WEBVTT - How Occam's Razor Works 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:06.520 Hey, everybody, tour announcement, it's just me. Chuck. Josh isn't 0:00:06.559 --> 0:00:07.760 here for this one. We had to get it out 0:00:07.800 --> 0:00:11.520 the door. So apologies for fifty of stuff you should know. 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:14.440 But we have added two dates to uh the two 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:17.280 thousand eighteen tour, and there may be another couple to come. 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:20.560 You never know. But everybody, we asked Salt Lake City 0:00:20.640 --> 0:00:24.200 ins and Utahn's should we come there, and boy, we 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:28.560 heard from you, so we're coming. It's that easy. Tuesday October, 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:32.880 we are coming to Salt Lake City for an evening 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:36.040 with stuff you should know at the Grand Theater and 0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:38.520 we are super excited. I'll tell you what. You guys 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:41.720 really came through on the emails and social meds and 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:44.000 let us know that we would see some love if 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:46.800 we came to Salt Lake City, a city we've talked 0:00:46.840 --> 0:00:50.320 about often in the past. So we are a coming Tuesday, 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:52.920 October twenty three, and we decided, hey, we're gonna be 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:56.120 out there, we might as well add another city that 0:00:56.160 --> 0:00:59.280 we've never been to. So it is your lucky day, 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:03.120 Phoenix eras Zona and dare I say, Tucson and in 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:06.560 the Greater Phoenix area drive over to Phoenix and come 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:11.640 see us on Wednesday October at the Van Buren. And 0:01:11.680 --> 0:01:13.679 this is also an evening with stuff you should know. 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:15.720 I don't even know what that means, but it sounds 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:18.720 a little more regal than normal. So come see us 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:23.560 October Salt Lake City and Phoenix. Uh, you know what, 0:01:23.640 --> 0:01:25.319 I don't even know if tickets are on sale. I 0:01:25.360 --> 0:01:28.120 believe by the time this announcement goes up, tickets will 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:31.039 be on sale, and you can go to the Van 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:34.479 Buren website or to the Grand Theater website to get 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:36.800 your ticket links. I will try and have them up 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:40.200 very soon on s y s K live dot com, 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:41.880 but I don't know if I'll get to that today, 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:44.720 but look forward soon and we can't wait to see you, guys. 0:01:46.360 --> 0:01:49.840 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works 0:01:49.840 --> 0:01:59.440 dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, 0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:03.040 and there's Charles Chuck Bryant, and there's guest producer Tristan 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:07.000 over there, so it's stuff you should know. I don't 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:09.160 know how these are going to release, but as you've noticed, 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.959 Tristan weirdly grew out his mustache in the last hour. Again, 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:16.800 he's quick, He's very fast. He can make it go 0:02:17.000 --> 0:02:20.440 in and out, in and out. Woooo what is that? 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:24.120 It's like he's growing his mustache and it's sucking it 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:27.160 back in, sucking it back in, you know, like a 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:31.520 reverse Plato. Right. Do you remember that Plato set with 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:34.639 the like a little meat grinder. No, there was one 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:37.120 where like you could grow a mustache on I dude, 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:41.320 I think I remember that. I would imagine if you 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:48.000 could reverse it too. It was called the Plato Nightmare set. Yeah, 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:52.720 is that your nightmare? Growing Plato mustache? Waking up like that? Yeah, 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:55.160 I've had that dream about once a week for about 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:57.720 thirty five years. Like all the rest of you is chuck, 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:02.840 but just your mustaches Wallace and alm it. Yeah, dude. Yesterday, 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:08.440 I h there was a bad smell. Emily and I 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:09.919 were having a glass of wine at a wine bar 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:12.519 and there was a bad smell nearby. I think it 0:03:12.600 --> 0:03:15.120 was a dumpster or something. And they were growing fresh 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:19.680 herbs at this wine bar, and I rubbed a rosemary 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:25.400 bush and then swiped it all over my mustache. Uh In. 0:03:25.520 --> 0:03:29.440 Emily's mind was blown. She was just like, oh my God, 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:33.519 like I can't believe, like that's an actual use for 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:37.400 facial hair. Yeah, I guess just to hold in that smell. 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:38.920 It was like, well, you can wipe it on your 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:41.680 upper lip. It's probably the same thing. Maybe the hair 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:48.080 retains more essential oils. Which essential oils? Man, people are 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:51.400 clamoring for that episode. Yeah, we should do that. We 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:53.160 will eventually. It's been a big part of my life 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:56.839 for two or twelve years now, essential oils. We'll talk 0:03:56.880 --> 0:04:00.400 about it someday, but not today. No, no, because Chuck's 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:04.920 gonna stumble through a philosophy podcast. It's a yeah, I 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:08.880 guess it is philosophy. It's the philosophy of knowledge. Epistemology 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:12.720 is another way to put it. But specifically, Chuck, we're 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:16.599 talking today about a little ditty you may have heard 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:20.920 of before called acams razor, called the Gambler. Have you 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:24.719 have you ever you've heard of ocums razor before? Right, Well, 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:26.720 so much so that I thought for sure we had 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:29.520 covered this, But um, I realized that we just talked 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:33.440 about it quite a bit in the scientific methods. I'm 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:35.599 not at all surprised because a lot of people say 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:39.760 that the basis of science, which is how humans approach 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:45.919 um nature in our universe and us and everything. Scientifically, 0:04:46.440 --> 0:04:50.320 the basis of that is ocams razor and if if 0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:52.600 acams razor sounds familiar but you can't quite place it, 0:04:52.640 --> 0:04:57.240 You've probably heard it as something like um, given two 0:04:57.279 --> 0:05:03.120 possible outcomes or explanations or whatever, the simplest version is 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:06.960 probably the right one. Yeah, it's a pretty even that, 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:11.159 in its simplicity is is beautiful. The mere statement itself 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:16.039 is an example of its simplicity and how wonderful it 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:18.279 can be just to think, like, yeah, you know what, 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:21.840 let's get through all the gobbledegook. I think the easiest 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:29.280 way to explain this, whether it's a a what do 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:33.320 you call the orb and a photo Yeah, it's not. 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:35.960 It's not your great grandfather coming to visit you on 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:40.320 a different plane. It's really just an error with your photograph. 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:44.440 Or it's a it's the flash um yeah, reflecting off 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:49.800 like water vapor in the air. Or Kennedy probably acted alone. 0:05:50.120 --> 0:05:56.800 Kennedy he shot himself from afar. Yeah. I clearly meant 0:05:56.839 --> 0:06:00.920 to say Oswald acted alone, because that is a plus explanation, 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:09.560 not this very convoluted deep um plot that goes that 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:13.000 a hundred people were involved in to assassinate Kennedy. So 0:06:13.120 --> 0:06:16.800 we'll talk about all that, because what you're doing right 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:20.239 now is has become pretty standard. You're using ocams razor 0:06:20.360 --> 0:06:25.440 to disprove other people's points. There's this is a total 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:31.120 and complete misuse of ocams razors, not the original intention. 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:34.919 The original intention had nothing to do with saying that's wrong. 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:38.920 Is just a heuristic device, a guide, a rule of 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:43.920 thumb that tells you that, because things tend to be 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:49.640 more simple in the universe, if you if you're doing something, 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:52.120 don't make it harder than it has to be. Don't 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:54.640 add more to it than is needed to get the 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:57.560 job done. And there's actually a couple of ways to 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:00.719 put this, and both of them get attributed to William 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:03.919 of Ockham, who will talk about in a second. But 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:07.400 one is called he sounds like a baseball manager. But 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:11.560 one is called the principle of plurality harder to say 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:15.560 fast than you would think, and that is translated from 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:19.560 the Latin plurality should not be positive without necessity. And 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:21.880 the other is the principle of parsimony, which is it 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:24.280 is pointless to do with more what is done with less. 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:27.360 From what I understand, they are one and the same 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:33.360 Oh really, I could not find anyone who could explain 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:36.960 the difference. And I see them interchangeably, not just like 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:42.040 on some dudes blog, but unlike you know, the the 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:47.240 the Internet Encyclopedia Philosophy or the Stanford Encyclopedia Philosophy, like 0:07:47.240 --> 0:07:51.679 they don't seem to be different. Well, parsimony, it seems 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:56.560 different to me because that specifically is like not using resources, 0:07:56.640 --> 0:07:59.920 not spending money if you don't have to. And that's 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:04.040 SEMs different than plurality. Okay, well then then let's explore it. 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:08.360 So plurality adding to something, doubling something, maybe just making 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:12.160 it more than just the singular. He's saying plurality should 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:14.960 not be positive without necessity, right, so I guess what 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:18.559 he's saying. Then if they are different, then if you're 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:23.040 if you're guessing at something, if you're trying to explain something, 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:26.320 don't make it harder than it is, don't make it 0:08:26.360 --> 0:08:31.400 bigger than is absolutely necessary to explain its sense. Or 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:33.319 and this is a really big point that we'll see 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:37.520 in a minute. William of Ockham really was saying, don't 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:41.640 don't add on to something beyond what you know to 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:45.400 be true and correct, which a lot of people over time. 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:49.120 And I think he actually maybe explicitly wasn't empirersist have 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:52.720 said William of Ockham wasn't empirersist. He was saying that 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:57.160 that you need to experience things through your senses to 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:01.000 know that they are true. Yes, empirical evidence if I 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:03.160 can look at it or smell it, or taste it 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:07.480 or feel it. What's the fifth one? Uh, tickle it, 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:09.920 tickle it. And then the sixth one, of course we 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:12.720 know means Bruce Willis is really dead. See the ghost 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:17.520 of it. Uh. Yeah, if there's no empirical evidence, if 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:21.640 you cannot experience it with one of your senses, then um, 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:24.640 it's it's poo pooed. So so it is so. And 0:09:24.679 --> 0:09:28.240 those two things, like you really especially modern science, especially 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:31.800 science these days, you put them together. It's given two things. 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:36.640 Go with the simpler explanation, and you don't don't believe 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:39.560 anything that you can't sense one way or another through 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:42.720 your senses empirically. Right, you put those together, you have 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:46.040 the basis for modern science. And so the idea that 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:50.960 that that things that are simpler are better, or the 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:54.120 idea that the universe is simpler, Like when you start 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:57.760 to think about it. It's all over the place, right, 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:00.880 Like the the idea that the you universe is based 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:05.120 on simpler being better is found everywhere, right, So, like 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:11.160 there's things that things have fewer parts, things that require 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:16.120 less energy, the encapsulation of larger ideas into smaller amounts 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:18.880 of words or theories or whatever. All these things are 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:21.920 very much prized by humanity. So it just kind of 0:10:21.960 --> 0:10:26.240 makes sense that acams razor is a sensible thing and 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:29.400 that you could actually use it to uncover the mysteries 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:33.240 of the universe. But again, that's not really necessarily the case, 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:35.360 to tell you the truth. No, I mean, there's there's 0:10:35.400 --> 0:10:38.040 gonna be a lot of uh and and this stuff 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:39.640 is kind of fun, just a lot of back and 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:43.720 forth on Acam's razor throughout this whole thing, because there 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:45.680 is no idea and that's kind of part of the 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:48.720 whole jam of Bockham's razor, because there is no right 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:53.080 or wrong here. You know, what's weird is right? A 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:55.760 lot of people point to it though that it's this 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:58.320 is right. I just proved you wrong, razor and that's 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:01.040 just not true. And all right, should we take a 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:04.960 break early? Okay? Yeah, I think we should take a 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:06.439 break now because I need to get my head wrapped 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:09.280 around this, and we'll come back getting the way back 0:11:09.320 --> 0:11:35.120 machine and visit Billy Ackum. Okay, so now Billy Ackum 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:43.600 sounds like a recording star. Oh sure, like Billy Ocean. Yeah, 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:47.640 get also my razor and get into my car, so 0:11:47.720 --> 0:11:50.800 that we should say the razor too. It's a philosophical term. 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:55.000 It's the term of philosophy. The razor used to scrape 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:59.400 away unnecessary stuff. So it's Acom's razor. So let's go 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:07.880 back and me Billy Yakum shown. Yeah. And you wrote 0:12:07.880 --> 0:12:10.920 this by the way back in your in your article 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:14.400 righting days uh, And you point out very astutely that 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:16.840 this is from a time in our history of the 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:19.880 world where you might not have had a surname. You 0:12:19.920 --> 0:12:23.200 may have been William of Ockham, which is the case here, 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:27.480 which is in England. And he lived between about twelve 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:32.400 eighty five and thirty nine, and he was a philosophical 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:36.200 dude and a Franciscan monk. And he very much like 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:39.400 you point out, took his valid poverty very seriously and 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:45.480 lived a very meager, humble life. Yeah he did. He 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:49.079 also expected the church to take the same vow of party, 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:52.000 and he actually butted heads with the Church quite a bit, 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:54.400 so much so that he ended up getting excommunicated, as 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:57.640 we'll see. But he um, he was the real deal 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:01.040 as far as like a true believer went. The weird 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:03.760 thing about William of Akam was that he was also 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:10.840 a genuinely independent thinker and a rationalist, which at the 0:13:10.880 --> 0:13:15.320 time rationalism and the church did not go hand in hand. 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:19.560 They were there was really not much rationalism. So for 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:23.280 an idea of the idea for this this upstart Franciscan 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:26.720 monk to start questioning the ideas of the church. And 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:30.040 not only that, but how the the leaders of the 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:32.920 church conducted themselves and how much money they surrounded themselves 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:35.679 with and how much power they had politically. This is 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:38.080 it was a big deal, all right. Yeah. And he 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:41.559 is not He did not invent this line of thought, um, 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:44.000 as much as he's probably attributed to this to people 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:47.000 that uh just know him from like a jeopardy board. 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:49.800 He h. This is already a line of thought well 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:54.079 established by this time in the medieval times, and he 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:57.559 was just he kind of boiled it down to those 0:13:57.600 --> 0:14:00.200 two sentences that you were talking about. So in one 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:02.800 could understand it, he could put it on a bumper 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:05.120 sticker and a T shirt and sell it. Right. So 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:08.319 it was Aristotle who was the guy who came up 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:12.400 with this idea first, that that simplicity equals perfection, and 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:15.880 perfection equal simplicity, said, the more perfect a nature is, 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:20.200 the fewer means it requires for its operation. Right, So 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:22.960 that makes sense. That speak to me. But then over time, 0:14:22.960 --> 0:14:26.640 in between Aristotle and William it kind of got expanded. 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:28.880 So let me give you an example of that same 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:32.720 thought from Robert gross Test who was an early scientist 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:36.080 also a theologian I believe too. Here was his his 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:39.600 version of it, That is better and more valuable, which 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:44.280 requires fewer other circumstances being equal, For if one thing 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:47.720 we're demonstrated from many and another thing from fewer equally 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:51.160 known premises, clearly that is better, which is from fewer 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:54.360 because it makes us no quickly, just as a universal 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:58.160 demonstration is better than particular because it produces knowledge from 0:14:58.160 --> 0:15:03.400 fewer premises. Is that similarly in natural science, in moral science, 0:15:03.600 --> 0:15:07.239 and in metaphysics, the best is that which needs no premises, 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:11.760 and that better that which needs the fewer other circumstances 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:15.880 being equal. Boy, the ironies there are rich, right. So 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:19.320 within less than a hundred years, William of Ockham comes 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:22.600 along and he's just like, plurality should not be positive 0:15:22.600 --> 0:15:26.200 without necessity Robert, and Robert was like, well, yeah, I 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:28.560 guess that's one way you could say it. So so 0:15:28.640 --> 0:15:32.400 I want to say something though, Um, before we keep going, 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:36.280 Chuck actually found a correction of my own article that 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:39.760 I missed before. What's that? It turns out that they 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:45.640 think now that a another um theologian slash scientist from 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:50.120 uh William of Ockham's era named John Dunn Scottis was 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:53.720 the one who really encapsulated this this principle of plurality 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:56.320 and principle of parsimony, and that it was a guy 0:15:56.640 --> 0:16:01.160 from the nineteenth century, William Rowan Hamilton's Irish mathematician, that 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:04.440 he was the one who misattributed it to William a. Ackam. 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:10.320 So is William Avakam just a uh and no nothing, no, no, 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:14.000 His writings definitely included this stuff and he never took 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:17.320 credit for this. But they think that that it was 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:21.720 actually um John's done scott Is who encamped who encapsulated 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:23.840 it the way that we tend to think of it 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:28.360 now bumper stickers, but right, But William of Akam thought 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:31.000 this way and he was a radical thinker and a rationalist, 0:16:31.040 --> 0:16:33.520 as we'll see. Right, And like you kind of teased 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:35.840 out earlier, he did butt heads with the church over this. 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:39.920 He wrote a lot about it, and the church was 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:43.120 not into it, and Pope John the what is that 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:47.600 twenty two? Um? He they kind of squared off on this, 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:51.360 and of course the pope wins all battles, at least 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:55.040 back then. Uh. And he was excommunicated and several of 0:16:55.120 --> 0:16:58.920 his his monk brothers, and I take that to mean 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:04.439 not real. There's right, we're excommunicated. In thirty eight he 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:08.280 went to Munich seeking refuge. He was protected there by 0:17:08.320 --> 0:17:14.160 Emperor Louis the fourth, and uh, Ultimately he went out 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:18.720 because he started writing papers about Pope John the twenty 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:22.959 two saying he's a heretic, and people ultimately believed him. Right. 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:26.000 He he definitely made some pretty convincing points. And he 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:29.720 also again like if you're saying I took avour poverty, 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:33.640 the church really should too. And the church isn't poverty 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:35.840 stricken and you are. That gives you a little more 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:39.199 credibility from the outside as well. So there there's some 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:42.959 reasons why William of Bakum is this theologian, a devout 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:46.640 Franciscan monk, is looked upon as one of the fathers 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:52.000 of western um science like the foundation of Western science right, 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:55.000 or science in general um. And the reason why is 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:59.080 he argued against the prevailing ideas at the time, which 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:02.840 is called medieval synthesis. And this is very much championed 0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:06.280 by Thomas Aquinas, who's a famous theologian. I believe he 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:08.479 was a saint, and one of the reasons he was 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:11.800 canonized was because of this. Thinking about this, but the 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:15.879 whole medieval synthesis thing was that God was first and 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:21.160 foremost everything. Right, you were, you were a member of 0:18:21.200 --> 0:18:24.240 the church, just as much as you were a member 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:27.600 of your country, a citizen of your country. Um. All 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:31.480 human knowledge came from God, and Thomas Aquinas he was 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:35.480 it wasn't just like the end. Thomas Aquinas used philosophy 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:38.640 to prove that sentiment that all human knowledge came from God, 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:41.399 and here is how. And basically it took the idea 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:43.720 of cause and effect and said that you can trace 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:47.040 every effect back to a cause, back to another effect 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:49.399 back to another cause. But ultimately you were going to 0:18:50.040 --> 0:18:52.960 end up on God, and that all of our conceptions 0:18:52.960 --> 0:18:56.480 of everything arose from God's conception, and that God will 0:18:56.640 --> 0:18:59.359 that we understand things this way, which means that this 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:01.840 is the perfect way to understand it, which means it's 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:05.280 right right. So that is not what William Wacam thought. 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:09.800 He was again a rationalist who said, um, no, we 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:12.919 tend to think things or things because that is that 0:19:13.000 --> 0:19:16.160 arises in the human mind from cognition, not from God. 0:19:16.800 --> 0:19:20.240 And this dude was not a heretic. He believed that 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:25.159 you didn't apply rationalism to God, that God required faith, 0:19:25.800 --> 0:19:29.160 and rationalism stood on its own, it was a different thing, 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:32.960 and you couldn't know God through your senses. God was elsewhere. 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:35.760 Leave God out of this. And the fact that he 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:39.520 was able to really successfully lay like a philosophical groundwork 0:19:39.600 --> 0:19:42.200 for this, a rational groundwork for it. It's one thing 0:19:42.280 --> 0:19:44.959 today to be like I'm a secular humanist. You know, 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:50.200 I'm rational. Forget the church that's today. This is at 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:53.439 a time when this guy is saying this and the 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:55.600 Church has the power to burn you at the stake. 0:19:56.080 --> 0:20:00.359 Like he was. He was a stand up rational thing, right, 0:20:00.440 --> 0:20:03.119 which kind of makes him a hero of rationality today. 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:06.240 But don't. And this is another perfect example of how 0:20:06.400 --> 0:20:10.000 Akam's razor gets confused. Akam himself gets confused too. He's 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:12.520 a hero of science. But it was also one of 0:20:12.520 --> 0:20:15.840 the more devout human beings walking the earth at the time. 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:18.800 It was a monk for basically his whole life, and 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:22.720 also had a metal band called Medieval Synthesis. Oh that 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:24.399 is a good name, isn't it. So he was he 0:20:24.480 --> 0:20:27.440 was just a conundrum. Yeah, he was a conundrum for sure. 0:20:27.440 --> 0:20:30.240 And again he got excommunicated. He had to escape by horse, 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:35.800 stolen horse. I mean, he was not very monk like. No, 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:39.080 But all right, So we were talking earlier about empirical evidence, 0:20:39.320 --> 0:20:42.240 um and how that kind of fits in here, and 0:20:42.240 --> 0:20:45.359 the fact that if you can't you know, like you 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:47.199 you know the sky is blue because you look up 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:50.280 and you see it's blue. You you know a bird 0:20:50.560 --> 0:20:52.479 makes a whistle because you can hear the bird make 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:56.680 a whistle. So uh, it's very easy to sort of 0:20:57.080 --> 0:21:01.800 use that um and say sure, but if you don't, 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:04.919 if you can't see it or hear it empirically or 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:08.680 any of the senses experience it. Uh, it's very easy 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:11.960 to poopoo. And you give a great example here, um 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:15.440 with Lawrence and Einstein, and kind of which one would 0:21:15.440 --> 0:21:19.520 win out. So both of these guys, both physicists, UM, 0:21:19.560 --> 0:21:22.359 Einstein obviously more popular. We we'll see for a very 0:21:22.400 --> 0:21:27.320 important reason. They both had the conclusion mathematically that with 0:21:27.400 --> 0:21:29.880 the space time continuum, the closer we get to moving 0:21:29.880 --> 0:21:32.040 at the speed of light, the more we slow down, 0:21:32.080 --> 0:21:35.520 which is hard to wrap your head around. So Lawrence 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:38.840 comes out and says, explains it away because of changes 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:41.280 that take place in the ether, which he might as 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:45.760 well have said, a bit of magic happens. Uh, Einstein didn't. 0:21:46.280 --> 0:21:49.240 And so the one we talked about today is Einstein 0:21:49.359 --> 0:21:53.439 and not Lawrence. That explanation of Einstein was more rooted 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:56.400 in science, and he didn't say something wacky like the ether, 0:21:56.760 --> 0:21:59.960 which is something empirically you can't see or smell or taste. 0:22:00.760 --> 0:22:05.520 So Einstein, you know, he won that great battle. Yeah, 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:08.439 he very famously said, he goes, I don't know what's what, 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:10.239 but I know it ain't got nothing to do with 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:17.239 no ether. And one day my brain's gonna end up 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:19.840 in a jar and some guy's garage in New Jersey, right, 0:22:19.960 --> 0:22:22.479 and everybody will love that picture of me with my 0:22:22.560 --> 0:22:25.119 tongue sticking out, and Walter math that will play me 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:29.920 in a romantic comedy. So Lawrence violated that principle of plurality, right, 0:22:30.080 --> 0:22:35.200 it added something to this that required an additional basically 0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:37.680 like a leap of faith. There was no empirical evidence 0:22:37.760 --> 0:22:39.480 that there was such a thing as the ether. And 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:42.080 he said, did I say ether? And I didn't mean ether? 0:22:42.160 --> 0:22:46.040 And every went no, no, no, it's too lady. And 0:22:46.119 --> 0:22:49.360 he's still I mean, he's a respected he's a respected physicist. Still, 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:51.560 it's not like he was some crackpot or anything like that, 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:54.960 because if you put his equations in Einstein's equations side 0:22:54.960 --> 0:22:58.159 by side, they came to the same conclusions. It was 0:22:58.240 --> 0:23:03.760 just explaining how Lawrence seems to have misstepped, right, But 0:23:04.000 --> 0:23:06.840 he was obviously at least as brilliant as Einstein. When 0:23:06.880 --> 0:23:09.720 it comes to that, he's just a little nuts apparently. So, 0:23:09.720 --> 0:23:12.159 so he violates the principle of plurality. And now we 0:23:12.280 --> 0:23:16.800 understand relativity rather than Lawrence's manic ravings. Yeah, and I 0:23:16.800 --> 0:23:19.120 don't believe we mentioned there's a word for that. If 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:23.000 you can't prove it empirically, it doesn't exist. It's called positivism. Yes, 0:23:23.400 --> 0:23:26.560 positivism isn't about having a good attitude, right, and so 0:23:26.680 --> 0:23:30.160 this is and this also happened during Einstein's working days too. 0:23:30.320 --> 0:23:33.760 There was a guy named Ernest Mock, and Ernest Mock 0:23:34.040 --> 0:23:39.240 was so Ernest Mock, thank you. That's that's way better 0:23:39.280 --> 0:23:46.240 than Ernest Ernst Mock. Um. He was so nuts on empiricism. 0:23:46.280 --> 0:23:48.399 He was. It was an early I think he was 0:23:48.440 --> 0:23:50.680 a physicist, if not a mathematician, one of the two. 0:23:51.040 --> 0:23:56.520 And he he basically said, like, molecules don't exist. All 0:23:56.560 --> 0:23:59.040 this whole bubble over molecules and atoms and all this stuff, 0:23:59.080 --> 0:24:02.040 you're all crazy. We can't see him. They don't exist. 0:24:02.560 --> 0:24:05.679 So there's a there's this kind of ironic twist that 0:24:05.760 --> 0:24:10.000 came from Einstein's working career where he actually um he 0:24:10.720 --> 0:24:16.040 beat Lorenz, his rival to this theory, through this through 0:24:16.080 --> 0:24:21.720 Ockham's razor. But he also disproved this idea of um 0:24:21.760 --> 0:24:25.919 that Earnst Mock, this thing about only believing what you 0:24:25.960 --> 0:24:28.080 can sense with your your senses, this kind of other 0:24:28.119 --> 0:24:31.560 part of Ockham's Razor, and a subsequent paper that came 0:24:31.600 --> 0:24:34.840 a few years later that showed that molecules do exist. 0:24:35.240 --> 0:24:38.800 So the idea that that ocams razor can be used 0:24:39.280 --> 0:24:42.399 both ways is something that just keeps coming up again 0:24:42.480 --> 0:24:45.320 and again and again, and we'll we'll talk about how 0:24:45.400 --> 0:25:12.960 after a break. How about that? Okay, Chuck, So who 0:25:13.119 --> 0:25:18.000