[Update: Some readers have pointed out that Ockham should be spelled "Occam." But either spelling is correct.]
You’ve heard of Ockham’s Razor. It’s the philosophic (epistemological) concept – posited by the 14th-century theologian William of Ockham - that the complexity in any given explanation need not be “multiplied beyond what is necessary.” In the words of World Book Encyclopedia, “...a problem should be stated in its basic and simplest terms. In science, the simplest theory that fits the facts of a problem is the one that should be selected.”
It is a seductive idea, this one of simplicity. One recalls the wild speculations of cosmologists confronted with anomalies in the rotation of the heavens in the geo-centric model of the universe, heaping complex “epicycles” upon the orbits of planets around the earth to explain away a problem. It was not until the Copernican Revolution with its shift to a helio-centric paradigm – the solar system – that a simpler explanation was embraced. And that explanation is something of a relief, though seductively so, inviting us to believe that we’ve finally understood and explicated a mystery that too long evaded comprehension.
But the fact remains that though a sun-centered planetary system may be a simple model, the solar system is not a simple place. Similarly, the attractiveness of Ockham’s Razor too often blinds us to the complexity that marks any given issue. In fact, it may bias us against complexity, inuring us to the idea that the world is a challenging mystery. After all, humans are busy people, busy working and following sundry dreams. Hence, a simple explanation, easy to comprehend and manage, is perhaps preferred for its utility, and not for its breadth or nuance. Laziness loves simplicity, (at least intellectual laziness loves simplicity). People are too busy to think.
Perhaps no greater source of oversimplification in matters political comes from my liberal peers. I am not suggesting that conservatives are not overly-simplistic, only that conservatives are far less so. Please indulge me as I list the examples.
Liberals think that the war in Iraq is “just about oil”; about securing favors for “corporations.” Liberals think Iraq is a “quagmire”, proven so by its difficulty; and by the lack of an “exit-strategy.” They believe it to be “illegal” and “illegitimate.”
Liberals view American foreign policy, at least that which is drafted by Republicans, as being solely about “corporate imperialism” and “greed.”
Liberals believe, regarding sexuality, that heterosexual marriage is all about “love” and “choice”; about the freedom to be with whomever one desires; concluding that homosexual marriage is no big deal (for virginity and sex and yes, even marriage, are ultimately to the liberal no big deal).
Liberals believe that tax cuts “only benefit the rich.”
Liberals believe that George W. Bush "stole" the 2000 election.
Liberals believe, blind to their own religiosity, that the “religious right is trying to create a theocracy.”
Liberals reduce abortion to nothing more than “choice.”
Liberals reduce history to two struggles: the economic struggle for dominance; and the political struggle for power. To a liberal, there are no other motives, no other forces, unfurled in the world of men and women.
Of course, there are other such reductions. Critics of pro-gay arguments are simply “homophobes”. Gun rights advocates are "rednecks." Opponents to affirmative action are patently "racist." President Clinton’s impeachment was just about “sex”, about the “invasion of privacy.”
You get the picture. But it is not merely the reductionism that is disconcerting. It is the delivery of the reduced, over-simplified beliefs to the masses that is most frightening. Let me explain with a passage from the late-Allan Bloom, written in his outstanding volume,The Closing of the American Mind. It has to do with freedom, freedom of the mind:
"Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even especially, the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts. The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense there is an outside. It is not feelings or commitments that will render a man free, but thoughts, reasoned thoughts. …Much in democracy conduces to the assault on the awareness of difference."[emphasis added]
Bloom’s point is trenchant, and it applies to liberalism. The liberal propaganda machine, reducing everything to the simplest possible terms, presents information as if there is not only no reasonable alternative; there is no alternative at all. (One perfect pop-culture example is the gratuitous simplicity of argument presented in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, in which Moore will not brook a dissenting point-of-view.) And those of us who dare question the liberal gospel have witnessed the highbrow incredulity with which our counter-arguments are greeted. It is all reminiscent of a 1970s film, Midnight Express, in which an incarcerated man in a Turkish prison begins to walk around a dungeon post against the tide of prisoners habituated in a counter-clockwise course: He is urged to turn around and join the party as it trods a path to psychological hell.
You see, Bloom is right: leftists make it “seem inconceivable that other ways are viable.” (Again, I know that some conservatives do this, but it is not pervasive). According to Brit Hume, news anchor for Fox News, the New York Times did not once report the outrageous statements made by Democratic Party National Chair Howard Dean until Dean recently appeared on television to explain himself. Why the silence? Because the NYT does not want you to have knowledge which might lead to your liberation from the NYT. (For more on Dean, see my post Howard Dean IS.) [FYI: Hume was citing a report by National Review's Byron York.]
Reductionism, in a sense, is endemic to the science-driven culture. Some philosophers of science refer to this tendency as “nothing buttery”. You know - gravity is “nothing but” the result of mass and motion; color is “nothing but” reflected wavelengths of light; mankind is “nothing but” evolved chimpanzees with larger brains; death is “nothing but” the cessation of brain activity; God is “nothing but” the wishful psychological extension of an earthly father's care. Science is wildly reductionistic. And its conceit is the conceit of the liberal classes of thinkers who dismiss mystery and complexity with a sweep of the hand, as if even the least capable liberal mind grasps with ease and facility all that is real knowledge.
All this amounts to the loss of freedom, the freedom to think about reality in divergent and complex ways; and yes, even in ways that conclude certain ideas are wrong. The imprisoned man is he who limits himself to seeing the world as a loosely linked chain of “nothing buts.” The free man does not so limit his mind. The liberal reduces water to H2O; and the conservative looks beyond the molecule to the mystery it portends: That there is a molecule of water in the first place is cause for altars and cathedrals; and that existence itself, and consciousness, are mysteries far beyond the crush of reductionism.
Ockham’s Razor has its place, but in the hands of presumptuous intellectuals, it is just mere slashing at the complexity of life. We are too great to see life so simplistically. The razor is gutting us of our awe, humility, circumspection; it is bleeding us of our respect for one another; it is inuring us to the fact of our own ignorance; it does not give us an advantageous but a disadvantageous perspective. For failing to think is really a condition of wanting not to work too hard. It is also the stubborn resistance of humility. It is laziness and pride that reduces things to over-simplified assertions; and we must not forget that it is the lazy person who ends up working the hardest.
Do not be manipulated by their mastery, these gross simplifiers. For they are not masters, but slaves, hoping to hold you down, with them, in the slippery realm of "nothing buttery."
You, however, are too good and too complex for that.
Contratimes
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes
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