Synopsis: This explains everything is, in its most basic sense, a collection of scientific theories. The book starts off by explaining that in 2012 the author posted a question on a website (edge.org) and this book is some of the better responses to that question along with an explanation of why it is their favorite. The question, in 2012, was “What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?” and I must say that he got some very good responses. The most popular was obviously natural selection but there were a lot of different theories some of which I had never even heard of.
Without a doubt my favorite explanation of an explanation was definitely Katinka Matson’s one sentence explanation of Occam’s Razor. For those of you that don’t know what Occam’s Razor is I will explain. Occam’s Razor is a theory proposed by a philosopher, called William of Occam, for use in medicine, basically the theory is that the more simplistic and basic an idea the more likely it is to be correct, as long as it encompasses all of the symptoms.
For example a patient goes to see his doctor and he has a slightly runny nose. The doctor, just for example, has two theories the first is that his nose is runny because it is cold outside the second is that the patient has (for example) a brain tumor. Without Occam’s Razor these theories are equally likely, but Occam’s Razor says that the “its cold outside” theory is MUCH more likely.
Katinka Matson’s explanation of why Occam’s Razor was simply “Keep it simple.”
Rating: 8 (1-5)
Synopsis: This explains everything is, in its most basic sense, a collection of scientific theories. The book starts off by explaining that in 2012 the author posted a question on a website (edge.org) and this book is some of the better responses to that question along with an explanation of why it is their favorite. The question, in 2012, was “What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?” and I must say that he got some very good responses. The most popular was obviously natural selection but there were a lot of different theories some of which I had never even heard of.
Without a doubt my favorite explanation of an explanation was definitely Katinka Matson’s one sentence explanation of Occam’s Razor. For those of you that don’t know what Occam’s Razor is I will explain. Occam’s Razor is a theory proposed by a philosopher, called William of Occam, for use in medicine, basically the theory is that the more simplistic and basic an idea the more likely it is to be correct, as long as it encompasses all of the symptoms.
For example a patient goes to see his doctor and he has a slightly runny nose. The doctor, just for example, has two theories the first is that his nose is runny because it is cold outside the second is that the patient has (for example) a brain tumor. Without Occam’s Razor these theories are equally likely, but Occam’s Razor says that the “its cold outside” theory is MUCH more likely.
Katinka Matson’s explanation of why Occam’s Razor was simply “
Keep it simple.”By Christian Wentzell