One of the most famous scientific endorsements of Ockham’s Razor can be found in Isaac Newton’s MathematicalPrinciples of Natural Philosophy (1687), where he states four ‘Rules of Reasoning’. Here are the first two:
Rule I. No more causes of natural things should be admitted than are both true and sufficient to explain their phenomena. As the philosophers say: nature does nothing in vain, and more causes are in vain when fewer suffice. For nature is simple and does not indulge in the luxury of superfluous causes.Rule II. Therefore, the causes assigned to natural effects of the same kind must be, so far as possible, the same. Examples are the cause of respiration in man and beast, or of the falling of stones in Europe and America, or of the light of a kitchen fire and the Sun, or of the reflection of light on our Earth and the planets.
Newton doesn’t do much to justify these rules, but in an unpublished commentary on the book of Revelations, he says more. Here is one of his ‘Rules for methodising/construing the Apocalypse’:
To choose those constructions which without straining reduce things to the greatest simplicity. The reason of this is… [that] truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things. It is the perfection of God’s works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of order and not of confusion. And therefore as they that would understand the frame of the world must endeavour to reduce their knowledge to all possible simplicity, so it must be in seeking to understand these visions…
Newton thinks that preferring simpler theories makes sense, whether the task is to interpret the Bible or to discover the laws of physics. Ockham’s Razor is right on both counts because the Universe was created by God.
https://aeon.co/essays/are-scientific-theories-really-better-when-they-are-simpler
