The Razor With Less Irritation (or IMMA FIRIN’ MA RAZOR!!!)
By SoundOfScilence on commentHuman beings love simplicity.
People get nostalgic about living in the past – what they see as ‘simpler times’. It’s true to say that the world around us is growing more complicated every hour. At the age of twelve, I could have explained to you how the television in my house worked. Now, ten years older and (hopefully) more knowledgeable, It absolutely baffles me. As I’ve progressed through my education, I’ve discovered whole worlds so small that they cannot be seen, and so large that they cannot adequately be imagined. Every day, scientific discoveries are being made and added to the lists of information that students must learn before they can reach the cutting edge, and much of this knowledge flies in the face of our preconceived notions.
Little wonder therefore that so many people warm to anti-scientific schools of thought under the influence of Occam’s Razor. The common perception of this is that if two equally likely explanations exist for a particular phenomenon, then the simpler of the two is probably the correct one. Hopefully everyone reading this can easily think of examples where this idea is flat-out wrong.
For instance, at school you probably learnt the chemical equation for respiration, the process that fuels every living cell in your body:
“Glucose + oxygen —–> carbon dioxide + water + energy”
Let us suppose that there are only two mechanisms by which this happens:
This
Or this
(Albeit on a much smaller scale)
On the surface, both of these ideas seem equally likely. Both produce the same chemical products and release the same amount of energy. So on the face of it, it would seem that the simpler explanation – that our cells are powered by small sugar-burning incinerators – is the correct one. It’s only when you start exploring the sub-cellular mechanics of respiration that you realise that the two explanations are not equally likely. Clearly in the light of scientific evidence, Occam’s Razor cannot be applied here.
So what? Well, it’s not a scenario confined just to this one example. Lightning is either the result of complex interactions of weather fronts, supercooling of water, collision of ice particles and separation of electric charges… or Zeus’ thunderbolts falling to Earth. Rainbows are either the internal reflection and dispersive refraction of the sun’s electromagnetic radiation through uniformly spherical water droplets… or a sign from Yahweh that he won’t go on another global killing spree. It’s difficult to think of a single phenomenon for which all explanations are equally valid in the light of scientific evidence.
At this point I’ll come clean and admit that the layman’s version of Occam’s Razor described above is something of a straw man. Occam’s original statement was that the competing explanations must both fit the observed data. Where it comes unstuck is that Occam suggested that the explanation most likely to be correct is the one that relies on the fewest assumptions. While this avoids the difficult problem of how to objectively measure simplicity, it throws up the problem of which assumptions should and shouldn’t be counted. All science relies the same assumptions as a starting point; that the Universe as we know it really exists, and that the Universe follows a set of reliable laws which can be known. Meanwhile, many proponents of religious apologetics will try and argue that things like the existence of their supernatural deity and said deity’s actions are not assumptions, but the irrefutable truth. While I am happy to admit that if, say, the god of the Bible does exist, then everything described in the Bible could be accepted as fact, it’s still a bad idea to accept Biblical literalism over scientific naturalism, even though it relies of fewer ‘assumptions’.
What we’re most concerned with then is the size of the assumptions, rather than simply quantity. The fundamental assumptions of science seem small in comparison to accepting one particular deity over the hundreds of thousands of others on the table. But do all those small assumptions of science add up to be greater than the single assumption of a particular religion? Since the size of an assumption can’t be measured objectively, there’s no answer to that.
By now I hope I’ve convinced you that Occam’s Razor is, for all intents and purposes, useless. So what do I suggest instead? I present to the world, The Naturalist’s Razor:
If there are two plausible explanations for a particular phenomenon, both of which are contingent with the observable data, then a natural explanation is more likely to be correct than a supernatural one.
Of course, it’s hardly an original idea, let alone my own. Dawkins’ latest book The Magic of Reality says much the same thing, doubtlessly in more elegant terms, but I feel that it cannot be said too often.
Probability doesn’t enter into the Razor, since it’s far too easy to level bogus improbabilities at any occurrence. If anyone reading this wants to argue against the proposition, they must argue with this observation: Thousands of phenomena that were previously thought to be caused by a supernatural being have been found to have natural causes through the scientific method. Disasters, diseases, remedies, life, the weather, the stars, the mind; all of these were once thought to be the workings of the supernatural, but so far not one phenomenon has shown us a supernatural cause when scientifically examined.
So learn to live with naturalistic explanations for the world around you, even if they’re not simple, comfortable or easy to imagine. And for those reading this who think that this cold and clinical approach to life leaves no room for awe and wonder, I’ll be addressing that next time.
I’ve always felt that Occam’s razor supports the atheist position much more strongly than that of any creationist. If you look on the surface, it would seem to be the opposite, scientists can show all the natural laws that produced the universe, creationists say goddidit. The problem lies with how the current complexity of the universe was arrived at.
The naturalistic position is one of complexity derived from simplicity, all complex things are produced by laws that are simpler than the result. Almost all of the assumptions made in science are ones you would have to make to be able to surmise anything at all, such as; the universe exists, and if every method you have at hand to test something arrives at the same result, that is likely to be the correct result.
The creationist’s position is that the universe was all created, and in a very short space of time, meaning that their god would have to be MORE complex than the universe, because it would have had to have conceived in its mind or whatever, everything in the universe, had to have been able to affect every point in space across the universe, and be able to create matter and energy, while somehow not being corporeal(except they always claim he can be if he wants to) Furthermore, if he is to be considered omnipotent and omniscient, that means he could conceive and create every possible permutation of a universe and everything that includes, making his intellect infinitely complex.
In short, with the choice being between an INFINITELY complex option, and the naturalistic explanations, which simplify the universal explanation, I see no problem in using Occam’s razor to choose between the two.
Whoever wrote this needs to have the back of their heads thwacked. 😛
This is what happens when scientists try to evaluate philosophical matters. You don’t entertain the nuance meanings of what ‘simple’ means. Indeed, in philosophy, having a natural explanation is defined as being a ‘simpler’ answer than a supernatural position, because the supernatural position adds unnecessary entities, those unnecessary entities usually including that of a god that somehow has magic, which is a totally unexplained phenomena, and indeed an UNEXPLAINABLE phenomena. Not only that, but the definition given for what Occam’s Razor states isn’t even correct. The way it’s employed, is that if two explanations are given for something, and both have an equal amount of evidence for their positions, then the simpler one is often preferred.
Occam’s Razor, I should say, isn’t employed as some sort of logical law of the universe, but more a rule of thumb, so it’s not MEANT to be a universal thing, just something that tends to work, and indeed it regularly does.
At the end of the article an appeal was made that Occam’s Razor doesn’t take probability into account, and that’s just utterly silly. The example was given was that thousands of things previously thought to be explained supernaturally have since been found out to be completely natural. Yes, this would fall very much in line with the Razor.
There’s a reason people like Dawkins for his science, and not his philosophy. There’s a reason why Dawkins is regularly shown to be wrong on philosophical ground often by other atheists, like Harris, and indeed Dawkins even considers Daniel Dennett his intellectual hero. Trying to evaluate everything strictly empirically and through the view that “God is the simple answer, science is the complex answer” is completely wrong.
The attempt made to introduce this ‘naturalist’s razor’ is an admirable one, but a redundant one when one realize the naturalist’s razor ALREADY follows what Occam’s Razor tells us.
Hey,
Firstly, I should clarify that what I meant was that the NATURALISTIC razor does not take probability into account. I realise my article may have been ambiguous. The reason I chose to ignore probability is because it’s very easy to throw bogus probabilities together to make something seem impossible (like Creationist calculations of a protein spontaneously forming, for example).
Maybe my definition of Occam’s Razor is incorrect, and for that I must accept responsibility for checking bad sources. I’m also aware that the razor is not a law, but merely a tool for differentiating between hypotheses. I was unaware of how philosophers use it, but my main aim in the article was to counter its abuse as an argument in support of supernatural causes.
However – if we are still in the mood for throwing jocular insults – this is what happens when philosophers try to evaluate scientific matters. I absolutely disagree that Occam’s Razor regularly helps us in scientific investigation. Maybe it does support a host of philosophical concepts, but when it comes to understanding the Universe at is most fundamental levels, the truth is routinely stranger and more complex than we have ever imagined.
Hypotheses are rejected on the basis of evidence alone to the point at which we have to ask ourselves what use is there in having a system to choose between them, based on simplicity, assumptions or anything else that is intangible. One model that Occam’s Razor supports one day may be overturned the next.
I know Dawkins is cack-handed in Philosophy, and should leave it alone, I don’t mean to follow in his footsteps, but I cannot abide the hand-wavy methods of Philosophy, nor the notion that differing viewpoints could be equally valid. I need to rely on cold, hard facts and Occam’s Razor will not help one jot.