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Written by spacetravel.org
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The decline in power of the Greek empire after Alexander the Great was followed by a decline in scientific discovery and enquiry. The period known as the Dark Ages encompasses centuries when only a few analytical lights shone through the fog of apathetic enquiry. One such luminary was a Franciscan friar, a sometime apostate, called William of Ockham (c. 1285-1349).
Ordained at Winchester in 1305, he was known for his philosophical axiom 'Ockham’s razor’. It stated, 'what can be accounted for by fewer assumptions is explained in vain by more’. Ockham’s razor is a useful device for cutting through superfluous, entrenched ideas. It is a mental drain cleaner. Time and again in science, it is the giving up of assumptions rather than the acquiring of new data that has provided the impetus for advances.
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