Hodges' Model: Welcome to the QUAD: Occam

Hodges' model is a conceptual framework to support reflection and critical thinking. Situated, the model can help integrate all disciplines (academic and professional). Amid news items, are posts that illustrate the scope and application of the model. A bibliography and A4 template are provided in the sidebar. Welcome to the QUAD ...

Showing posts with label Occam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Occam. Show all posts

Thursday, September 28, 2023

Whether, wherever, whatever you shave - you need Occam's razor

Can Hodges' model be honed by students from day #1 - 'Intro lecture 101',
 across all curricula to function as a form of Occam's razor -
a reflective and critical thinking tool
to last a lifetime's learning (and unlearning)?
 

INDIVIDUAL
|
     INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               
HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      
SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 
|
GROUP

Occam's razor:

"entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity".

"It urges us to choose the simplest explanations or models for any phenomenon we observe."

William of Ockham, born around 1285.

"It has been a tool for scientific progress, not to mention a guiding principle for our thoughts, right up to the present day."
 
Hodges' model:
a tool for 
individual learners
and communities of practice.

"He was, I believe, the first person to so clearly separate science from its religious tethers, a move crucial to science's subsequent secular development."



McFadden, J. (2021) Razor sharp, New Scientist, 18-25 December. 252:3365/66. pp.70-71.

Friday, December 31, 2021

Occam's razor (i)

"2. The virus of encyclopedism in definitions should be
recognized and resisted
. There is a role and a place for
illustrative detail, but that role and place is not in a

definition. Social science is content to tolerate excep
-
tions to its theories—it is satisfied with explanations

covering most cases, not each and every one. In the

definition of strategic concepts, more detail inevitably

promotes less clarity and therefore less understanding.

William of Occam should be regarded as the patron

saint of wordsmithing for strategic conceptualization.

3. Ideas matter: Concepts for theory have practical
consequences
. The way in which we behave strategi-
cally is not dictated strictly by the way in which we

conceptualize its challenges and intellectually order

our possible responses, but our concepts educate our

perception and interpretation of events, and they find

expression in the doctrine that shapes our behavior.
52
Of course, strategic behavior should be adaptable to

unanticipated events, but frequently it is not. Strategic

and military culture can and does change, but at any

one time it is going to help mold action now in ways

organized doctrinally in the light shed by authorita
-
tive strategy concepts." (p.46).

 
Gray, C. S. (2012). CATEGORICAL CONFUSION?: THE STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS OF RECOGNIZING CHALLENGES EITHER AS IRREGULAR OR TRADITIONAL. Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep11257