WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.779 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are opening 00:00:02.779 --> 00:00:05.799 up a file that, on the surface, looks like it 00:00:05.799 --> 00:00:08.179 belongs in the dusty, restricted section of a 00:00:08.179 --> 00:00:10.300 medieval library. For sure. The kind of place 00:00:10.300 --> 00:00:12.279 where you need special gloves just to turn the 00:00:12.279 --> 00:00:14.740 page. Exactly. But once you actually start reading 00:00:14.740 --> 00:00:16.899 the source material we have for today, you realize 00:00:16.899 --> 00:00:20.480 it's actually a political thriller. It is. Yeah. 00:00:20.620 --> 00:00:22.780 Mixed with a revolution in how human beings think. 00:00:22.899 --> 00:00:26.420 We are talking about a figure who is probably 00:00:26.420 --> 00:00:29.379 responsible for the most famous catchphrase in 00:00:29.379 --> 00:00:31.960 the history of logic, and yet his life reads 00:00:31.960 --> 00:00:34.140 more like an action movie than a philosophy textbook. 00:00:34.619 --> 00:00:36.859 Yeah, a lot more. We are talking about William 00:00:36.859 --> 00:00:40.359 of Ockham. And Ockham's razor. We have all heard 00:00:40.359 --> 00:00:42.840 it. Keep it simple. The simplest explanation 00:00:42.840 --> 00:00:45.700 is usually the right one. All those variations. 00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:48.100 You hear it in boardrooms. You hear it in science 00:00:48.100 --> 00:00:50.979 labs. You hear it on detective shows like CSI. 00:00:51.060 --> 00:00:54.219 It's everywhere. But what struck me going through 00:00:54.219 --> 00:00:56.920 the stack of research we have here is that almost 00:00:56.920 --> 00:01:00.759 nobody knows the man holding the razor. And the 00:01:00.759 --> 00:01:03.700 man behind it, William of Ockham, wasn't just 00:01:03.700 --> 00:01:06.140 sitting in a monastery trimming hedges or, you 00:01:06.140 --> 00:01:08.409 know, contemplating flowers. Far from it. This 00:01:08.409 --> 00:01:10.609 guy was a fugitive. He was a radical. He spent 00:01:10.609 --> 00:01:13.290 the prime of his life excommunicated, literally 00:01:13.290 --> 00:01:16.170 on the run from the Pope. hiding out with emperors 00:01:16.170 --> 00:01:18.790 and dismantling the entire intellectual structure 00:01:18.790 --> 00:01:20.590 of the Middle Ages while he was at it. It is 00:01:20.590 --> 00:01:23.010 a massive story. And to understand him, you have 00:01:23.010 --> 00:01:25.730 to understand the world he was living in. We're 00:01:25.730 --> 00:01:27.930 talking about the early 14th century. Yeah, and 00:01:27.930 --> 00:01:29.790 it's a world that feels like it's coming apart 00:01:29.790 --> 00:01:32.370 at the seams. You have the Black Death looming 00:01:32.370 --> 00:01:35.030 on the horizon. The Hundred Years' War is brewing 00:01:35.030 --> 00:01:37.250 between England and France. And the Catholic 00:01:37.250 --> 00:01:39.849 Church, the glue holding Europe together, is 00:01:39.849 --> 00:01:41.909 tearing itself apart from the inside. It really 00:01:41.909 --> 00:01:44.810 is. The papacy has moved from Rome. to Avignon 00:01:44.810 --> 00:01:48.209 in France, and it's seen as corrupt and politically 00:01:48.209 --> 00:01:50.950 compromised. And right in the center of all this 00:01:50.950 --> 00:01:53.370 chaos, holding a stick of dynamite, is William. 00:01:53.670 --> 00:01:56.269 So our mission today is to find the man behind 00:01:56.269 --> 00:01:58.750 the maxim. We want to unpack his life, figure 00:01:58.750 --> 00:02:01.750 out why he's called the venerable beginner. Which 00:02:01.750 --> 00:02:03.629 is a very strange nickname we absolutely have 00:02:03.629 --> 00:02:06.209 to get to. We will, and understand his complex 00:02:06.209 --> 00:02:08.789 philosophy called nominalism. And we're going 00:02:08.789 --> 00:02:10.870 to see how that philosophy, believe it or not, 00:02:11.150 --> 00:02:14.770 paved the way for modern science and even the 00:02:14.770 --> 00:02:16.650 separation of church and state. So let's set 00:02:16.650 --> 00:02:18.650 the scene. We aren't in a university lecture 00:02:18.650 --> 00:02:21.889 hall yet. We are in a tiny village in Surrey, 00:02:21.909 --> 00:02:25.370 England in the late 1200s. That's right, Ockham. 00:02:25.610 --> 00:02:28.110 It's a small place. William is born there around 00:02:28.110 --> 00:02:31.370 1287. Now, looking at the demographics of the 00:02:31.370 --> 00:02:33.509 time, if you were a bright kid from a village 00:02:33.509 --> 00:02:35.590 like that and you didn't have a title or a family 00:02:35.590 --> 00:02:37.889 crest, there was really only one path out of 00:02:37.889 --> 00:02:40.629 obscurity. The church. The church. specifically 00:02:40.629 --> 00:02:43.590 for William, the Franciscans, the Order of Friars 00:02:43.590 --> 00:02:45.590 Minor. Also known as the Grey Friars because 00:02:45.590 --> 00:02:49.800 of their robes. Exactly. And this choice... Becoming 00:02:49.800 --> 00:02:52.259 a Franciscan isn't just a career move for William. 00:02:52.400 --> 00:02:54.759 It's not like choosing a college major. It defines 00:02:54.759 --> 00:02:56.620 everything that happens to him later. Because 00:02:56.620 --> 00:02:58.919 the Franciscans aren't just your average monks, 00:02:59.080 --> 00:03:01.620 right? They had a very specific brand. Oh, they 00:03:01.620 --> 00:03:04.060 were the radicals of their day. Their whole identity 00:03:04.060 --> 00:03:07.300 was built on the idea of absolute poverty. They 00:03:07.300 --> 00:03:09.340 were trying to live exactly like Christ and the 00:03:09.340 --> 00:03:12.479 apostles. Which meant Owning nothing. Absolutely 00:03:12.479 --> 00:03:14.439 nothing. They didn't just talk about being humble. 00:03:14.560 --> 00:03:17.439 They aggressively rejected property and wealth, 00:03:17.599 --> 00:03:20.400 both individually and as an order. Which sounds 00:03:20.400 --> 00:03:23.060 noble, but as we'll see, poverty turns out to 00:03:23.060 --> 00:03:25.419 be a very dangerous political stance in the 14th 00:03:25.419 --> 00:03:28.020 century. A politically explosive stance. But 00:03:28.020 --> 00:03:30.159 before the politics, he has to get educated. 00:03:30.419 --> 00:03:33.259 The sources say he heads to London first for 00:03:33.259 --> 00:03:35.699 his early schooling, and then around 1309, he 00:03:35.699 --> 00:03:38.280 goes to the big leagues. Oxford. The University 00:03:38.280 --> 00:03:40.659 of Oxford. The intellectual heartbeat of England. 00:03:40.919 --> 00:03:43.180 For sure. He spends over a decade there studying 00:03:43.180 --> 00:03:46.039 theology. This is the place where the smartest 00:03:46.039 --> 00:03:48.560 minds in Christendom came to debate the nature 00:03:48.560 --> 00:03:52.500 of God, reality, logic, everything. And this 00:03:52.500 --> 00:03:54.379 is where we run into his first major contradiction. 00:03:55.240 --> 00:03:57.780 He earns a nickname that has stuck with him for 00:03:57.780 --> 00:04:02.159 700 years. Venerabilis inceptor. The venerable 00:04:02.159 --> 00:04:06.639 beginner. Now I have to ask, is that shade? It 00:04:06.639 --> 00:04:08.780 sounds like calling someone a distinguished amateur 00:04:08.780 --> 00:04:12.479 or the perpetual student. It does sound a bit 00:04:12.479 --> 00:04:14.740 backhanded, doesn't it? But it's actually a technical 00:04:14.740 --> 00:04:16.939 term that tells us a lot about his situation. 00:04:17.199 --> 00:04:19.360 Okay, break it down for me. In the medieval university 00:04:19.360 --> 00:04:23.500 system, to become a regent master, which is basically 00:04:23.500 --> 00:04:26.680 a tenured professor with the full authority to 00:04:26.680 --> 00:04:29.759 teach you. You had to jump through an incredible 00:04:29.759 --> 00:04:32.459 number of hoops. So it was a long process. Very 00:04:32.459 --> 00:04:35.300 long. You had to attend lectures for years, participate 00:04:35.300 --> 00:04:38.000 in public disputations, and lecture on the Bible 00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:40.779 yourself. William did all of that. He finished 00:04:40.779 --> 00:04:42.779 all the requirements for a master's degree in 00:04:42.779 --> 00:04:44.980 theology. So he did the work, but he didn't get 00:04:44.980 --> 00:04:47.220 the job. He never got the chair. He remained 00:04:47.220 --> 00:04:49.600 an inceptor, someone at the beginning or the 00:04:49.600 --> 00:04:52.420 threshold of their mastership. So in title, he 00:04:52.420 --> 00:04:54.980 was a beginner. But why? If he did all the work, 00:04:55.060 --> 00:04:56.939 was it politics? Was he just not good enough? 00:04:57.370 --> 00:05:00.089 Oh, he was too good. That was the problem. He 00:05:00.089 --> 00:05:03.329 was too smart, and his ideas were too dangerous 00:05:03.329 --> 00:05:05.689 for the establishment. And this all came to a 00:05:05.689 --> 00:05:09.230 head over a textbook, of all things. Yes. The 00:05:09.230 --> 00:05:11.949 standard requirement for an aspiring theologian 00:05:11.949 --> 00:05:15.069 was to write a commentary on a book called The 00:05:15.069 --> 00:05:18.069 Sentences by Peter Lombard. Okay, let's pause 00:05:18.069 --> 00:05:19.750 on The Sentences. I kept seeing this in the notes. 00:05:19.970 --> 00:05:22.970 What exactly is this book? It sounds incredibly 00:05:22.970 --> 00:05:24.970 important. It was the textbook of the Middle 00:05:24.970 --> 00:05:29.009 Ages. Think of it as a massive four -volume collection 00:05:29.009 --> 00:05:32.069 of opinions from the church fathers Augustine, 00:05:32.069 --> 00:05:35.610 Jerome, all the greats on every theological topic 00:05:35.610 --> 00:05:39.550 imaginable. The Trinity, creation, sin, the sacraments. 00:05:39.589 --> 00:05:41.649 So it was like a master anthology of Christian 00:05:41.649 --> 00:05:44.110 thought. Exactly. And if you wanted to prove 00:05:44.110 --> 00:05:46.069 you were ready to teach, you had to write a massive 00:05:46.069 --> 00:05:48.170 analysis of this book. It was your PhD thesis, 00:05:48.329 --> 00:05:50.930 your bar exam, and your first book deal all rolled 00:05:50.930 --> 00:05:53.670 into one. Everyone who was anyone did it. Thomas 00:05:53.670 --> 00:05:56.490 Aquinas did it. Bonaventure did it. Duns Scotus 00:05:56.490 --> 00:05:58.389 did it. It was the rite of passage. And William 00:05:58.389 --> 00:06:01.870 did it. He did. But when he handed in his commentary, 00:06:02.129 --> 00:06:07.790 the reaction wasn't applause. It was shock and 00:06:07.790 --> 00:06:10.769 horror in some corners. Why? What did he say? 00:06:11.069 --> 00:06:13.629 You have to remember, the dominant intellectual 00:06:13.629 --> 00:06:17.350 vibe at Oxford was this heavy, complex synthesis 00:06:17.350 --> 00:06:20.639 of faith and reason. They were trying to build 00:06:20.639 --> 00:06:23.399 a perfect logical system where Greek philosophy, 00:06:23.579 --> 00:06:26.459 especially Aristotle, proved Catholic theology. 00:06:26.759 --> 00:06:30.120 A grand, unified theory of everything. Precisely. 00:06:30.120 --> 00:06:32.540 And Williams' commentary took a sledgehammer 00:06:32.540 --> 00:06:35.240 to that entire project. He was arguing for a 00:06:35.240 --> 00:06:37.459 much simpler, more direct way of thinking. He 00:06:37.459 --> 00:06:39.800 was criticizing the old guard. So he's the grad 00:06:39.800 --> 00:06:41.639 student who writes a thesis saying everything 00:06:41.639 --> 00:06:43.819 you professors are teaching is wrong. Pretty 00:06:43.819 --> 00:06:46.019 much. He was tearing down the arguments of men 00:06:46.019 --> 00:06:48.420 like Duns Scotus, who was an absolute legend 00:06:48.420 --> 00:06:50.800 at Oxford. He was seen as the subtle doctor, 00:06:50.920 --> 00:06:53.279 this master of intricate arguments. And Occam 00:06:53.279 --> 00:06:55.500 comes along and basically says, this is all needlessly 00:06:55.500 --> 00:06:57.620 complicated. The faculty must have been furious. 00:06:58.079 --> 00:07:00.079 They didn't know what to do with him. His ideas 00:07:00.079 --> 00:07:02.680 were considered unorthodox. He wasn't just coloring 00:07:02.680 --> 00:07:04.540 outside the lines. He was ripping up a coloring 00:07:04.540 --> 00:07:07.740 book. And in the medieval world, being unorthodox 00:07:07.740 --> 00:07:10.939 isn't just about getting a bad grade. It's dangerous. 00:07:11.660 --> 00:07:13.920 Extremely dangerous. It could end your career 00:07:13.920 --> 00:07:17.399 or even your life. And in 1324, the academic 00:07:17.399 --> 00:07:20.060 politics spilled over into real world danger. 00:07:20.259 --> 00:07:22.620 This is where the story shifts from a university 00:07:22.620 --> 00:07:25.560 drama to a legal thriller. He gets summoned. 00:07:26.079 --> 00:07:28.000 He's ordered to appear before the papal court 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:30.800 in Avignon, France, to defend himself. And just 00:07:30.800 --> 00:07:32.920 for context, you might be wondering, why Avignon? 00:07:33.100 --> 00:07:36.120 We usually associate the Pope with Rome. Right, 00:07:36.220 --> 00:07:38.759 the Vatican. But not in this century. This is 00:07:38.759 --> 00:07:41.139 the era of the Avignon Papacy. The so -called 00:07:41.139 --> 00:07:43.420 Babylonian captivity of the church. Exactly. 00:07:43.519 --> 00:07:45.980 The popes had relocated to France, essentially 00:07:45.980 --> 00:07:48.519 under the thumb of the French monarchy. It was 00:07:48.519 --> 00:07:51.120 a time of massive corruption, intrigue, and opulence. 00:07:51.319 --> 00:07:53.819 So here comes this friar from Surrey, dressed 00:07:53.819 --> 00:07:56.399 in a rough gray robe, walking into the most luxurious 00:07:56.399 --> 00:07:59.040 court in Europe to defend his mind. And the charge 00:07:59.040 --> 00:08:01.600 is heresy. Technically, it was an investigation 00:08:01.600 --> 00:08:04.810 into the orthodoxy of his writings. The chancellor 00:08:04.810 --> 00:08:07.470 of Oxford at the time, a man named John Lutterall, 00:08:07.629 --> 00:08:10.129 who really seemed to have a personal vendetta 00:08:10.129 --> 00:08:13.189 against William, went to Avignon specifically 00:08:13.189 --> 00:08:16.569 to prosecute him. His own boss turned on him. 00:08:16.610 --> 00:08:19.209 Oh, completely. Lutterall presented a list of 00:08:19.209 --> 00:08:22.329 56 statements from William's books that he claimed 00:08:22.329 --> 00:08:25.230 were dangerous errors. So William is under house 00:08:25.230 --> 00:08:28.350 arrest in Avignon. He's there for years, waiting 00:08:28.350 --> 00:08:30.430 for a committee of theologians to pick apart 00:08:30.430 --> 00:08:32.820 his life's work. It must have been terrifying. 00:08:33.019 --> 00:08:34.879 Incredibly dangerous. You're completely at the 00:08:34.879 --> 00:08:37.779 mercy of this court. But here is the plot twist. 00:08:38.220 --> 00:08:40.419 While William is sitting there dealing with his 00:08:40.419 --> 00:08:43.100 philosophy trial waiting for a verdict that may 00:08:43.100 --> 00:08:45.399 never come. He gets drafted into a completely 00:08:45.399 --> 00:08:47.889 different war. Yes. This is the part of the story 00:08:47.889 --> 00:08:49.669 that just seems unbelievable. He gets pulled 00:08:49.669 --> 00:08:52.450 into a bigger fight by his boss, the head of 00:08:52.450 --> 00:08:54.029 the whole Franciscan order. Michael of Sassina, 00:08:54.129 --> 00:08:56.309 the minister general of the Franciscans. Exactly. 00:08:56.330 --> 00:08:58.990 He shows up in Avignon, and Michael is in deep, 00:08:59.029 --> 00:09:01.230 deep trouble, too. Over this issue of poverty, 00:09:01.409 --> 00:09:04.409 right? Yes, it all comes back to that. The Franciscans 00:09:04.409 --> 00:09:07.350 claimed that Jesus and the apostles owned nothing. 00:09:07.769 --> 00:09:11.470 No property, no money. They just used what they 00:09:11.470 --> 00:09:14.240 needed to survive. This was the doctrine of apostolic 00:09:14.240 --> 00:09:16.840 poverty. And this was the core of their identity. 00:09:16.980 --> 00:09:18.960 It was everything to them. Now, the pope at the 00:09:18.960 --> 00:09:22.389 time, John XXII. absolutely hated this idea. 00:09:22.590 --> 00:09:25.289 Why? I mean, why did the Pope care so much about 00:09:25.289 --> 00:09:28.049 monks not owning things? Shouldn't the Pope be 00:09:28.049 --> 00:09:30.210 into poverty and holiness? You would think so. 00:09:30.429 --> 00:09:33.769 But Pope John was a lawyer by training, a brilliant 00:09:33.769 --> 00:09:36.450 administrator, and he was very focused on the 00:09:36.450 --> 00:09:39.289 temporal power and wealth of the church. He looked 00:09:39.289 --> 00:09:41.490 at the Franciscans and saw a massive threat. 00:09:41.629 --> 00:09:44.129 A threat how? The implications were political. 00:09:44.370 --> 00:09:47.440 If Jesus owned nothing, And the church is supposed 00:09:47.440 --> 00:09:49.379 to represent Jesus on earth. Then the church 00:09:49.379 --> 00:09:52.159 shouldn't own anything either. Exactly. No palaces 00:09:52.159 --> 00:09:55.500 in Avignon, no vast land holdings, no armies, 00:09:55.600 --> 00:09:58.860 no political power. The Franciscan view was a 00:09:58.860 --> 00:10:00.860 direct threat to the wealth and sovereignty of 00:10:00.860 --> 00:10:03.000 the papacy. I see. It's an attack on his entire 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:06.860 business model. Precisely. So Pope Jonathan 27 00:10:06.860 --> 00:10:10.639 issues a series of papal bulls official decrees 00:10:10.639 --> 00:10:13.960 attacking the doctrine. He declared that the 00:10:13.960 --> 00:10:16.580 idea that Jesus of the apostles owned nothing 00:10:16.580 --> 00:10:20.080 was heretical. Wait, wait. He made it a heresy 00:10:20.080 --> 00:10:23.480 to say Jesus was poor? Effectively, yes. He attacked 00:10:23.480 --> 00:10:25.700 the rule of St. Francis, the very foundation 00:10:25.700 --> 00:10:28.000 of their order. He was trying to crush them. 00:10:28.139 --> 00:10:30.340 So Michael of Sassina is in Avignon to fight 00:10:30.340 --> 00:10:33.019 this, and he sees William. He sees the smartest 00:10:33.019 --> 00:10:35.419 guy he knows, a brilliant logician who happens 00:10:35.419 --> 00:10:37.440 to already be there. So he goes to William and 00:10:37.440 --> 00:10:40.399 says, William, I need you to look at this. Read 00:10:40.399 --> 00:10:42.299 the Pope's bulls and tell me if they stand up 00:10:42.299 --> 00:10:44.360 to theology and scripture. That is a dangerous 00:10:44.360 --> 00:10:46.440 assignment. You are already on trial for your 00:10:46.440 --> 00:10:48.600 own ideas, and now you're being asked to grade 00:10:48.600 --> 00:10:50.879 the Pope's homework. William was reluctant at 00:10:50.879 --> 00:10:53.179 it. first, according to the sources. But he's 00:10:53.179 --> 00:10:55.100 a Franciscan. This is an attack on his order. 00:10:55.440 --> 00:10:58.220 So he spends weeks, maybe months, locked away 00:10:58.220 --> 00:11:00.659 just reading these papal documents. And what 00:11:00.659 --> 00:11:03.240 does he find? He comes to a conclusion that probably 00:11:03.240 --> 00:11:05.779 made his blood run cold. He concludes that the 00:11:05.779 --> 00:11:08.500 pope is not just wrong. Not just a bad theologian. 00:11:08.539 --> 00:11:12.360 No. Much, much worse. He concludes that Pope 00:11:12.360 --> 00:11:15.940 John XXII is a heretic. Whoa. He decides the 00:11:15.940 --> 00:11:18.419 Pope's is the heretic. Yes. William argued that 00:11:18.419 --> 00:11:20.419 by denying the poverty of Christ, the Pope was 00:11:20.419 --> 00:11:22.539 contradicting Scripture and the clear teachings 00:11:22.539 --> 00:11:25.799 of previous Popes. And in William's mind, and 00:11:25.799 --> 00:11:28.940 this is key to his character, truth trumps authority. 00:11:29.320 --> 00:11:32.340 Always. So if a Pope contradicts Scripture, he 00:11:32.340 --> 00:11:34.600 isn't the Pope anymore. He forfeits his authority. 00:11:34.820 --> 00:11:37.059 He becomes a false Pope, an enemy of the faith. 00:11:37.500 --> 00:11:39.899 That is, I mean, bold doesn't cover it. That 00:11:39.899 --> 00:11:42.639 is suicidal. Calling the Pope a heretic while 00:11:42.639 --> 00:11:45.100 you are essentially his prisoner in his own city. 00:11:45.279 --> 00:11:48.200 It was. They knew at that moment that if they 00:11:48.200 --> 00:11:50.039 stayed in Avignon after reaching that conclusion, 00:11:50.360 --> 00:11:52.600 they would have been arrested, tried, and burned 00:11:52.600 --> 00:11:54.500 at the stake. No question. So they had to get 00:11:54.500 --> 00:11:56.679 out. They had to run for their lives. So on the 00:11:56.679 --> 00:11:59.759 night of May 26, 1328, they make their move. 00:11:59.860 --> 00:12:02.350 The great escape. William of Ockham. Michael, 00:12:02.409 --> 00:12:04.690 Cecina, and a handful of other leading Franciscans 00:12:04.690 --> 00:12:07.149 slip out of the Franciscan convent under cover 00:12:07.149 --> 00:12:10.230 of darkness. They flee the city, they race to 00:12:10.230 --> 00:12:12.470 the docks, and find a small boat to take them 00:12:12.470 --> 00:12:14.350 to a galley waiting offshore. They're on the 00:12:14.350 --> 00:12:16.610 run from the most powerful man in Europe. A full 00:12:16.610 --> 00:12:18.950 -blown extraction. And they head straight for 00:12:18.950 --> 00:12:21.570 the one man who has a big enough army to protect 00:12:21.570 --> 00:12:24.149 them. Louis I of Bavaria, the Holy Roman Emperor. 00:12:24.470 --> 00:12:27.830 Who, conveniently, was also in a massive knock 00:12:27.830 --> 00:12:30.750 -down, drag -out fight with the Pope over who 00:12:30.750 --> 00:12:32.789 was the true ruler of Christendom. The enemy 00:12:32.789 --> 00:12:35.570 of my enemy is my friend. The ultimate example. 00:12:35.870 --> 00:12:38.450 They reach Louis' court in Munich, and legend 00:12:38.450 --> 00:12:41.529 has it that William meets the emperor and says 00:12:41.529 --> 00:12:43.799 one of the hardest lines in history. I love this 00:12:43.799 --> 00:12:46.059 line. Defend me with the sword and I will defend 00:12:46.059 --> 00:12:48.139 you with the pen. That is cinematic. It's like 00:12:48.139 --> 00:12:49.759 something out of Game of Thrones. And he lived 00:12:49.759 --> 00:12:51.720 up to it. William spent the rest of his life 00:12:51.720 --> 00:12:54.139 in exile in Munich under the emperor's protection. 00:12:54.860 --> 00:12:56.659 He was officially excommunicated by the pope 00:12:56.659 --> 00:12:59.519 on June 6, 1328. Kicked out of the church, eternal 00:12:59.519 --> 00:13:02.019 damnation, the whole works. But he didn't stop. 00:13:02.480 --> 00:13:04.899 He unleashed a torrent of writing, a storm of 00:13:04.899 --> 00:13:07.399 political treatises, arguing that the pope was 00:13:07.399 --> 00:13:10.139 a criminal, a heretic, and a fraud who needed 00:13:10.139 --> 00:13:12.440 to be deposed. It's important to clarify, though, 00:13:12.500 --> 00:13:15.679 was he excommunicated because of his philosophy, 00:13:16.000 --> 00:13:19.100 the razor stuff? No, and that's a crucial distinction 00:13:19.100 --> 00:13:20.799 for the listener. That's a common misconception. 00:13:21.840 --> 00:13:25.320 He was excommunicated for his disobedience, for 00:13:25.320 --> 00:13:27.980 fleeing Avignon without permission. And for his 00:13:27.980 --> 00:13:30.600 political stance on apostolic poverty. So for 00:13:30.600 --> 00:13:33.679 his actions, not his core ideas about reality. 00:13:34.039 --> 00:13:36.840 Exactly. His actual philosophy, the nominalism 00:13:36.840 --> 00:13:39.600 we're about to discuss, was controversial. But 00:13:39.600 --> 00:13:41.840 it was never officially condemned as heresy by 00:13:41.840 --> 00:13:44.159 the church. So he's a political outlaw, but his 00:13:44.159 --> 00:13:45.860 ideas are still in play. And this is where we 00:13:45.860 --> 00:13:47.779 need to pivot, right? From the political thriller 00:13:47.779 --> 00:13:51.379 to the philosophy that changed everything. Exactly. 00:13:51.379 --> 00:13:54.440 While all this drama is unfolding. William had 00:13:54.440 --> 00:13:56.419 already laid down a system of thought that was 00:13:56.419 --> 00:13:58.879 going to change the world. We need to get into 00:13:58.879 --> 00:14:01.220 the deep part of the deep dive. We need to talk 00:14:01.220 --> 00:14:04.440 about nominalism. This is the big idea. And I 00:14:04.440 --> 00:14:06.500 want to take this slowly because when you read 00:14:06.500 --> 00:14:09.179 about nominalism in textbooks, it can get very 00:14:09.179 --> 00:14:12.419 abstract very quickly. It can. But it solves 00:14:12.419 --> 00:14:15.419 a very real problem. And to understand Occam, 00:14:15.419 --> 00:14:17.679 you have to understand the problem of universals. 00:14:18.290 --> 00:14:20.950 It's a debate that had been raging for centuries. 00:14:21.250 --> 00:14:23.570 Okay, lay it out for me. What is the problem 00:14:23.570 --> 00:14:27.070 of universals? The question is this. Do general 00:14:27.070 --> 00:14:30.269 concepts exist as real things out in the world? 00:14:31.330 --> 00:14:34.250 Or are there only individual things? Okay, that 00:14:34.250 --> 00:14:36.350 still sounds a bit abstract. Give me an example. 00:14:36.529 --> 00:14:38.870 Let's use a concrete example. Picture two red 00:14:38.870 --> 00:14:41.049 apples sitting on a table. Okay, I have two red 00:14:41.049 --> 00:14:43.309 apples. Now, we look at them and we say they 00:14:43.309 --> 00:14:46.269 share a quality, redness, and they share a nature. 00:14:48.179 --> 00:14:50.159 Appleness. They're both red and they're both 00:14:50.159 --> 00:14:54.240 apples. The philosophical question is, does redness 00:14:54.240 --> 00:14:58.259 exist as a real independent thing? Is there a 00:14:58.259 --> 00:15:00.440 universal redness floating around in the universe 00:15:00.440 --> 00:15:02.720 that both of these apples are participating in? 00:15:02.919 --> 00:15:05.340 Same for appleness. Most people today would say, 00:15:05.440 --> 00:15:07.940 no, it's just a color. The apples are red. It's 00:15:07.940 --> 00:15:10.000 a property they have. Right. But in the Middle 00:15:10.000 --> 00:15:12.580 Ages, the dominant school of thought, the realists 00:15:12.580 --> 00:15:15.059 who were followers of Plato and a modified Aristotle, 00:15:15.320 --> 00:15:19.320 said yes. They believed that redness or apple 00:15:19.320 --> 00:15:22.820 -ness or humanity were real universal forms or 00:15:22.820 --> 00:15:25.720 essences. So there's a ghostly perfect apple 00:15:25.720 --> 00:15:28.059 somewhere that makes my apple an apple. In a 00:15:28.059 --> 00:15:31.519 sense, yes. Or at least a shared real extramental 00:15:31.519 --> 00:15:33.919 essence. They believed that for two things to 00:15:33.919 --> 00:15:36.340 be similar, they had to share a connection to 00:15:36.340 --> 00:15:39.740 a real existing universal. The universal was 00:15:39.740 --> 00:15:42.340 the metaphysical glue of reality. They built 00:15:42.340 --> 00:15:44.500 their whole worldview on this. The whole thing. 00:15:44.539 --> 00:15:47.960 Humanity was a real thing. The church was a real 00:15:47.960 --> 00:15:49.580 mystical thing, separate from the individual 00:15:49.580 --> 00:15:53.419 people in it. Justice was a real form. And Occam 00:15:53.419 --> 00:15:56.039 comes along and says... Garbage. Just blunt. 00:15:56.480 --> 00:15:59.659 Occam was a radical empiricist. He trusted his 00:15:59.659 --> 00:16:02.639 senses. He looked at the table and said, I see 00:16:02.639 --> 00:16:05.610 one apple. I see another apple. That's it. That's 00:16:05.610 --> 00:16:07.730 all that's real on that table. So what are these 00:16:07.730 --> 00:16:10.710 universals then? What is redness? He argued that 00:16:10.710 --> 00:16:13.710 universals like redness, humanity, dogness are 00:16:13.710 --> 00:16:16.470 just names. The Latin word for name is gnomon. 00:16:16.490 --> 00:16:18.350 That's where we get the term nominalism. They 00:16:18.350 --> 00:16:21.029 are just labels we invent. Exactly. He said there 00:16:21.029 --> 00:16:23.990 are concepts in our minds. Our brain sees two 00:16:23.990 --> 00:16:26.009 things that look alike. And to be efficient, 00:16:26.169 --> 00:16:28.750 it creates a category, a mental shortcut, a word 00:16:28.750 --> 00:16:30.830 to group them together. But that category has 00:16:30.830 --> 00:16:33.690 no reality outside your skull. So there is no 00:16:33.690 --> 00:16:36.529 humanity floating in the ether. There are just, 00:16:36.629 --> 00:16:40.190 what, 8 billion individual humans? That's the 00:16:40.190 --> 00:16:42.269 alchemist's view. There are only individuals. 00:16:42.570 --> 00:16:45.809 To be precise, he's sometimes called a conceptualist 00:16:45.809 --> 00:16:48.289 or a terminist because he saw these universals 00:16:48.289 --> 00:16:51.970 as mental concepts or terms in language. But 00:16:51.970 --> 00:16:54.590 the basic idea is the same. They're not out there. 00:16:54.940 --> 00:16:56.799 This seems like common sense to us today, but 00:16:56.799 --> 00:16:59.279 why was this so dangerous back then? Why did 00:16:59.279 --> 00:17:01.179 people get so angry about it? Because if you 00:17:01.179 --> 00:17:04.019 destroy universals, you destabilize the entire 00:17:04.019 --> 00:17:06.960 structure of medieval society and theology. How 00:17:06.960 --> 00:17:09.920 so? Well, think about it. If humanity isn't real, 00:17:10.119 --> 00:17:12.500 do we all share a common human nature derived 00:17:12.500 --> 00:17:15.220 from Adam? Does original sin work the same way? 00:17:15.819 --> 00:17:18.299 If the church isn't a real mystical entity, what 00:17:18.299 --> 00:17:20.819 is it? Just a collection of guys in robes. Just 00:17:20.819 --> 00:17:23.099 a bunch of fallible individuals. It strips the 00:17:23.099 --> 00:17:25.660 mystique away. It questions the very basis of 00:17:25.660 --> 00:17:28.559 institutional authority. It individualizes everything. 00:17:28.819 --> 00:17:30.819 And it forces you to look at the specific singular 00:17:30.819 --> 00:17:33.160 thing right in front of you. Exactly. And this 00:17:33.160 --> 00:17:35.579 brings us to the tool he used to slice away those 00:17:35.579 --> 00:17:38.759 unnecessary universals. The razor. Occam's razor. 00:17:39.599 --> 00:17:41.319 Now, you mentioned earlier that there is a bit 00:17:41.319 --> 00:17:43.859 of a Mandela effect with the famous quote. Right. 00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:46.220 If you ask someone to quote Occam's razor, they'll 00:17:46.220 --> 00:17:50.509 say. Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity. 00:17:51.250 --> 00:17:54.369 Entia non sunt multiplicanda si necessitate. 00:17:54.609 --> 00:17:57.029 It sounds very profound. It is a great Latin 00:17:57.029 --> 00:17:59.769 phrase. But William never wrote it. He never 00:17:59.769 --> 00:18:02.769 said it. Not in those exact words. That specific 00:18:02.769 --> 00:18:05.529 phrasing was invented much later, in the 17th 00:18:05.529 --> 00:18:08.410 century, by an Irish Franciscan who was a follower 00:18:08.410 --> 00:18:10.730 of his philosophy. So what did Occam actually 00:18:10.730 --> 00:18:13.430 say? He said the same thing in different ways 00:18:13.430 --> 00:18:15.900 throughout his work. A more accurate, though 00:18:15.900 --> 00:18:19.019 less catchy, version is something like, Nothing 00:18:19.019 --> 00:18:21.720 ought to be posited without a reason given, unless 00:18:21.720 --> 00:18:24.559 it is self -evident, known by experience, or 00:18:24.559 --> 00:18:26.460 proved by the authority of sacred scripture. 00:18:26.920 --> 00:18:29.519 That is a bit wordier. Nothing ought to be posited 00:18:29.519 --> 00:18:31.680 without a reason given. Right, but the core idea 00:18:31.680 --> 00:18:35.240 is parsimony. The principle of parsimony. Parsimony. 00:18:35.240 --> 00:18:39.519 Meaning frugality. Like being cheap. Yes. But 00:18:39.519 --> 00:18:42.240 in a philosophical sense. Stinginess with your 00:18:42.240 --> 00:18:45.509 concepts. William was obsessed with ontological 00:18:45.509 --> 00:18:48.710 parsimony. Ontology is the study of what exists, 00:18:48.950 --> 00:18:51.230 the furniture of the universe. William wanted 00:18:51.230 --> 00:18:53.549 to keep the inventory list of things that exist 00:18:53.549 --> 00:18:57.450 as short as absolutely possible. So going back 00:18:57.450 --> 00:19:00.809 to the apples, the realist says, OK, on my list 00:19:00.809 --> 00:19:03.569 of existing things, I have apple A, apple B and 00:19:03.569 --> 00:19:06.269 the universal form of redness. That's three things. 00:19:06.410 --> 00:19:08.210 Right. And Auchin comes in with his razor and 00:19:08.210 --> 00:19:11.269 says, I see apple A and apple B. They just happen 00:19:11.269 --> 00:19:13.170 to look like each other. The redness is just 00:19:13.170 --> 00:19:15.369 a description, not a thing. He shaves off the 00:19:15.369 --> 00:19:18.289 universal. So the rule is, if you can explain 00:19:18.289 --> 00:19:20.589 a phenomenon without inventing a new invisible 00:19:20.589 --> 00:19:23.950 entity, you must do so. You must. It's the ultimate 00:19:23.950 --> 00:19:26.150 decluttering method for philosophy. Does this 00:19:26.150 --> 00:19:29.130 abstract concept spark joy? No. Throw it out. 00:19:29.250 --> 00:19:31.150 It's Marie Kondo for metaphysics. Essentially. 00:19:31.230 --> 00:19:33.730 And he used this to attack the bad physics of 00:19:33.730 --> 00:19:36.609 his day. For example. The Aristotelians thought 00:19:36.609 --> 00:19:38.769 that when you throw a rock, it has a quality 00:19:38.769 --> 00:19:41.130 called motion added to it, like it's wearing 00:19:41.130 --> 00:19:43.609 a coat of motion. Motion is a thing. To them, 00:19:43.609 --> 00:19:47.210 yes. Occam said, no, that's absurd. Motion isn't 00:19:47.210 --> 00:19:50.150 a thing. Motion is just the rock being in one 00:19:50.150 --> 00:19:52.190 place and then being in another place later. 00:19:52.490 --> 00:19:54.650 It's a description of change, not an entity. 00:19:55.150 --> 00:19:58.190 He's stripping away the magic. He is. And that's 00:19:58.190 --> 00:20:00.549 why Bertrand Russell and modern scientists love 00:20:00.549 --> 00:20:03.470 him. He paved the way for the scientific method. 00:20:03.589 --> 00:20:06.690 Stop assuming there are hidden essences or forms 00:20:06.690 --> 00:20:09.589 or motion spirits governing nature. Right. Just 00:20:09.589 --> 00:20:11.930 look at the data. What is the simplest explanation 00:20:11.930 --> 00:20:14.930 that fits the facts we can observe? But here 00:20:14.930 --> 00:20:17.390 is the paradox I found in the notes. William 00:20:17.390 --> 00:20:20.230 wasn't a modern secular scientist. He was a devout 00:20:20.230 --> 00:20:23.539 Franciscan friar. He believed in God. Angels, 00:20:23.539 --> 00:20:26.740 miracles, the soul. All of it. So how does the 00:20:26.740 --> 00:20:28.799 razor fit with religion? If you shave away everything 00:20:28.799 --> 00:20:31.420 you can't see or prove by experience, don't you 00:20:31.420 --> 00:20:33.779 shave away God? That is the big question. And 00:20:33.779 --> 00:20:35.500 this is where it gets absolutely fascinating 00:20:35.500 --> 00:20:37.539 because it's the opposite of what you'd expect. 00:20:37.680 --> 00:20:39.619 We tend to think that logic and religion are 00:20:39.619 --> 00:20:43.299 opposites. But for William, using the razor was 00:20:43.299 --> 00:20:45.940 a way to protect faith. How does that work? He 00:20:45.940 --> 00:20:48.380 was a fideist. Fideist. That comes from fides, 00:20:48.400 --> 00:20:51.450 the Latin word for faith. Exactly. He believed 00:20:51.450 --> 00:20:53.269 that faith and reason were totally separate lanes. 00:20:53.650 --> 00:20:56.710 He argued, in a direct challenge to someone like 00:20:56.710 --> 00:20:59.289 Thomas Aquinas, that you cannot prove God exists 00:20:59.289 --> 00:21:02.910 using logic or reason. You can't prove God with 00:21:02.910 --> 00:21:04.650 logic. I thought that was the whole point of 00:21:04.650 --> 00:21:06.930 scholastic theology. That was Aquinas' project. 00:21:07.210 --> 00:21:11.450 The five ways, the logical proofs for God. Occam 00:21:11.450 --> 00:21:14.500 thought that was a huge mistake. He said human 00:21:14.500 --> 00:21:17.240 logic is limited to what we can see and experience 00:21:17.240 --> 00:21:20.039 in the world. God is, by definition, outside 00:21:20.039 --> 00:21:22.819 of that system. So trying to prove God with logic 00:21:22.819 --> 00:21:24.940 is like trying to measure the ocean with a teaspoon? 00:21:25.440 --> 00:21:28.039 Perfect analogy. He thought that if you try to 00:21:28.039 --> 00:21:31.299 trap God in a logical syllogism, you are bringing 00:21:31.299 --> 00:21:34.160 God down to your level. You are insulting him. 00:21:34.380 --> 00:21:36.440 You're making God subject to the rules of human 00:21:36.440 --> 00:21:39.220 reason. So he separated them to save God from 00:21:39.220 --> 00:21:41.640 human limitations. Exactly. His position was 00:21:41.640 --> 00:21:44.440 only faith gives us access to theological truths. 00:21:44.859 --> 00:21:47.099 You believe in God because it's revealed in scripture 00:21:47.099 --> 00:21:50.000 and you choose to believe, not because you solved 00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:52.059 a math problem. That actually makes sense. It 00:21:52.059 --> 00:21:54.640 liberates faith from having to be logical in 00:21:54.640 --> 00:21:57.700 a human sense. And it liberates reason to do 00:21:57.700 --> 00:22:00.480 its own thing, to study the world as it is. But 00:22:00.480 --> 00:22:02.740 it also leads to his most radical theological 00:22:02.740 --> 00:22:07.380 idea. Voluntarism. Voluntarism. From Volundus' 00:22:07.420 --> 00:22:10.559 will, the power of the will. Specifically, God's 00:22:10.559 --> 00:22:14.740 will. Occam believed that God is absolutely terrifyingly 00:22:14.740 --> 00:22:17.799 free. God is omnipotent. He can do anything that 00:22:17.799 --> 00:22:20.039 isn't the logical contradiction, like making 00:22:20.039 --> 00:22:22.640 a square circle. But aside from that, anything 00:22:22.640 --> 00:22:25.200 goes. And this is where we get the famous and 00:22:25.200 --> 00:22:28.380 honestly kind of bizarre donkey example. Yes. 00:22:28.640 --> 00:22:31.420 This is classic Akko. It's so provocative. He 00:22:31.420 --> 00:22:33.680 was debating God's absolute power. And he said, 00:22:33.799 --> 00:22:36.279 look, the way the world works isn't necessary. 00:22:36.640 --> 00:22:38.700 God didn't have to make it this way. Gravity 00:22:38.700 --> 00:22:40.500 didn't have to work this way. Humans didn't have 00:22:40.500 --> 00:22:42.279 to have two legs. He was all choice. A completely 00:22:42.279 --> 00:22:44.920 free choice. And to prove his point, he takes 00:22:44.920 --> 00:22:47.359 on the incarnation. He says if God had wanted 00:22:47.359 --> 00:22:49.880 to, he could have become incarnate as a donkey 00:22:49.880 --> 00:22:53.900 or an ox. Or even a donkey and a man at the same 00:22:53.900 --> 00:22:56.319 time. God could have been a donkey. Theoretically, 00:22:56.319 --> 00:22:58.500 yes. I can just imagine the other theologians 00:22:58.500 --> 00:23:00.099 flipping tables when he said that. It sounds 00:23:00.099 --> 00:23:02.779 so blasphemous. They were horrified. Of course 00:23:02.779 --> 00:23:06.140 it does. But William's point was a serious philosophical 00:23:06.140 --> 00:23:10.559 one. Who are you to tell God? He can't be a donkey. 00:23:10.700 --> 00:23:12.940 Right. If you say God can't do that because it's 00:23:12.940 --> 00:23:15.640 undignified, you are putting your human standards 00:23:15.640 --> 00:23:18.740 of dignity above God's absolute power. You are 00:23:18.740 --> 00:23:21.779 saying God is limited by your idea of what's 00:23:21.779 --> 00:23:25.900 proper. Occam refused to do that. For him, God's 00:23:25.900 --> 00:23:28.059 freedom is the ultimate reality. This actually 00:23:28.059 --> 00:23:30.299 has a huge impact on science, doesn't it? Because 00:23:30.299 --> 00:23:32.380 if the world could be anything. Then you can't 00:23:32.380 --> 00:23:34.059 just sit in your armchair and think about how 00:23:34.059 --> 00:23:36.470 the world must work. What do you mean? The Greeks 00:23:36.470 --> 00:23:38.049 and the early scholastics loved to do that. They'd 00:23:38.049 --> 00:23:40.529 say, circles are the most perfect shape, so planets 00:23:40.529 --> 00:23:43.170 must move in perfect circles. It's an argument 00:23:43.170 --> 00:23:45.589 from reason. And Occam says? Occam says, no. 00:23:46.150 --> 00:23:48.329 God could have made them move in squares if you 00:23:48.329 --> 00:23:50.630 wanted to. There's no must about it. The only 00:23:50.630 --> 00:23:52.630 way to find out how they move is to go look. 00:23:53.009 --> 00:23:55.430 Empiricism. You have to observe the world because 00:23:55.430 --> 00:23:58.369 the world is contingent. It's a choice God made, 00:23:58.470 --> 00:24:02.690 not a logical necessity. Precisely. By emphasizing 00:24:02.690 --> 00:24:06.099 God's absolute freedom, He unintentionally created 00:24:06.099 --> 00:24:09.039 the philosophical justification for experimental 00:24:09.039 --> 00:24:12.180 science. You have to test reality to see what 00:24:12.180 --> 00:24:15.039 it actually is, because logic alone can't predict 00:24:15.039 --> 00:24:18.619 God's free choices. That is a massive aha moment. 00:24:18.779 --> 00:24:21.880 So by saying logic can't explain God, he actually 00:24:21.880 --> 00:24:24.119 freed up logic to look at the physical world. 00:24:24.160 --> 00:24:27.450 And he freed up faith. to just be faith it's 00:24:27.450 --> 00:24:30.769 a brilliant if controversial separation of powers 00:24:30.769 --> 00:24:33.109 so let's zoom out a bit we have the fugitive 00:24:33.109 --> 00:24:36.190 friar in munich he's dismantled metaphysics with 00:24:36.190 --> 00:24:39.349 his razor he separated faith and reason now let's 00:24:39.349 --> 00:24:41.309 look at how he applied this to politics because 00:24:41.309 --> 00:24:42.970 you mentioned he's a pioneer of the separation 00:24:42.970 --> 00:24:45.109 of church and state he is and again it comes 00:24:45.109 --> 00:24:47.470 directly from his personal situation and his 00:24:47.470 --> 00:24:49.630 philosophical principles just as he separated 00:24:49.630 --> 00:24:52.250 logic from faith he wanted to separate the spiritual 00:24:52.250 --> 00:24:55.839 rule from the earthly rule. Which, in the 1300s, 00:24:55.839 --> 00:24:58.319 was not the vibe. The pope claimed plenitudo 00:24:58.319 --> 00:25:00.680 potestatis, fullness of power. He was the CEO 00:25:00.680 --> 00:25:03.440 of the world. He was the spiritual and temporal 00:25:03.440 --> 00:25:06.700 ruler of everything. The pope claimed he could 00:25:06.700 --> 00:25:10.319 depose kings, run empires, and that all earthly 00:25:10.319 --> 00:25:13.819 power flowed from God through him to the rulers. 00:25:14.140 --> 00:25:16.740 And Ockham, writing under the protection of the 00:25:16.740 --> 00:25:20.039 emperor, had a different idea. A very different 00:25:20.039 --> 00:25:22.579 idea. He went back to Scripture, specifically 00:25:22.579 --> 00:25:25.460 a passage in 2 Timothy, where St. Paul says a 00:25:25.460 --> 00:25:27.640 soldier of God shouldn't get entangled in civilian 00:25:27.640 --> 00:25:30.740 affairs. A pretty clear line. Ockham used that 00:25:30.740 --> 00:25:33.279 to argue that the Pope's job is purely spiritual. 00:25:33.619 --> 00:25:36.119 Preach the gospel, administer the sacraments, 00:25:36.140 --> 00:25:38.279 care for the souls of the faithful. That's it. 00:25:38.400 --> 00:25:41.119 He has zero business running a government, owning 00:25:41.119 --> 00:25:43.720 a palace, or commanding an army. So he's telling 00:25:43.720 --> 00:25:45.980 the Emperor Louis... You don't answer to the 00:25:45.980 --> 00:25:48.140 pope on political matters. Your power doesn't 00:25:48.140 --> 00:25:50.480 come from the church. Right. But here is the 00:25:50.480 --> 00:25:52.920 really radical part. He then has to answer the 00:25:52.920 --> 00:25:55.240 question, where does the emperor's power come 00:25:55.240 --> 00:25:58.039 from then? If not from God through the pope. 00:25:58.380 --> 00:26:00.920 Occam argued that after the fall of man, God 00:26:00.920 --> 00:26:03.440 gave humanity as a whole the right and the reason 00:26:03.440 --> 00:26:05.759 to set up their own governments and elect their 00:26:05.759 --> 00:26:08.799 own rulers to maintain peace and order. The people 00:26:08.799 --> 00:26:12.079 choose. In a way, yes. He argued that political 00:26:12.079 --> 00:26:13.980 power comes from the consent of the governed. 00:26:14.759 --> 00:26:17.980 The ruler has a job to serve the common good. 00:26:18.339 --> 00:26:22.039 If the ruler fails at that job, or if, say, the 00:26:22.039 --> 00:26:24.380 pope becomes a heretic and a criminal, the community 00:26:24.380 --> 00:26:26.480 has the right to remove him. That sounds like 00:26:26.480 --> 00:26:29.059 the seeds of democracy. Or at least the social 00:26:29.059 --> 00:26:31.579 contract of Locke and Rousseau. It's a direct 00:26:31.579 --> 00:26:34.099 precursor. You see echoes of Occam and Thomas 00:26:34.099 --> 00:26:36.339 Hobbes and John Locke and eventually the American 00:26:36.339 --> 00:26:39.220 founding fathers. The idea that power is a loan 00:26:39.220 --> 00:26:41.319 from the people, not a divine right of kings 00:26:41.319 --> 00:26:44.119 or popes. It's an astonishingly modern political 00:26:44.119 --> 00:26:46.759 theory. And he also had to dive into legal theory, 00:26:46.920 --> 00:26:49.440 right? To save the Franciscans from that poverty 00:26:49.440 --> 00:26:52.319 trap. The property debate. This is really interesting 00:26:52.319 --> 00:26:54.839 for anyone interested in law or economics. Remember, 00:26:54.960 --> 00:26:56.980 the pope said, if you eat the apple, you own 00:26:56.980 --> 00:26:59.910 it. It's a legal checkmate. How did Occam get 00:26:59.910 --> 00:27:02.269 out of it? He had a lawyer his way out. He developed 00:27:02.269 --> 00:27:05.769 the concept of usus facti, which means factual 00:27:05.769 --> 00:27:08.349 use or use in fact. Okay, what does that mean? 00:27:08.470 --> 00:27:11.930 He argued that you can have a natural right to 00:27:11.930 --> 00:27:15.029 use something to survive, like eating food or 00:27:15.029 --> 00:27:17.490 wearing a robe, without having a legal right 00:27:17.490 --> 00:27:20.809 or title to it. He separated the physical act 00:27:20.809 --> 00:27:24.250 of using from the legal concept of owning. Like... 00:27:24.750 --> 00:27:26.950 Being a guest in someone's house. I can sit on 00:27:26.950 --> 00:27:28.569 the couch, I can drink a glass of water, but 00:27:28.569 --> 00:27:30.690 I don't own the couch or the glass. That's a 00:27:30.690 --> 00:27:33.990 perfect modern analogy. He argued the Franciscans 00:27:33.990 --> 00:27:36.750 were permanent guests in God's world. They used 00:27:36.750 --> 00:27:39.430 things, but they claimed no legal power over 00:27:39.430 --> 00:27:42.170 them, no right to sue someone for them, no right 00:27:42.170 --> 00:27:44.630 to sell them. This whole debate forced him to 00:27:44.630 --> 00:27:47.369 define what rights actually are. And what was 00:27:47.369 --> 00:27:49.549 his definition? He moved the definition of a 00:27:49.549 --> 00:27:51.980 right. from being some kind of cosmic entitlement 00:27:51.980 --> 00:27:54.859 to being a specific legal power granted by society. 00:27:55.440 --> 00:27:58.220 Again, he's making things concrete, observable, 00:27:58.220 --> 00:28:00.539 and secular. He's laying the groundwork for modern 00:28:00.539 --> 00:28:02.700 legal and economic theory. It's amazing. We're 00:28:02.700 --> 00:28:05.779 talking about a guy in the 1340s in exile. coming 00:28:05.779 --> 00:28:07.799 up with theories of property rights and the consent 00:28:07.799 --> 00:28:10.140 of the governed. He's centuries ahead of schedule. 00:28:10.319 --> 00:28:12.680 He really was. And we should briefly mention 00:28:12.680 --> 00:28:15.400 his contributions to pure logic, because he was 00:28:15.400 --> 00:28:17.299 doing things that look remarkably like modern 00:28:17.299 --> 00:28:20.119 computer science. Do tell. Well, in his massive 00:28:20.119 --> 00:28:22.900 simulogicae, he wrote down logical formulas that 00:28:22.900 --> 00:28:26.140 define how and -e and or statements work when 00:28:26.140 --> 00:28:29.359 you negate them. Today, in any intro to logic 00:28:29.359 --> 00:28:31.480 or computer programming course, we call them 00:28:31.480 --> 00:28:34.569 De Morgan's laws. Wait, I learned De Morgan's 00:28:34.569 --> 00:28:37.049 laws in a logic class. Those are named after 00:28:37.049 --> 00:28:39.809 Augustus De Morgan, a 19th century British mathematician. 00:28:40.269 --> 00:28:43.269 They are. He gets the credit because he formalized 00:28:43.269 --> 00:28:45.650 them using modern notation in the 19th century. 00:28:45.950 --> 00:28:49.109 But Occam had written them down in words in the 00:28:49.109 --> 00:28:51.650 14th century. He was essentially coding logic 00:28:51.650 --> 00:28:54.950 before computers existed. That is wild. Absolutely 00:28:54.950 --> 00:28:57.009 wild. And it gets weirder. He played around with 00:28:57.009 --> 00:29:00.190 ternary logic. Most logic we use is binary. True 00:29:00.190 --> 00:29:02.700 or false? Zero or one? That's the basis of all 00:29:02.700 --> 00:29:04.779 computing. Occam explored a system with three 00:29:04.779 --> 00:29:07.940 truth values, true, false, and some kind of middle 00:29:07.940 --> 00:29:10.980 indeterminate value. A three -valued logic. Yes. 00:29:11.099 --> 00:29:13.160 And that's something mathematical logic didn't 00:29:13.160 --> 00:29:15.619 really return to in a serious way until the 19th 00:29:15.619 --> 00:29:18.299 and 20th centuries. He was just on another level. 00:29:18.519 --> 00:29:21.160 And I also saw in the outline that he had a beef 00:29:21.160 --> 00:29:23.220 with time, or at least how people thought about 00:29:23.220 --> 00:29:25.839 time. Yes. Another application of the razor, 00:29:26.140 --> 00:29:29.359 the medievals had a very complicated view of 00:29:29.359 --> 00:29:32.859 duration. They thought there was time for us 00:29:32.859 --> 00:29:35.779 mortals on Earth, which is measured by change 00:29:35.779 --> 00:29:38.039 in motion. Okay. Then there was eternity for 00:29:38.039 --> 00:29:40.420 God, which is completely outside of time all 00:29:40.420 --> 00:29:42.700 at once. Makes sense. And then, because they 00:29:42.700 --> 00:29:44.619 loved creating categories for everything, they 00:29:44.619 --> 00:29:47.740 had a weird middle thing called the Avum. Avum? 00:29:47.799 --> 00:29:50.299 What on Earth is that? It was a special time 00:29:50.299 --> 00:29:52.660 measure just for angels. Angel time? You're kidding. 00:29:52.759 --> 00:29:55.200 I am not. It was supposed to be somewhere between 00:29:55.200 --> 00:29:57.920 our time and God's eternity. It had a beginning, 00:29:58.019 --> 00:30:00.420 but it didn't have change or succession in the 00:30:00.420 --> 00:30:02.559 same way our time does. It was. Yeah, while it 00:30:02.559 --> 00:30:06.319 was angel time. And Occam said... Razor it. Unnecessary 00:30:06.319 --> 00:30:09.140 entity. He said it's nonsense. There is only 00:30:09.140 --> 00:30:11.880 one measure of duration for all created things. 00:30:12.500 --> 00:30:15.980 Time. And it is shared by all of creation. Angels, 00:30:16.039 --> 00:30:19.539 humans, rocks. We are all on the same clock. 00:30:20.029 --> 00:30:22.589 Eternity is for God alone. It's a democratization 00:30:22.589 --> 00:30:24.410 of the universe. We are all in the same boat 00:30:24.410 --> 00:30:27.250 chronologically. Exactly. It simplifies the cosmos. 00:30:27.490 --> 00:30:30.829 It's classic Occam. So William of Occam dies 00:30:30.829 --> 00:30:33.970 around 1347 in Munich, right? Yes. The sources 00:30:33.970 --> 00:30:37.089 point to April of 1347. And grimly enough, he 00:30:37.089 --> 00:30:39.890 probably died at the Black Death. The great plague 00:30:39.890 --> 00:30:41.609 that he had watched approaching from the east 00:30:41.609 --> 00:30:44.269 finally reached Munich and caught him. Wow. He 00:30:44.269 --> 00:30:46.849 died still excommunicated, still a rebel. Yes. 00:30:47.369 --> 00:30:50.380 Buried in a Franciscan church in Munich. A fugitive 00:30:50.380 --> 00:30:52.539 to the end. But the ideas didn't stay buried 00:30:52.539 --> 00:30:54.480 with him. Not at all. In fact, they exploded 00:30:54.480 --> 00:30:57.500 across Europe. His way of thinking, the via moderna 00:30:57.500 --> 00:31:00.599 or modern way, became hugely influential. And 00:31:00.599 --> 00:31:02.500 there's a direct line to the Protestant Reformation. 00:31:02.819 --> 00:31:04.640 To Martin Luther. Absolutely. Martin Luther actually 00:31:04.640 --> 00:31:07.519 called Occam my master and my dear master. He 00:31:07.519 --> 00:31:09.539 said he belonged to the Occamist party. He read 00:31:09.539 --> 00:31:13.140 him avidly. Why? Luther was a German monk almost 00:31:13.140 --> 00:31:16.500 200 years later. What did he see in this medieval 00:31:16.500 --> 00:31:19.619 English friar? He saw the whole toolkit for challenging 00:31:19.619 --> 00:31:22.700 the papacy. Occam denied papal infallibility 00:31:22.700 --> 00:31:25.180 long before it was an official doctrine to deny. 00:31:25.640 --> 00:31:28.019 Ockham argued that church councils could make 00:31:28.019 --> 00:31:30.480 mistakes because they're just made of fallible 00:31:30.480 --> 00:31:32.880 men. Which means institutions aren't guaranteed 00:31:32.880 --> 00:31:36.359 to be right. Exactly. And most importantly, Ockham 00:31:36.359 --> 00:31:38.579 argued that scripture is the ultimate authority 00:31:38.579 --> 00:31:41.339 and that a Christian is bound to believe scripture 00:31:41.339 --> 00:31:44.279 over a pope's decree if they conflict. That sounds 00:31:44.279 --> 00:31:46.599 exactly like Luther's argument at the Diet of 00:31:46.599 --> 00:31:49.099 Worms. It is. This foreshadows Luther's core 00:31:49.099 --> 00:31:51.480 doctrine of sola scriptura, scripture alone. 00:31:52.019 --> 00:31:55.079 So the fugitive friar of the 14th century planted 00:31:55.079 --> 00:31:57.160 the bomb that blew up the unity of the Western 00:31:57.160 --> 00:31:59.579 church two centuries later. And for the literature 00:31:59.579 --> 00:32:02.700 fans listening, there is one more massive direct 00:32:02.700 --> 00:32:06.259 legacy. The name of the rose. Umberto Eco's masterpiece. 00:32:06.500 --> 00:32:08.200 If you haven't read the book or seen the movie 00:32:08.200 --> 00:32:10.500 with Sean Connery, you absolutely have to. The 00:32:10.500 --> 00:32:12.599 main character is a brilliant Franciscan friar 00:32:12.599 --> 00:32:15.180 named William of Baskerville. Baskerville obviously 00:32:15.180 --> 00:32:18.420 referencing Sherlock Holmes. Right. But the character 00:32:18.420 --> 00:32:21.599 is a direct loving homage to William of Ockham. 00:32:21.950 --> 00:32:24.150 He's an English Franciscan, he's in trouble with 00:32:24.150 --> 00:32:26.369 the Pope in Avignon, he's a nominalist philosopher, 00:32:26.809 --> 00:32:29.509 and he uses logic and empirical observation to 00:32:29.509 --> 00:32:32.190 solve a series of murders in a medieval abbey. 00:32:32.750 --> 00:32:36.930 He is literally Occam as a detective. If you 00:32:36.930 --> 00:32:38.930 think about it, Occam is the original detective. 00:32:39.349 --> 00:32:41.849 Sherlock Holmes owes him a royalty check. Without 00:32:41.849 --> 00:32:44.309 a doubt. When you have eliminated the impossible, 00:32:44.650 --> 00:32:47.650 whatever remains, however improbable, must be 00:32:47.650 --> 00:32:51.279 the truth. That... is pure occam shave away the 00:32:51.279 --> 00:32:53.980 impossible assumptions until you are left with 00:32:53.980 --> 00:32:56.079 the hard fact it is a shortcut to being well 00:32:56.079 --> 00:32:58.799 informed indeed so let's try to recap this incredible 00:32:58.799 --> 00:33:01.500 life we have a man who is a beginner who never 00:33:01.500 --> 00:33:04.759 got his degree a friar sworn to poverty who ended 00:33:04.759 --> 00:33:07.650 up shaping the modern laws of property A fugitive 00:33:07.650 --> 00:33:09.730 hiding from the Pope who wrote the playbook for 00:33:09.730 --> 00:33:12.349 modern secular politics. And a deeply religious 00:33:12.349 --> 00:33:14.950 theologian whose logic drives the scientific 00:33:14.950 --> 00:33:17.650 method. A life of contradictions held together 00:33:17.650 --> 00:33:20.730 by one driving principle. Simplicity. Truth. 00:33:21.289 --> 00:33:24.250 Strip away the fake stuff, the complex theories, 00:33:24.470 --> 00:33:27.210 the institutional power, and deal with what is 00:33:27.210 --> 00:33:29.430 real, what is right in front of you. So what 00:33:29.430 --> 00:33:31.470 does this all mean for us today? We usually end 00:33:31.470 --> 00:33:33.289 with a takeaway, but today I want to leave the 00:33:33.289 --> 00:33:36.450 listener with a question based on Occam's volunteerism. 00:33:36.490 --> 00:33:39.109 Go for it. Occam believed that the laws of nature 00:33:39.109 --> 00:33:42.069 aren't necessary. Gravity doesn't have to pull 00:33:42.069 --> 00:33:44.349 down. The speed of light doesn't have to be constant. 00:33:44.650 --> 00:33:47.049 It happens that way because God wills it moment 00:33:47.049 --> 00:33:50.650 by moment. The universe is contingent. It could 00:33:50.650 --> 00:33:52.630 have been a universe where God became incarnate 00:33:52.630 --> 00:33:55.049 as a donkey. It could have been. The laws could 00:33:55.049 --> 00:33:56.890 be different tomorrow. So here's the question. 00:33:57.420 --> 00:33:59.180 How does that change the way we look at science 00:33:59.180 --> 00:34:01.819 today? We often think of the laws of physics 00:34:01.819 --> 00:34:05.200 as these rigid, unchangeable, almost divine truths. 00:34:05.720 --> 00:34:07.940 But if we view them through Occam's lens, they 00:34:07.940 --> 00:34:11.480 are just observations. They are just how it happens 00:34:11.480 --> 00:34:13.119 to be right now. Does that make the universe 00:34:13.119 --> 00:34:16.099 feel more fragile to you, or does it make it 00:34:16.099 --> 00:34:18.440 feel more miraculous? That is a deep thought 00:34:18.440 --> 00:34:20.880 to end on. It certainly makes you appreciate 00:34:20.880 --> 00:34:23.780 the stability we do have. It's not guaranteed 00:34:23.780 --> 00:34:26.940 by some abstract logic. It's a gift of existence. 00:34:27.440 --> 00:34:30.699 And it reinforces his main point. We have to 00:34:30.699 --> 00:34:33.059 open our eyes and look at it to truly understand 00:34:33.059 --> 00:34:35.460 it. We can't just assume. Something to mull over. 00:34:35.960 --> 00:34:37.960 And the next time you are faced with a complex 00:34:37.960 --> 00:34:40.460 problem or conspiracy theory with 12 different 00:34:40.460 --> 00:34:43.320 moving parts, remember our friend William of 00:34:43.320 --> 00:34:45.500 Ockham. Shave away the water fairies. Look for 00:34:45.500 --> 00:34:48.019 the simplest explanation. Don't multiply entities 00:34:48.019 --> 00:34:50.340 beyond necessity. Thanks for listening to The 00:34:50.340 --> 00:34:51.860 Deep Dive. We'll see you next time.