I would give a hundred usual comments for one commenter who mentioned the similarity of the Mantra to Occam’s Razor. I appreciate the usual stuff, but it is once in a coon’s age that they have any relevance to the important points that only I make.

Occam’s Razor was dynamite in its day. Like wordism today, scholasticism went nuts and beyond during the so-called Renaissance. Scholars spent all their time quoting Latin and Greek and arguing over nonsense into which “How many angels can stand on the point of a pin?” would have fitted nicely.

The so-called Renaissance damned near crippled Western thought, which had already proceeded into Calculus while professional scholars gloried in the ancient invention of geometry.

To put it simply, the descendents of Germans and Vikings naturally concerned themselves with what WORKED, while scholars only worry was whether Aristotle agreed with them, or, better, to prove that that was what Aristotle actually meant in some obscure quote.

The history of Western medicine is the agonizingly slow transition from doing everything in Greek to learning to disinfect, which Medieval medicine was doing with wine before Great Educators got there.

Does it work or does it sound Educated? That is the real, undiscussed history of science.

The difference between old scholasticism and that with which Occam’s Razor sided is exactly the same as the simple distinction between science and magic: Is it glitter and show, or does it WORK.

The Mantra takes a straight look at the world and says what is really going on. The same shouts of ignorance and anti-intellectualism used against it met Occam’s Razor in earlier times.