Parsimony
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Parsimony is a 'less is better' concept of frugality, economy, stinginess or caution in arriving at a hypothesis or course of action. The word derives from Middle English parcimony, from Latin parsimonia, from parsus, past participle of parcere: to spare. It is a general principle that has applications from science to philosophy and all related fields. Parsimony is basically the implementation of Occam's razor.
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[edit] Science
Parsimony is one of the two pillars of science, the first pillar being falsification through experiment, the other taking the results and explaining it with the simplest theory with the best predictive power. See also scientific method.
In science, parsimony is preference for the least complex explanation for an observation. This is generally regarded as good when judging hypotheses. Occam's razor also states the "principle of parsimony".
In systematics, maximum parsimony is a cladistic "o