Encyclopedia > William of Ockham

  Article Content

William of Ockham

William of Ockham (ca. 1285-1349) was a Franciscan friar and philosopher, in Ockham (near Ripley, Surrey), England. William devoted to a life to extreme poverty and minimalism. A pioneer of nominalism, some consider him the father of modern epistemology.

Dave Beckett of the University of Kent at Canterbury writes:

"The medieval rule of parsimony, or principle of economy, frequently used by Ockham came to be known as Ockham's razor." [1] (http://wotug.ukc.ac.uk/parallel/www/occam/occam-bio)

Summoned to Avignon by Pope John XXII, William fled on May 26, 1328 and sought the the protection of Emperor Louis IV in Bavaria. [2] (http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Ockham) After criticizing the pope, he may have been excommunicated, although historical sources vary.

Famous Works:

Sum of Logic

External links



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Rameses

... is a disambiguation page; that is, one that just points to other pages that might otherwise have the same name. If you followed a link here, you might want to go back ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 41.4 ms