Simplicity

Simplicity is the property, condition, or quality of being simple or un-combined. It often denotes beauty, purity or clarity. Simple things are usually easier to explain and understand than complicated ones. Simplicity can mean freedom from hardship, effort or confusion. more...

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It may also refer to a simple living lifestyle.

According to Occam's razor, all other things being equal, the simplest theory is the most likely to be true — hence the importance of the concept of simplicity in epistemology. According to Thomas Aquinas, God is infinitely simple.

Members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) practice the Testimony of Simplicity, which is the simplifying of one's life in order to focus on things that are most important and disregard or avoid things that are least important.

In MCS cognition theory, simplicity is the property of a domain which requires very little information to be exhaustively described. The opposite of simplicity is complexity.

Simplicity in the philosophy of science

Simplicity is a meta-scientific criterion by which to evaluate competing theories. See also Occam's Razor and references. The similar concept of Parsimony is also used in philosophy of science, that is the explanation of a phenomenon which is the least involved is held to have superior value to a more involved one.

Simplicity in the philosophy

The definition provided by stanford encyclopedia of philosophy is that "Other things being equal simpler theories are better."

There is a widespread philosophical presumption that simplicity is a theoretical virtue. This presumption that simpler theories are preferable appears in many guises. Often it remains implicit; sometimes it is invoked as a primitive, self-evident proposition; other times it is elevated to the status of a ‘Principle’ and labeled as such (for example, the ‘Principle of Parsimony’). However, it is perhaps best known by the name ‘Occam's (or Ockham's) Razor.’ Simplicity principles have been proposed in various forms by theologians, philosophers, and scientists, from ancient through medieval to modern times. Thus Aristotle writes in his Posterior Analytics,

We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses.;

Moving to the medieval period, Aquinas writes

If a thing can be done adequately by means of one, it is superfluous to do it by means of several; for we observe that nature does not employ two instruments where one suffices (Aquinas 1945, p. 129).;

Kant — in the Critique of Pure Reason — supports the maxim that “rudiments or principles must not be unnecessarily multiplied (entia praeter necessitatem non esse multiplicanda)� and argues that this is a regulative idea of pure reason which underlies scientists' theorizing about nature (Kant 1950, pp. 538-9). Both Galileo and Newton accepted versions of Occam's Razor. Indeed Newton includes a principle of parsimony as one of his three ‘Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy’ at the beginning of Book III of Principia Mathematica.

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