

By pure chance, the line that it traces curves and recrosses itself in such a way that it ends up looking like a recognizable caricature of Winston Churchill. As it crawls, it traces a line in the sand. Putnam starts the essay with a different, lesser-known thought experiment: In Putnam’s essay, “ A Brain in a Vat”, he discusses the problems with Cartesian skepticism and particularly the concerns with the thought experiment in question: A Brain in a Vat. Hilary Putnam was an American philosopher and mathematician whose work greatly influenced the philosophy of mind. The most obvious answer is that it’s a complete fluke. If an ant draws a picture in the sand, don’t overthink it.

This is because the likeliest explanation is probably the correct one. When diagnosing a patient, doctors should look first at the expected causes of an ailment first, rather than its unlikely or ‘exotic’ causes.

This saying is taught in medical schools and is considered a medical proverb though the phrase accurately captures Occam’s Razor. Theodore Woodward from the University of Maryland. “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras ” is an aphorism coined by Dr.
