. Principle attributed to William of Ockham, that ‘entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity’ (not his own words), i.e. it is arbitrary to postulate the existence of things, or kinds of things, unless one has to. More generally,...

Occam's razor (sometimes spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as...