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I tell the following story for which, alas, I can give no primary
reference citation, but it has always appealed to me. Newton gives,
in his *Principia* (which I have read neither in its original Latin
nor in translation), a set of Rules for Reasoning in Natural
Philosophy. Among these rules is what has come to be called the Law
of parsimony. Again, from very faulty memory, this law goes
something like "Nature does not that by many [mechanisms] which may
be done by few."