William of Ockham

William of Ockham or William of Occam (14th cent.). Christian philosopher. He studied at Oxford but, since he did not complete his master's degree, he remained an inceptor, hence his nickname, Inceptor Venerabilis. He began to write logic and commentaries, especially on Aristotle's Physics. Here he argued against prevalent views which allowed the intellect to constitute individuals as universals, never perceiving them directly as such, but knowing them to be so by reflection. To Ockham, individuals alone are real, as they are and as they can be observed; and what can be known is the individual, not some unperceivable universal. In this insistence on observation, he has been regarded as the forerunner of Bacon, Newton, and Descartes. His name has been given to the principle of ontological economy (popularly known as ‘Occam's razor’), entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (‘entities ought not to be multiplied beyond necessity’), i.e. that in accounting for phenomena, one should not posit more (especially by way of cause or reality) than is necessary to give a satisfactory or true explanation; and as such it might seem to call in question the propriety of invoking God to account for anything. The principle is derived from Aristotle, and is referred to by Grosseteste as lex parsimoniae, but the words do not occur in the surviving works of Ockham.