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From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Elementary AI Philosophy
Summary: Who was Occam?
Keywords: Understanding and Comprehension, Reality and Modeling
Message-ID: <7440@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 6 Feb 89 14:57:40 GMT
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In article <44237@linus.UUCP> bwk@mbunix.mitre.org (Barry Kort) writes:
>In article <733@htsa.uucp> fransvo@htsa.UUCP (Frans van Otten) writes:
>
> > I've seen this name - Occam - several times in this newsgroup. I have not
> > the slightest idea what is meant, what his theories are about, etc. Would
> > anyone care to explain ? Thanks.
>
>
>Occams' Razor is a principle in the art of theory construction.
>
>Given two competing theories purporting to explain the same
>phenomenon, the simpler, more elegant theory is to be preferred.
>
The principle was named for William of Occam, to whom Bertrand Russell devotes
considerable attention in A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY.  Here is how it
starts:

		William of Occam is, after Taint Thomas, the most
	important schoolman.  The circumstances of his life are very
	imperfectly known.  He was born probably between 1290 and 1300;
	he died on April 10, but whether in 1349 or 1350 is uncertain.
	(The Black Death was raging in 1349, so that is perhaps the more
	probable year.)  Most people say he was born at Ockham in Surrey,
	but Delisle Burns prefers Ockham in Yorkshire.  He was a Oxford,
	and then at Paris, where he was first the pupil and afterwards
	the rival of Duns Scotus.

His most celebrated pupil was probably William of Baskerville, the hero of
Umberto Eco's THE NAME OF THE ROSE :=).