Is Occam's Razor Obsolete in Light of Modern Scientific Complexity?

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by Ambitwistor
there is no a priori reason to believe that unification must be possible.

That makes two.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by Ambitwistor
Utter nonsense. Science does not ignore the possibility of unknown explanations. If it did, then science wouldn't exist at all.

I just gave an example of where this does often happen. Though in fairness, there are a few scientists willing to throw their careers to the wind and pursue unpopular subjects.

Occam's Razor applies to explanations that you do have; it can't be applied to explanations that you don't have, because you can't say anything about either how simple they are, or how well they fit the evidence.

However it can be used wrongly to defer further investigation. In short, it is used to rule out unknown explanations.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by Ambitwistor
Ivan, in a field where hoaxes and mundane natural and man-made phenomena have often proven to be correct explanations, hoaxes and mundane natural and man-made phenomena are rightly a good assumption.

Approximately 90-95% of all sightings. True.

There simply isn't the funding to go chasing after every weird thing that some guy claimed he saw in the sky, considering how often people have studied UFO phenomena in the past and turned up no amazing new phenomena.

Again, the cases that interest me do not depend on what "some guy claimed he saw in the sky". Next, only after many years of refusals has the journal Nature agreed [in principle at least] to publish well penned papers on the subject. Funding is not the only issue.

Unknown explanations are never "ruled out", certainly not by Occam's Razor. Unknown explanations may not be actively pursued because nobody is interested, in a field that historically has not proven a fruitful source of interesting new phenomena. [/B]

I think you've hit the nail on the head. The trouble is, no one is smart enough to come up with anything the rival the ET hypothesis. So, since nature abhors a vacuum, we get Art Bell.

 

[Iacchus32]

That which is most obvious -- and hence, easiest to deduce -- is usually that which is most prevalent. Whereas that which is most prevalent, is usually the "status quo."

Hence it would seem, Occam's Razor is quite often "a ploy" to maintain the status quo.

 

[geometer]

I have quickly skimmed the posts here, so I apologize in advance if I am restating something or missing the whole point here. I remember reading somewhere Occam's actual words which were: "Construct no unnecessary hypotheses." Our interpretation of this as "All things being equal, the simplest explanation is probably the right one" is an interpretation of this statement or maybe a corollary.

 

[vanesch]

I don't see any simple explanations in modern physics. All of our simple expectations failed.

One shouldn't confuse "simple" with "simplistic" or "naive". The first one refers to the use of only a few, even if very abstract and counter intuitive, concepts. Modern physics strives towards it, with success. The latter means: what I can find without much thinking.
Unification is the typical example in physics, and has already worked out with success several times. Take electricity and magnetism. Before Maxwell, there were several, apparently unrelated, different, but indeed simplistic, explanations of several phenomena: static electricity, currents, magnetic needles etc...
Maxwell 4 equations, using 2 vector fields, describing ALL those phenomena at once. Although conceptually harder to understand, LESS concepts were used, in a more abstract way. This is what "simple" means in physics. A bit later, it was possible to reformulate, in relativistic language, the same mathematical content, but using ONE SINGLE entity, the 4-potential, and 1 equation. Again, things became less obvious and more abstract, but with less different concepts: simplicity again.
This story went on and on, for most of the 20th century.

Simpler, and at the same time more abstract and difficult. But simpler, because of a lower number of different concepts.

cheers,
Patrick.