Ockham

(born circa 1285, Ockham, Surrey?, Eng.—died 1347/49, Munich, Bavaria) English Franciscan philosopher, theologian, and political writer. A late Scholastic thinker, he is regarded as the founder of a form 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. He is also remembered as the originator of the medieval rule of logical economy known as Ockham's razor. He was excommunicated by Pope John XXII for his defense of the Franciscan notion of poverty and the rights of the empire against the papacy.

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(born circa 1285, Ockham, Surrey?, Eng.—died 1347/49, Munich, Bavaria) English Franciscan philosopher, theologian, and political writer. A late Scholastic thinker, he is regarded as the founder of a form 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. He is also remembered as the originator of the medieval rule of logical economy known as Ockham's razor. He was excommunicated by Pope John XXII for his defense of the Franciscan notion of poverty and the rights of the empire against the papacy.

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Methodological principle of parsimony in scientific explanation. Traditionally attributed to William of Ockham, the principle prescribes that entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. In practice, this means that if a phenomenon can be explained without assuming the existence of an entity, then philosophers and scientists should not assume the entity's existence. The history of science provides many examples of the principle's application (e.g., the rejection by scientists of the hypothesis of a luminiferous ether in response to Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity). Seealso materialism.

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• The philosopher William of Ockham; see also Occam's razor
• Ockham, Surrey, birthplace of William of Ockham
• The occam programming language
• OCCAM: Observatory for Cultural and Audiovisual Communication in the Mediterranean and in the World
• OCCAM: The Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NIH/NCI)