Multiple working hypotheses (Informal statement)
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose.
[page 366] Brother William of Baskerville is speaking to his Benedictine novice Adso of Melk in November 1327:
“I was trying to tell you that the search for explicative laws in natural facts proceeds in a tortuous fashion. In the face of some inexplicable facts you must try to imagine many general laws, whose connection with your facts escapes you. Then suddenly, in the unexpected connection of a result, you perceive a line of reasoning that seems more convincing than the others. You try applying it to all similar cases, to use it for making predictions, and you discover that your intuition was right. But until you reach the end you will never know which predicates to introduce into your reasoning and which to omit. And this is what I am doing now. I line up so many disjointed elements and I venture some hypotheses. I have to venture many, and many of them are so absurd that I would be ashamed to tell them to you…”
[page 367] Then comes this dialogue between Adso and William, with introductory commentary by Adso:
“I understood at that moment my master’s method of reasoning, and it seemed to me quite alien to that of the philosopher, who reasons by first principles, so that his intellect almost assumes the ways of the divine intellect. I understood that, when he didn’t have an answer, William proposed many to himself, very different one from another. I remained puzzled.”
“But then…” I ventured to remark, “you are still far from the solution…”
“I am very close to one,” William said, “but I don’t know which.”
“Therefore you don’t have a single answer to your questions?”
“Adso, if I did I would teach theology in Paris.”
“In Paris do they always have the true answer?”
“Never,” William said, “but they are very sure of their errors.”
“And you,” I said with childish impertinence, “never commit errors?
“Often,” he answered. “But instead of conceiving only one, I imagine many, so I become the slave of none.”