![]() ![]() There’s no easy equation between simplicity and truth.īut Occam’s razor is often fetishized and misapplied as a guiding beacon for scientific enquiry. Applied this way, simplicity is a practical virtue, allowing a clearer view of what’s most important in a phenomenon. That’s why most scientific theories are intentional simplifications: They ignore some effects not because they don’t happen, but because they’re thought to have a negligible effect on the outcome. This sounds like good sense: Why make things more complicated than they need be? You gain nothing by complicating an explanation without some corresponding increase in its explanatory power. Isaac Newton more or less restated Ockham’s idea as the first rule of philosophical reasoning in his great work Principia Mathematica (1687): “We are to admit no more causes of natural things, than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.” In other words, keep your theories and hypotheses as simple as they can be while still accounting for the observed facts. What William actually wrote (in his Summa Logicae, 1323) is close enough, and has a pleasing economy of its own: “It is futile to do with more what can be done with fewer.” Occam’s razor is often stated as an injunction not to make more assumptions than you absolutely need. Called Ockam’s razor (more commonly spelled Occam’s razor), it advises you to seek the more economical solution: In layman’s terms, the simplest explanation is usually the best one. This, it’s often said, is just where you need a hypothetical tool fashioned by the 14th-century English Franciscan friar William of Ockham, one of the most important thinkers of the Middle Ages. As a result, he didn’t know how characteristics are passed from parents to offspring, let alone how they could change over time.Imagine you’re a scientist with a set of results that are equally well predicted by two different theories. That’s because he knew nothing about genes. This cartoon from the 1870s makes fun of both Darwin and his theory.Īlthough Darwin presented a great deal of evidence for evolution in his book, he was unable to explain how evolution occurs. It was only when another scientist, named Alfred Russel Wallace, developed essentially the same theory of evolution that Darwin put his book into print.Ĭharles Darwin’s name is linked with the theory of evolution. ![]() Darwin had actually expected this type of reaction to his theory and had waited a long time before publishing his book for this reason. The cartoon reflects how many people felt about Darwin and his theory during his own time. Drawn in 1871, it depicts Darwin himself as an ape. Many people found it hard to accept the idea that humans had evolved from an ape-like ancestor, and they saw evolution as a challenge to their religious beliefs. An adaptation is a trait that helps an organism survive and reproduce in a given environment.ĭespite all the evidence Darwin presented, his theory was not well-received at first. As living things evolve, they generally become better suited for their environment. Evolution explains how living things are changing today and how modern living things have descended from ancient life forms that no longer exist on Earth. Over many generations, this can lead to major changes in the characteristics of the species. In natural selection, some members of a species, being better adapted or suited to their environment, produce more offspring than others, so they pass "advantageous traits" to their offspring. As described by Darwin, evolution occurs by a process called natural selection. He also presented a great deal of evidence that evolution occurs.Įvolution is a change in the characteristics of living things over time. In the book, Darwin stated the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin published a book on evolution in 1859 titled On the Origin of Species. However, evolution is most often associated with Charles Darwin. In fact, it goes all the way back to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. The idea of evolution has been around for centuries. ![]()
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