1852, William Hamiltion, in Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education and University Reform (1862).
This is the law of parsimony; which prohibits, without a proven necessity, the multiplication of entities, powers, principles or causes; above all, the postulation of an unknown force where a known impotence can account for the phenomenon. We are, therefore, entitled to apply "Occam's razor" to this theory of causality, unless it be proved impossible to explain the causal judgment at a cheaper rate, by deriving it from a common, and that a negative, principle.
