Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

Plurality should not be posited without necessity.

What can be explained by the assumption of fewer things is vainly explained by the assumption of more things.

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem

The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way.

Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate. A plurality (of reasons) should not be posited without necessity.

If I have learned anything as a scientist, it is that one should not make things complicated when a simple explanation will do.

The main purpose of science is simplicity and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler.

I think simplicity is a good guide: The more economical a theory, the better.

There is really nothing more to say-except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary, i.e., the fewer assumptions an explanation of a phenomenon depends on, the better the explanation

But shall gravity be therefore called an occult cause, and thrown out of philosophy, because the cause of gravity is occult and not yet discovered? Those who affirm this, should be careful not to fall into an absurdity that may overturn the foundations of all philosophy. For causes usually proceed in a continued chain from those that are more compounded to those that are more simple; when we are arrived at the most simple cause we can go no farther ... These most simple causes will you then call occult and reject them? Then you must reject those that immediately depend on them.

The human mind cannot grasp the causes of phenomena in the aggregate. But the need to find these causes is inherent in man’s soul. And the human intellect, without investigating the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions of phenomena, any one of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, snatches at the first, the most intelligible approximation to a cause, and says: This is the cause!

Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.

A good theory explains a lot but postulates little.

Any theory which causes solipsism to seem just as likely an explanation for the phenomena it seeks to describe ought to be held in the utmost suspicion.

Science offers us an explanation of how complexity (the difficult) arose out of simplicity (the easy). The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain. It postulates the difficult to explain, and leaves it at that.

In my view, the argument from parsimony is really no argument at all - it typically functions only to shut down more interesting discussion. If history is any guide, it's never a good idea to assume that a scientific problem is cornered.

The simplest explanation is always the most likely.

I don't think God is an explanation at all. It's simply redescribing the problem. We are trying to understand how we have got a complicated world, and we have an explanation in terms of a slightly simpler world, and we explain that in terms of a slightly simpler world and it all hangs together down to an ultimately simple world. Now, God is not an explanation of that kind. God himself cannot be simple if he has power to do all the things he is supposed to do.

We do not know a truth without knowing its cause.

The simplest and most obvious cause which can there be assigned for any phenomena, is probably the true one.

To ask for an explanation is to explain the obscure by the more obscure.

If it takes more than a sentence to explain what you are doing, it's almost always a sign that what you are doing is too complicated.

Reductionism is merciless.