Knowra William of Ockham William of Ockham William of Ockham was a fourteenth-century English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher. He defended nominalism and argued that explanations should not multiply entities beyond necessity.
Scholasticism : A medieval intellectual tradition that used rigorous argument to reconcile inherited authorities, especially Christian theology and ancient philosophy. Ockham worked within scholastic methods while challenging conclusions defended by major scholastic thinkers.
Occam's razor : A principle advising against positing more entities or assumptions than an explanation requires. The principle later associated with Ockham expresses a theme in his preference for ontological economy.
University of Oxford : A historic English university whose medieval schools shaped theology, philosophy, and natural science. Ockham studied and taught in Oxford’s scholastic environment before his later political controversies.
Ockhamism : A movement of late medieval thought that developed or adapted positions associated with William of Ockham. Later thinkers turned Ockham’s logical and philosophical positions into a broader school of debate.
Thomas Aquinas : A medieval Dominican theologian and philosopher who integrated Aristotelian philosophy with Christian doctrine. Aquinas’s realist account of universals contrasts with Ockham’s rejection of universals as independent entities.
Universals : General concepts, such as humanity or redness, that can be predicated of multiple individual things. Whether universals exist independently of individual things was central to Ockham’s dispute with realism.
Mental language : A system of mental concepts that, in medieval theories, structures thought and signifies things. Ockham treated mental terms as signs underlying spoken and written language.
Franciscan Order : A Catholic religious order founded by Francis of Assisi, emphasizing poverty and itinerant preaching. Ockham’s commitment to Franciscan poverty became entangled with his conflict over papal authority.
Marsilius of Padua : A medieval political thinker who argued that secular authority, rather than the pope, should govern the church. Marsilius shared the political setting in which Ockham challenged expansive claims of papal authority.
Walter Burley : An English scholastic philosopher known for defending realism about universals. Burley directly opposed nominalist claims associated with Ockham in debates over universals.
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