<P> Occam's razor (also Ockham's razor or Ocham's razor; Latin: lex parsimoniae "law of parsimony") is the problem - solving principle that the simplest solution tends to be the correct one . When presented with competing hypotheses to solve a problem, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions . The idea is attributed to William of Ockham (c. 1287--1347), who was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher, and theologian . </P> <P> In science, Occam's razor is used as an abductive heuristic in the development of theoretical models, rather than as a rigorous arbiter between candidate models . In the scientific method, Occam's razor is not considered an irrefutable principle of logic or a scientific result; the preference for simplicity in the scientific method is based on the falsifiability criterion . For each accepted explanation of a phenomenon, there may be an extremely large, perhaps even incomprehensible, number of possible and more complex alternatives . Since one can always burden failing explanations with ad hoc hypotheses to prevent them from being falsified, simpler theories are preferable to more complex ones because they are more testable . </P>

English philosopher for whom a razor was named