Seven hundred years ago, an unknown, penniless Franciscan friar named William of Ockham had a notion that changed the world. “The best answer to a question,” he said, “is the simplest answer that explains the facts.” In modern vernacular, “Keep it simple, stupid!”*
Upon a fourteenth-century society that believed everyday events were governed by mystical forces beyond human reckoning, his proposition—today known as Ockham’s Razor—fell like a bombshell. Suddenly, everything was open to question. Unfortunately for Ockham, “everything” included the Catholic Church, which promptly branded him a heretic and tossed him into the slammer.
His idea, however, refused to be unthought. The first faint glimmers ...
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