Nominalism and Ockham's Razor

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the key role played by the philosophy of nominalism in instigating the European Renaissance and the particular role of its greatest proponent William of Ockham. It also draws parallels between the impasse reached by the medieval school of scholasticism, and the modern welter of specialized scholarship, both trends guilty of flouting the dictate of Ockham's razor that "multiplicity should not be posited without necessity".

From the Paper:

"Though derided in modern times as regressive, marking the stagnancy of the medieval period, Scholasticism was a study that pursued all great philosophical questions - reason vs. faith, will vs. intellect, the human's capacity to know God etc. It was carried out by monks and ecclesiasts, and very much confined by the rigorous discipline of the Catholic Church. Scholasticism indeed boasts such great names as Augustine, Boethius, Cassiodorus, Pseudo-Dionysius etc. But after a thousand years of such cloistered existence the discipline was sagging under the weight of meaningless abundance and convoluted pontificating. It is this state of affairs that the Renaissance swept aside to effect a new beginning. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Chesterton, G. K. Orthodoxy. London: The Bodley Head, 1934.
• Ockham, William. Ockham's Theory of Terms: Summa Logicae Pt. 1. Trans. Michael J. Loux. New ed. South Bend: St Augustine's Press, 1998.

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