What Is Occam's Razor?

Occam, or rather William of Ockham, to give him his full English title, was an English theologian who lived in the 14th Century and is almost completely forgotten, apart from his razor. This was an 'imaginary' instrument which hs used to trim off the absurdities out of arguments.
This can be paraphrased into 'Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity'.
He felt that this means of shaving off any complexities to an argument laid the bones of it bare, so it was easier to see what was the logical answer. The more fine words and hypothetical situations which were attached, the less easy it was to come to a satisfactory conclusion.
He used the razor to trim away lots of accepted truths at the time, insisting that explanations had to be based on simple, provable facts which were supplemented by pure logic. Given that he was a theologian and given that the existence of God cannot be logically proved, this must have caused him some unhappiness at work, although the razor is useful when looking at other problems.

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