The name `Razor'

The engineers involved with the writing of this package had only one driving force that helped them decide on a name for the product; they were all sick and tired of acronyms. It seemed that the whole industry had become overrun by them... SCCS, RCS, CMF, CVS, etc., etc. All of their meanings had become clouded, and it became rough to speak of them in conversation without confusion.

`Razor' has no direct intended meaning. Although a variety of cute sayings and sales pitches could be made relating the name to one theme or another, we have decided to avoid doing that. There's too much of that in the industry already. The name is just a name.

Long after that issue had been settled, however, the editors at SunExpert magazine found a link between `Razor' and William of Occam that we found interesting.

Occam's Razor

The following is quoted from The Academic American Encyclopedia, on-line edition, Grolier Electronic Publishing, Danbury, CT., 1991, courtesy of Compuserve.

Occam's razor is a logical principle attributed to William of Occam, although it was used by some scholastic philosophers prior to him. The principle states that a person should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything¹, or that the person should not make more assumptions than the minimum needed. This principle is often called the principle of parsimony. Since the Middle Ages it has played an important role in eliminating fictitious or unnecessary elements from explanations. In the development of logic, logicians such as Bertrand Russel removed traditional metaphysical concepts by applying Occam's razor.

¹ In modern parlance, this is better known as `KISS': Keep it Simple, Stupid.