Mark Lilla has a wonderful little review at The New Republic on Brad S. Gregory’s Book, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. After discussing the relationship of ...

William of Ockham is the medieval philosopher who gave us what is perhaps the world’s only metaphysical knife. Raised by Franciscan friars and educated at Oxford in the late 13th century, he focused ...

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Robyn Williams: Well I hope you're having an excellent festive season, and we shall celebrate with this ...

At first glance, Lorenzo Valla has much in common with William of Ockham. Both see language as the key to an understanding of the world, criticizing realist ontologies which admit of various abstract ...

In his De primo et ultimo instantly Walter Burley paid careful attention to continuity, assuming that continua included and were limited by indivisibles such as instants, points, ubi (or places), ...

A new article argues that by relying too much on parsimony in modeling, scientists make mistakes and miss opportunities. Medieval friar William of Ockham posited a famous idea: always pick the ...

Once nominalism severs the sacred chain connecting all being to God, creation shrinks back from its Creator. Main picture: Sketch of William of Ockham labeled ‘frater Occham iste’. (From a manuscript ...

Seven hundred years ago in a commentary on a religious tract, William of Ockham, a Franciscan friar, wrote that “plurality must never be posited without necessity.” Such is Occam’s razor. A bit gnomic ...

Medieval friar William of Ockham posited a famous idea: always pick the simplest explanation. Often referred to as the parsimony principle, “Ockham’s razor” has shaped scientific decisions for ...