William of Ockham or Occam ( ; ;In manuscripts of Ockham's work his name is spelled in various ways, e.g. "Okan". On the title pages of the modern critical edition his name is taken to be Guillelmus de Ockham (in the genitive case, "Guillelmi de Ockham"). The stained-glass picture reproduced above is based on a drawing in a 1341 manuscript (reproduced below), OP, vol. 1, p.32*; it was made by a copyist who may never have seen Ockham. 9/10 April 1347) was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher and theologian. He is considered to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the centre of the major intellectual and political controversies of the 14th century.William J. Courtenay, "The Academic and Intellectual Worlds of Ockham", in P.V. Spade (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ockham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp.17-30. The nominalists of the fifteenth century regarded him as one of the founders of their movement. He is widely known for Occam's razor, the methodological principle that bears his name. He produced significant works on logic, physics and theology. Ockham is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration corresponding to the commonly ascribed date of his death on 10 April.
Life William of Ockham was probably born in Ockham, Surrey, around 1287. At an early age he became a member of the Franciscan Order (Order of Friars Minor) and received the first stages of his theological education in the Franciscan school in London. From some undetermined date until probably 1321 he studied in the Franciscan school in the University of Oxford.He has long been claimed as a Merton alumnus, but there is no contemporary evidence to support this claim and as a Franciscan, he would have been ineligible for fellowships at Merton (see G. H. Martin and J. R. L. Highfield, A History of Merton College, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 53). The claim that he was a pupil of Duns Scotus at Oxford is also disputed (see Philip Hughes, History of the Church: Volume 3: The Revolt Against The Church: Aquinas To Luther, Sheed and Ward, 1979, p. 119 n. 2).During that time (1312–1317) Henry Harclay was the Chancellor of Oxford and it is believed that Ockham was his pupil (see John Marenbon (ed.), Medieval Philosophy, Routledge, 2003, p. 329). Although he completed all the requirements for a master's degree in theology, he never was a regent master. Because of this he was later called the . (An was someone recognized by the university as qualified to begin ("incept") as a regent master.)
A scholar seeking to become a Master of Theology was required to give lectures on Peter Lombard's Sentences.On studies in theology in Oxford see William J. Courtenay, "Theology and Theologians from Ockham to Wyclif", in The History of the University of Oxford: Volume II, J.I. Catto (ed.) and T.A.R. Evans (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 1-34. These lectures (which were usually in the form of disputed questions) were often copied and circulated, and a "Commentary on the Sentences" was often a theologian's main publication.Olson, Roger E. (1999). The Story of Christian Theology, p. 350. Ockham's disputations on the Sentences were held probably in the years 1317-1319. His Sentences commentary has been edited in his Opera Theologica.
After qualifying for the Mastership, Ockham was sent by his Order to one of its schools, probably the school in London where he had previously been a student. Most of the works he produced during this time were philosophical, rather than theological. They included commentaries on several logical treatises of Aristotle, a commentary on Aristotle's Physics, and a Summary of Logic. His output during this time was prodigious. The works Ockham produced during this period have been edited in his Opera Philosophica.
His teaching work was interrupted in 1324 by a summons to the papal court, at that time located in Avignon, to defend his Sentences commentary. (An alternative hypothesis, recently proposed by George Knysh, is that he was initially appointed in Avignon as a professor of philosophy in the Franciscan school there, and that his disciplinary difficulties did not begin until 1327.) The Pope, Pope John XXII, directed former Oxford chancellor John Lutterell, who had come to Avignon looking for advancement, to prepare a collection of suspect passages from Ockham's Sentences commentary, and a committee of theologians was appointed to review them. The committee's preliminary reports were critical, but the process was never brought to a conclusion.
While he was in Avignon, Ockham became involved in the dispute about Apostolic poverty. The Rule of Saint Francis commanded members of the Order to practice the poverty of Jesus and his apostles, who, the Franciscans maintained, owned nothing either individually or "in common" (i.e. as a group). In several papal bulls or "constitutions" Pope John rejected the Franciscan doctrine and practice. In Ad conditorem canonem John argued that no-one could justly consume (i.e. destroy by use) something owned by someone else (for example, food, clothing), so that provision of consumables was a transfer of ownership. He also argued that it was not possible to transfer durables to another person's use permanently without thereby transferring ownership. In Cum inter nonnullos John condemned as heresy the statement that Christ and the Apostles did not have anything individually or as a group. The Minister General (head) of the Franciscan order, Michael of Cesena, asked Ockham to study the pope's bulls. Ockham found in them "a great many things that were heretical, erroneous... adverse to orthodox faith". Together with Michael, Bonagratia of Bergamo, Francis of Marchia and perhaps other members of the Order, Ockham secretly left Avignon on 26 May 1328. The dissident Franciscans eventually took refuge in Munich, under the protection of the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV of Bavaria, who was also engaged in a dispute with Pope John over the question whether he ought to have obtained the Pope's approval to become Emperor. On June 6, 1328, Ockham and the other dissidents were excommunicated for leaving Avignon without permission.
Most members of the Franciscan Order submitted to the decrees of Pope John. Ockham and other members of the small band of dissident Franciscans in Munich (the "Michaelists") campaigned for years to get John XXII and his successors Benedict XII and Clement VI deposed from the papacy. The writings Ockham published during those years are often called his "political writings" (Opera Politica), because they deal with many matters relevant to political philosophy. After he left Avignon Ockham seems to have written nothing more on the topics of his academic work in England. William of Ockham died probably on either 9 or 10 April 1347 (just before the outbreak in Munich of the Black Death).
Philosophical thought
Ockham incorporated much of the work of some previous theologians, especially Duns Scotus. From Scotus Ockham derived his view of divine omnipotence, his view of grace and justification, much of his epistemology and ethics.Lucan Freeport, Basis of Morality According to William Ockham, , Franciscan Herald Press, 1988. He disagreed with Scotus about predestination, penance, universals, and the formal distinction ("on the part of the thing") in creatures.
Faith and reason William of Ockham held that theology is not a science. "Only faith gives us access to theological truths. The ways of God are not open to reason, for God has freely chosen to create a world and establish a way of salvation within it apart from any necessary laws that human logic or rationality can uncover."Dale T. Irvin and Scott W. Sunquist. History of World Christian Movement Volume I: Earliest Christianity to 1453, p. 434. Science includes empirical knowledge and conclusions demonstrated from self-evident premises.Maurer, The Philosophy of William of Ockham, pp.135-6.
Nominalism As noted above, fifteenth-century nominalists regarded Ockham as one of the founders of their movement. Some modern scholars think that it would be better to call his position "terminism" or "conceptualism" rather than "nominalism", because in Ockham's view individuals are not only names (understood as spoken words) but also concepts, which occur as "terms" in a statement (spoken, written or thought). Universals (e.g. "human being") are individuals -- sounds in the air, inscriptions on paper or other surfaces, or concepts (mental pictures or mental acts) -- that signify or stand for other individuals (e.g. Socrates, Plato, Joe Blow). A universal can stand for many things because those things are similar to one another. Ockham did not hold that resemblances are imposed by the human mind: really, i.e. truly, apart from human thinking, some things resemble some other things.Maurer, The Philosophy of William of Ockham, pp. 62-4, 84-7, 48.
Efficient reasoning One important contribution that he made to modern science and modern intellectual culture was efficient reasoning with the principle of parsimony in explanation and theory building that came to be known as Occam's razor. This maxim, as interpreted by Bertrand Russell, states that if one can explain a phenomenon without assuming this or that hypothetical entity, there is no ground for assuming it, i.e. that one should always opt for an explanation in terms of the fewest possible causes, factors, or variables. He turned this into a concern for ontological parsimony; the principle says that one should not multiply entities beyond necessity——although this well-known formulation of the principle is not to be found in any of Ockham's extant writings. He formulates it as: "For nothing ought to be posited without a reason given, unless it is self-evident (literally, known through itself) or known by experience or proved by the authority of Sacred Scripture."Spade, Paul Vincent (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Ockham. Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 104. For William of Ockham, the only truly necessary entity is God; everything else is contingent. He thus does not accept the principle of sufficient reason, rejects the distinction between essence and existence, and opposes the Thomistic doctrine of active and passive intellect. His scepticism to which his ontological parsimony request leads appears in his doctrine that human reason can prove neither the immortality of the soul; nor the existence, unity, and infinity of God. These truths, he teaches, are known to us by revelation alone.
Natural philosophy Ockham wrote a great deal on natural philosophy, including a long commentary on Aristotle's Physics.André Goddu, The Physics of William of Ockham, , Brill Academic Pub., 1984. According to the principle of ontological parsimony, he holds that we do not need to allow entities in all ten of Aristotle's categories; we thus do not need the category of quantity, as the mathematical entities are not "real". Mathematics must be applied to other categories, such as the categories of substance or qualities, thus anticipating modern scientific renaissance while violating Aristotelian prohibition of metabasis.
Theory of knowledge In the theory of knowledge, Ockham rejected the scholastic theory of species, as unnecessary and not supported by experience, in favour of a theory of abstraction. This was an important development in late medieval epistemology. He also distinguished between intuitive and abstract cognition; intuitive cognition depends on the existence or non-existence of the object, whereas abstractive cognition "abstracts" the object from the existence predicate. Interpreters are, as yet, undecided about the roles of these two types of cognitive activities.
Political theory