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Ockham’s Razor

Ockham’s Razor is a well-known concept within philosophy and logic. It stipulates that in trying to understand something and to determine the solution to a given problem, getting any unnecessary information out of the way is the fastest way to determine the truth or to find out the best explanation.

The originator of the concept was William of Ockham (1285-1349), an English Franciscan friar, philosopher, and theologian. Ockham spent most of his life developing a philosophical concept that reconciled religious belief with demonstratable, generally experienced truth, mainly by separating the two from each other.

Getting any unnecessary information out of the way is the fastest way to determine the truth or to find out the best explanation.

Where earlier philosophers attempted to justify God’s existence with physical proof, Ockham declared religious belief to be incapable of such proof and a matter of faith. He rejected the notions preserved from Classical times of the independent existence of qualities such as truth, hardness, and durability and said these ideas had value only as descriptions of particular objects and were really characteristics of human cognition.

Matthew Rosehttp://ourpolitics.net
Matt studies and analyzes politics at all levels. He is the creator of OurPolitics.net, a scholarly resource exploring political trends, political theory, political economy, philosophy, and more. He hopes that his articles can encourage more people to gain knowledge about politics and understand the impact that public policy decisions have on their lives. Matt is also involved in the preservation of recorded sound through IASA International Bibliography of Discographies, and is an avid record collector.

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