The Canon Of Pasimony In The Discipline Of Science

You could say parsimony refers to the concept of KISS (Keep it simple stupid). It is the idea that we

should keep theories as simple and pragmatic as possible and it is an important cornerstone of the

discipline of psychology and science in general. Parsimony means that if we have two competing

theories we will use the simplest one. The canon of parsimony says that we should be frugal in

developing theories by avoiding unnecessary concepts, again going back to the pragmatic. The idea

is that the simpler the theory the more precise it is; it is easier to refute it at some point later in time

than to deal with crazy large theories that we can barely understand. We have a higher chance of being

correct by being simple and connecting theories than by making a large complicated one. …show more content…
The principle of parsimony has a long history dating back to the medieval times when