Occam – the Franciscan friar William of Ockham – taught at Oxford. He is credited with Occam’s Razor (first used by Sir William Rowan Hamilton in 1852), which states: “When competing theories have equal predictive power, the principle recommends selecting those that introduce as few assumptions (hypotheses) as possible and that hypothesize as few additional entities as possible.” Occam’s principle was actually: “entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem” or: “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” Occam’s Razor has become one of the pillars of the scientific method.
