Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

You who are simple, gain prudence; you who are foolish, set your hearts on it.

• Proverbs 8:5

The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.

• Proverbs 27:12

The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.

• Psalm 119:130

“Ockham was the most influential theologian of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He is best known for the famous ‘Ockham’s Razor’ or Law of Economy. This is the principle of simplicity — ‘the simplest explanation is the best’, or ‘it is futile to multiply hypotheses when a few will suffice’. This principle Ockham applied to mediaeval theories about ‘universals’, with devastating effect.”

• Tony Lane, A Concise History of Christian Thought

William of Ockham or Occam (1287-1347?) was a Franciscan Friar.  He followed in the philosophy of John Duns Scotus.  He was on charges of heresy.  The pope began to wage a heated discussion against the Rule of Francis of Assisi, and many of the leading Franciscans fled to Bavaria to seek asylum.  It is said that emperor Ludwig protected Ockham with the sword and Ockham protected Ludwig with his pen.

The question mark on the year of his death is that one source said that he died in 1347, but another source said he died during the Black Death in either 1349 or 1350.  I wonder if we could figure out when he died using Ockham’s Razor?  Probably not.  Maybe the “simple” way of saying it is that he died in the late 1340s, but then 1350 would be excluded.  Hmmm.  Even something this simple gets complicated.

Really, simplicity is at the heart of Ockham’s Razor, but the actual argument is looking at various solutions for a problem, and the one with the least set of elements is the best.

Odd that modern razors have gone from a single blade to multiple blades, throwing their design in the face of poor William of Ockham. Note: Ockham is a town in England where William was born. But to clarify, my present razor that I use has five blades. I do not think many people like William of Ockham’s argument.

Bertrand Russell and other philosophers have ridiculed Ockham’s Razor as being a ridiculous way of deciding the best solution.  They postulate a variety of things that a much more complicated solution yet will resolve the issue at hand most satisfactorily.

But what got me into the field of technical training was that I was a good troubleshooter in the maintenance engineering department.  Something would be shut down.  An alarm had gone off that required the shutdown.  I would talk to the operators and hear what was going on when the alarm happened.  I talked to the maintenance personnel, both the mechanical and electrical/instrument people.  With the clock ticking and management wanting to start up, I had to figure out, from three or more sets of conditions, what was the easiest thing to check that had the greatest chance of success.  Sometimes the stories that I was told were contradictory.  I then had to figure out who had not done their job to the best of their ability.  I ruffled feathers, but I got quick results.  Odd how many times this was done from about 3:00am to 6:00am on a Saturday morning, and since I was salaried and all the technicians were paid to be there on overtime, I was not getting paid.  Resolving the issue meant I might be home in time for breakfast, and a nap while the boys were watching cartoons, back in the day when cartoons were mostly only on Saturday morning.

So, I used Ockham’s Razor without even knowing it.  Good troubleshooters are simply wired that way.  But what the maintenance superintendent did not know is that I understood how the process worked.  When an instrument in the control room said there was no flow going through a pipe, but you could place a screwdriver against the pipe and placed the handle to your ear and hear the flow going through the pipe, some part of that instrument was not working properly.  It was all a matter of understanding how things worked.  And I spent the next four years writing textbooks on that subject and teaching everyone.

To make Ockham’s Razor work, doing a few simple things that reduce the amount of elements in finding a solution was possibly more important than finding a solution with the least elements.

But to William of Ockham’s demise, he tried to tackle old philosophies that had not been well accepted by applying his razor technique.  He applied it to beings, separating mankind from the other animals.  But by the time he was done, he had just about “proven” that “humanity” did not exist.  It reminds me of how it is so easy to get a politicians to stutter, stammer, and even stop talking.  Just ask them what a woman is.

Hmmm.  In using Ockham’s Razor, the biblical definition has the least elements: man and woman, and God created them.  And as for the “race” issue, Ockham’s Razor again concludes with the biblical definition.  There is one race, the human race.  Let us love one another.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.