Do you have any evidence/source that this is the correct form of the razor? It does go against what most scholars have understood about the razor and the origins thereof.
There is no surviving statement of it in Ockham's own words. He refers to the principle routinely, but the closest we have to the original is a fragment:
Nunquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate. "Never is plurality to be posited without necessity."
Scholars wrote in Latin in the 14th century. If he had written this in Middle English, it would be like translating Chaucer.
The closest we can come to today's common vernacular version is, "The simplest solution is
usually the best." Note that it doesn't say "always," so in every case we have an obligation to prove it. The only way to do that is to
test it.
From this derives the clearer but slightly more elaborate rendition I started with:
Always test the simplest solution first.
I did not mean to imply that this was Ockham's own writing--it's not even my own. I see that statement of it frequently, but yes, the ones you all have posted are also in common use. I just like this one better because it seems clearer and truer to the principles of science
as we now know it. The scientific method was merely a scholar's dream six and a half centuries ago, and Ockham helped turn that dream into a reality.
It was first printed in 1852, in a Modern English translation, 500 years after Ockham's death. Even then it appears that no one had Ockham's original Latin writing and the principle had simply been handed down for half a millennium.
