Despite the traditional disagreement between science and religion, there are three priests that have had an enormous influence among researchers. From most recent to oldest, they are Georges Lemaître, who a century ago deduced the Big Bang from Einstein’s equations; Gregor Mendel, who discovered genetics in Darwin’s time; and William of Ockham, who is perhaps the least known of the three. Ockham, a Franciscan monk, worked at Oxford during the first half of the 14th century as a philosopher, theologian and political scientist, if that was a job in the Middle Ages. He was about to star the name of the roseby Umberto Eco, what happened is that Eco got angry with him while he was preparing the novel in 1980 and decided to invent William of Baskerville, whom we all imagine today with the face of Sean Connery.
Ockham must have been a groundbreaking intellectual at the time, because the orthodox dons at Oxford refused to grant him a doctorate in Theology, and the poor Franciscan had to earn his living as inceptor, a kind of bachelor, who wandered around English convents participating in theological debates. At night, in the solitude of his cell, he dedicated himself to analyzing the logic of nature. After moving to Avignon, he was able to free himself from the rigidity of Oxfordshire and immerse himself in a university environment more open to discussion and innovative proposals.
Philosophers admire Ockham for formulating nominalism—that abstract objects do not exist—but scientists prefer to remember him for Ockham’s razor: Plurality is not to be posited without necessityplurality should not be postulated without necessity. Said like this, in its original formulation, the truth is that nothing is understood. The clearest way to explain the idea is surely this: if there are two ideas that can explain a phenomenon, the simplest one is usually the correct one. Scientists love this principle.
Ockham’s razor is a foundation of the Copernican revolution. The night sky can be explained mathematically if the Earth is the center of the universe, as the epicycle models of Hipparchus and Ptolemy already did in classical Greece. An epicycle is a small circle that rotates as it moves through a larger circle. If the planets move like this, the Earth can be perfectly in the center. But, if you put the Sun in the center, as Copernicus did, the movement of the planets can be explained in a much simpler way, without epicycles or bagpipes. By Ockham’s razor, Copernicus’ model is superior to Ptolemy’s, for the simple reason that it is simpler.
The physicist Jorge Wagensberg, whom I miss, told me that a man once showed up in his office, threw a 500-page deck on the table with a loud bang and told him: “Einstein was wrong, here I leave you the true theory.” of relativity.” Wagensberg immediately responded that his theory was incorrect. “But how?” said the man, “how can you say that without having read it?” And Wagensberg responded: “Dear sir, because Einstein’s theory takes up half a page.” Another direct application of Ockham’s razor.
But what if Ockham’s razor doesn’t work? What if it’s dented? That’s what my favorite science historian, Naomi Oreskes, of Harvard University, thinks. He says that often The simplest explanation is not the best, in blatant contradiction to Ockham’s razor. He says that real life is complicated and messy and that, like in detective novels, the culprit is usually the one you least expect. And that 95% of the world consists of dark matter and dark energy. Who said it would be simple?
