Quote

There never was a sounder logical maxim of scientific procedure than Ockham's razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. That is to say before you try a complicated hypothesis, you should make quite sure that no simplification of it will explain the facts equally well.

Charles Sanders Peirce

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Charles Sanders Peirce
Age: 74 †
Born: 1839
Born: September 10
Died: 1914
Died: April 19
Geodesist
Linguist
Logician
Mathematician
Philosopher
Pragmatist
Statistician
University Teacher
Phillips Place
Cambridge
Massachusetts
Charles Peirce
Charles S. Peirce
Charles Sanders Santiago Peirce
CSP
Make
Simplicity
Maxim
Never
Complicated
Maxims
Quite
Procedures
Sunt
Sure
Hypothesis
Sounder
Facts
Logical
Razor
Wells
Equally
Simplification
Well
Explain
Procedure
Trying
Scientific
Razors

More quotes by Charles Sanders Peirce

Image
Mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
We should chiefly depend not upon that department of the soul which is most superficial and fallible (our reason), but upon that department that is deep and sure, which is instinct.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
It is a common observation that those who dwell continually upon their expectations are apt to become oblivious to the requirements of their actual situation.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
Still, it will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which concordance the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and one-sidedness, and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness. I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
In all the works on pedagogy that ever I read — and they have been many, big, and heavy — I don't remember that any one has advocated a system of teaching by practical jokes, mostly cruel. That, however, describes the method of our great teacher, Experience.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
It is not knowing, but the love of learning, that characterizes the scientific man.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
Another characteristic of mathematical thought is that it can have no success where it cannot generalize.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
We, one and all of us, have an instinct to pray and this fact constitutes an invitation from God to pray.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
All the progress we have made in philosophy ... is the result of that methodical skepticism which is the element of human freedom.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
But the extraordinary insight which some persons are able to gain of others from indications so slight that it is difficult to ascertain what they are, is certainly rendered more comprehensible by the view here taken.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
Whenever a man acts purposively, he acts under a belief in some experimental phenomenon. Consequently, the sum of the experimental phenomena that a proposition implies makes up its entire bearing upon human conduct.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
We do not really think, we are barely conscious, until something goes wrong.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
It is the man of science, eager to have his every opinion regenerated, his every idea rationalized, by drinking at the fountain of fact, and devoting all the energies of his life to the cult of truth, not as he understands it, but as he does not yet understand it, that ought properly to be called a philosopher.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
The idea does not belong to the soul it is the soul that belongs to the idea.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
A quality is something capable of being completely embodied. A law never can be embodied in its character as a law except by determining a habit. A quality is how something may or might have been. A law is how an endless future must continue to be.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
When anything is present to the mind, what is the very first and simplest character to be noted in it, in every case, no matter how little elevated the object may be? Certainly, it is its presentness .
Charles Sanders Peirce