William of Ockham

(c. 1285–1347)

   Philosopher and Polemicist.

   William was born in Surrey. A member of the Franciscan Order, he studied and taught at the University of Oxford. In 1323 he was summoned to Avignon to ans wer charges of heresy before Pope John XXII and five years later he was compelled to flee from the Papal Court. From then on he lived under the protection of Louis of Bavaria and was probably never reconciled to the Church. He was the author of a variety of theological texts and several polemics against the Papacy. Today he is remembered for ‘Ockham’s razor’ – the principle of economy that demands that entities should not be posited unnecessarily. He also insisted that universals have no separate existence and there are only individual examples in reality. He believed that knowledge can only be derived from experience and therefore he argued that the existence of God is a matter of faith and cannot be proved from first principles. Thus he undermined the whole basis of scholasticism and his concentration on individual examples rather than universal ideas paved the way for modern scientific investigation.

   M.M. Adams, William Ockham, 2 vols (1987);

   M.H. Carre, Realists and Nominalists (1946).