“We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible.”
Book III, sec 1 (trans. Gerald J. Toomer)
Almagest
Causality
Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)
“We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible.”
Book III, sec 1 (trans. Gerald J. Toomer)
Almagest
James McCosh (1811–1894) British philosopher
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 58.
William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer
Source: A Manual of the Steam Engine and Other Prime Movers (1859), p. 27
György Lukács book History and Class Consciousness
Source: History and Class Consciousness (1968), p. 28
“Every explanation is after all an hypothesis.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher
Source: 1930s-1951, Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 123
Reinout Willem van Bemmelen (1904–1983) Dutch geologist
Source: "The Scientific Character of Geology," 1961, p. 454; As cited in: Alberta Research Council, Research Council of Alberta (1964), Bulletin - Alberta Research Council. Vol. 15-17, p. 31
“Although to penetrate into the intimate mysteries of nature and thence to learn the true causes of phenomena is not allowed to us, nevertheless it can happen that a certain fictive hypothesis may suffice for explaining many phenomena.”
Quanquam nobis in intima naturae mysteria penetrare, indeque veras caussas Phaenomenorum agnoscere neutiquam est concessum: tamen evenire potest, ut hypothesis quaedam ficta pluribus phaenomenis explicandis aeque satisfaciat, ac si vera caussa nobis esset perspecta.
Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) Swiss mathematician
§1
A conjecture about the nature of air (1780)
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
The Analysis of Mind (1921), Lecture IX: Memory, p. 159
1920s
Context: There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.
George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher
Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Human Immortality: its Positive Argument, p.282