biography
| name: |
William of Ockham or Occam
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| |
known as the Venerable Inceptor
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pronunciation:
[okam]
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (c.1285–c.1349)
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| biography:
| Scholastic philosopher, born in Ockham, Surrey, SE England, UK. He entered the Franciscan order, and studied theology at Oxford, but because of his controversial views he left technically still an ‘undergraduate’ - hence his nickname. Summoned to Avignon (1324) to respond to charges of heresy, he became involved in a dispute between the Franciscans and Pope John XXII over apostolic poverty. He fled to Bavaria in 1328, where he remained until 1347, writing treatises on papal versus civil authority. His best-known philosophical contributions are his successful defence of nominalism against realism, and his deployment in theology of the rule of ontological economy, ‘entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity’, so frequently and to such effect that it came to be known as Ockham's razor. |
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