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I have to apologize for my title but this seems to me the only way I could have articulated this weird intuitive idea I had for the Occam's razor meta-analysis. Usually I tend to analyze things on the basis of themselves (recursively) partially due to my background in programming and so the title is not as appealing or clear, but bear with me.

In my understanding, I see that Occam's razor is the principle, most often used in the scientific setting to choose the least complex/simplest and most reasonable explanation that fits well within the realms of what is being observed, so my question goes along the lines of: Did William Occam in a way develop his reasoning for the principle of Occam's razor through a method or an intuition that made use of Occam's razor principle, I say this because to pick the simplest and most reasonable method is the simplest and reasonable method in and of itself, or am I wrong?

I am not entirely sure where I am going with this and I understand that my question might not result in an ulterior or significant implication, but are there any implications to my understanding of the formulation and development of Occam's razor.

In a different way, my question begs if the application of Occam's razor was inherent to the formulation of Occam's razor? Or was it not? Does applying the principle of the 'already existing' Occam's razor might not actually be the simplest yet most reasonable thing to do? Could using the principle Occam's razor in the realm of epistemology yield something even simpler and more reasonable i.e., "a razor sharper than Occam's razor (metaphorically speaking)" or does applying it result in Occam's razor exactly holding that Occam's razor is indeed the simplest and most reasonable principle that could be formulated or possibly conceived.

I guess in the simplest of terms, I am asking if the idea of Occam's razor supposes Kant's claim of transcendental deduction i.e., from my understanding of Kant's claim that intuition presupposes any logical thought, thus supposing it was an innate intuition of Occam's razor that led to the principle of Occam's razor?

If there is anything wrong you think I have said in previous lines, please correct me and give an explanation.

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    I think this is an interesting idea. I don't have any other thoughts about it yet.
    – TKoL
    Commented Mar 19 at 13:59
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    Occam's razor is only a rule of thumb... simple ideas and hypotheses are easy to manage compared to complex ones. There is no way to "prove" it.
    – Mauro ALLEGRANZA
    Commented Mar 19 at 15:18
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    Self-supporting systems or ideas have an inherent beauty, and in hindsight Occam's razor is kind of self-supporting. But I doubt that he thought about this reflectivity when he wrote his formulation of the principle. In computer science, creating self-supporting systems (such as compilers which can compile themselves) always requires some sort of "bootstrap" from some simpler system.
    – Hans-Martin Mosner
    Commented Mar 19 at 15:19
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    @how-why-e it's likely impossible what happened in the mind of someone who lived 700 years ago if they didn't write about their reasoning themselves. I'm not familiar with his writings so I don't know whether there is something to that effect.
    – Hans-Martin Mosner
    Commented Mar 19 at 15:37
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    But the "rule" is already in Aristotle; see An.Post, 86a34-86a36: "Let that demonstration be better which, other things being equal, depends on fewer postulates or suppositions or propositions. For if they are equally familiar, knowing will come about more quickly in this way; and that is preferable."
    – Mauro ALLEGRANZA
    Commented Mar 20 at 11:46

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It would depend on William Okham's process. Perhaps he used the principle to develop other ideas unconsciously, then whittled down a decision-making method and coining the term.

If he did that, then the development of Occam's razor was definitely an application of the same. If not, then not.

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