Is simplicity the key?....is the simplest explanation the correct one

Question

Is simplicity the key?....is the simplest explanation the correct one

Answer 1

Everyone has they're own explanation

Answer 2

Gee arent you so cool I watched the same TV show.

Doh

Answer 3

It depends on the viewer or the person inquiring. Some people,depending on their personality type, may prefer quick and simple answers, while others may want to have a full explanation of how the answer was conceived.  

Answer 4

Einstein is quoted as saying, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler."  The essential part of this quote is the second part which warns against over simplification.

When trying to explain something that is not obvious, you could create a simple answer like "It's magic" or "The Flying Spaghetti Monster said it should be so", but these types of explanations are gross over simplifications and do not provide much insight.  It is important when examining unexplained phenomenon to consider all of the evidence and to attempt to formulate a hypothesis that will provide more information than you started with.

This is where Occam's Razor is valuable.  Occam's Razor helps to provide a starting point for experimentation and it helps to optimize the experimental process.  Some people understand Occam's Razor to say that the simpler explanations are usually correct, but, in reality, it states that simpler explanations will involve less decision points and will reduce the risk of following a dead-end or making a mistake.  This is a great way to begin an experimental process, but it doesn't have anything to do with "correctness".

Oftentimes, complexity is necessary to explain a complex world with many variables.  For example, to say that today's temperature is evidence for or against global warming is not only a simplification, but it is also just dead wrong.  Complex systems, like weather systems, require complex analysis in order to determine how the system works.  Complex analyses require complex explanations.

So, no, the simplest explanation is not necessarily the correct one.  Simplicity is attractive because of it's elegance, but sometimes, in science and life, things get complicated.  Thanks for the question!

Answer 5

Not always but it should be the first one you think of.Only after eliminating the simplest should you go on to the more complicated.

Answer 6

Gee, I was all ready to jump in on this one and saw that there were already great answers. Oh well, I'll add my brief $0.02 and a link. The simplest explanation often is the correct one, but not always. But it certainly makes sense when you're experimenting and trying to find the explanation for a certain observation to brainstorm what the possible causes are and then test each one, starting from the one which assumes the least unknowns. If a simpler explanation is found to be plausible and you can't falsify it, there's not much reason to choose a more complex explanation instead.

Answer 7

The simplest explanation is not necessarily the correct one.

But the explanation that requires the fewest extra assumptions is most likely to be the correct explanation.

Occam's razor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_R...

Occam's razor (sometimes spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar, William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness"): "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem", roughly translated as "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity".

This is often paraphrased as "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood.

Originally a tenet of the reductionist philosophy of nominalism, it is more often taken today as an heuristic maxim (rule of thumb) that advises economy, parsimony, or simplicity, often or especially in scientific theories.

Answer 8

Occam's Razor states that the explanation making the fewest number of assumptions tends to be correct. So, the simplest explanation given a set of experimental data is probably right.