OCCAM'S RAZOR

William of Occam (Ockham) (1285-1349) is the second Englishman so far (after Roger Bacon), whom we are encountering in the ongoing chronological procession of major philosophers (soon to be followed by a third one, John Wycliffe). He is also one of the most important scholastics, although not as well-known as St. Thomas Aquinas. He was also a Franciscan monk in the tradition of Duns Scotus, by whose teachings he was much influenced, but with whom he still had serious differences. He studied theology at Oxford, but supposedly never completed his undergraduate master’s course, although later he would become known as Doctor Invincibilis, perhaps, for taking on Pope John XXII himself, whom he had accused of heresy. The contention with the Pope was over the Franciscan concept of poverty, which Occam upheld, but the Pope dismissed, as well as over a host of other issues. Excommunicated by the Pope, and exiled, he was promptly rehabilitated ten years after his death by Pope Innocent VI.

Bertrand Russell gives a marked prominence to Occam in his History of Western Philosophy. In his overall assessment of Occam’s place in the history of philosophy, he agrees with Ernest Addison Moody (a notable American philosopher-medievalist, 1903-1975, cited opus, The Logic of William of Occam [1935], revised in 1965), in the following remark:

“There is a tendency in writers on history of philosophy to interpret men in the light of their successors, but this is generally a mistake. Occam has been regarded as bringing about the breakdown of scholasticism, as a precursor of Dèscartes, or Kant, or whoever may be the particular commentator’s favorite among modern philosophers. According to Moody, with whom I agree, all this is a mistake. Occam, he holds, was mainly concerned to restore a pure Aristotle, freed from Augustinian and Arabic influences. This has also been, to a considerable extent, the aim of St. Thomas, but the Franciscans, as we have seen, had continued to follow Augustine much more closely than he did. The interpretation of Occam by modern historians, according to Moody, has been vitiated by the desire to find a gradual transition from scholastic to modern philosophy; this has caused people to read modern doctrines into him, when in fact he is only interpreting Aristotle.”

Occam’s most famous (relatively speaking, of course, as very few people outside the circle interested in the medieval philosophy know anything about him, anyway!) logico-philosophical accomplishment is known as Occam’s razor. In its most common form it states that the explanation of any phenomenon should take the fewest number of simplest assumptions, and those assumptions which are not absolutely necessary are to be eliminated. In Latin, this general principle reads: entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. Ironically, it is not contained in this form in any of Occam’s known works, where we find this idea stated slightly differently: Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora. (It is in error to do with more what can be done with fewer.) It is probably within the framework of this logical connection that Occam rejects all ontological and other proofs of God’s existence, unity, or infinity. In fact, he rejects all natural theology as such, stating that even perfect reason cannot satisfy faith, which is always superior to reason, even when it is irrational. As we can see in the logical outcome of Occam’s razor, if faith is sufficient in all matters of theology, reason here becomes superfluous, irrelevant, and, therefore, illegitimate, and must be dismissed altogether.

And finally, in Occam’s nominalistic logic we see another important application of his razor, as he rejects the view of universals as some sort of entity thought by the mind:

“But what in the soul is this thing which is a sign? It must be said that with regard to this, there are various opinions. For, some say that it is nothing but a certain fiction, produced by the soul. Others say that it is a certain quality existing subjectively in the soul, distinct from the act of understanding. Others say that it is the act of understanding. And in favor of these it has to be said: what can be explained on fewer principles is explained needlessly by more. Everything, however, that is explained by positing something distinct from the act of understanding, can be explained without positing such a distinct thing, for to stand for something and to signify something can belong just as well to the act of understanding, as to this fictive entity. Ergo, one ought not to posit anything else beyond the act of understanding.”

In my personal view, Occam’s razor is one of the most interesting and intellectually challenging tools that philosophy has acquired from anyone throughout all history. The razor has proved itself capable of producing great scientific and philosophical breakthroughs, as well as becoming an impediment to progress, but such is the fate of every tool, including the very best: they can be well used or badly abused at people’s will, and their application for the better or for the worse has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of the tool itself. It must be admitted, though, that all inventors of useful tools are to be honored in their own right, and this case is no exception. William of Occam wasn’t just one of the scholastic philosophers (in which capacity he has been obscured by Thomas Aquinas’s shadow), but the original creator of a valuable philosophical tool, for which achievement his major role in the history of philosophy cannot be too much overstated.