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Occam's razor

Index Occam's razor

Occam's razor (also Ockham's razor or Ocham's razor; Latin: lex parsimoniae "law of parsimony") is the problem-solving principle that, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one. [1]

231 relations: 'Pataphysics, Ad hoc hypothesis, Adaptation and Natural Selection, Akaike information criterion, Albert Einstein, Alfred Jarry, Algorithmic information theory, Algorithmic probability, Alistair Cameron Crombie, Altruism, American Scientist, Andrey Kolmogorov, Aristotle, Arthur Oncken Lovejoy, Artificial intelligence, Assume a can opener, Atheism, Atomic theory, Ball lightning, Basic Books, Bayes factor, Bayesian inference, Bayesian information criterion, Bertrand Russell, Biogeography, Biology, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Brownian motion, Cambridge University Press, Causality, Chekhov's gun, Chemistry, Chris Wallace (computer scientist), Cladistics, Columbia Law Review, Common sense, Conditional probability, Conjunction fallacy, Consilience, Continental drift, Correlation does not imply causation, David J. C. MacKay, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Duhem–Quine thesis, Duns Scotus, Edwin Thompson Jaynes, Eliminative materialism, Elliott Sober, Emergent evolution, Empirical evidence, ..., Epistemology, Ernst Mach, Eucharist, Evolution, Existence of God, Explanatory power, Faith, False discovery rate, Falsifiability, Fideism, Five Ways (Aquinas), Folk psychology, Fraction of variance unexplained, Framing (social sciences), Francis Crick, Franciscans, Free energy principle, Galileo Galilei, Genealogy, George Berkeley, George C. Williams (biologist), Gordon Clark, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Gray wolf, Greedy reductionism, Gregory Chaitin, Hanlon's razor, Harold Jeffreys, Henry Pemberton, Heuristic, Hickam's dictum, Hitchens's razor, Hypothesis, Immanuel Kant, Inductive probability, Inductive reasoning, Information theory, Isaac Newton, J. J. C. Smart, Jürgen Schmidhuber, Jeremy Bentham, Jim Berger (statistician), John Dalton, John Punch (theologian), John Wiley & Sons, Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Karl Menger, Karl Popper, KISS principle, Kolmogorov complexity, Laplace's method, Latin, Leap of faith, Leonhard Euler, Leprechaun, Libert Froidmont, Likelihood function, Logic, Long branch attraction, Louis de Broglie, Luminiferous aether, Maimonides, Marcus Hutter, Marginal distribution, Marquette University Press, Materialism, Max Planck, Maximum parsimony (phylogenetics), McNamara fallacy, Metaphysical naturalism, Metaphysics, Mike Alder, Mind–body dualism, Minimum description length, Minimum message length, MIT Press, Model selection, Morgan's Canon, Muskox, Napoleon, Naturalism (philosophy), New England Skeptical Society, Nominalism, Occam learning, Ontology, Organism, Overfitting, Oxford University Press, Paul Churchland, Philosopher, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Philosophical razor, Philosophy of religion, Philosophy of science, Phylogenetic tree, Physics, Pierre Louis Maupertuis, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Population, Posterior Analytics, Posterior probability, Pragmatism, Pre-modern human migration, Predictive inference, Premise, Prentice Hall, Presuppositional apologetics, Princeton University Press, Principle of least action, Principle of least astonishment, Principle of plenitude, Prison abolition movement, Probability theory, Proportionality (law), Pseudoscience, Ptolemy, Punishment, Quantum mechanics, Rationalism, Ray Solomonoff, Rayleigh–Jeans law, Reaction mechanism, Reductionism, Regress argument, Restorative justice, Revelation, Reverse transcriptase, Richard Dawkins, Richard McKeon, Richard Swinburne, Robert Grosseteste, Søren Kierkegaard, Scholasticism, Science, Scientific method, Semantics, Sensibility, Sentences, Simplicity, Skeptical movement, Solomonoff's theory of inductive inference, Sparse matrix, Special relativity, Species, Spherical cow, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Statistical inference, Sui generis, Summa Theologica, Supernatural, Syntax, Systematics, Test method, The Philosophical Review, The Selfish Gene, The Skeptic's Dictionary, Theodore Woodward, Theology, Thomas Aquinas, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Training, test, and validation sets, Turing machine, Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit, Underdetermination, Universal Turing machine, Utilitarianism, Vacuum, Variational Bayesian methods, Walter Chatton, Wave–particle duality, Werner Heisenberg, Wien approximation, William H. Jefferys, William Kneale, William of Ockham, Zebra (medicine), Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, Zoologica Scripta, Zoology. Expand index (181 more) »

'Pataphysics

Pataphysics or pataphysics (pataphysique) is a difficult to define literary trope invented by French writer Alfred Jarry (1873–1907).

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Ad hoc hypothesis

In science and philosophy, an ad hoc hypothesis is a hypothesis added to a theory in order to save it from being falsified.

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Adaptation and Natural Selection

Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought is a 1966 book by the American evolutionary biologist George C. Williams.

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Akaike information criterion

The Akaike information criterion (AIC) is an estimator of the relative quality of statistical models for a given set of data.

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Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics).

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Alfred Jarry

Alfred Jarry (8 September 1873 – 1 November 1907) was a French symbolist writer who is best known for his play Ubu Roi (1896).

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Algorithmic information theory

Algorithmic information theory is a subfield of information theory and computer science that concerns itself with the relationship between computation and information.

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Algorithmic probability

In algorithmic information theory, algorithmic probability, also known as Solomonoff probability, is a mathematical method of assigning a prior probability to a given observation.

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Alistair Cameron Crombie

Alistair Cameron Crombie (4 November 1915 – 9 February 1996) was an Australian historian of science who began his career as a zoologist.

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Altruism

Altruism is the principle and moral practice of concern for happiness of other human beings, resulting in a quality of life both material and spiritual.

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American Scientist

American Scientist (informally abbreviated AmSci) is an American bimonthly science and technology magazine published since 1913 by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society.

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Andrey Kolmogorov

Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov (a, 25 April 1903 – 20 October 1987) was a 20th-century Soviet mathematician who made significant contributions to the mathematics of probability theory, topology, intuitionistic logic, turbulence, classical mechanics, algorithmic information theory and computational complexity.

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Aristotle

Aristotle (Ἀριστοτέλης Aristotélēs,; 384–322 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist born in the city of Stagira, Chalkidiki, in the north of Classical Greece.

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Arthur Oncken Lovejoy

Arthur Oncken Lovejoy (October 10, 1873 – December 30, 1962) was an American philosopher and intellectual historian, who founded the discipline known as the history of ideas with his book The Great Chain of Being (1936), on the topic of that name, which is regarded as 'probably the single most influential work in the history of ideas in the United States during the last half century'.

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Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI, also machine intelligence, MI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence (NI) displayed by humans and other animals.

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Assume a can opener

"Assume a can opener" is a catchphrase used to mock economists and other theorists who base their conclusions on impractical or unlikely assumptions.

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Atheism

Atheism is, in the broadest sense, the absence of belief in the existence of deities.

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Atomic theory

In chemistry and physics, atomic theory is a scientific theory of the nature of matter, which states that matter is composed of discrete units called atoms.

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Ball lightning

Ball lightning is an unexplained and potentially dangerous atmospheric electrical phenomenon.

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Basic Books

Basic Books is a book publisher founded in 1952 and located in New York, now an imprint of Hachette Books.

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Bayes factor

In statistics, the use of Bayes factors is a Bayesian alternative to classical hypothesis testing.

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Bayesian inference

Bayesian inference is a method of statistical inference in which Bayes' theorem is used to update the probability for a hypothesis as more evidence or information becomes available.

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Bayesian information criterion

In statistics, the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) or Schwarz criterion (also SBC, SBIC) is a criterion for model selection among a finite set of models; the model with the lowest BIC is preferred.

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Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate.

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Biogeography

Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time.

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Biology

Biology is the natural science that studies life and living organisms, including their physical structure, chemical composition, function, development and evolution.

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British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (BJPS) is a peer-reviewed, academic journal of philosophy, owned by the British Society for the Philosophy of Science (BSPS), and published by Oxford University Press.

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Brownian motion

Brownian motion or pedesis (from πήδησις "leaping") is the random motion of particles suspended in a fluid (a liquid or a gas) resulting from their collision with the fast-moving molecules in the fluid.

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Cambridge University Press

Cambridge University Press (CUP) is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge.

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Causality

Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is what connects one process (the cause) with another process or state (the effect), where the first is partly responsible for the second, and the second is partly dependent on the first.

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Chekhov's gun

Chekhov's gun is a dramatic principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed; elements should not appear to make "false promises" by never coming into play.

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Chemistry

Chemistry is the scientific discipline involved with compounds composed of atoms, i.e. elements, and molecules, i.e. combinations of atoms: their composition, structure, properties, behavior and the changes they undergo during a reaction with other compounds.

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Chris Wallace (computer scientist)

Christopher Stewart "Chris" Wallace (26 October 1933 – 7 August 2004) was an Australian computer scientist and physicist.

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Cladistics

Cladistics (from Greek κλάδος, cládos, i.e., "branch") is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups ("clades") based on the most recent common ancestor.

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Columbia Law Review

The Columbia Law Review is a law review edited and published by students at Columbia Law School.

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Common sense

Common sense is sound practical judgment concerning everyday matters, or a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge that is shared by ("common to") nearly all people.

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Conditional probability

In probability theory, conditional probability is a measure of the probability of an event (some particular situation occurring) given that (by assumption, presumption, assertion or evidence) another event has occurred.

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Conjunction fallacy

The conjunction fallacy (also known as the Linda problem) is a formal fallacy that occurs when it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than a single general one.

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Consilience

In science and history, consilience (also convergence of evidence or concordance of evidence) refers to the principle that evidence from independent, unrelated sources can "converge" on strong conclusions.

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Continental drift

Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other, thus appearing to "drift" across the ocean bed.

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Correlation does not imply causation

In statistics, many statistical tests calculate correlations between variables and when two variables are found to be correlated, it is tempting to assume that this shows that one variable causes the other.

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David J. C. MacKay

Sir David John Cameron MacKay (22 April 1967 – 14 April 2016) was a British physicist, mathematician, and academic.

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Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo) is a 1632 Italian-language book by Galileo Galilei comparing the Copernican system with the traditional Ptolemaic system.

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Duhem–Quine thesis

The Duhem–Quine thesis, also called the Duhem–Quine problem, after Pierre Duhem and Willard Van Orman Quine, is that it is impossible to test a scientific hypothesis in isolation, because an empirical test of the hypothesis requires one or more background assumptions (also called auxiliary assumptions or auxiliary hypotheses).

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Duns Scotus

John Duns, commonly called Duns Scotus (1266 – 8 November 1308), is generally considered to be one of the three most important philosopher-theologians of the High Middle Ages (together with Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham).

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Edwin Thompson Jaynes

Edwin Thompson Jaynes (July 5, 1922 – April 30, 1998) was the Wayman Crow Distinguished Professor of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis.

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Eliminative materialism

Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is the claim that people's common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology) is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist.

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Elliott Sober

Elliott Sober (born 6 June 1948, Baltimore) is Hans Reichenbach Professor and William F. Vilas Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at University of Wisconsin–Madison.

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Emergent evolution

Emergent evolution was the hypothesis that, in the course of evolution, some entirely new properties, such as mind and consciousness, appear at certain critical points, usually because of an unpredictable rearrangement of the already existing entities.

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Empirical evidence

Empirical evidence, also known as sensory experience, is the information received by means of the senses, particularly by observation and documentation of patterns and behavior through experimentation.

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Epistemology

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge.

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Ernst Mach

Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach (18 February 1838 – 19 February 1916) was an Austrian physicist and philosopher, noted for his contributions to physics such as study of shock waves.

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Eucharist

The Eucharist (also called Holy Communion or the Lord's Supper, among other names) is a Christian rite that is considered a sacrament in most churches and an ordinance in others.

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Evolution

Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations.

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Existence of God

The existence of God is a subject of debate in the philosophy of religion and popular culture.

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Explanatory power

Explanatory power is the ability of a hypothesis or theory to effectively explain the subject matter it pertains to.

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Faith

In the context of religion, one can define faith as confidence or trust in a particular system of religious belief, within which faith may equate to confidence based on some perceived degree of warrant, in contrast to the general sense of faith being a belief without evidence.

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False discovery rate

The false discovery rate (FDR) is a method of conceptualizing the rate of type I errors in null hypothesis testing when conducting multiple comparisons.

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Falsifiability

A statement, hypothesis, or theory has falsifiability (or is falsifiable) if it can logically be proven false by contradicting it with a basic statement.

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Fideism

Fideism is an epistemological theory which maintains that faith is independent of reason, or that reason and faith are hostile to each other and faith is superior at arriving at particular truths (see natural theology).

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Five Ways (Aquinas)

The Quinque viæ (Latin "Five Ways") (sometimes called "five proofs") are five logical arguments regarding the existence of God summarized by the 13th-century Catholic philosopher and theologian St. Thomas Aquinas in his book Summa Theologica.

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Folk psychology

In philosophy of mind and cognitive science, folk psychology, or commonsense psychology, is a human capacity to explain and predict the behavior and mental state of other people.

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Fraction of variance unexplained

In statistics, the fraction of variance unexplained (FVU) in the context of a regression task is the fraction of variance of the regressand (dependent variable) Y which cannot be explained, i.e., which is not correctly predicted, by the explanatory variables X.

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Framing (social sciences)

In the social sciences, framing comprises a set of concepts and theoretical perspectives on how individuals, groups, and societies, organize, perceive, and communicate about reality.

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Francis Crick

Francis Harry Compton Crick (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was a British molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, most noted for being a co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953 with James Watson, work which was based partly on fundamental studies done by Rosalind Franklin, Raymond Gosling and Maurice Wilkins.

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Franciscans

The Franciscans are a group of related mendicant religious orders within the Catholic Church, founded in 1209 by Saint Francis of Assisi.

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Free energy principle

The free energy principle tries to explain how (biological) systems maintain their order (non-equilibrium steady-state) by restricting themselves to a limited number of states.

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Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564Drake (1978, p. 1). The date of Galileo's birth is given according to the Julian calendar, which was then in force throughout Christendom. In 1582 it was replaced in Italy and several other Catholic countries with the Gregorian calendar. Unless otherwise indicated, dates in this article are given according to the Gregorian calendar. – 8 January 1642) was an Italian polymath.

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Genealogy

Genealogy (from γενεαλογία from γενεά, "generation" and λόγος, "knowledge"), also known as family history, is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history.

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George Berkeley

George Berkeley (12 March 168514 January 1753) — known as Bishop Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne) — was an Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism" (later referred to as "subjective idealism" by others).

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George C. Williams (biologist)

George Christopher Williams (May 12, 1926 – September 8, 2010) was an American evolutionary biologist.

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Gordon Clark

Gordon Haddon Clark (August 31, 1902 – April 9, 1985) was an American philosopher and Calvinist theologian.

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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz (or; Leibnitz; – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath and philosopher who occupies a prominent place in the history of mathematics and the history of philosophy.

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Gray wolf

The gray wolf (Canis lupus), also known as the timber wolf,Paquet, P. & Carbyn, L. W. (2003).

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Greedy reductionism

Greedy reductionism, identified by Daniel Dennett, in his 1995 book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, is a kind of erroneous reductionism.

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Gregory Chaitin

Gregory John Chaitin (born 15 November 1947) is an Argentine-American mathematician and computer scientist.

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Hanlon's razor

Hanlon's razor is an aphorism expressed in various ways, including: It suggests a way of eliminating unlikely explanations ("attributions") for human behavior and its consequences.

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Harold Jeffreys

Sir Harold Jeffreys, FRS (22 April 1891 – 18 March 1989) was a British mathematician, statistician, geophysicist, and astronomer.

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Henry Pemberton

Henry Pemberton (1694 – 9 March 1771) was an English physician and man of letters.

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Heuristic

A heuristic technique (εὑρίσκω, "find" or "discover"), often called simply a heuristic, is any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method, not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, logical, or rational, but instead sufficient for reaching an immediate goal.

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Hickam's dictum

Hickam's dictum is a counterargument to the use of Occam's razor in the medical profession.

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Hitchens's razor

Hitchens's razor is an epistemological razor asserting that the burden of proof regarding the truthfulness of a claim lies with the one who makes the claim, and if this burden is not met, the claim is unfounded, and its opponents need not argue further in order to dismiss it.

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Hypothesis

A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon.

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Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher who is a central figure in modern philosophy.

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Inductive probability

Inductive probability attempts to give the probability of future events based on past events.

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Inductive reasoning

Inductive reasoning (as opposed to ''deductive'' reasoning or ''abductive'' reasoning) is a method of reasoning in which the premises are viewed as supplying some evidence for the truth of the conclusion.

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Information theory

Information theory studies the quantification, storage, and communication of information.

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Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, astronomer, theologian, author and physicist (described in his own day as a "natural philosopher") who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time, and a key figure in the scientific revolution.

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J. J. C. Smart

John Jamieson Carswell "Jack" Smart AC (16 September 1920 – 6 October 2012) was an Australian philosopher and academic, and was appointed as an Emeritus Professor by the Australian National University.

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Jürgen Schmidhuber

Jürgen Schmidhuber (born 17 January 1963) is a computer scientist who works in the field of artificial intelligence.

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Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham (15 February 1748 – 6 June 1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism.

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Jim Berger (statistician)

James O. Berger (born April 6, 1950 in Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an American statistician best known for his work on Bayesian statistics and decision theory.

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John Dalton

John Dalton FRS (6 September 1766 – 27 July 1844) was an English chemist, physicist, and meteorologist.

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John Punch (theologian)

John Punch, O.F.M. (or John Ponce or, in the Latinate form, Johannes Poncius) (1603–1661) was an Irish Franciscan scholastic philosopher and theologian.

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John Wiley & Sons

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., also referred to as Wiley, is a global publishing company that specializes in academic publishing.

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Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish-language literature.

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Joseph-Louis Lagrange

Joseph-Louis Lagrange (or;; born Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia, Encyclopædia Britannica or Giuseppe Ludovico De la Grange Tournier, Turin, 25 January 1736 – Paris, 10 April 1813; also reported as Giuseppe Luigi Lagrange or Lagrangia) was an Italian Enlightenment Era mathematician and astronomer.

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Karl Menger

Karl Menger (January 13, 1902 – October 5, 1985) was an Austrian-American mathematician.

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Karl Popper

Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher and professor.

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KISS principle

KISS is an acronym for "Keep it simple, stupid" as a design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960.

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Kolmogorov complexity

In algorithmic information theory (a subfield of computer science and mathematics), the Kolmogorov complexity of an object, such as a piece of text, is the length of the shortest computer program (in a predetermined programming language) that produces the object as output.

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Laplace's method

In mathematics, Laplace's method, named after Pierre-Simon Laplace, is a technique used to approximate integrals of the form where ƒ(x) is some twice-differentiable function, M is a large number, and the endpoints a and b could possibly be infinite.

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Latin

Latin (Latin: lingua latīna) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages.

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Leap of faith

A leap of faith, in its most commonly used meaning, is the act of believing in or accepting something outside the boundaries of reason.

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Leonhard Euler

Leonhard Euler (Swiss Standard German:; German Standard German:; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, logician and engineer, who made important and influential discoveries in many branches of mathematics, such as infinitesimal calculus and graph theory, while also making pioneering contributions to several branches such as topology and analytic number theory.

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Leprechaun

A leprechaun (leipreachán/luchorpán) is a type of fairy of the Aos Sí in Irish folklore.

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Libert Froidmont

Libert Froidmont (Latin: Libertus Fromondus, 3 September 1587 in Haccourt-Liège – 28 October 1653 in Louvain) a son of Gerard Libert de Froidmont and Marguerite Radoux, was a Liégeois theologian and scientist.

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Likelihood function

In frequentist inference, a likelihood function (often simply the likelihood) is a function of the parameters of a statistical model, given specific observed data.

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Logic

Logic (from the logikḗ), originally meaning "the word" or "what is spoken", but coming to mean "thought" or "reason", is a subject concerned with the most general laws of truth, and is now generally held to consist of the systematic study of the form of valid inference.

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Long branch attraction

In phylogenetics, long branch attraction (LBA) is a form of systematic error whereby distantly related lineages are incorrectly inferred to be closely related.

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Louis de Broglie

Louis Victor Pierre Raymond de Broglie, duke de Broglie (or; 15 August 1892 – 19 March 1987) was a French physicist who made groundbreaking contributions to quantum theory.

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Luminiferous aether

In the late 19th century, luminiferous aether or ether ("luminiferous", meaning "light-bearing"), was the postulated medium for the propagation of light.

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Maimonides

Moses ben Maimon (Mōšeh bēn-Maymūn; موسى بن ميمون Mūsā bin Maymūn), commonly known as Maimonides (Μαϊμωνίδης Maïmōnídēs; Moses Maimonides), and also referred to by the acronym Rambam (for Rabbeinu Mōšeh bēn Maimun, "Our Rabbi Moses son of Maimon"), was a medieval Sephardic Jewish philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ages.

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Marcus Hutter

Marcus Hutter (born April 14, 1967) is a German computer scientist.

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Marginal distribution

In probability theory and statistics, the marginal distribution of a subset of a collection of random variables is the probability distribution of the variables contained in the subset.

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Marquette University Press

Marquette University Press is a university press managed and supported by Marquette University.

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Materialism

Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental aspects and consciousness, are results of material interactions.

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Max Planck

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, FRS (23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.

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Maximum parsimony (phylogenetics)

In phylogenetics, maximum parsimony is an optimality criterion under which the phylogenetic tree that minimizes the total number of character-state changes is to be preferred.

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McNamara fallacy

The McNamara fallacy (also known as quantitative fallacy), named for Robert McNamara, the United States Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, involves making a decision based solely on quantitative observations (or metrics) and ignoring all others.

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Metaphysical naturalism

Metaphysical naturalism, also called ontological naturalism, philosophical naturalism, and scientific materialism is a philosophical worldview, which holds that there is nothing but natural elements, principles, and relations of the kind studied by the natural sciences.

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Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that explores the nature of being, existence, and reality.

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Mike Alder

Mike Alder (born Michael D. Alder) is an Australian mathematician who was an assistant professor at the University of Western Australia.

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Mind–body dualism

Mind–body dualism, or mind–body duality, is a view in the philosophy of mind that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical,Hart, W.D. (1996) "Dualism", in A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, ed.

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Minimum description length

The minimum description length (MDL) principle is a formalization of Occam's razor in which the best hypothesis (a model and its parameters) for a given set of data is the one that leads to the best compression of the data.

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Minimum message length

Minimum message length (MML) is a formal information theory restatement of Occam's Razor: even when models are equal in goodness of fit accuracy to the observed data, the one generating the shortest overall message is more likely to be correct (where the message consists of a statement of the model, followed by a statement of data encoded concisely using that model).

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MIT Press

The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States).

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Model selection

Model selection is the task of selecting a statistical model from a set of candidate models, given data.

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Morgan's Canon

Morgan's Canon, also known as Lloyd Morgan's Canon, Morgan's Canon of Interpretation or the principle of parsimony, was coined by 19th-century British psychologist C. Lloyd Morgan, and remains a fundamental precept of comparative (animal) psychology.

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Muskox

The muskox (Ovibos moschatus), also spelled musk ox and musk-ox (in ᐅᒥᖕᒪᒃ, umingmak), is an Arctic hoofed mammal of the family Bovidae, noted for its thick coat and for the strong odor emitted during the seasonal rut by males, from which its name derives.

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Napoleon

Napoléon Bonaparte (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821) was a French statesman and military leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the French Revolutionary Wars.

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Naturalism (philosophy)

In philosophy, naturalism is the "idea or belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world." Adherents of naturalism (i.e., naturalists) assert that natural laws are the rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural universe, that the changing universe at every stage is a product of these laws.

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New England Skeptical Society

The New England Skeptical Society (NESS) is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to promoting science and reason.

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Nominalism

In metaphysics, nominalism is a philosophical view which denies the existence of universals and abstract objects, but affirms the existence of general or abstract terms and predicates.

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Occam learning

In computational learning theory, Occam learning is a model of algorithmic learning where the objective of the learner is to output a succinct representation of received training data.

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Ontology

Ontology (introduced in 1606) is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations.

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Organism

In biology, an organism (from Greek: ὀργανισμός, organismos) is any individual entity that exhibits the properties of life.

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Overfitting

In statistics, overfitting is "the production of an analysis that corresponds too closely or exactly to a particular set of data, and may therefore fail to fit additional data or predict future observations reliably".

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Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press (OUP) is the largest university press in the world, and the second oldest after Cambridge University Press.

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Paul Churchland

Paul Montgomery Churchland (born October 21, 1942) is a Canadian philosopher known for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind.

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Philosopher

A philosopher is someone who practices philosophy, which involves rational inquiry into areas that are outside either theology or science.

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Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Latin for Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), often referred to as simply the Principia, is a work in three books by Isaac Newton, in Latin, first published 5 July 1687.

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Philosophical razor

In philosophy, a razor is a principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate ("shave off") unlikely explanations for a phenomenon, or avoid unnecessary actions.

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Philosophy of religion

Philosophy of religion is "the philosophical examination of the central themes and concepts involved in religious traditions." These sorts of philosophical discussion are ancient, and can be found in the earliest known manuscripts concerning philosophy.

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Philosophy of science

Philosophy of science is a sub-field of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science.

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Phylogenetic tree

A phylogenetic tree or evolutionary tree is a branching diagram or "tree" showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological species or other entities—their phylogeny—based upon similarities and differences in their physical or genetic characteristics.

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Physics

Physics (from knowledge of nature, from φύσις phýsis "nature") is the natural science that studies matterAt the start of The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Richard Feynman offers the atomic hypothesis as the single most prolific scientific concept: "If, in some cataclysm, all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed one sentence what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is that all things are made up of atoms – little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another..." and its motion and behavior through space and time and that studies the related entities of energy and force."Physical science is that department of knowledge which relates to the order of nature, or, in other words, to the regular succession of events." Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines, and its main goal is to understand how the universe behaves."Physics is one of the most fundamental of the sciences. Scientists of all disciplines use the ideas of physics, including chemists who study the structure of molecules, paleontologists who try to reconstruct how dinosaurs walked, and climatologists who study how human activities affect the atmosphere and oceans. Physics is also the foundation of all engineering and technology. No engineer could design a flat-screen TV, an interplanetary spacecraft, or even a better mousetrap without first understanding the basic laws of physics. (...) You will come to see physics as a towering achievement of the human intellect in its quest to understand our world and ourselves."Physics is an experimental science. Physicists observe the phenomena of nature and try to find patterns that relate these phenomena.""Physics is the study of your world and the world and universe around you." Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines and, through its inclusion of astronomy, perhaps the oldest. Over the last two millennia, physics, chemistry, biology, and certain branches of mathematics were a part of natural philosophy, but during the scientific revolution in the 17th century, these natural sciences emerged as unique research endeavors in their own right. Physics intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research, such as biophysics and quantum chemistry, and the boundaries of physics are not rigidly defined. New ideas in physics often explain the fundamental mechanisms studied by other sciences and suggest new avenues of research in academic disciplines such as mathematics and philosophy. Advances in physics often enable advances in new technologies. For example, advances in the understanding of electromagnetism and nuclear physics led directly to the development of new products that have dramatically transformed modern-day society, such as television, computers, domestic appliances, and nuclear weapons; advances in thermodynamics led to the development of industrialization; and advances in mechanics inspired the development of calculus.

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Pierre Louis Maupertuis

Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698 – 27 July 1759) was a French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters.

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Pierre-Simon Laplace

Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French scholar whose work was important to the development of mathematics, statistics, physics and astronomy.

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Population

In biology, a population is all the organisms of the same group or species, which live in a particular geographical area, and have the capability of interbreeding.

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Posterior Analytics

The Posterior Analytics (Ἀναλυτικὰ Ὕστερα; Analytica Posteriora) is a text from Aristotle's Organon that deals with demonstration, definition, and scientific knowledge.

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Posterior probability

In Bayesian statistics, the posterior probability of a random event or an uncertain proposition is the conditional probability that is assigned after the relevant evidence or background is taken into account.

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Pragmatism

Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that began in the United States around 1870.

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Pre-modern human migration

Paleolithic migration prior to end of the Last Glacial Maximum spread anatomically modern humans throughout Afro-Eurasia and to the Americas.

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Predictive inference

Predictive inference is an approach to statistical inference that emphasizes the prediction of future observations based on past observations.

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Premise

A premise or premiss is a statement that an argument claims will induce or justify a conclusion.

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Prentice Hall

Prentice Hall is a major educational publisher owned by Pearson plc.

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Presuppositional apologetics

Presuppositionalism is a school of Christian apologetics that believes the Christian faith is the only basis for rational thought.

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Princeton University Press

Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University.

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Principle of least action

The principle of least action – or, more accurately, the principle of stationary action – is a variational principle that, when applied to the action of a mechanical system, can be used to obtain the equations of motion for that system.

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Principle of least astonishment

The principle of least astonishment (POLA) (alternatively "principle/law/rule of least astonishment/surprise") applies to user interface and software design.

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Principle of plenitude

The principle of plenitude asserts that the universe contains all possible forms of existence.

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Prison abolition movement

The prison abolition movement is a loose network of groups and activists that seek to reduce or eliminate prisons and the prison system, and replace them with systems of rehabilitation that do not place a focus on punishment and government institutionalization.

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Probability theory

Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability.

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Proportionality (law)

Proportionality is a general principle in law which covers several special (although related) concepts.

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Pseudoscience

Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be both scientific and factual, but are incompatible with the scientific method.

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Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemy (Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος, Klaúdios Ptolemaîos; Claudius Ptolemaeus) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology.

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Punishment

A punishment is the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon a group or individual, meted out by an authority—in contexts ranging from child discipline to criminal law—as a response and deterrent to a particular action or behaviour that is deemed undesirable or unacceptable.

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Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics (QM; also known as quantum physics, quantum theory, the wave mechanical model, or matrix mechanics), including quantum field theory, is a fundamental theory in physics which describes nature at the smallest scales of energy levels of atoms and subatomic particles.

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Rationalism

In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".

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Ray Solomonoff

Ray Solomonoff (July 25, 1926 – December 7, 2009) was the inventor of algorithmic probability, his General Theory of Inductive Inference (also known as Universal Inductive Inference),Samuel Rathmanner and Marcus Hutter.

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Rayleigh–Jeans law

In physics, the Rayleigh–Jeans Law is an approximation to the spectral radiance of electromagnetic radiation as a function of wavelength from a black body at a given temperature through classical arguments.

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Reaction mechanism

In chemistry, a reaction mechanism is the step by step sequence of elementary reactions by which overall chemical change occurs.

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Reductionism

Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding the associations between phenomena which can be described in terms of other simpler or more fundamental phenomena.

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Regress argument

The regress argument (also known as the diallelus (Latin) or diallelon, from Greek di allelon "through or by means of one another") is a problem in epistemology and, in general, a problem in any situation where a statement has to be justified.

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Restorative justice

Restorative justice is an approach to justice in which the response to a crime is to organize a mediation between the victim and the offender, and sometimes with representatives of a wider community as well.

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Revelation

In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities.

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Reverse transcriptase

A reverse transcriptase (RT) is an enzyme used to generate complementary DNA (cDNA) from an RNA template, a process termed reverse transcription.

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Richard Dawkins

Clinton Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and author.

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Richard McKeon

Richard McKeon (April 26, 1900 – March 31, 1985) was an American philosopher and longtime professor at the University of Chicago.

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Richard Swinburne

Richard G. Swinburne (born 26 December 1934) is a British philosopher.

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Robert Grosseteste

Robert Grosseteste (Robertus Grosseteste; – 9 October 1253) was an English statesman, scholastic philosopher, theologian, scientist and Bishop of Lincoln.

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Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher.

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Scholasticism

Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics ("scholastics", or "schoolmen") of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100 to 1700, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending dogma in an increasingly pluralistic context.

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Science

R. P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol.1, Chaps.1,2,&3.

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Scientific method

Scientific method is an empirical method of knowledge acquisition, which has characterized the development of natural science since at least the 17th century, involving careful observation, which includes rigorous skepticism about what one observes, given that cognitive assumptions about how the world works influence how one interprets a percept; formulating hypotheses, via induction, based on such observations; experimental testing and measurement of deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement (or elimination) of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings.

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Semantics

Semantics (from σημαντικός sēmantikós, "significant") is the linguistic and philosophical study of meaning, in language, programming languages, formal logics, and semiotics.

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Sensibility

Sensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another.

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Sentences

The Four Books of Sentences (Libri Quattuor Sententiarum) is a book of theology written by Peter Lombard in the 12th century.

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Simplicity

Simplicity is the state or quality of being simple.

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Skeptical movement

The skeptical movement (also spelled sceptical) is a modern social movement based on the idea of scientific skepticism (also called rational skepticism).

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Solomonoff's theory of inductive inference

Ray Solomonoff's theory of universal inductive inference is a theory of prediction based on logical observations, such as predicting the next symbol based upon a given series of symbols.

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Sparse matrix

In numerical analysis and computer science, a sparse matrix or sparse array is a matrix in which most of the elements are zero.

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Special relativity

In physics, special relativity (SR, also known as the special theory of relativity or STR) is the generally accepted and experimentally well-confirmed physical theory regarding the relationship between space and time.

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Species

In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank, as well as a unit of biodiversity, but it has proven difficult to find a satisfactory definition.

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Spherical cow

A spherical cow is a humorous metaphor for highly simplified scientific models of complex real life phenomena.

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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) combines an online encyclopedia of philosophy with peer-reviewed publication of original papers in philosophy, freely accessible to Internet users.

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Statistical inference

Statistical inference is the process of using data analysis to deduce properties of an underlying probability distribution.

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Sui generis

Sui generis is a Latin phrase that means "of its (his, her, their) own kind; in a class by itself; unique." A number of disciplines use the term to refer to unique entities.

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Summa Theologica

The Summa Theologiae (written 1265–1274 and also known as the Summa Theologica or simply the Summa) is the best-known work of Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274).

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Supernatural

The supernatural (Medieval Latin: supernātūrālis: supra "above" + naturalis "natural", first used: 1520–1530 AD) is that which exists (or is claimed to exist), yet cannot be explained by laws of nature.

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Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, usually including word order.

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Systematics

Biological systematics is the study of the diversification of living forms, both past and present, and the relationships among living things through time.

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Test method

A test method is a method for a test in science or engineering, such as a physical test, chemical test, or statistical test.

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The Philosophical Review

The Philosophical Review is a quarterly journal of philosophy edited by the faculty of the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University and published by Duke University Press (since September 2006).

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The Selfish Gene

The Selfish Gene is a 1976 book on evolution by Richard Dawkins, in which the author builds upon the principal theory of George C. Williams's Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966).

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The Skeptic's Dictionary

The Skeptic's Dictionary is a collection of cross-referenced skeptical essays by Robert Todd Carroll, published on his website skepdic.com and in a printed book.

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Theodore Woodward

Theodore E. Woodward (March 22, 1914 – July 11, 2005) was an American medical researcher in the field of medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

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Theology

Theology is the critical study of the nature of the divine.

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Thomas Aquinas

Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar, Catholic priest, and Doctor of the Church.

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Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" is a short story by the 20th-century Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.

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Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP) (Latin for "Logico-Philosophical Treatise") is the only book-length philosophical work published by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his lifetime.

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Training, test, and validation sets

In machine learning, the study and construction of algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data is a common task.

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Turing machine

A Turing machine is a mathematical model of computation that defines an abstract machine, which manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules.

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Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit

The Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit is a counter-argument to modern versions of the argument from design for the existence of God.

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Underdetermination

In the philosophy of science, underdetermination refers to situations where the evidence available is insufficient to identify which belief one should hold about that evidence.

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Universal Turing machine

In computer science, a universal Turing machine (UTM) is a Turing machine that can simulate an arbitrary Turing machine on arbitrary input.

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Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that states that the best action is the one that maximizes utility.

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Vacuum

Vacuum is space devoid of matter.

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Variational Bayesian methods

Variational Bayesian methods are a family of techniques for approximating intractable integrals arising in Bayesian inference and machine learning.

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Walter Chatton

Walter Chatton (c. 1290–1343) was an English Scholastic theologian and philosopher who regularly sparred philosophically with William of Ockham, who is well known for Ockham's razor.

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Wave–particle duality

Wave–particle duality is the concept in quantum mechanics that every particle or quantic entity may be partly described in terms not only of particles, but also of waves.

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Werner Heisenberg

Werner Karl Heisenberg (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the key pioneers of quantum mechanics.

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Wien approximation

Wien's approximation (also sometimes called Wien's law or the Wien distribution law) is a law of physics used to describe the spectrum of thermal radiation (frequently called the blackbody function).

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William H. Jefferys

William H. "Bill" Jefferys (born 1940) is an American astronomer.

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William Kneale

William Calvert Kneale (22 June 1906 – 24 June 1990) was an English logician best known for his 1962 book The Development of Logic, a history of logic from its beginnings in Ancient Greece written with his wife Martha.

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William of Ockham

William of Ockham (also Occam, from Gulielmus Occamus; 1287 – 1347) was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher and theologian, who is believed to have been born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey.

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Zebra (medicine)

Zebra is the American medical slang for arriving at an exotic medical diagnosis when a more commonplace explanation is more likely.

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Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory

In mathematics, Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, named after mathematicians Ernst Zermelo and Abraham Fraenkel, is an axiomatic system that was proposed in the early twentieth century in order to formulate a theory of sets free of paradoxes such as Russell's paradox.

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Zoologica Scripta

Zoologica Scripta is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal on systematic zoology, published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

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Zoology

Zoology or animal biology is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems.

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References

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

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