Occam's tools (was Halls of ivy)

[Arnold Zwicky]

larry horn: "A more positive spin is that humans love explanations,
especially elegant ones...I see it as stemming from the same impulse
that leads to mythological and...religious "explanation" of the
otherwise inexplicable."

not to deny this, exactly, but to put a slightly different (but still
positive) spin on it: humans love explanations that are *stories*,
with *characters* in them.  (mythological and religious explanations
largely fall into this category.)

hmmm...maybe there's a place for a scholarly paper here.
Narratotropism [or for a somewhat sexier title, The Narratophilic
Impulse] in Popular Etymology.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)