Where it comes from
William of Ockham, a fourteenth-century friar, held that we shouldn’t assume more than we need to explain something. The famous wording, ‘entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity’, was written three centuries after him.
How to play it
Hold and drag the razor across the explanation. Shave off anything that needs an assumption.
What it teaches (try it first)
When an explanation needs a lot of moving parts, shave it. What’s left is often the thing nobody wanted to say out loud.
Ask yourself. What’s the simplest explanation you’ve been avoiding?
Next door in the cabinet
Private viewings by appointment
Ring for a curator.
Tell us what’s on your mind, or what you’ve been reading. The first conversation costs nothing, and you don’t need to prepare a thing.
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