"Occam's razor" (a maxim meaning "don't add unnecessary entities", basically) was very much in vogue while I was in college. Sometimes an atheist would trot it out — as though it were actually some scientific principle — as a sort of disproof of God.

Strange thing, though, as materialists began to embrace unprovable entities like the multiverse (adding an extra 10^5000th universes, or so), Occam's razor suddenly seemed to disappear. Entities were to be multiplied gratuitously and unflinchingly if they might help dispel the "fine tuning" the universe seemed to display. Those who had once sneered at the idea of adding 'unnecessary' entities were suddenly quite willing to do so to protect their own metaphysical views.

So I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that what I first suspected (though gave up on suspecting, when I was told otherwise) turned out, at long last, to be true. Apparently:

Ockham's Razor is a Modern Myth

[....] Ockham never invented Ockham's Razor. [William] Thornburn appears to have meticulously gone through a vast amount of material, and found that the phrase "Ockham's Razor" comes from the writings of Sir William Hamilton in the 19th Century. The phase "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" ["do not needlessly multiply entities"], can be found no earlier than 1639, in the writings of John Ponce of Cork. More importantly, neither similar phrases, nor anything that really resembles the concept they are expressing, can be found in the writings of Ockham.

The gory details can be found here, with this thought-provoking addendum:

[This] has turned a sound rule of Methodology into a Metaphysical dogma. As J.S. Mill pointed out in his Examination of Hamilton [...]: 'The Law of Parcimony... is a purely logical precept'. It is folly, to complicate research by multiplying the objects of inquiry; but we know too little of the ultimate constitution of the Universe, to assume that it cannot be far more complex than it seems, or than we have any actual reason to suppose. The value of this warning has just now received signal illustration from the very recent discovery of Chemical Isotopes, which has proved (e.g.), that what had previously been simply called 'lead' is infinitely complex in its composition. This discovery ought to operate as a salutary check upon dogmatism, and the tendency to turn logical rules into ontological principles.

In other words: We probably shouldn't add unnecessary entities, BUT that doesn't mean the simplest answer (the most "parsimonious" assumption) usually turns out to be the one.

Odd that I've accepted this: Anyone even remotely familiar with the history of science knows the truth has almost always been otherwise. The "atoms" Democritus hoped for turned out to be composed of still smaller forms (and so on). Cells, we learned, were not simple bags of liquid, but vast, city-like structures which process data at speeds yet unequaled by modern computers. Ptolemy's complicated system of "celestial spheres" were ultimately superseded by Einstein's general and special relativity, which far fewer people are capable of understanding. And quantum physics is bizarre beyond description.

This reminds me of the "Copernican Principle", which was similarly fictional, and yet was also elevated to a atheistic metaphysical dogma: no scientific finding must ever imply there's anything interesting or odd about the universe which is particularly conducive to human existence. Man must never been found to be, in any sense, at the "center" of the universe.

Yet, in this story behind this myth, also, it was those who came up with the more bizarre-sounding explanations which ultimately proved to be correct. Contrary to the story we hear today, where the idiot churchmen cling to their obviously-wrong Aristotelian dogmas while rejecting a clearly superior model:

But this story, inspiring though it is, runs afoul of the fact that Aristotle was a masterful observer, one whose physical theories are closely based on the world as it appears to the unaided senses. Knowledge, he held, begins with our observations of the world around us. Similarly, Ptolemy constructed his Earth-centered model of the cosmos to accurately reflect the best astronomical observations available to him.

In fact, it was the pioneers of the Scientific Revolution who had to overcome the commonsense view of the world revealed by direct observation in order for their theories to gain acceptance. The most obvious discrepancy between the reports of our senses and the new ideas is that the Earth seems quite plainly to be standing still, while the heavenly bodies clearly appear to be rotating around it. Renaissance man had no experience of, for instance, traveling in an airplane at 600 miles per hour yet feeling as though he wasn't moving. When he moved rapidly, such as on horseback, he could feel that he was moving. And to account for the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies, the Earth would have to rotate at what, for him, was a truly astonishing rate. (At the equator, the actual speed is over 1000 miles per hour.)

What's more, if the Earth was spinning around that rapidly, it seemed that we ought to be able to detect that motion in many ways. For example, if you dropped a rock from a tower, it should fall some distance from the tower's base, in the direction opposite to the Earth's rotation...

Ptolemy's system did a good job of predicting actual planetary motion. Why add apparently unnecessary, and seemingly counter-intuitive, details? Keep in mind that the detailed mathematics necessary to predict planetary motion didn't become available until much later, in Newton's time. (Copernicus published in 1543, Newton in 1687.) For almost 150 years, it seemed that a mathematically detailed model, which made specific predictions (which seemed, by the way, mostly correct), was being challenged by a more vague upstart, one which was unable produce similarly specific and accurate predictions.

Another story which was just a bit too good to check. Too bad it shows up so frequently in science textbooks, articles, and seemingly-reputable newspapers.