{"id":377,"date":"2010-09-02T15:46:25","date_gmt":"2010-09-02T15:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2010\/09\/02\/on_hawking\/"},"modified":"2010-09-02T15:46:25","modified_gmt":"2010-09-02T15:46:25","slug":"on_hawking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2010\/09\/02\/on_hawking\/","title":{"rendered":"On Hawking"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Bought Eureka. Came with free copy of <em>The Times<\/em>, which I threw away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>&#8212;<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/rpg7twit\/status\/22802582908\">earlier today<\/a> on Twitter<\/em><\/p>\n<p><p>\nSo Stephen Hawking has discovered Occam&#8217;s Razor. <\/p>\n<p>\nWilliam of Ockham (can I call him &#8216;Bill&#8217;?) is the monk and philosopher to whom is attributed the aphorism <em>entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem<\/em>. Put another way, &#8220;if you can explain something one way, there&#8217;s no need to invent complications.&#8221; Or, if you like, &#8220;the explanation of natural phenomena should not invoke supernatural causes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\nLet&#8217;s invoke Isaac Newton: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. Therefore, to the same natural effects we must, so far as possible, assign the same causes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\nThe natural world can be explained in natural terms. This is a 700 year old principle. To claim that a Supreme Being is <em>necessary<\/em> to explain the fact of our existence is not simply damnably poor science, it&#8217;s shockingly bad theology, too.<\/p>\n<p>\nIt has ever been thus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bought Eureka. Came with free copy of The Times, which I threw away. &#8212;earlier today on Twitter So Stephen Hawking has discovered Occam&#8217;s Razor. William of Ockham (can I call him &#8216;Bill&#8217;?) is the monk and philosopher to whom is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2010\/09\/02\/on_hawking\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonsense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}