When we try to make every explanation as simple as possible we are confronted by several dangers. The following is abstracted from Herbert Austin Aikins', The Principles of Logic, Simplicity pp 418-421, 1902, Henry Holt & Co. New York.
1) We make it simple by ignoring some essential part of the facts we are trying to explain.
2a) We attain simplicity, in explanation, by ignoring the relationship between facts we are trying to explain..
2b) The ideal of all science and philosophy is to achieve the simplest possible connected view of the whole; but we must not be penny wise and pound foolish.
2c) Kipling said, " There is a difference between a team of good players and a good team of players." Likewise there is a difference between a set of good explanations and a good set of explanations A simple explanation that fits with one set of data, but is in conflict with a larger mass of information is probably flawed.
3a) When a complicated explanation of facts (observations) in one field (experiment etc.) that fits in with what we know about the rest of the world (disease, etc.) is better than a simple explanation that does not.
3b) In the case of cause and effect - we must not accept a new set of causes until we have made a reasonable effort to explain the various facts in question by old ones.
3c) And yet, on the other hand we must not carry our rejection of strange causes to extreme.
3d) If the alleged new principle (theory) does nothing else, it may serve to hold together a mass of facts (observations) many of which would otherwise escape us or cause us to become hopelessly confused and puzzled until we find some explanation that is better.
3e) A null hypothesis or false hypothesis is often better than none at all. It may turn out that our disconnected principle is not false at all.
3f) The scientific ideal is a simple, well-coordinated understanding of the system under study as a whole. But, we are a long way from attaining it. What we possess in the way of knowledge is not so much one field that is always growing broader as a large number of fields each of which is growing out towards the others so that sometimes they meet; but there are still plenty of gaps. We must not always refuse to cultivate some new field because we do not see how it can be joined with the rest.
3g) It is nearly as bad to try to make our different hypotheses consistent with each other too soon as not to try to do so at all.
The principle of Simplicity or Parsimony is one that we are compelled to follow.
It is one thing to be so organized that the simple and familiar are more easily believed in than the complicated and unfamiliar, and a somewhat different thing to accept the formal principle that where there are two theories, equally good in other respects, that which assumes the simpler and more familiar state of affairs is the more likely to be true. Yet if we have the organization we can hardly avoid the principle. To say that the simpler and more familiar is more easily believed in, means that in most cases we do believe in it, or , in other words, that in most cases the relatively simple and familiar state of affairs is what we call the "true" one; and now, a large number of particular cases being settled, all we have to do is compare them and we reach our formal principle: The theory which supposes the simpler and more familiar state o f affairs is more often true than the other. (We get the principle when we reflect enough to see the results of our own organization (i.e., to see that all our explanations are relatively simple) but not enough to see that they are the results of that organization (i.e., that these explanations are simple because the simple ones are the one we chose.) When we see this, the question takes a new form.
It is because we act on this principle of discrediting the new, whether we ever state it in words or not, that the phrase " a very strange story" generally means a lie.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (We must not assume the existence of any more things than necessary) Occam's Razor or the Law of Parsimony.
Hypotheses non fingo. The cause for any known effect must be, vera causa; a true cause or one for whose existence we have more evidence than can be found in the special facts that it is invoked to explain. (For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.)
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