The Cambridge Companion to Ockham


Book Description

Offers a full discussion of all significant aspects of this medieval philosopher's thought.




Ockham's Nominalism


Book Description

"William of Ockham is a towering figure in the history of philosophy and he is commonly seen as the most important nominalist thinker of the Middle Ages. His nominalism basically consists in three theses: there are no universals in the external world, no relations either, and no quantities considered as distinct entities. This book provides an introduction to Ockham's defence of these positions and to what they amount to in metaphysics, semantics, and epistemology. It thus displays the outlines of a rich and carefully crafted nominalist system that is still of great philosophical interest today. All along in so doing, it situates Ockham's thought with respect to several salient contemporary debates in philosophy"--




Ockham and Ockhamism


Book Description

Against the background of changing assessments of Nominalism and its meanings before Ockham, this book examines the reception of Ockhama (TM)s thought at Oxford and Paris, the crisis over Ockhamism at Paris around 1340, and the legacy of Ockhamist thought into the sixteenth century.




Ockham Explained


Book Description

Ockham Explained is an important and much-needed resource on William of Ockham, one of the most important philosophers of the Middle Ages. His eventful and controversial life was marked by sharp career moves and academic and ecclesiastical battles. At 28, Ockham was a conservative English theologian focused obsessively on the nature of language, but by 40, he had transformed into a fugitive friar, accused of heresy, and finally protected by the German emperor as he composed incendiary treatises calling for strong limits on papal authority. This book provides a thorough grounding in Ockham's life and his many contributions to philosophy. It begins with an overview of the philosopher's youth and the Aristotelian philosophy he studied as a boy. Subsequent chapters cover his ideas on language and logic; his metaphysics and vaunted "razor," as well as his opponents' "anti-razor" theories; his invention of the church-state separation; and much more. The concluding chapter sums up Ockham's compelling philosophical personality and explains his modern appeal.




Ockham's Razors


Book Description

Ockham's razor, the principle of parsimony, states that simpler theories are better than theories that are more complex. It has a history dating back to Aristotle and it plays an important role in current physics, biology, and psychology. The razor also gets used outside of science - in everyday life and in philosophy. This book evaluates the principle and discusses its many applications. Fascinating examples from different domains provide a rich basis for contemplating the principle's promises and perils. It is obvious that simpler theories are beautiful and easy to understand; the hard problem is to figure out why the simplicity of a theory should be relevant to saying what the world is like. In this book, the ABCs of probability theory are succinctly developed and put to work to describe two 'parsimony paradigms' within which this problem can be solved.




Nominalism about Properties


Book Description

Nominalism, which has its origins in the Middle Ages and continues into the Twenty-First Century, is the doctrine that there are no universals. This book is unique in bringing together essays on the history of nominalism and essays that present a systematic discussion of nominalism. It introduces the reader to the distinction between particulars and universals, to the difficulties posed by this distinction, and to the main motivations for the rejection of universals. It also describes the main varieties of nominalism about properties and provides tools to understand how they developed in the history of Western Philosophy. All essays are new and are written by experts on the topic, and they advance the discussion about nominalism to a new level.




Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism


Book Description

Charles Peirce, the founder of pragmatism, was a thinker of extraordinary depth and range - he wrote on philosophy, mathematics, psychology, physics, logic, phenomenology, semiotics, religion and ethics - but his writings are difficult and fragmentary. This book provides a clear and comprehensive explanation of Peirce's thought. His philosophy is presented as a systematic response to 'nominalism', the philosophy which he most despised and which he regarded as the underpinning of the dominant philosophical worldview of his time. The book explains Peirce's challenge to nominalism as a theory of meaning and shows its implications for his views of knowledge, truth, the nature of reality, and ethics. It will be essential reading both for Peirce scholars and for those new to his work.




The Theological Origins of Modernity


Book Description

Taking as his starting point the collapse of the medieval world, Gillespie argues that from the very beginning moderns sought not to eliminate religion but to support a new view of religion and its place in human life- and that they did so not out of hostility but in order to sustain certain religious beliefs. He goes on to explore the ideas of such figures as William of Ockham, Petrarch, Erasmus, Luther, Descartes, and Hobbes, showing that modernity is best understood as the result of a series of attempts to formulate a new and coherent metaphysics or theology.




William of Ockham: Questions on Virtue, Goodness, and the Will


Book Description

A collection of the influential ethical writings of medieval philosopher William of Ockham, published in English for the first time.




Ockham's Theory of Terms


Book Description

William of Ockham, the most prestigious philosopher of the fourteenth century, was a late Scholastic thinker who is regarded as the founder of Nominalism, the school of thought that denies that universals have any reality apart from the individual things signified by the universal or general term. Ockham's Summa Logicae was intended as a basic text in philosophy, but it's originality and scope encompass his whole system of philosophy. Yet the paucity of English translations and the structural complexity of the Latin have made the Summa, until now, almost completely inaccessible. Here Michael Loux has translated the first part of the Summa, one of the most original and influential medieval texts in logic. Preceding the translation are two essys: The first focuses on Ockham's ontology; the second deals with his theory of supposition. They are meant to introduce the reader to the central themes of Part I of the Summa, but, while introductory, these essays incorporate a controversial interpretation of Ockham which is intended to suggest a continuity between his philosophy and the work of contemporary analytic philosophy. Book jacket.