"The simplest explanation is most likely to be the correct one" - Occam's Razor |
| On the
Copernican Revolution: o "The replacement of the planet Earth by the Sun as the centre of heavenly motions is widely (and rightly) seen as one of the great scientific paradigm shifts of all time. But what is often misunderstood is the reason why this Copernican "revolution" eventually carried the day with the scientific community. The commonly held view is that Copernicus's heliocentric model vanquished the competition, especially the geocentric view of Ptolemy, because it yielded better predictions of the positions of the celestial bodies. In actual fact, the predictions of the Copernican model were a little worse than those obtained via the complicated series of epicycles and other curves that constituted the Ptolemaic scheme, at least to within the accuracy available using the measuring instruments of the time. No, the real selling point of the Copernican model was that it was much simpler than the competition yet still gave a reasonably good account of the observational evidence. The Copernican revolution is a good case study in how to wield Occam's Razor to slit the throat of the competition. When in doubt, take the simplest theory that accounts for the facts. The problem is that it's not always easy to agree on what is 'simple'. The notion of simplicity, like truth, beauty, and effective process, is an intuitive one, calling for a more objective characterization - that is, formalization - before we can ever hope to agree about the relative complexities of different theories." - J.L. Casti and W. DePauli, Goedel: A Life of Logic (Perseue Publishing, Cambridge MA 2000, p.166) |