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The Meaning of Simplicity in Physics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

R. B. Lindsay
R. B. Lindsay*
Affiliation:
Brown University, Providence, R. I.
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Extract

In the fourteenth century William of Occam in the course of his attack on the medieval scholastic philosophy enunciated his famous “razor”: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (hypotheses should not be multiplied unnecessarily). This is the classic claim for the description of nature in terms of the minimum possible number of fundamental concepts. It was presumably so recognized by Newton in the third book of his “Principia” in 1687 when he wrote: “We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. To this purpose the philosophers say that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , April 1937 , pp. 151 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1937

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References

1 Newton's Latin reads “Enim Natura simplex est.”

2 Handbuch der Physik, Vol. IV (Berlin, Springer, 1929) p. 34.

3 H. Margcnau, Phil. Sci., 2, 48, 1935.

4 In the interesting paper of Margenau, above cited, on the Methodology of Physics, the term “construct” is introduced in place of “concept,” presumably to emphasize the active constructive rôle of the mind in building physical theories. This is a worthwhile procedure. However, the present paper will continue to use the more familiar term with the feeling that no essential ambiguity will result.

5 See Lindsay and Margenau, “Foundations of Physics,” (New York, 1936) p. 79 ff.

6 Cf. “Foundations of Physics,” p. 91.