Chapter 6:

Occam's Razor
& The Power Of
Simple Solutions

"A theory is more impressive the greater is the simplicity of its premises, the more different are the kinds of things it relates and the more extended its range of applicability."

Albert Einstein ¹

"Plurality should not be posited without necessity" (translation of "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate"), or alternatively, "Entities should not be multiplied more than necessary" (i.e. "the fewer assumptions an explanation of a phenomenon depends on, the better.") This is a translation of "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem."

William of Occam ²
(1285-1349)

"The more perfect a nature is the fewer means it requires for its operation."

Aristotle ³

he simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

There are few people who have not heard that pithy saying, though there are variations of this same seed thought that even originated from its namesake, William of Occam (also spelled "Ockham").
The basic concept is so simple that it alludes many. It has many corollaries, but the basic concept is the same -- simple, intuitive, and sublime. By whatever name you call it, "Occam's Razor," "The Rule of Economy," "The Principle of Parsimony of Hypothesis," "The Law of Parsimony," or even "The Law of Least Complex Postulation," it doesn't matter. The principle is the same. Writings on this topic go back at least to Aristotle, and probably much farther. 4
When interpreted as an immutable law for fashioning scientific theory, or made into a centerpiece for rigid methodological reductionism, a debate can be expected to ensue. Wasserman, among others, argues that Occam's Razor "is an arbitrary convention, (which) turns out, on closer examination, to be an absurdity." 5 He projects his long flames of intellectual vitriol, proclaiming its failure "in the case of many of the most prominent scientific hypothetico-deductive theories." Considering the layers of complexity that exist in Quantum Mechanics or even Classical Electromagnetic theory, my reading of Wasserman is that the poor man is missing the point. Physics itself provides one of the most glaring examples of the perfection of Occam's Razor in "the Democracy of Paths." 6 In a universe with systems that are inherently differing in their level of complexity, it would seem that Occam's Razor itself should be applied at varying quantum levels to fit the systems which are the subject of examination. Furthermore, Wasserman and others fail to take into account the many elements of human nature that provide a propensity to make things more complicated than they really are -- for reasons that are self-evident from the prior chapters of this work. Others, like Wolfram, note that the urge to discard Occam, is often attributable to a lack of depth of examination, for "what appears complicated may actually be produced by very simple underlying programs -- which perhaps occur because they were the first to be tried, or are the most robust." 7 Like Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields 8, Wolfram's "cellular automata" show us that the universe is based on amazingly simple rules that generate counterintuitively complex results. 9 My position is that optimal healing is based on insights into -- and practical application of -- very simple rules of healing. Our attempts to make these rules more complicated serves the interests of commerce and politics well.
It does not serve the interests of healing.
Occam's Razor.

Putting its applications to theoretical modelling aside, my experience over fifteen years in the alternative health care field taught me that, with rare exception, the ideal medical solution tended to be remarkably simple, cost effective, natural -- without the need for further complexity on the part of the practitioner or the patient. My experience in running into this phenomenon again and again became a source of inspiration for "Unifying Principles."

We already covered in some detail within Chapters One and Two, my creation of Cansema and the history of escharotics that formed the underpinnings of that development. Now we will re-examine this phenomenon in terms of Occam's Razor and the Exosomatic Axis.
It is hard to imagine a formulatory process that is any simpler than one employing water, a zinc halide salt, and one or a handful of dried, ground herbal components.
The product is simple and inexpensive.
The process is simple . . . uncomplicated.
I defy anybody to come up with a product that works better and more consistently than Cansema on skin cancers -- or cancerous growths of the dermal region. Internal results using variations of Cansema worked on an astonishing high percentage of cases -- better than highly expensive, high entropy, exosomatic chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical approaches. (For one shocking case study in this regard, see Kent Estes.)
Another case study of note involves Heart Drops. We did not create this formula at Alpha Omega Labs, but we created our own variation, for which we got excellent feedback from heart patients -- something I was just beginning to work on when I was arrested in September, 2003 by the FDA. In examining this case, it is important to note that the Strauss formula literally has THOUSANDS of end users who have reported more favorable results than any of the treatments they have received from conventional cardiologists.
Once again we are dealing with a formula that is remarkably simple, (aged garlic oil, cayenne, bilberry, hawthorn berry, olive leaf extract, white willow bark, bioenergized in an aqueous alcohol base), easy to make, easy to use, relatively inexpensive (we charged $19.95 for our 120 ml. product -- less than the cost of an office visit in the U.S. to a general practitioner).
How does the purchase, over time, of two or three bottles of this product compare with the expense of triple-bypass surgery? Or, as John McDonall once noted, "Research completed over the past eighty years not only supports the role of diet and lifestyle in the cause and prevention of disease, but clearly shows that most of these same diseases can be treated more effectively by removing the causes than by using any of the drugs and surgical practices available today. Sad to say, the choice of therapy is often based on the profit margin tied to that therapy. Compare $100 worth of vegetables and a $25 pair of walking shows to a $20,000 coronary bypass operation. The probability of positive results at one month and continuing positive results five years later are better with the $125 approach, but how many victims of heart disease know about this alternative approach?" 10
Yet another case study that demonstrates the evidence of Occam's Razor at work in the realm of human health is the role of clay.
That's right . . . Raw earth.
In my travels I encountered many indigenous groups and healing traditions. I was surprised to find out just how many native people used raw clay to cure a variety of different ailments -- dermatological as well as gastrointestinal. The suppression of this entire area of study, which comprises an entire medical discipline, called "geophagy," is most illustrative. (I set up a special page for my own inexpensive, simple clay formulas, called Enchanted Ruins Healing Clays to tell the story, introduce the products, and summarize a leading book on healing clays for lay people.) 11
Outside the physical "walls" of the body, for any being on earth, nothing is more endosomatic than clay. The uses of clay to cure such a variety of ailments has been well established, and yet very few medical doctors are aware of its properties or would ever think to use it in their practice.
It isn't complex.
It isn't proprietary.
You can't patent it.
All the research in the world isn't going to make it work any better or improve its performance than to use it as Nature has provided.
And that leads to the worst indictment of all in modern medicine ---- it isn't profitable.
Once again, we fight Occam's Razor and end up with more costly, less effective, more expensive solutions.


Make no mistake about it: this is the source of the problem.
The very nature of optimal healing, leaning as it does on Occam's Razor, sitting on the far left end of the Exosomatic Axis, not existing to make money, or provide proprietary protection, or bring power, or assist in enforcing economic servitude, is itself the source of the conflict.
Organized medicine, by its very nature, must, out of necessity, declare war on the most effective methods of healing. It cannot but do otherwise. Its inherent desire to insert itself in place of Mother Nature to extract maximum profits is not compatible with the very laws that determine the health of the human subject. Organized medicine is the attempt to enforce exosomatic solutions into an inherent endosomatic world.
Shackled by its own inherent corruption and self-centered agenda, organized medicine, without a radical makeover that divorces medical practice from political lobbying and the eternal fight for market share, can never be a part of the solution.
For the time being, it will remain part of the problem -- as will its sycophants and co-conspirators at the pharmaceutical companies and its henchmen at the FDA.

Footnotes

1. G. Tyler Miller, Jr., Energetics, Kinetics and Life, 1971. p. 46.
2. William of Ockham biography.
3. Occam's Razor (definition) from a "website for skeptics." An alternative translation, where Occam's Razor is applied to the field of logic is: “What can be done with fewer [assumptions] is done in vain with more.” See:
   http://www.bartleby.com/65/wm/WmOcm.html
   Or, "It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer." This is just an extension of Aristotle's own thoughts on parsimony of explanation: "Entities must not be multiplied beyond what is necessary." See: http://www.2think.org/occams_razor.shtml ... A further reduction: "The simplest model is more likely to be correct--especially when we are working with unusual phenomenon."
   
4. The simplest explanation is usually the most accurate. Though this holds in the majority of cases, naysayers are quick to try to point out exceptions.
   
5. Gerhard D. Wasserman, From Occam's Razor to the Roots of Consciousness -- 20 Essays on Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Mind, Avebury, Ashgate Publishing Limited, Hants, England, 1997. Chapter 3, p. 36-38.
6. Discussion of the "Democracy of Paths" in layman terms:
   http://www.natural-law.org/ideal_administration/ch01.html
   
7. Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science, Wolfram Media, Inc., Champaign, IL; 2002. p. 1,025. In this one instance, the entire quote on Occam's Razor is worth repeating: "Simplicity in scientific models: To curtail absurdly complicated early scientific models Occam's razor principle that 'entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity' was introduced in the 1300s. This principle has worked well in physics, where it has often proven to be the case, for example, that out of all possible terms in an equation the only ones that actually occur are the very simplest. But in a field like biology, the principle has usually been regarded as much less successful. For many complicated features are seen in biological organisms, and when there have been guesses of simple explanations for them, these have often turned out to be wrong. Much of what is seen is probably a reflection of complicated details of the history of biological evolution. But particularly after the discoveries in this book it seems likely that at least some of what appears complicated may actually be produced by very simple underlying programs -- which perhaps occur because they were the first to be tried or are the most efficient or robust. Outside of natural science, Occam's principle can sometimes be useful -- typically because simplicity is a good assumption in some aspect of human behavior or motivation. In looking at well-developed technological systems or human organizations simplicity is also quite often a reasonable assumption -- since over the course of time parts that are complicated or difficult to understand will tend to have been optimized away."
8. Rupert Sheldrake, A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation, Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., Los Angeles, 1981.
9. Steven Levy, "The Man Who Cracked The Code to Everything," Wired Mazazine, June 2002, p. 132-137, 146-148.
10. John A. McDougall, M.D. & Mary A. McDougall, The McDougall Plan, New Century Publishers, Inc., Piscataway, NJ. 1983. p. 4, 5.
11. Ran Knishinsky, The Clay Cure: Natural Healing from the Earth; Healing Arts Press, Rochester, Vermont, 1998.

This book is not new to me. It first read it in 1992, and then soon after creating the Alpha Omega site in 1995, I included a summary on our suppression page. It is a most relevant and worthy gold mine of examples of what ails medicine today: the abandonment of any vestige of Occam's Razor -- namely, the suppression of simple, effective, more natural, low cost, patient empowering methods in favor of complex, often less effective, artificial, high cost, patient dependency-related methods. (My words, using the models and principles I provide herein, but that is Dr. Carter's message, encapsulated.)
The book underscores the war against Mother Nature and Natural Law that is the sum and substance of conventional medicine today.

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