[R] Occams Razor Was: lm -- significance of x ...

[Uli Flenker; Raum 704]

Goran,

I fear you have to consult a philosophical textbook when you want to have
a look at the details. Indeed "Occam's principle" and "Occam's razor" are
identical. 


Briefly:

William of Occam was born around 1290 and worked in Oxford and Paris. The
way of thinking that Occam proposed is now known as "Nominalism". One
conclusion that can be drawn from his assumptions is that it is against
the principles of any kind of science to take into account more reasons
than absolutely neccessary to explain some phenomenon under study. This
nowadays is known as "Occams razor". 

Unfortunatley I have not found a recent epistimological text that deals
with "Occam's razor" yet. It is briefly mentioned in many publications on
scientific methods (at least in Germany), but there seems to be a
significant lack of theoretical discussion.

I hope this helps a bit. Best ...

        Uli Flenker
        Institute of Biochemistry
        German Sports University Cologne
        Carl-Diem-Weg 6

        50933 Cologne / Germany

        Phone 0049/0221/4982-493

PS: Occam of course came from England (and spent his last years in
Germany). So what I quoted has been translated from english to german and
vice versa several times; and the weakest link in the chain is definetely
me! I hope this is not too big a problem. 


On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, gb wrote:

> Where can I find a description of "Occam's principle"? I vaguely recall
> "Occam's razor", which I guess is the same thing?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Göran
> -- 
>  Göran Broström                      tel: +46 90 786 5223
>  Department of Statistics            fax: +46 90 786 6614
>  Umeå University
>  SE-90187 Umeå, Sweden             e-mail: gb at stat.umu.se
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