C. S. Lewis on Occam’s Razor
Sauntering the other day led me to reading remarks of C. S. Lewis about the Tao:
The Chinese also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself. It is Nature, it is the Way, the Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes on, the Way in which things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time. It is also the Way which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar.
Pages further he concludes:
There are progressions in which the last step is sui generis - incommensurable with the others - and in which to go the whole way is to undo all the labour of your previous journey. To reduce the Tao to a mere natural product is a step of that kind. Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.
Such shaving down to an irreducible essence is related to a previous post in The Saunterer, titled “How the shaved down reveals the pent up,” which is on various forms Occam’s razor may take. Shave a thing down to its essence and stop. To go further leaves nothing. (For the post, click here and scroll down the list of posts to the one for January 29, 2007.)
(The quotations of C. S. Lewis are from his book, The Abolition of Man. MacMillan Publishing Co., 1947. The first appears on page 28; the second on page 91.)
For a brief biography of C. S. Lewis, click here. For images of or relating to C. S. Lewis, click here.
Sauntering the other day led me to reading remarks of C. S. Lewis about the Tao:
The Chinese also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself. It is Nature, it is the Way, the Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes on, the Way in which things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time. It is also the Way which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar.
Pages further he concludes:
There are progressions in which the last step is sui generis - incommensurable with the others - and in which to go the whole way is to undo all the labour of your previous journey. To reduce the Tao to a mere natural product is a step of that kind. Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.
Such shaving down to an irreducible essence is related to a previous post in The Saunterer, titled “How the shaved down reveals the pent up,” which is on various forms Occam’s razor may take. Shave a thing down to its essence and stop. To go further leaves nothing. (For the post, click here and scroll down the list of posts to the one for January 29, 2007.)
(The quotations of C. S. Lewis are from his book, The Abolition of Man. MacMillan Publishing Co., 1947. The first appears on page 28; the second on page 91.)
For a brief biography of C. S. Lewis, click here. For images of or relating to C. S. Lewis, click here.
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