6.3 Ockham’s razor and the Law of Parsimony

I have made several appeals to Ockham's razor so far in this paper. It is one of the most widely referenced basic principles of science and reason, being one of the few that people who don't actually study this field are familiar with. It is a heuristic principle that has been shown to be immensely valuable in the long history of science. Also called the "Law of Parsimony", it is succinctly expressed as "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity". In modern English, "the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one". This is not a mystical revelation, but is a guideline that has been borne out in case after case. We observe that “that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain, when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity” (Isaac Newton). Simply stated, nature tends to solve problems using the least energy and complexity that will suffice, taking the shortest and most direct path available. Just as water flows downhill, and Uranium splits into new atoms that have the lowest stable energy level, all physical systems trend to the state of lowest energy following the path of least resistance. All of these phenomena, summed up, seem to promote the overall tendency of nature to "prefer" (pardon my anthropomorphizing) the simplest course.