The Razor With Less Irritation (or IMMA FIRIN’ MA RAZOR!!!)

Human 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.