0:20:27.440 --> 0:20:30.080 theory of gravity would fail, And we would get that 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:34.439 with Einstein and general relativity, which recharacterized gravity is the 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:38.200 curvature of space time caused by deformation due to mass, 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:41.440 rather than as a mutually attractive force between objects, though 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:43.520 in most cases if you think of it as a 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:46.480 force in in the Newtonian sense, your predictions work out 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:49.119 just fine. But from an article that I want to 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:52.520 refer to later by a philosopher named Elliott sober Uh, 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:55.479 he writes, quote Albert Einstein spoke for many when he 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:58.880 said quote, it can scarcely be denied that the supreme 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:02.240 goal of all the rie is to make the irreducible 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:06.080 basic elements as simple and as few as possible without 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:09.720 having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:13.719 of experience, which in a way is again articulating something 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:17.399 like Ockham's razor. It's saying like, you want the simplest 0:21:17.520 --> 0:21:21.359 possible explanation that explains everything. And if we're sticking with 0:21:21.359 --> 0:21:25.399 Einstein for a minute, to go beyond positing something like angels, 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:28.159 if if you want to go into real scientific hypotheses 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:30.680 in history, there are all kinds of things that you 0:21:30.800 --> 0:21:34.200 might argue we're sort of done away with by an 0:21:34.200 --> 0:21:37.479 Acam's razor ish kind of process, though I think there 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:40.520 are some historians and philosophers of science that might disagree there. 0:21:40.720 --> 0:21:42.440 But one example that comes to my mind is the 0:21:42.560 --> 0:21:46.240 luminiferous ether. You know, it was once believed by many 0:21:46.320 --> 0:21:49.560 scientists that there had to be a medium in space 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:53.000 through which light propagates, right, the same way that if 0:21:53.000 --> 0:21:56.080 you want sound to propagate, there's no sound in space, right, 0:21:56.320 --> 0:21:59.480 You've got to have sound traveling through a medium like air, 0:21:59.680 --> 0:22:02.000 or like water, or like a you know, like a 0:22:02.080 --> 0:22:05.760 steel wire. There must be matter to transmit that energy. 0:22:06.080 --> 0:22:08.840 And so the idea was that space was filled with 0:22:08.920 --> 0:22:13.960