Carolina QuotesIn the logic of science there is a principle as important as that of parsimony: it is that of sufficient reason. The former directs us to look for simplest causes, the later cautions us not to simplify so far that the explanation is inadequate to the facts to be explained....Parsimony is not itself a simple criterion of a good methodology; we cannot simply count the factors of explanation and say that the theory containing the smallest number is the best. The ideal of parsimony cannot be expressed without the proviso that the conditions for which it is a norm shall themselves be adequate.
Lewis White Beck Connected to the Carolinas
Source
Lewis White Beck, The "Natural Science Ideal" in the Social Sciences (1949), pp. 393-394
- year
- 1949
- locator
- pp. 393-394
Cite this record
“In the logic of science there is a principle as important as…” Lewis White Beck. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-741A8992EC. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/741a8992ec
More from Lewis White Beck
Kant did not tell us his strategic secrets, and perhaps he was not fully aware of his stratagem. But in our own century, this stratagem has been formulated in what is sometimes called "Ramsey's Maxim". In cases where two opposed arguments seem internally sound but where their conclusions are incompatible and hence a stalemate is created, Frank P. Ramsey wrote, "It is a heuristic maxim that the truth lies not in one of the two disputed views but in some third possibility which has not yet been thought of, which we can only discover by rejecting something assumed as obvious by both the disputants."...We have now seen how Kant applied this maxim in the disputes concerning mathematics....We can illustrate this pattern again by referring to Kant's later attempt to resolve the space antinomy.
[T]he only species on earth which prides itself on its intelligence is the only one with the intelligence necessary, and possibly sufficient, to render itself extinct tomorrow.
I think the best hope for our survival is to be based on understanding human predicaments here on earth, not expecting a saving message from super-human beings in the sky...Thinking about and even hoping to find extraterrestrial civilizations, however, sharpen our search for and appreciation of the peculiar virtues and vices of the only form of life we know.