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Ockham's razor...is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ( "law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness"): "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem", or "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity". This is often paraphrased as "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."... (© Wikipedia)
The statistician is a logician and must insist that the inferences bear the proper labels. To fail to do this is to invite misuse of ..." 2. from
Front Matter: "... Statistical theory shows how mathematics, judgment, and substantive knowledge work together to the best advantage. The statistician is thus the logician and the architect of a statistical study. ..."
"I believe the only difference between science and philosophy is, that science is what you more or less know and philosophy is what you do not know ... The advantage of Occam’s Razor, that it diminishes your risk of error."
What is difference between science and philosophy? Excerpt from Bertrand Russell's 1918 lecture Excursus into Metaphysics: What There Is.
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"The advantage of Occam’s Razor, that it diminishes your risk of error. Considered in that way you may say that the whole of our problem belongs rather to science than to philosophy. I think perhaps that is true, but I believe the only difference between science and philosophy is, that science is what you more or less know and philosophy is what you do not know. Philosophy is that part of science which at present people choose to have opinions about, but which they have no knowledge about. Therefore every advance in knowledge robs philosophy of some problems which formerly it had, and if there is any truth, if there is any value in the kind of procedure of mathematical logic, it will follow that a number of problems which had belonged to philosophy will have ceased to belong to philosophy and will belong to science.
And of course the moment they become soluble, they become to a large class of philosophical minds uninteresting, because to many of the people who like philosophy, the charm of it consists in the speculative freedom, in the fact that you can play with hypotheses. You can think out this or that which may be true, which is a very valuable exercise until you discover what is true; but when you discover what is true the whole fruitful play of fancy in that region is curtailed, and you will abandon that region and pas on.
Just as there are families in America who from the time of the Pilgrim Fathers onward had always migrated westward, towards the backwoods, because they did not like civilized life, so the philosopher has an adventurous disposition and likes to dwell in the region where there are still uncertainties. It is true that the transferring of a region from philosophy into science will make it distasteful to a very important and useful type of mind.
I think that is true of a good deal of the applications of mathematical logic in the directions that I have been indicating. It makes it dry, precise, methodical, and in that way robs it of a certain quality that it had when you could play with it more freely. I do not feel that it is my place to apologize for that, because if it is true, it is true. If it is not true, of course, I do owe you an apology; but if it is, it is not my fault, and therefore I do not feel I owe any apology for any sort of dryness or dullness in the world.
I would say this too, that for those who have any taste for mathematics, for those who like symbolic constructions, that sort of world is a very delightful one, and if you do not find it otherwise attractive, all that is necessary to do is to acquire a taste for mathematics, and then you will have a very agreeable world, and with that conclusion I will bring this course of lectures to an end."
— Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1975), Lecture 8. Excursus into Metaphysics: What There Is (1918), p.123-24
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Background: Logical atomism is a philosophical view that originated in the early 20th century with the development of Analytic philosophy (analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere). Its principal exponent was the British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Analytic philosophy and Logical atomism, in particular, is often contrasted with Continental philosophy (two notable exponents are French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and German Martin Heidegger). However, "continental philosophy" is coined as a catch-all term for other methods prominent in Europe. It is also widely held that the early works of Bertrand Russell's Austrian-born pupil and colleague, Ludwig Wittgenstein, defend a loose version of logical atomism.
Russell's philosophy of Logical atomism holds that the world consists of ultimate logical "facts" (or "atoms" not to be confused in "atoms" as understood in modern scientific physics). These "philosophical logical atoms" cannot be broken down further, each of which can be understood independently of other facts. Having originally propounded this stance in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), Wittgenstein rejected it in his later Philosophical Investigations, published posthumously in 1953.
At the time Russell delivered his lectures on logical atomism, he had lost all contact with Wittgenstein (on the outbreak of World War I, Wittgenstein immediately volunteered for the Austro-Hungarian Army, despite being eligible for a medical exemption and Russell's pleading not to fight in such "a vain and pointless war"). After the war, Russell enthusiastically met with Wittgenstein again and helped him publish the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, Wittgenstein's own supposed version of Logical Atomism.
Although Wittgenstein did not use the expression Logical Atomism, his book Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, does espouse most of Russell's logical atomism except for Russell's Theory of Knowledge (T 5.4 and 5.5541). However, by 1918 Russell had pointedly moved away from this position. Nevertheless, the Tractatus differed so fundamentally from the philosophy of Russell that Wittgenstein always believed, to his dying day, that Russell misunderstood and even misrepresented the work, which may have contributed to ending of their close but strained friendship.
The differences between Russell's thoughts and Wittgenstein relate to many details, but the crucial difference is in a fundamentally different understanding of the task of philosophy. Wittgenstein believed that the task of philosophy was to clean up, or "polish up" linguistic mistakes. Russell was ultimately concerned with establishing sound epistemological foundations.
Epistemological questions such as how practical knowledge is possible did not for the slightest interest Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein investigated the "limits of the world" and later on philosophical meaning. For Wittgenstein, metaphysics and ethics were in the end nonsensical - as they did not "speak of facts" - though he did not mean to devalue either ethics or metaphysics necessarily. Russell, on the other hand, believed that these subjects, particularly ethics (as can be seen in his latter years with his strong opposition to the Vietnam, and Cold War and the mere existence of nuclear weapons in general) were not only of great philosophical and ethical interest, but also fundamentally meaningful to the survival of human beings on this planet.
logic (FORMAL THINKING) Show phonetics
noun [U]
a formal scientific method of examining or thinking about ideas:
a treatise on formal logic
logician Show phonetics
noun [C]
someone who studies or is skilled in logic
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