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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!!
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To: jbe who wrote (34973)4/16/1999 1:30:00 AM
From: Chuzzlewit  Read Replies (3) of 108807
 
Joan, you said Let us say that Ockham's Razor works best in situations where you are looking for a single cause, or a single explanation. It works less well in situations where you anticipate many causes, and multiple explanations.

I respectfully disagree. Mutually exclusive explanations are rarely encountered, and statistical analysis is a way to test that. But even here, the best approach is the simplest until the data force you to take a more complicated approach. That is the essence of Ockham's razor.

I think your argument smacks of just the tiniest bit of disingenuousness. Esthetics is not the proper setting for Ockham's razor, and attempting to use it in literary criticism is like using a hammer to cut wood. Ockham's razor is designed to simplify analysis of situations where multiple, equally predictive hypotheses account for the available data. It is not a device intended for literary criticism. It is a tool used to simplify the inductive process -- nothing more.

TTFN,
CTC
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