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Info: Biography, Pictures, Discography of all CDs & DVDs |
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| Aaron Doral (credit only)Chandra Berg ...Little Lucy Cain (credit only)Jacob Blair ...Squad Leader BanzaiChris Bradford ...Kendra Shaw (as Stephanie Jacobsen)Nico Cortez ...Chief Petty Officer Galen TyrolMatt Drake ...Helena's Father (credit only)Michelle Forbes ...Child In CageMichael Hogan ...Colonel Saul TighAlessandro Juliani ...Helo' Agathon (credit only)Joey Pierce ...Captain Kara 'Starbuck' ThraceKyra Scott ...Young Helena Cain (credit only)Tyson Stanley ...Goofs:
Continuity: In the scene where soldiers are putting together their rifles while blindfolded, the soldier that Shaw orders to fire on her originally takes his blindfold off completely.Following shots switch between the blindfold being pushed down around his neck and completely off.Thank you, your vote will be counted and appear on this page within 24 hours.Battlestar Galactica: Razor shows us what happened with Pegasus during
the initial Cylon attack on the Colonies, as well as after it met up
with Galactica.Jacobsen that really
refreshed this whole thing along with the lovely Katee Sackhoff.The plot was very enjoyable to watch and it fits in great
with the rest of the series.Was the above comment useful to you?Whats the difference between the tv version and dvd?Does the unrated DVD version add gore?They will be examined and if approved will be included in a future update.Internet Movie Database Inc.Terms and Privacy Policy under which this service is provided to you.The release of Vipul's Razor v2.Here's a complete list of new features in Razor v2.What is Vipul's Razor?Vipul's Razor is a distributed, collaborative, spam detection and filtering network.Through user contribution, Razor establishes a distributed and constantly updating catalogue of spam in propagation that is consulted by email clients to filter out known spam.Detection is done with statistical and randomized signatures that efficiently spot mutating spam content.User input is validated through reputation assignments based on consensus on report and revoke assertions which in turn is used for computing confidence values associated with individual signatures.This software is distributed under the ARTISTIC License.For other uses, see Razor (disambiguation).Early razors
2 Straight razors
3 Safety razors
4 Electric razors
4.Early razors
Razors have been identified from many Bronze Age cultures.Straight razors with open steel blades were the most commonly used razors before the 20th century.However, they are now chiefly used by barbers.Straight razors consist of a blade sharpened on one edge.The first American safety razor was marketed in 1875 by the Kampfe Brothers.In 1901, the American inventor King Camp Gillette, with the assistance of William Nickerson, invented a safety razor with disposable blades.Gillette realized that a profit could be made by selling a razor with inexpensive disposable blades.This has been called the Razor and blades business model, or a "loss leader", and has become a very common practice for a wide variety of products.There are also safety razors that are made of inexpensive materials that are meant to be wholly disposable.The electric razor (also known as the electric dry shaver) has a rotating or oscillating blade.The electric razor does not require the use of shaving cream, soap, or water.The razor is powered by a small DC motor, and usually has rechargeable batteries, though early ones were powered directly by house current.Some very early mechanical shavers had no electric motor and had to be powered by hand, for example by pulling a cord to drive a flywheel.The other design is the rotary type with circular blade structures, usually three in a triangular arrangement which has the same shaving function.The Remington Rand Corporation developed the electric razor further, first producing the Remington brand of razor in 1937.Another important inventor was Prof.Alexandre Horowitz, from Philips Laboratories in the Netherlands, who invented the very successful concept of the revolving electric razor.It has a shaving head consisting of cutters that cut off the hair entering the head of the razor at skin level.Early versions of electric razors were meant to be used on dry skin only.More recent electric razors have been designed to allow for shaving cream and moisture.Some patience is necessary when starting to use a razor of this type, as the skin usually takes some time to adjust to the way that the electric razor lifts and cuts the hairs.Razor Batteries
Early electric razors plugged directly into an AC outlet, but in recent decades most have been rechargeable, containing rechargeable batteries sealed inside the razor's case.If it fails after the warranty expires, one is expected to throw it away and buy a new one, from the same company.They are used in carpentry for detailed work, sanding, and scraping (in a specialized holder), in mechanical drawing for paper cutting, in plumbing and finish work for grouting and cleaning, for removing paint from flat surfaces such as panes of glass, and in many other applications.This page was last modified 09:03, 9 January 2008.All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.See Copyrights for details.For the "House" television show episode called "Occam's Razor", see Occam's Razor (House episode).This is often paraphrased as "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities.It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood.History
2 Justifications
2.Aesthetic and practical considerations
2.Science and the scientific method
3.Occam's razor Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem or "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily."The term razor refers to the act of shaving away unnecessary assumptions to get to the simplest explanation.No doubt this represents correctly the general tendency of his philosophy, but it has not so far been found in any of his writings.His nearest pronouncement seems to be Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate, which occurs in his theological work on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (Quaestiones et decisiones in quattuor libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi (ed.In his Summa Totius Logicae, i.Kneale and Kneale, 1962, p.Ockham did not invent this "razor," so its association with him may be due to the frequency and effectiveness with which he used it (Ariew 1976).Though Ockham stated the principle in various ways, the most popular version was written not by himself but by John Ponce of Cork in 1639 (Thorburn 1918).Razor to be found in Ockham's work is Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate or Plurality ought never be posited without necessity.The common form of the razor, used to distinguish between equally explanatory theories, can be supported by appeals to the practical value of simplicity.Thus, if two theories are equally accurate and neither appears more probable than the other, the simple one is to be preferred over the complicated one, because simplicity is practical.In computer science, for instance, tractability itself can be affected, such as with sorting algorithms.Beginning in the 20th century, epistemological justifications based on induction, logic, pragmatism, and probability theory have become more popular among philosophers.Empirical justification
One way a theory or a principle could be justified is empirically; that is to say, if simpler theories were to have a better record of turning out to be correct than more complex ones, that would corroborate Occam's razor.However, Occam's razor is not a theory in the classic sense of being a model that explains physical observations, relying on induction; rather, it is a heuristic maxim for choosing among such theories and underlies induction.This, however, does not exclude legitimate attempts at a deductive justification of the razor (and indeed these are inherent to many of its modern derivatives).Failing even that, the razor may be accepted a priori on pragmatist grounds.Karl Popper
Karl Popper argues that a preference for simple theories need not appeal to practical or aesthetic considerations.Elliott Sober
The philosopher of science Elliott Sober once argued along the same lines as Popper, tying simplicity with "informativeness": The simpler theory is the more informative theory, in the sense that less information is required in order to answer one's questions (Sober 1975).Jerrold Katz
Jerrold Katz has outlined a deductive justification of Occam's razor: "If a hypothesis, H, explains the same evidence as a hypothesis G, but does so by postulating more entities than G, then, other things being equal, the evidence has to bear greater weight in the case of H than in the case of G, and hence the amount of support it gives H is proportionately less than it gives G" (Katz 1998).He maintains that we have an innate bias towards simplicity and that simplicity considerations are part and parcel of common sense.Duhem thesis), we must rely on some criterion to determine which theory to use.However, while the necessity of some method or another to determine a working hypothesis in spite of the problem of underdetermination is by and large undisputed, the progression of actual science and actual scientific consensus is far removed from some simple formula which accepts "the evidence" and outputs "the best theory".Resorting to the importance of Occam's Razor within the limits of inductive arguments still leaves open problems of formulation; "the simplest explanation tends to be the best" is hardly a formally precise statement and it may be difficult to use it, as is, to rigorously compare two competing hypotheses.In physics, for example, one measurement of the simplicity of a theory is the number of free parameters.Occam's razor is not equivalent to the idea that "perfection is simplicity".Albert Einstein probably had this in mind when he wrote in 1933 that "The supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience" often paraphrased as "Theories should be as simple as possible, but no simpler."It often happens that the best explanation is much more complicated than the simplest possible explanation because its postulations amount to less of an improbability.There are two senses in which Occam's razor can be seen at work in the history of science.In the latter case there are three examples from the history of science where the simpler of two competing theories each of which explains all the observed phenomena has been chosen over its ontologically bloated competitor: the Copernican heliocentric model of celestial mechanics over the Ptolemaic geocentric model, the mechanical theory of heat over the Caloric theory, and the Einsteinian theory of electromagnetism over the luminiferous aether theory.In the first example, the Copernican model is said to have been chosen over the Ptolemaic due to its greater simplicity.In a single stroke the Copernican model reduced by a factor of two the ontology of Astronomy.It was while studying cannon boring that Count Rumford made observations that conflicted with the Caloric theory and he formulated his mechanical theory to replace it.The Mechanical theory eliminated the Caloric and was ontologically simpler than its predecessor.It was hypothesized that a universal aether was such a medium and much effort was expended to detect it.Then when Einstein constructed his theory of special relativity without any reference to the Aether this subsequently became the accepted view, thus providing another example of a theory chosen in part for its greater ontological simplicity.Biology
Biologists or philosophers of biology use Occam's razor in either of two contexts both in evolutionary biology: the units of selection controversy and Systematics.The basis for Williams's contention is that of the two, individual selection is the more parsimonious theory.In doing so he is invoking a variant of Occam's razor known as Lloyd Morgan's Canon: "In no case is an animal activity to be interpreted in terms of higher psychological processes, if it can be fairly interpreted in terms of processes which stand lower in the scale of psychological evolution and development" (Morgan 1903).Dawkins argues the way evolution works is that the genes that are propagated in most copies will end up determining the development of that particular species, i.Zoology provides an example.Musk oxen, when threatened by wolves, will form a circle with the males on the outside and the females and young on the inside.However, a much better explanation immediately offers itself once one considers that natural selection works on genes.If the male musk ox runs off, leaving his offspring to the wolves, his genes will not be propagated.If however he takes up the fight his genes will live on in his offspring.This is an example of kin selection.Systematics is the branch of biology that attempts to establish genealogical relationships among organisms.There are three primary camps in systematics; cladists, pheneticists, and evolutionary taxonomists.The cladists hold that genealogy alone should determine classification and pheneticists contend that similarity over propinquity of descent is the determining criterion while evolutionary taxonomists claim that both genealogy and similarity count in classification.It is among the cladists that Occam's razor is to be found, although their term for it is cladistic parsimony.Cladistic parsimony (or maximum parsimony) is a method of phylogenetic inference in the construction of cladograms.Cladistic parsimony is used to support the hypothesis(es) that require the fewest evolutionary changes.For a discussion of both uses of Occam's razor in Biology see Elliott Sober's article Let's Razor Ockham's Razor (1990).Recent advances employ information theory, a close cousin of likelihood, which uses Occam's Razor in the same way.Francis Crick has commented on potential limitations of Occam's razor in biology.He cautions: "While Ockham's razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be a very dangerous implement in biology.Medicine
When discussing Occam's razor in contemporary medicine, doctors and philosophers of medicine speak of diagnostic parsimony.Diagnostic parsimony advocates that when diagnosing a given injury, ailment, illness, or disease a doctor should strive to look for the fewest possible causes that will account for all the symptoms.Hickam's dictum, which put succinctly states that "patients can have as many diseases as they damn well please".Also, independently of statistical likelihood, some patients do in fact turn out to have multiple diseases, which by common sense nullifies the approach of insisting to explain any given collection of symptoms with one disease.These misgivings emerge from simple probability theory, which is already taken into account in many modern variations of the razor; and from the fact that the loss function is much greater in medicine than in most of general science, namely loss of a person's health and potentially life, and thus it is better to test and pursue all reasonable theories even if there is some theory that appears the most likely.Any set of symptoms could be indicative of a range of possible diseases and disease combinations; though at no point is a diagnosis rejected or accepted just on the basis of one disease appearing more likely than another, the continuous flow of hypothesis formulation, testing and modification benefits greatly from estimates regarding which diseases (or sets of diseases) are relatively more likely to be responsible for a set of symptoms, given the patient's environment, habits, medical history and so on.For example, if a hypothetical patient's immediately apparent symptoms include fatigue and cirrhosis and they test negative for Hepatitis C, their doctor might formulate a working hypothesis that the cirrhosis was caused by their drinking problem, and then seek symptoms and perform tests to formulate and rule out hypotheses as to what has been causing the fatigue; but if the doctor were to further discover that the patient's breath inexplicably smells of garlic and they are suffering from pulmonary edema, they might decide to test for the relatively rare condition of Selenium poisoning.Religion
In the philosophy of religion, Occam's razor is sometimes applied to the existence of God; if the concept of God does not help to explain the universe, it is argued, God is irrelevant and should be cut away (Schmitt 2005).While Occam's razor cannot prove God's nonexistence, it is argued to imply that, in the absence of compelling reasons to believe in God, disbelief should be preferred.The cosmological argument, for example, states that the universe must be the result of a "first cause" and that that first cause must be God.Similarly, the teleological argument credits the appearance of design and order in the universe to supernatural intelligence.Many people believe in miracles or have what they call religious experiences, and creationists consider divine design to be more believable than naturalistic explanations for the diversity and history of life on earth.The majority of the scientific community generally does not accept these arguments, and prefers to rely on explanations that deal with the same phenomena within the confines of existing scientific models.God actually works miracles, any explanation that "God did it" must fit the facts and make accurate predictions better than more parsimonious guesses like "something did it", or else Occam's razor still cuts God out.Rather than argue for the necessity of God, some theists consider their belief to be based on grounds independent of, or prior to, reason, making Occam's razor irrelevant.Kierkegaard, who viewed belief in God as a leap of faith which sometimes directly opposed reason (McDonald 2005); this is also the same basic view of Clarkian Presuppositional apologetics, with the exception that Clark never thought the leap of faith was contrary to reason.In a different vein, Alvin Plantinga and others have argued for reformed epistemology, the view that God's existence can properly be assumed as part of a Christian's epistemological structure.In other words, proponents of this view hold that there is no other viable option to ultimately explain any fact of human experience or knowledge, let alone a simpler one.Considering that the razor is often wielded as an argument against theism, it is somewhat ironic that Ockham himself was a theist.He wrote, "No plurality should be assumed unless it can be proved (a) by reason, or (b) by experience, or (c) by some infallible authority"; referring in the last clause "to the Bible, the Saints and certain pronouncements of the Church" (Hoffmann 1997).Philosophy of mind
Probably the first person to make use of the principle was Ockham himself.Summa Totus Logicae Bk I, C.We are apt to suppose that a word like "paternity" signifies some "distinct entity", because we suppose that each distinct word signifies a distinct entity.Berkeley was an idealist who believed that all of reality could be explained in terms of the mind alone.He famously invoked Occam's razor against Idealism's metaphysical competitor, materialism, claiming that matter was not required by his metaphysic and was thus eliminable.In the 20th century Philosophy of Mind, Occam's razor found a champion in J.Dualists claim that there are two kinds of substances in the universe: physical (including the body) and mental, which is nonphysical.In contrast identity theorists claim that everything is physical, including consciousness, and that there is nothing nonphysical.Smart was criticized for his use of the razor and ultimately retracted his advocacy of it in this context.Paul Churchland (1984) cites Occam's razor as the first line of attack against dualism, but admits that by itself it is inconclusive.The deciding factor for Churchland is the greater explanatory prowess of a materialist position in the Philosophy of Mind as informed by findings in neurobiology.Dale Jacquette (1994) claims that Occam's razor is the rationale behind eliminativism and reductionism in the philosophy of mind.Eliminativism is the thesis that the ontology of folk psychology including such entities as "pain", "joy", "desire", "fear", etc.Probability Theory and Statistics
One intuitive justification of Occam's Razor's admonition against unnecessary hypotheses is a direct result of basic probability theory.By definition, all assumptions introduce possibilities for error; If an assumption does not improve the accuracy of a theory, its only effect is to increase the probability that the overall theory is wrong.There are various papers in scholarly journals deriving formal versions of Occam's razor from probability theory and applying it in statistical inference, and also of various criteria for penalizing complexity in statistical inference.Recent papers have suggested a connection between Occam's razor and Kolmogorov complexity.Occam's razor can be derived from Bayesian model comparison and Bayes factors, which can be used to compare models that don't fit the data equally well.These methods can sometimes optimally balance the complexity and power of a model.The statistical view leads to a more rigorous formulation of the razor than previous philosophical discussions.In particular, it shows that 'simplicity' must first be defined in some way before the razor may be used, and that this definition will always be subjective.However one could always choose a Turing machine with a simple operation that happened to construct one's entire theory and would hence score highly under the razor.This has led to two opposing views of the objectivity of Occam's razor.Subjective Razor
The Turing machine can be thought of as embodying a Bayesian prior belief over the space of rival theories.Hence Occam's razor is not an objective comparison method, and merely reflects the subject's prior beliefs.One's choice of exactly which razor to use is culturally relative.Objective Razor
The minimum instruction set of a Universal Turing machine requires approximately the same length description across different formulations, and is small compared to the Kolmogorov complexity of most practical theories.For instance John Tromp's minimal universal interpreters, based on the Lambda Calculus and Combinatory logic are 210 and 272 bits respectively.Variations
The principle is most often expressed as Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, or "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity", but this sentence was written by later authors and is not found in Ockham's surviving writings.This also applies to non est ponenda pluritas sine necessitate, which translates literally into English as "pluralities ought not be posited without necessity".Other common restatements are:
Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity.Occam's razor, in more formal terms, is provided by information theory in the form of minimum message length (MML).Other criticisms of Occam's razor and MML (e."When deciding between two models which make equivalent predictions, choose the simpler one," makes the point that a simpler model that doesn't make equivalent predictions is not among the models that this criterion applies to in the first place.Ockham's time and has a variant of Occam's razor.Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.Occam's razor is now usually stated as follows:
Of two equivalent theories or explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred.As this is ambiguous, Isaac Newton's version may be better:
We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.In the spirit of Occam's razor itself, the rule is sometimes stated as:
The simplest explanation is usually the best.See above, "In science".For instance, classical physics is simpler than subsequent theories, but should not be preferred over them because it is demonstrably wrong in some respects.It is the first requirement of a theory that it works, that its predictions are correct and it has not been falsified.Another contentious aspect of the Razor is that a theory can become more complex in terms of its structure (or syntax), while its ontology (or semantics) becomes simpler, or vice versa.The theory of relativity is often given as an example.Galileo Galilei lampooned the misuse of Occam's Razor in his Dialogue.The principle is represented in the dialogue by Simplicio.The telling point that Galileo presented ironically was that if you really wanted to start from a small number of entities, you could always consider the letters of the alphabet as the fundamental entities, since you could certainly construct the whole of human knowledge out of them (a view that Abraham Abulafia presented much more expansively).Occam's razor has met some opposition from people who have considered it too extreme or rash.Occam's razor and Ockham's use of it."If three things are not enough to verify an affirmative proposition about things, a fourth must be added, and so on"."The variety of beings should not rashly be diminished."Razor (1984) by Armand Maurer).There is also Crabtree's Bludgeon, which takes a cynical view that 'No set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation, however complicated.Notable among these is the premise stated by eminent pathologist, Ed Uthman, MD, who gave us Uthman's Razor: "Of two equally plausible explanations, the more cynical one is correct."This is illustrated by Einstein's famous phrase: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."Razor as a formal basis for a physical theory' by Andrei N."But Ockham's razor does not say that the more simple a hypothesis, the better.""Today, we think of the principle of parsimony as a heuristic device.We don't assume that the simpler theory is correct and the more complex one false."While these two facets of simplicity are frequently conflated, it is important to treat them as distinct.One reason for doing so is that considerations of parsimony and of elegance typically pull in different directions.Original Latin: Entium varietates non temere esse minuendas.Kant, Immanuel (1950): The Critique of Pure Reason, transl.Ockham's Razor: A Historical and Philosophical Analysis of Ockham's Principle of Parsimony.Urbana, University of Illinois.Steve Gardner, Graham Oppy (December 2007).Philosophy of Science 58: 46pp."Ockham's Razor and Chemistry"."Ockham's Razor and Bayesian Statistics (Preprint available as "Sharpening Occam's Razor on a Bayesian Strop)",".The Development of Logic.London: Oxford University Press, 243.Counterpart of Ockham's Razor in Pure and Applied Mathematics: Ontological Uses".New York: Random House, 129.Ockham's Razor Suggests Atheism."Sensations and Brain Processes".Oxford: Oxford University Press."Let's Razor Ockham's Razor", in Dudley Knowles: Explanation and its Limits.What is the Problem of Simplicity?.Simplicity as Evidence for Truth.Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press."The Myth of Occam's Razor".Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.External links
What is Occam's Razor?This essay distinguishes Occam's Razor (used for theories with identical predictions) from the Principle of Parsimony (which can be applied to theories with different predictions).Skeptic's Dictionary: Occam's Razor
Ockham's Razor, an essay at The Galilean Library on the historical and philosophical implications by Paul Newall.MacKay, includes an introductory chapter on the automatic Occam's razor that is embodied by Bayesian model comparison."Message Length as an Effective Ockham's Razor in Decision Tree Induction", by S.Shows how Ockham's razor works fine when interpreted as Minimum Message Length (MML).Lloyd's MML pages describe how Minimum Message Length induction extends Ockham's razor for differing hypotheses.ABC Radio National program in which speakers are allowed to explicate at length on topics without the moderation of an interviewer.This article needs additional citations for verification.All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.See Copyrights for details.All images and products are copyright thier respective owners.On the cutting edge of Ultima Online game play, Razor offers UO players a chance to enhance and extend game play to enjoy new heights they never thought possible on player run shards.Razor is an Assistant program (similar to the popular UOAssist) for player run Ultima Online shards.Razor offers features and functionality previously unheard of on unofficial shards.C++, Razor automates common tasks and helps track items and statistics to help players save time and maximize their enjoyment.Razor strives to offer peace of mind to server administrators.Razor is committed to eliminating exploits and helping Developers correct loop holes to ensure free shards can be enjoyed by everyone.Occam's razor is a logical principle attributed to the mediaeval philosopher William of Occam (or Ockham).It admonishes us to choose from a set of otherwise equivalent models of a given phenomenon the simplest one.In any given model, Occam's razor helps us to "shave off" those concepts, variables or constructs that are not really needed to explain the phenomenon.By doing that, developing the model will become much easier, and there is less chance of introducing inconsistencies, ambiguities and redundancies.Though the principle may seem rather trivial, it is essential for model building because of what is known as the "underdetermination of theories by data".For a given set of observations or data, there is always an infinite number of possible models explaining those same data.For example, through two data points in a diagram you can always draw a straight line, and induce that all further observations will lie on that line.Only Occam's razor would in this case guide you in choosing the "straight" (i.Occam's razor is especially important for universal models such as the ones developed in General Systems Theory, mathematics or philosophy, because there the subject domain is of an unlimited complexity.If one starts with too complicated foundations for a theory that potentially encompasses the universe, the chances of getting any manageable model are very slim indeed.Moreover, the principle is sometimes the only remaining guideline when entering domains of such a high level of abstraction that no concrete tests or observations can decide between rival models.This principle is part of epistemology, and can be motivated by the requirement of maximal simplicity of cognitive models.See also, Occam's Razor: as part of the scientific method in the sci.Updated July 1997 by Sugihara Hiroshi.Original by Phil Gibbs September 1996.What is Occam's Razor?Occam's (or Ockham's) razor is a principle attributed to the 14th century logician and
Franciscan friar; William of Occam."Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate"
"Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora"
"Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem"
In fact, only the first two of these forms appear in his surviving works and the third
was written by a later scholar.That one didn't make him very popular with the Pope.Many scientists have adopted or reinvented Occam's Razor as in Leibniz's "identity of
observables" and Isaac Newton stated the rule: "We are to admit no more causes of
natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their
appearances."In physics we use the razor to cut away metaphysical concepts.The canonical
example is Einstein's theory of special relativity compared with Lorentz's theory that
ruler's contract and clocks slow down when in motion through the Ether.Ether could not be
detected according to the equations of Lorentz and Maxwell.By Occam's razor it had
to be eliminated.Heisenberg deduced his uncertainty principle from the quantum nature of light and the
effect of measurement.Stephen Hawking explains in A Brief History of Time:
"We could still imagine that there is a set of laws that determines events completely
for some supernatural being, who could observe the present state of the universe without
disturbing it.It seems better to employ the principle known as Occam's razor and cut out
all the features of the theory that cannot be observed."It can separate two theories that make the same predictions, but does not
rule out other theories that might make a different prediction.Empirical evidence
is also required and Occam himself argued for empiricism, not against
it.Ernst Mach advocated a version of Occam's razor which he called the Principle of
Economy, stating that "Scientists must use the simplest means of arriving at their
results and exclude everything not perceived by the senses."The moral
of this story is that Occam's razor should not be wielded blindly.Occam's razor is often cited in stronger forms than Occam intended, as in the
following statements."If you have two equally likely solutions to a problem, pick the simplest."Notice how the principle has strengthened in these forms which should be more
correctly called the law of parsimony, or the rule of simplicity.To begin with, we used Occam's razor to separate theories that would predict the same
result for all experiments.Now we are trying to choose between theories that make
different predictions.This is not what Occam intended.Should we not test
those predictions instead?Obviously we should eventually, but suppose we are at an
early stage and are not yet ready to do the experiments.It can work well in philosophy or particle physics, but less often so in
cosmology or psychology, where things usually turn out to be more complicated than you
ever expected.Perhaps a quote from Shakespeare would be more appropriate than
Occam's razor: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of
in your philosophy.".Simplicity is subjective and the universe does not always have the same ideas about
simplicity as we do.Successful theorists often speak of symmetry and beauty as well
as simplicity.It often happens
that the requirements of simplicity and beauty are the same, but where they clash the
latter must take precedence."As
arbiters of correctness only logical consistency and empirical evidence are
absolute.He constructed the
relativistic field equation for the electron and used it to predict the positron.He fully appreciated the need for experimental verification.It may well be a precis of the last few pages of his "The Meaning of
Relativity" (5th edition), where he wrote about his unified field theory, saying "In
my opinion the theory here is the logically simplest relativistic field theory that is at
all possible.But this does not mean that nature might not obey a more complex
theory.More complex theories have frequently been proposed.Thorburn, "Occam's razor",
Mind, 24, pp.Thorburn, "The Myth of Occam's razor",
Mind, 27, pp.Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time.Found
The document has moved here.Are you an online gamer?This article has been pruned to allow less advanced browsers to load it with little performance loss.USA 12 November 2007 (theater screening in select U.Battle of the Communications Relay
2.Analysis
5 Questions
6 Official Statements
7 Noteworthy Dialogue
8 Guest Stars
9 External Links
10 References
if (window.Below the different story lines are listed chronologically.William Adama
See also: Razor Flashbacks
Razor DVD Only: At the end of the first Cylon War, a Colonial battle group conducts Operation Raptor Talon against a Cylon planet presumed to house a super weapon.Adama then spots two Raiders entering the planet's atmosphere.He shoots down one in the high altitudes, but collides with the other and is forced to eject.As Adama enters what appears to be a Cylon laboratory, he finds evidence of human experimentation and human mutilations.Hybrid tanks that the later humanoid Cylons would use.He kneels down and touches the substance, and immediately begins to hear the screams of torture victims.The hand disappears just as quickly as it appeared, and Adama falls back to the ground.Pythian prophecies: "All this has happened before and will happen again."As Adama approaches the window of the chamber, an unidentified man presses his face against the window and begs Adama to release him and the other captives.As Adama attempts to free the door, the man tells him that they are civilians from the Gemenese ship Diana, whose convoy was attacked by the Cylons, and that there were initially 50 of them who were taken away one by one.Suddenly the ground begins to tremble.Adama manages to open the door a little bit, but not enough to allow the captives to escape.He radios his findings about the Cylon experimentation on humans to Galactica, but the young pilot is shocked to learn that an armistice has just been signed, and the war is over.Helena Cain
This entire story segment is contained exclusively on the unrated, extended DVD version of "Razor".At the same time Tauron is under attack by Cylon basestars and Centurion ground forces.Helena Cain, her sister Lucy and her father are pinned down in a building under heavy fire.The three attempt to escape after the last remaining marines in the building are gunned down.The sisters make it out of the building, but Lucy trips over concrete rubble and injures herself, unable to go on.Helena panics, yelling at Lucy to get up and run.When Helena comes out, she finds only her sister's doll on the ground, and watches the Raiders leave the planet.Fall of the Scorpion Fleet Shipyards
Razor DVD Only: Kendra Shaw waits at the Caprica Transfer Station for a ship to bring her to Pegasus.She briefly chats with Frank Bruno about her mother, Quorum delegate Marta Shaw, her assignment and her career goals.Admiral Helena Cain is in her quarters, reviewing a crew status report as her XO, Colonel Jurgen Belzen enters.He lightly encourages her to take her shore leave, but she insists that she could never leave Pegasus in the hands of the civilian contractors assigned to oversee her overhaul.With orders to report directly to CIC, Shaw steps down and asks a pair of passing crewman to help her locate it.Inviere shows Shaw a map of Pegasus, with a route to the CIC, and the two discuss the origins of Gina's last name.She grills Shaw for being late to the CIC, concluding that she either stopped for a cup of coffee, or got lost.Shaw and Hoshi are immediately thrown to the floor.As Shaw awakens, she is in a daze.She looks around to find Hoshi unconscious on the floor.The hallway has suddenly become a disaster area.Cain slaps her in the face.The hallway echoes with screams of horror, and the Condition One sirens blare.DRADIS and weapons have both been knocked out.The Cylon attack is taking its toll on the shipyards.The missiles fly past a Galactica type battlestar as its moorings are destroyed, and past the wreckage of several other battlestars and support vessels.Shaw suggests that the entire program be purged from the system.After ordering two Raptors on a reconnaissance mission back to the Colonies, the time has finally come for Cain to reveal the extent of the devastation at home to her crew.While the victory of one ship may seem unattainable when even their very survival is at stake, she tells them that they have revenge to reach for instead.Cain assures her senior staff that while she does want to engage in guerrilla warfare tactics against the Cylons, she is not willing to put the ship and crew in any amount of excessive danger.Inviere then discusses her relationship with Cain in greater detail.However, when Pegasus arrives, there are twelve Cylon Raiders guarding the relay.Almost the second after the Vipers are launched, fifteen enemy squadrons of fighters jump into DRADIS range.She persists in her orders, but Belzen refuses to carry them out.Cain orders Belzen to hand her his sidearm, which she uses to shoot him in the forehead, in front of the entire bridge crew.Cain turns to a stunned Fisk, tells him that he is now the XO and orders him to launch the reserve Vipers.Fisk, nearly petrified by what he just saw, is more than compelled to follow the order.As Shaw heads to Secondary Damage Control, she finds Gina Inviere trying to escape the Centurions, and orders her to the CIC.Shaw shoots and kills the Six, leaving it dead right in front of a security camera.Shaw immediately heads to the CIC to take Inviere, now also in CIC, into custody before she can do any more harm.When Cain belays the order, Shaw states that Gina is a Cylon infiltrator and that "they can look like us".Vipers are either destroyed or out of commission, and the deck crew doesn't have the resources to repair all remaining ones.The hatch opens, and Lieutenant Alastair Thorne salutes Admiral Cain.They will take what they need, including spare parts and people, and leave the ships without FTL drives to fend for themselves.Fisk and Shaw come aboard the Scylla, where they find a relieved welcoming party.As the mob inches closer to the boarding party, Fisk reports to Cain of the escalating situation.At that very moment, Shaw pulls out her sidearm, and shoots a woman in the front in the head.Laird, who is too stunned to move.Fisk comforts her by telling her that the entire fleet heard about what happened and there should be no more resistance.For her actions aboard the Scylla, Cain promotes Shaw to captain.Commander Lee Adama is formally appointed commander of Pegasus by Laura Roslin in front of the ship's crew.She walks to a jar, takes out a syringe and injects herself with a drug.William Adama comments that his son found an XO meaner than Saul Tigh.The Admiral gives Commander Adama his first mission: a search and rescue for two pilots and a civilian science team in an overdue Raptor.Pegasus establishes a defensive perimeter and orders the Vipers to return prior to an FTL jump.Sharon Valerii recalls the "Guardians", a group of original Centurion models that escaped being scrapped by the humanoid Cylons.For the duration of the operation, he transfers his flag to Pegasus, but assures Lee that it will be his mission.Before the battle Shaw is about to take another shot of the drug and when she is caught by Thrace, who is looking for a bottle of ambrosia.Razor DVD Only: Thrace is going over the Raptor prepared for the mission and told by Shaw that Chief Tyrol already checked everything.During their chat, the two notice that Thrace's mother and Admiral Cain weren't too different, advising to repress one's fear and focus on the anger.The mission doesn't go as planned when the strike team's Raptor is pursued by two Raiders.Raptor before it is destroyed by the Cylons, escaping undetected.Thrace, Shaw, Mathias, Dasilva and Hudson find the missing Raptor crew, whom the Cylons mutilate in a manner similar to what William Adama saw in the first Cylon War.As they free the survivors, two Centurions attack, wound Dasilva and begin to drag him away.While under cover from the firefight, Mathias reports to Pegasus that the detonator for the nuclear warhead, which they plan to use to destroy the basestar, is damaged.Thrace herself considers the "mission outcome doubtful".While Lee is reluctant to sacrifice someone to detonate the warhead, his father believes that the Cylons would easily shoot down a missile, but leaves the final decision to Lee.He orders Thrace to get the team to safety, but to stay behind and detonate the nuke manually.The Hybrid also delivers a warning about Thrace: she will lead the human race to its end, she is the herald of the apocalypse and the harbinger of death, and she must not be followed.Shaw tries to relay this to Pegasus, but her transmission is blocked by Cylon jamming shortly after the start, and the warning is not heard.She then detonates the nuke, killing herself and destroying the basestar.The admiral replies that he never had to face similar circumstances, and that he had people like Lee, Roslin and Tigh to counsel and challenge him and keep him from making extreme and questionable decisions.He comforts Lee, telling him that his decision to launch the nuclear missile and sacrifice the strike team wasn't wrong, just necessary from Lee's perspective at the time.Thrace tells him that she requested reassignment back to Galactica because she thinks Lee would keep trying to get her killed."Razor" is available on the SciFi website.Aaron Doral) do not appear in the aired version of "Razor".Tyrol is mentioned by Admiral Adama as having helped Gaius Baltar remove navigational information from the Cylon Raider, but is never seen otherwise.Part of it can still be seen in the recap at the beginning of the movie.According to composer Bear McCreary, no specific soundtrack release for "Razor" is currently planned.According to Gary Hutzel, the Fall of the Scorpion Fleet Shipyards was written so that "we would see it in bits and pieces.For the most part, it centered on the fact that they had to jump out of there before two nuclear missiles hit them."CIC personnel, who saw the two incoming warheads on DRADIS, which prompted the jump.However, Felix Alcala wanted the scene to be something out of Pearl Harbor, thus the shots showing the destruction of the shipyards were added in.Hutzel laid out the Centurion shots himself, eventually choosing the chrome appearance over a sophisticated silver metallic appearance, as the chrome surfaces were best for reflections.Another snippet mentions Roslin's "recent" ban of abortion.Valerii, the Hybrids were created as a means to grow out of their mechanical roots and into biological ones.As shown on Doctor Cottle earlier, a major's uniform only has a white trim.Unrated DVD
In the DVD version, Virtual Six appears and reveals why the Cylons achieved human form, claiming that since their God created humanity in his image, the Cylons wanted to do the same, regardless of how much they themselves loathed humanity.Razor Flashbacks to "This frakker's mine."Shootings are more graphically violent than Battlestar Galactica normally shows on television.Usually only the entry wound is shown and the camera avoids the area behind the head, such as when Number Six is shot in "Precipice" and Three in "Hero".The DVD version includes an additional monologue by the first Hybrid when the strike team arrives at the basestar.The Hybrid also talks about the seven other Cylon models and demonstrates knowledge of Number Three's boxing, an event over a year in the future at the time of his speech:
"Soon there will be four, glorious in awakening, struggling with the knowledge of their true selves.Enemies brought together by impossible longing.And then, they will join the promised land, gathered on the wings of an angel."The main feature does not include all of the Razor Flashbacks, namely Episodes 1, 2 and and the Galactica scenes of Episode 7.One with Lee Adama at the Caprica Transfer Station waiting for a flight to Galactica's decommissioning, in which he talks about his dissatisfaction with his father's expectations of him.Analysis
Given the overall survivor count and the tally of 49,579 during the credits, "Razor" takes place between "The Captain's Hand" and "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I".This is also the only time during Lee Adama's command of Pegasus that the episode can fit, since Starbuck leaves for Caprica in "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I".However, it can be reasonably surmised that because she is still cooperating with the Colonials that Hera's birth and her subsequent faked death haven't occurred yet.According to Admiral Cain, a razor is someone who can set aside all fear, hesitation, revulsion and natural inhibition in battle (see noteworthy dialogue).Despite misgivings about declaring war on America, he served his Emperor and planned the attack on Pearl Harbor.Cain found as child when her home colony was attacked by the Cylons.After Cain's death, the blade passes to Kendra Shaw and eventually to Kara Thrace.It appears several times in the episode, and is used by Cain to explain the concept of becoming a razor to Shaw.Regarding the casualties suffered by Pegasus during the Battle of the Communications Relay, Shaw's report that Pegasus suffered over 800 dead likely refers to the total casualty rate since the Cylon attack.His reaction to the woman's execution, however, can be taken one of two ways.He was either a man in complete shock of witnessing his wife's death or a man who was horrified from what he didn't believe was possible of Colonial military.Given that an evac Raptor successfully retrieves the assault team by docking or at least flying close to the Guardian basestar without incident, it seems that the Guardian basestar itself appears to be unarmed and totally reliant on its Raiders for defense, unlike the standard Cylon basestar.Unless the flames (which would appear as a globular "blossom" shape without gravity) jet upward, the smoke, with the lack of convection (heat rising upward as lighter gases against gravity), would expand in all directions opposite the flames or venting, not "up" relative to the battlestar or flames.While this is true, it is possible that the ship yard is drifting, having lost attitude control due to damage which would leave a short trail.She briefly talks to and comforts crewman in the corridors, and expresses strong emotions and sheds tears as she surveys the ship's casualties.All these point to the war and especially Gina's betrayal as reasons for her push over the edge to become a "razor" and the narrowing of her perspective to pure vengeance.Sometimes you have do things that we never thought we were capable of ..."When she arrives on Pegasus, she is regarded as an opportunist, but in the end she is quite the opposite.Her death signifies the complete replacement of Pegasus's original leadership and opens up the merging of the two battlestar crews.Both Shaw and Thrace have been noticed and mentored by Admiral Cain.In this respect, the friction between the two takes on aspects of sibling rivalry.Based on the restored scenes on the "Razor" DVD, Admiral Cain's past plays a huge role in how she approached the second Cylon War.Though this scene of a young Cain is mixed in Cain's speech of the need to leave some behind in order to go on fighting, it implies a sense of guilt on Cain's part for having abandoned her sister to the Cylons.She had a need to stop running.When she is finally discovered, she makes her last stand with this same knife.The actions of the younger Cain and Adama during the final events of the first Cylon War both contrast and parallel.Adama continued to pursue and attack the Cylons; Cain was told to run and hide from the Cylons, but when she was cornered by a Centurion, she picked up the knife and made as best a last stand as she could.Is the Hybrid's warning that Kara Thrace is the harbinger of death true?Who is Pegasus's CAG after Thrace steps down?Does this statement imply that the first Hybrid is capable of downloading?Given the implication that the Cylons abducted Lucy Cain on Tauron, did they collect her and other humans for further experimentation after being forced to abandon their facilities on the ice planet?TEQUILA' SCORES, 'RAZOR' FALTERS.Battlestar Galactica' Ratings Adrift.Retrieved on 29 November 2007.Battlestar Galactica: Razor' cuts to the heart of the matter.This event is recalled by Jack Fisk to Saul Tigh months later, over drinks, in the Season 2 episode "Pegasus."This tactic is reminiscent of a similar tactic attempted by the Cylons in the episode "Valley of Darkness."Kendra Shaw reports "at least 816 dead, 121 injured" after the attack on the com relay.Earlier, Colonel Belzen reports the loss of over 700 people in the attack on the shipyards.Given Pegasus's crew complement of approximately 1,750 when she encounters Galactica, adding both numbers would mean that almost half of the crew died.Battlestar Wiki assumes that Shaw is relating the casualties of both battles.Answers to your 'Razor' questions and clues about 'Battlestar Galactica's' final season.Retrieved on 16 November 2007.House on Battlestar Galactica: Razor.House on Battlestar Galactica: Razor. |
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