Excerpt

The modern scientific position on simplicity is largely an extension of Newton’s argument as presented in his defense of the classical theory of gravity. Namely, in the absence of known mechanism, it is the role of theory to express through laws, all—and only—that which can be deduced from the observation and analysis of phenomena. A value that Newton distilled into an epigram, “Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain when less will serve.”

The physicist Ernst Mach ([1893] 2013) brought the point home when he defined the physical sciences as “sense experience economically arranged.” What we now call, somewhat habitually, the principle of parsimony or Ockham’s razor is a statement about the compressibility of both compendious observations and rules of inference or generalization. Despite numerous recent efforts to formalize and quantify parsimony, it remains as John Laird described it a century ago, “Every one realizes that it is foolish to be recklessly prodigal of assumptions. That way incapacity lies. But in particular cases it is usually very difficult to prove that any given assumption is necessarily superfluous in every regard” (Laird 1919).

And simplicity is not only a virtue in the natural sciences. Raymond Havens (1953) has reviewed the deliberations of politicians, poets, and authors, from Swift to Walpole, who write of simplicity as, “The best and truest ornaments of most things in life,” and that, “Taste . . . can not exist without simplicity.” In a recent book on minimalism in art by Kyle Chayka (2020), The Longing for Less, the author captures one of the essential tensions experienced in pursuing simplicity as inscribed in a Kyoto garden, “dramatic simplicity side by side with unruly life.”

Bibliography

Chayka, K. 2020. The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Ding, J., V. Tarokh, and Y. Yang. 2018. “Model Selection Techniques: An Overview.” IEEE Signal Processing Magazine 35 (6): 16–34. https://doi.org/10.1109/MSP.2018.2867638.

Havens, R. D. 1953. “Simplicity, a Changing Concept.” Journal of the History of Ideas 14 (1): 3–32. https://doi.org/10.2307/2707493.

Laird, J. 1919. “The Law of Parsimony.” Monist 29 (3): 321–344. https://doi.org/10.5840/monist191929317.

Mach, E. [1893]2013. The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Exposition of Its Principles. Translated by T. J. McCormack. Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge Press.

Mahner, M. 2021. “Mario Bunge (1919–2020): Conjoining Philosophy of Science and Scientific Philosophy.” Journal for General Philosophy of Science 52 (1): 3–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-021-09553-7.

Rudner, R. 1961. “An Introduction to Simplicity.” Philosophy of Science 28 (2): 109–119. https://doi.org/10.1086/287793.

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