Message #1792

[AndyHB]

Probably does really, especially for a scientist!

Occam's razor (or Ockham's razor), often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae, translating to law of parsimony, law of economy or law of succinctness, is a principle that generally recommends selecting the competing hypothesis that makes the fewest new assumptions, when the hypotheses are equal in other respects. For instance, they must both sufficiently explain available data in the first place.

  But Occam's Razor doesn't assume that the hypothesis with fewest new assumptions is necessarily less complex.  It will depend on the level of complexity of that or those assumptions.

My point is that the sheer number of other complicated explanations, which are completely unsupported by anything other than hearsay, are utterly limitless. 

So how do you explain something that is supported by some scientific observation but not by other such observation?  A friend of mine has had a series of pneumathorax's over the past 6 or 7 months, and was due to have the two layers stuck together using 'powder glue' (I think that was the name it's given) later this month.

2 weeks ago, he was hit by a further breathing problem and admitted to hospital, where they found that this was something totally unrelated to the pneumathorax issue (different side of the chest for a start!).  There was damage visible on the scans, so last week they opened him up to repair it, only to find nothing there.  I know that some will say that there was probably some problem with the scan, but as there were more than one taken from different angles, this seems less likely.  How do you fit the two 'scientific observations' into your system that is based so heavily on the truth of  scientific observation?

I also notice that you have failed to answer my question about the role of our relationship with God in all this?  Is this because it doesn't fit with your scientific POV?