Charles Sanders Peirce Quotes

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem

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

Most scientists like to operate in the context of economy. If you don't need an explanatory principle, don't invoke it.

Traditional science is all about finding shortcuts.

A study, by its very nature, is an abstraction.

When you come up with a theory, you fall in love with the beauty the simplicity and elegance of it. But then you have to get a sheet of paper and pencil and crack out all the details. Hundreds and hundreds of pages. Because you have to prove it.

Plurality should not be posited without necessity.

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

If a thing can be done adequately by means of one, it is superfluous to do it by means of several; for we observe that nature does not employ two instruments [if] one suffices.

Scientists often talk of parsimony (as in "the simplest explanation is probably correct," also known as Occam's razor), but we should not get seduced by the apparent elegance of argument from parsimony; this line of reasoning has failed in the past at least as many times as it has succeeded.

Adequacy is sufficient. All else is superfluous.

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.

Nature...does not act by means of many things when it can do so by means of a few.

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary.

For if as scientists we seek simplicity, then obviously we try the simplest surviving theory first, and retreat from it only when it proves false. Not this course, but any other, requires explanation. If you want to go somewhere quickly, and several alternate routes are equally likely to be open, no one asks why you take the shortest. The simplest theory is to be chosen not because it is the most likely to be true but because it is scientifically the most rewarding among equally likely alternatives. We aim at simplicity and hope for truth.

It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. It is possible that your car engine is driven by psychokinetic energy, but if it looks like a petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly as well as a petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol engine.

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

You take a painting, you have a white, virginal piece of canvas that is the world of purity, and then you put your imagery on it, and you try to bring it back to the original purity.

It is not necessary to move mountains in order to prove one's faith.

But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!

The golf swing is like a suitcase into which we are trying to pack one too many things.

Science attempts to find logic and simplicity in nature. Mathematics attempts to establish order and simplicity in human thought.

I'm an educator, and I'm a scientist, and I speak what is objectively true. And if that offends you, I can try to have a conversation with you to ask why it offends you, and tell you why objective truth should not offend you because that's how the world works.

I try not to go the obvious route all the time, but sometimes the most obvious is actually the best.

Keep everything simple, don't try anything crazy and all your strikes must be hard! NOTHING WEAK, no jabs or weak attacks.