SPECK ‘N U: 21 (Marcelo Gleiser)

blog about living in Europe, and Italy

Posted on the December 5th, 2011

From “A Tear At The Edge of Creation” by Marcelo Gleiser

Sam said, on December 5th, 2011 at 1:25 pm

To excerpt from Wikipedia, relevant to musing about the origin of the species, “Occam’s razor, also known as Ockham’s razor, and sometimes expressed in Latin as lex parsimoniae (the law of parsimony, economy or succinctness), is a principle that generally recommends from among competing hypotheses selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions.”

What this means, with respect to probabilities for validity for a theory on the origin of life is that there are fewer assumptions required to imagine the technicalities of the origin of a relatively simple creature as the human than the unimaginably complex being of God, and then on top of that the even further assumption complexity of God then taking care of the lesser technicalities of populating life. On the other hand, there is the “black swan” line of thought on matters of probability. Then, there is the further imponderable that God is necessarily found in believing in two opposing ideas at the same time, just each having its leading role at different times. I’m inclined to see some advantage to better mental hygiene in so many things in life in this latter idea.

a curious Yankee in Europe's court