I wonder why it makes some people fume
When Occam's Razor cuts them down to size
It's quite a silly thing if you assume
Complexity's the answer to your whys
Copernicus observed the simple fact
That Jupiter and Mars went to and fro
To make their motion smooth a simple act
The geocentric system had to go
It's obvious to all, except a few
You look at what you see then simplify
Instinctively young children know its true
The complex tale just has to be the lie
A fabulous invention may be fun
But isn't going to be how life was spun
Simplicity will always be your friend
If you've a mind to find the ways things go
Just look at facts not lots of lets pretend
It's all about the things that you can know
You postulate a theory in your head
What it predicts you test against the facts
You cut out all the rubbish that you've said
And take away the story that distracts
If you were right what's left is near the truth
And other minds will build on what you found
What seemed to be the arrogance of youth
Will then be seen as basic and profound
Until a mind that's clearer than your own
Reveals a truth beyond what you have shown
Author notes
The scientific method in other words.
A contest entry
- Occam's Razor - WInklings Contest #145 by Lyndon.
1750 points, ended December 3, 2008, 11 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me honestly what you think, good or bad.
Comments
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Organized purposeful forms of matter-in-motion
Using Occam's Razor, I begin.
What to me are the simplest things?
We can't unscramble an egg I contend
Shows purpose forced that time passage brings.
Matter-in-motion only moves one way.
Changing forms of every kind are organized
Into motions with purposes they obey
Which requires intelligence to be recognized.
Therefore there are reasons for everything
(As there are for all the things we create).
Some help us while some destruction bring,
But each fulfills its purpose for its own sake.
The simplest universal thing is purpose then.
Intelligence must be present to account for it.
All pervasive time enfolds all purpose when
Everything that happens is doing its bit.
Organized purposeful forms (Plato)
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Matter-in-motion (Thomas Hobbs) -
Some wonderful home truths in this lovely rhyming verse.
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LMAO interesting piece or was it the battle between you and Mairi lmao. Indeed, always a pleasure to walk in on this sort
Good luck
Love you
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Occam's razor tends to prevent original thought, tends to distract a thinker from possibilities. It would have been so easy for the scientific world to carry on thinking that Newton was more-likely-than-not to be right, but Einstein carried on with an idea from left-field.
Occam's razor is little more than basic statistics, in which the principle exists that a sample will tend to bulk around the mean. That bulking does not invalidate data at the extremes. It's no good principle for philosophical enquiry, because it drives the enquirer to reject so-called "anomalous" data. (Charles Fort recognised this all too well.)
Good poem, though.
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Oh and Newton, who knew and applied Occam's Razor with extreme vigor reqarded all of his work as philosophical enquiry. It is a conceit reinvented by French philosophers of the 19th century that thought could ditch science and make sense. Philosophy without Occam's Razor is fiction writing!
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NEVER!!!!
Occams's Razor is exactly what Einstein was using!
If you fail to understand that you will ALWAYS miss the point. Newton needed twiddly bits to work, Einstein does not. The razor applies in deciding between explanations, never to the data.
Just look at facts not lots of lets pretend
It's all about the things that you can know
You take ALL the data, and you postulate an explanation. If your explanation fits people will look at it, as they did with Einstein, remember within a very short time of Einstein governments diverted funds and military resources away from fighting the greatest war that had ever been fought to testing his theory.
Occam's Razor is what allows us to look at outlying data and make sense of it. The difficullty that many non-scientists and some scientists have with it is completely failing to understand what an assumption is. The data (the good data) is not assumption therefore Occam cannot touch it. Einstein new his theory was incomplete because it required a fiddle factor, Occam's Razor supported Einstein however because it required fewer fiddles and required us to throw away less data than Newton.
THIS IS THE POINT!!!
You apply the Razor to the theory, NOT the data.
Ummm have I said that often enough yet?
Looks like I need a better poem! -
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I think we will have to agree to disagree.
"Philosophy without Occam's Razor is fiction writing!" Well, that about wraps it up for metaphysics! -
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Not at all!!!
Metaphysics IS fiction writing
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Ah - the words of a priest spotting heresy! Any use of the mind to encompass a matter one cannot subject to a test is anathema. Won't do, old chap.
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Emphatically not true, why cannot it not be subjected to a test?
For instance the "out of body experience" of many patients in hospital who say they floated to the ceiling and saw the room from above. There is now a large international test of that underway.
Why metaphysics is fiction writing is it is not a "study" is because most metaphysicists don't want to look for answers, they want to look for wonder.
I can take you to meet people who have watched matter transporters as seen on Star Trek, who can pass data at twice the speed of light and who can affect the past by something they have not yet done.
All these people are reputable scientists and their results are repeatable by others anywhere the right equipment can be got together. Yet all should be "heresy" if scientists believed in it. We don't. All we say is, give the evidence in the best way you can and let sceptics look.
Dowsing is a good one, accepted by millions across the world, big companies pay dowsers good money to find water.
However no-one had tested it.
With the co-operation of the British Association of Dowsers (can't remember their real name) a school science project under the auspices of the BAAA was set up they built a platform with artificial rivers running underneath and about 80 dowsers dowsed it to plot the rivers. Only 3 dowsers got a result any different to chance, and the best of those was about 15% WORSE than chance. In other words it was testable, tested and failed.
All you have to do, is spend the time looking for the test
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BECAUSE the only thing you can truly "test" is your own existence. Anything beyond that is conjecture. Once we realise that, it cuts us down to size.
Let's suppose all you say is "right", or at least strongly arguable. Here we are with a capacity for conceiving of the abstract - for no apparent reason! Oh determinists say we are "hard wired" that way, but that's no "reason" worth a hoot!
What you are doing, through your long answers to me, is setting up your own coconuts to knock down. All very nice, but all it "proves" is that you know where to put the coconuts.
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The logical conclusion of that argument completely supports my statement! And actually you don't go far enough you cannot actually know that you exit either, that aside if you argue that you cannot know anything else then EVERYTHING is fiction writing. Metaphysics is then completely pointless
Determinist?
Hardwired?
both words show you have a very dated view of how most scientists in the field see thought.
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Einstein?
How long dead is he? The terms "determinist" and "hardwired" are simply from the body of knowledge.
One thing I can assume, Jeff, is that I WILL "exit". I think.
As for existing - that is proved by awareness, and is the only thing proved by awareness (or is Descartes to old-fashioned for you too?).
Metaphysics may well be "pointless"; the remarkable thing is that we nevertheless seem to have the capacity to contemplate such things. -
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Awareness doesn't prove existence, Descartes, suggested it as evidence but actually it fails all the same tests the other evidences fail. You don't know that you are aware, you could simply be a set of answers written in a script. If you start off with the idea nothing can be proven, then actually, nothing can.
So it is an interesting idea, but a complete dead end.
Now the scientific idea is different. It starts off by saying that nothing can be proven...
The difference is that science doesn't stop there. It says you look beyond there you look for evidence and you look to test things. That what you do is to try to build up the best and most complete picture that you can, knowing full well that all that you do will be bettered in the future. Newton and Einstein both knew they were wrong. All scientists know they are wrong.
THIS is why it is powerful. -
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Oh one can ARGUE whether awareness does or doesn't prove existence all day and all night. One can also argue that if nothing can be proven there is NO POINT looking beyond - or anywhere - for an answer, that a "most complete picture" is an illusory thing.
It doesn't matter that Newton or Einstein were "wrong" or "right"; what really matters is that they were beautiful! (Discuss. Do not write on both sides of the paper simultaneously).
Oho, so it's POWER you're after! Guess again!
Stephen Fry perfectly describes (good) science as "humility in the face of facts". I describe philosophy (which includes science) as "humility in the face of truth". The fact that facts and truth are elusive commodities, and that as observers of either we are probably well short of perfect, doesn't blunt the impulse to enquire, nor should it blunt the humility of the enquiry.
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I love it...
You've written it very well...
Thanks for sharing
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