Occam's Razor as a Formal Basis for a Physical Theory

TL;DR

This paper formalizes Occam's Razor as a foundational principle for physics, deriving key variational principles and Lagrangians across classical and relativistic mechanics to promote economical physical theories.

Contribution

It introduces a formalized version of Occam's Razor as a basis for deriving physical laws and structures, unifying various mechanics under this principle.

Findings

Derived Hamilton's principle of stationary action from Occam's Razor.

Obtained Lagrangians for Newtonian and relativistic mechanics.

Unified derivation of physical laws using the principle.

Abstract

We introduce the principle of Occam's Razor in a form which can be used as a basis for economical formulations of physics. This allows us to explain the general structure of the Lagrangian for a composite physical system, as well as some other artificial postulates behind the variational formulations of physical laws. As an example, we derive Hamilton's principle of stationary action together with the Lagrangians for the cases of Newtonian mechanics, relativistic mechanics and a relativistic particle in an external gravitational field.