William of Ockham
MedievalAs Your Guide
“Ockham will cut away every unnecessary layer of your identity until only what is real and particular remains. His razor demands that your soul earn its complexity. Choose him if you want a guide who values simplicity as a form of honesty.”
Who They Were
Franciscan friar known for nominalism and methodological principle of parsimony.
How They Saw the World
Ockham takes a razor to the bloated metaphysics of his predecessors and insists that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Universals do not exist in some Platonic heaven — only individual things exist, and 'humanity' is merely a name we apply to a collection of particular humans. God's power is absolute and unconstrained by any rational order we might wish to impose on it, which means theology and philosophy must finally go their separate ways. His parsimony is not mere tidiness but a revolutionary demand that explanations earn their complexity, an instinct that will eventually flower into the scientific method.
What They Left Behind
Words that outlived their authors.
What Haunts Them
These are the questions that wouldn't let them rest.
Their Echo
What they left rippling through everyone who came after.
Scientific method, empiricism, political theory of consent