<philosophy> The English philosopher, William of Occam
(1300-1349) propounded Occam's Razor:
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
(Latin for "Entities should not be multiplied more than
necessary"). That is, the fewer assumptions an explanation of
a phenomenon depends on, the better it is.
For example, some claim that God caused himself to exist and
also caused the universe to exist - he was the "first cause" -
whereas Occam's Razor suggests that if one accepts the
possibility of something causing itself then it is better to
assume that it was the universe that caused itself rather than
God because this explanation involves fewer entities.
The negation of Occam's Razor would suggest that an
arbitrarily complex explanation is just as good as the
simplest one. (E.g. God and his cat created a robot called
Sparky who built the universe from parts bought from a shop in
another dimension).
