B Occam's razor in science: all-time practice or modern fashion?

[Lord Jestocost]

"Bringing out the Occam’s razor in peer-review"

Nature Nanotechnology, volume 17, page 561 (2022) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-022-01166-5

 

[apostolosdt]

"Bringing out the Occam’s razor in peer-review"

Nature Nanotechnology, volume 17, page 561 (2022) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-022-01166-5

Thanks a lot! Good editorial; I'll try to trace Hoffmann's, I liked his style!

 

[Klystron]

I'm sorry to have put you in any trouble; it's my fault, I should have been more accurate in my wording. By "literature" I meant scientific literature, that is, published papers in scientific journals. I guess I thought that was obvious in a physics forum.

Anyway, apologies once again!

Gracious response, thank you, but my error for not checking the subforum heading before responding. I was thinking "Art, History and Linguistics" instead of "Other Physics".

Discussing pre-Rennaissance philosophical concepts in light of modern science remains difficult no matter how useful.

 

[Vanadium 50]

"Bringing out the Occam’s razor in peer-review"

Nature Nanotechnology, volume 17, page 561 (2022) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-022-01166-5

I wonder how this will work in practice. "Why yes, there is a simpler explanation. The author is a fruitcake. Well, not exactly. More like a few pecans short of a fruitcake."

 

[apostolosdt]

I wonder how this will work in practice. "Why yes, there is a simpler explanation. The author is a fruitcake. Well, not exactly. More like a few pecans short of a fruitcake."

An editorial in Nature has always been carrying some weight, I guess. I downloaded Hoffmann's article (you can find it cited on that Nature page and it is free to download). It's 26 pages of chemistry stuff mostly (I feel comfortable with chemistry) and I'm going to read it all.

 

[JBGARNER]

Scientific practice does indeed change over time. For example, in the early 1900’s it was not even common to report error bars or uncertainty. Now it is effectively mandatory. It is not as though earlier scientists didn’t know about uncertainty, it just became more prevalent in scientific writing and more central in scientific thinking. Same with Occham’s razor.

By the way, in my opinion both Occham’s razor and Popper’s falsifiability are properly subsumed in Bayesian inference

I agree. I learned statistics from the text 'Theory of Probability' by Harold Jeffreys. He used William of Ockham's rule: 'Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity'. First edition 1939. The first convincing text about statistical inference that I found. I based my Ph.D on his work.
J.B. Garner.

 

[Rive]

I'm wondering if Occam's razor has always been an all-time practice in science, or if it has become a modern fashion?

As I see it, science always had an all-time practice (or, rather: requirement) about keeping things nice, clean, elegant (in scientific sense).

Later, some kind of formalization were required about this, either as a self-reflection and also as an explanation for the public. Thus, Occam's razor were invented/re-interpreted in that simple form.

My humble opinion is, that this attempt is at least partially backfired. Within science, it was not really needed and the question of 'what's simple' always/still remained a scientific one: while outside of science, the 'just because ... ' remained the simplest explanation, giving birth to a plethora of 'alternative sciences' now backed up with some popcult Occam's razor.

 

[Dale]

the 'just because ... ' remained the simplest explanation

”Just because” is a very complicated explanation. It has a separate term for each data point. There are, in principle, more complicated models possible, but “just because” is still quite complicated

 

[Rive]

”Just because” is a very complicated explanation. It has a separate term for each data point.

Yes, exactly that's the missing part which makes the difference between 'inside science' and 'outside science' interpretation of Occam's razor

'Outside science' any 'Joe' can easily provide (and: believe in!) even multiple versions of 'just because ... ' explanations (word salads) for each 'data point' without breaking a sweat - and it'll be a perfect 'simple' for him since it was soooo easily done.

So by my opinion it's a partial failure having Occam's razor publicized as a principle of science without the 'what's simple' part really strongly attached.

 

[Dale]

Yes, exactly that's the missing part which makes the difference between 'inside science' and 'outside science' interpretation of Occam's razor

Ah, I understand your point now.

Here is an Insights article I wrote on using Bayesian inference in place of the usual philosophy of science concepts like Ockham's razor.

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/how-bayesian-inference-works-in-the-context-of-science/

Something like Bayesian inference allows the benefits of Ockham's razor (and other philosophical views) without promoting the "just because".

 

[Rive]

Here is an Insights article I wrote on using Bayesian inference

Seen that, but you know... 'inside science' it's nice but kind of redundant, while 'outside science' you'll lose the public at 'Baye...', because it continues with equations and not with football

I think to mitigate Occam's failure for the public you'll need something what can go with a beer or two too

 

[Dale]

'inside science' it's nice but kind of redundant

Well, I don't think it is redundant since many scientists are not familiar with Bayesian methods.

 

[apostolosdt]

I've read the first two references in Nature's editorial, as cited in Lord Jestocost's post, a few posts above, and I'd like to share some thoughts of mine about their claims.

In Hoffmann et al. review article, the authors discuss Occam's Razor, both historically and through comparisons with other "simplifying" principles, within the framework of reaction mechanisms in chemistry. In the last sections, they also mention its status in Bayesian analysis. As I understand from the numerous statistics-inclined posts in this thread, those sections will be most interesting. The article itself is rather long, twenty-one pages plus notes & references, but it's worth reading. The concluding passage is the authors' remark that Occam's Razor is more like "an instruction in an operating manual," rather than "a world view."

The second reference in Nature, however, is more intriguing. It's called "Inverse Occam's razor," by I. Mazin. It's not a research paper, call it a short review article. It talks about a current tendency among journal editors to prefer complicated papers rather than simpler ones---hence the name "inverse." The reasons appear to be less scientific and more about the impact such publications will make.

Philosophy is one discipline and science is another, and how much they overlap is, in my opinion, not an objective issue. I prefer to see them as `orthogonal' to each other and, personally, I'm reluctant to entrust the interpretation of a 21th-century set of experimental data to a 14th-century "scholastic Philosopher."

But let me, for the sake of argument, assume for a moment the validity of Occam's Razor. The `simpler approach' it suggests is how we, people, tend to model our data in the hope of tracing some pattern in them. That should never be taken as some indication that Nature prefers to be simpler as well! Natural phenomena can and, most probably, are too complicated. Practicing scientists experience that during all their daily work.

I particularly enjoyed what Feynman used to lecture about `simplicity' in Nature; the video is from his famous "Go somewhere else!" statement:

 

[Dale]

That should never be taken as some indication that Nature prefers to be simpler as well!

This is a good point. Sometimes you hear Occham’s razor mis-stated as “all other things equal the simplest explanation is usually right”. The simplest explanation is usually the best, even if it is not right. And in science we generally assume that none of our explanations are “right”, so “best” is all we can do.