William of Ockam (1280?-1349?), born in Ockham, Surrey, England, was a Franciscan Friar of many accomplishments. Venerabilis Inceptor, Doctor Invincibilis, Ockam is considered the most important philosopher of this period. Scholars say he studied at Merton College, Oxford, possibly with John Duns Scotus (1265-1308) as teacher. Some say that he followed the lectures of Scotus at Paris. Ockam taught at Paris between the years 1320 and 1323, but quit his academic chair at Paris, to join opponents of the temporal power of the popes. Ockam was imprisoned at Avignon, but escaped in 1328, seeking refuge at the court of Louis of Bavaria, to whom he made the well-known promise: "Tu me defendas gladio, ego te defendam calamo (You defend me gladly, I defend you distressfully)."

Ockam's principal philosophical works are Super Quatuor Libros Sententiarum, Quodlibeta, Tractatus Logices, and Commentaries on Aristotle. Ockam also wrote several controversial works in support of the claims of the State against the Church. His Commentary on the Books of Sentences was published by Trechsel, at Lyons, in 1495. For bibliography and list of Ockam's controversial writings, cf. Potthast, Wegweiser, p. 871.

Ockam is sometimes crdited with renewal of nominalism, thesis that "universals" or "ideas shared by all" are only names, not realities. Perhaps more correctly his doctrine of universals is a modified conceptualism (universals only as concepts). In the Tractatus Logices Ockam declares that the universal is an intention of the mind. He maintains that propositions, not things, are the objects of scientific knowledge.

Ockam especially studied the logical doctrine of supposition as formulated in the Summulae of Petrus Hispanus. Ockam made distinction between the meaning of the word and the supposition of the term, attributing universality both to supposition and meaning. Although not professing the cruder form of nominalism, some consider him forerunner of the nominalists who appeared at the close of the fourth period of the history of Scholasticism.

In psychology, Ockam argued that, since the only reality is the individual, then the individual is the only object of knowledge, hence, no need of an intermediary species. Ockam said, knowledge occurs by immediate contact of subject and object, intuitively. But Ockam accepts a kind of knowledge which he calls abstractive, having nothing to do with really existing things. Since all knowledge of reality is intuitive, the active intellect is as useless as are the species. But Ockam preserves the terms active intellect and passive intellect to designate the active and passive phases of the activity of the mind. In his work, Intellectus agens et intellectus possibilis sunt omnino idem re et ratione. Ideo dico quod non est ponenda pluralitas sine necessitate is enunciated the principle known as the Law of Parcimony, or more commonly as "Ockam's razor: Don't multiply entities" -- that is, IF A SIMPLE EXPLANATION OR HYPOTHESIS DOES AS WELL AS A MORE COMPLICATED ONE, DECIDE UPON THE SIMPLE ONE. (Galileo used "Ockam's Razor" to defend "The Heliocentric Theory" against the Ptolomaic "Geocentric Theory", because it was SIMPLER. Many scientists since, including Albert Einstein, have appealed to this principles. ONLINE, in bonus1.htm , I derive Ockam[s Razor as a Theorem from my Asserbility Formula.)

Ockam argued that reason cannot demonstrate the immortality of the individual soul, so we must to accept these truths as matters of faith, a controversial position to The Church. Ockam does not deny the possibility of certainty. His scepticsm resides in the attempt to restrict the power of human reason. Besides relegating the immortality of the soul to the sphere of faith, his list of truths which human reason cannot prove includes existence, unity and infinity of God, and the immediate creation of the universe by God.

Siding with Duns Scotus, Ockam argues that right and wrong depend on the will of God, thereby questioning the necessity and immutability of the principles of morality. "Eo ipso quod voluntas divina hoc vult, ratio recta dictat quod est volendum." These principles suggested materialistic scepticism but Ockam maintained belief in the supernatural order of truth. Some scholars see William as Ockam as forerunner of the anti-Romanist philosophers of the Renaissance and the first Protestant. For, in an age holding theism and spiritualism as universally tenets, Ockam protested, in the name of human reason, that belief in God and in spirituality of the human soul has no foundation except in revelation.

Long before Galileo or Newton, William expressed the essentials of the physical concept of "inertia".

Long before 19th and 20th century nonstandard logic, Ockam sketched many-valued logic, now a special field of LOGIC.

Because the Franciscans advocated poverty for the Church and William advocated sharing power with The Vatican Council (a step adopted by Pope John VII in 1950), Pope Clement VI inclemently denounced William as a "heretic", put a bounty on his life, saying it would "be no sin to kill him". William of Ockam disappeared during THE BLACK PLAGUE, circa 1349-50.

It may interest the reader that the friar, William of Baskerville (played by Sean Connery), who solved the murders in the 1986 film, "The Name of the Rose", was modeled, by Emberto Eco, whose novel inspired the film, on William of Ockam.