Five philosophical razors for clearer thinking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a Wikipedia article titled Philosophical razor which defines one as:

 

“a principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate (shave off) unlikely explanations for a phenomenon or avoid unnecessary actions.

 

The best known is Occam’s razor. Wikipedia says that:

 

“In philosophy, Occam’s razor is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations with the smallest possible set of elements. It is also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony.”

 

There is a more specific principle called Hanlon’s razor that instead says:  

 

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”

 

On March 23, 2026 I blogged about it in a post titled Stupidity can explain a lot of behavior.

 

And there is Alder’s razor:

 

“If something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worthy of debate.”

 

There is Grice’s razor:

 

“Address what someone meant to say instead of the literal meaning of the words.”

 

There is Hitchens’ razor:

 

“That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”

 

An article at Life Lessons is titled 9 Philosophical razors you need to know. Another article by Chris Meyer at The Mind Collection is titled 11 Philosophical razors to simplify your life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

How we describe the solar system is a good example of Occam’s razor. As shown simply above, once we had an earth-centered view using circular orbits. For Geocentrism Wikipedia says:

 

“The resultant system, which eventually came to be widely accepted in the west, seems unwieldy to modern astronomers; each planet required an epicycle revolving on a deferent, offset by an equant which was different for each planet. It predicted various celestial motions, including the beginning and end of retrograde motion, to within a maximum error of 10 degrees, considerably better than without the equant.”

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The modern, simpler, heliocentric version, is shown above. It has elliptical orbits that result from gravitational attraction.

 

 

The razor was adapted from an image at OpenClipart.  The Ptolemaic model and solar system were adapted from Wikimedia Commons.