Ockham

Ockham or William of Occam (1285?-1349?), known as Doctor Invincibilis (Latin, “unconquerable doctor”) and Venerabilis Inceptor (Latin, “worthy initiator”), English philosopher and Scholastic theologian, who is considered the greatest exponent of the nominalist school, the leading rival of the Thomist and Scotist schools. See Nominalism; Scholasticism.

Ockham was born in Surrey, England. He entered the Franciscan order and studied and taught at the University of Oxford from 1309 to 1319. Denounced by Pope John XXII for dangerous teachings, he was held in house detention for four years (1324-1328) at the papal palace in Avignon, France, while the orthodoxy of his writings was examined. Siding with the Franciscan general against the pope in a dispute over Franciscan poverty, Ockham fled to Munich in 1328 to seek the protection of Louis IV, Holy Roman emperor, who had rejected papal authority over political matters. Excommunicated by the pope, Ockham wrote against the papacy and defended the emperor until the latter's death in 1347. The philosopher died in Munich, apparently of the plague, while seeking reconciliation with Pope Clement VI.

Ockham won fame as a rigorous logician who used logic to show that many beliefs of Christian philosophers (for example, that God is one, omnipotent, creator of all things; and that the human soul is immortal) could not be proved by philosophical or natural reason but only by divine revelation. His name is applied to the principle of economy in formal logic, known as Ockham's razor, which states that entities are not to be multiplied without necessity.