Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are opening
up a file that, on the surface, looks like it
belongs in the dusty, restricted section of a
medieval library. For sure. The kind of place
where you need special gloves just to turn the
page. Exactly. But once you actually start reading
the source material we have for today, you realize
it's actually a political thriller. It is. Yeah.
Mixed with a revolution in how human beings think.
We are talking about a figure who is probably
responsible for the most famous catchphrase in
the history of logic, and yet his life reads
more like an action movie than a philosophy textbook.
Yeah, a lot more. We are talking about William
of Ockham. And Ockham's razor. We have all heard
it. Keep it simple. The simplest explanation
is usually the right one. All those variations.
You hear it in boardrooms. You hear it in science
labs. You hear it on detective shows like CSI.
It's everywhere. But what struck me going through
the stack of research we have here is that almost
nobody knows the man holding the razor. And the
man behind it, William of Ockham, wasn't just
sitting in a monastery trimming hedges or, you
know, contemplating flowers. Far from it. This
guy was a fugitive. He was a radical. He spent
the prime of his life excommunicated, literally
on the run from the Pope. hiding out with emperors
and dismantling the entire intellectual structure
of the Middle Ages while he was at it. It is
a massive story. And to understand him, you have
to understand the world he was living in. We're
talking about the early 14th century. Yeah, and
it's a world that feels like it's coming apart
at the seams. You have the Black Death looming
on the horizon. The Hundred Years' War is brewing
between England and France. And the Catholic
Church, the glue holding Europe together, is
tearing itself apart from the inside. It really
is. The papacy has moved from Rome. to Avignon
in France, and it's seen as corrupt and politically
compromised. And right in the center of all this
chaos, holding a stick of dynamite, is William.
So our mission today is to find the man behind
the maxim. We want to unpack his life, figure
out why he's called the venerable beginner. Which
is a very strange nickname we absolutely have
to get to. We will, and understand his complex
philosophy called nominalism. And we're going
to see how that philosophy, believe it or not,
paved the way for modern science and even the
separation of church and state. So let's set
the scene. We aren't in a university lecture
hall yet. We are in a tiny village in Surrey,
England in the late 1200s. That's right, Ockham.
It's a small place. William is born there around
1287. Now, looking at the demographics of the
time, if you were a bright kid from a village
like that and you didn't have a title or a family
crest, there was really only one path out of
obscurity. The church. The church. specifically
for William, the Franciscans, the Order of Friars
Minor. Also known as the Grey Friars because
of their robes. Exactly. And this choice... Becoming
a Franciscan isn't just a career move for William.
It's not like choosing a college major. It defines
everything that happens to him later. Because
the Franciscans aren't just your average monks,
right? They had a very specific brand. Oh, they
were the radicals of their day. Their whole identity
was built on the idea of absolute poverty. They
were trying to live exactly like Christ and the
apostles. Which meant Owning nothing. Absolutely
nothing. They didn't just talk about being humble.
They aggressively rejected property and wealth,
both individually and as an order. Which sounds
noble, but as we'll see, poverty turns out to
be a very dangerous political stance in the 14th
century. A politically explosive stance. But
before the politics, he has to get educated.
The sources say he heads to London first for
his early schooling, and then around 1309, he
goes to the big leagues. Oxford. The University
of Oxford. The intellectual heartbeat of England.
For sure. He spends over a decade there studying
theology. This is the place where the smartest
minds in Christendom came to debate the nature
of God, reality, logic, everything. And this
is where we run into his first major contradiction.
He earns a nickname that has stuck with him for
700 years. Venerabilis inceptor. The venerable
beginner. Now I have to ask, is that shade? It
sounds like calling someone a distinguished amateur
or the perpetual student. It does sound a bit
backhanded, doesn't it? But it's actually a technical
term that tells us a lot about his situation.
Okay, break it down for me. In the medieval university
system, to become a regent master, which is basically
a tenured professor with the full authority to
teach you. You had to jump through an incredible
number of hoops. So it was a long process. Very
long. You had to attend lectures for years, participate
in public disputations, and lecture on the Bible
yourself. William did all of that. He finished
all the requirements for a master's degree in
theology. So he did the work, but he didn't get
the job. He never got the chair. He remained
an inceptor, someone at the beginning or the
threshold of their mastership. So in title, he
was a beginner. But why? If he did all the work,
was it politics? Was he just not good enough?
Oh, he was too good. That was the problem. He
was too smart, and his ideas were too dangerous
for the establishment. And this all came to a
head over a textbook, of all things. Yes. The
standard requirement for an aspiring theologian
was to write a commentary on a book called The
Sentences by Peter Lombard. Okay, let's pause
on The Sentences. I kept seeing this in the notes.
What exactly is this book? It sounds incredibly
important. It was the textbook of the Middle
Ages. Think of it as a massive four -volume collection
of opinions from the church fathers Augustine,
Jerome, all the greats on every theological topic
imaginable. The Trinity, creation, sin, the sacraments.
So it was like a master anthology of Christian
thought. Exactly. And if you wanted to prove
you were ready to teach, you had to write a massive
analysis of this book. It was your PhD thesis,
your bar exam, and your first book deal all rolled
into one. Everyone who was anyone did it. Thomas
Aquinas did it. Bonaventure did it. Duns Scotus
did it. It was the rite of passage. And William
did it. He did. But when he handed in his commentary,
the reaction wasn't applause. It was shock and
horror in some corners. Why? What did he say?
You have to remember, the dominant intellectual
vibe at Oxford was this heavy, complex synthesis
of faith and reason. They were trying to build
a perfect logical system where Greek philosophy,
especially Aristotle, proved Catholic theology.
A grand, unified theory of everything. Precisely.
And Williams' commentary took a sledgehammer
to that entire project. He was arguing for a
much simpler, more direct way of thinking. He
was criticizing the old guard. So he's the grad
student who writes a thesis saying everything
you professors are teaching is wrong. Pretty
much. He was tearing down the arguments of men
like Duns Scotus, who was an absolute legend
at Oxford. He was seen as the subtle doctor,
this master of intricate arguments. And Occam
comes along and basically says, this is all needlessly
complicated. The faculty must have been furious.
They didn't know what to do with him. His ideas
were considered unorthodox. He wasn't just coloring
outside the lines. He was ripping up a coloring
book. And in the medieval world, being unorthodox
isn't just about getting a bad grade. It's dangerous.
Extremely dangerous. It could end your career
or even your life. And in 1324, the academic
politics spilled over into real world danger.
This is where the story shifts from a university
drama to a legal thriller. He gets summoned.
He's ordered to appear before the papal court
in Avignon, France, to defend himself. And just
for context, you might be wondering, why Avignon?
We usually associate the Pope with Rome. Right,
the Vatican. But not in this century. This is
the era of the Avignon Papacy. The so -called
Babylonian captivity of the church. Exactly.
The popes had relocated to France, essentially
under the thumb of the French monarchy. It was
a time of massive corruption, intrigue, and opulence.
So here comes this friar from Surrey, dressed
in a rough gray robe, walking into the most luxurious
court in Europe to defend his mind. And the charge
is heresy. Technically, it was an investigation
into the orthodoxy of his writings. The chancellor
of Oxford at the time, a man named John Lutterall,
who really seemed to have a personal vendetta
against William, went to Avignon specifically
to prosecute him. His own boss turned on him.
Oh, completely. Lutterall presented a list of
56 statements from William's books that he claimed
were dangerous errors. So William is under house
arrest in Avignon. He's there for years, waiting
for a committee of theologians to pick apart
his life's work. It must have been terrifying.
Incredibly dangerous. You're completely at the
mercy of this court. But here is the plot twist.
While William is sitting there dealing with his
philosophy trial waiting for a verdict that may
never come. He gets drafted into a completely
different war. Yes. This is the part of the story
that just seems unbelievable. He gets pulled
into a bigger fight by his boss, the head of
the whole Franciscan order. Michael of Sassina,
the minister general of the Franciscans. Exactly.
He shows up in Avignon, and Michael is in deep,
deep trouble, too. Over this issue of poverty,
right? Yes, it all comes back to that. The Franciscans
claimed that Jesus and the apostles owned nothing.
No property, no money. They just used what they
needed to survive. This was the doctrine of apostolic
poverty. And this was the core of their identity.
It was everything to them. Now, the pope at the
time, John XXII. absolutely hated this idea.
Why? I mean, why did the Pope care so much about
monks not owning things? Shouldn't the Pope be
into poverty and holiness? You would think so.
But Pope John was a lawyer by training, a brilliant
administrator, and he was very focused on the
temporal power and wealth of the church. He looked
at the Franciscans and saw a massive threat.
A threat how? The implications were political.
If Jesus owned nothing, And the church is supposed
to represent Jesus on earth. Then the church
shouldn't own anything either. Exactly. No palaces
in Avignon, no vast land holdings, no armies,
no political power. The Franciscan view was a
direct threat to the wealth and sovereignty of
the papacy. I see. It's an attack on his entire
business model. Precisely. So Pope Jonathan 27
issues a series of papal bulls official decrees
attacking the doctrine. He declared that the
idea that Jesus of the apostles owned nothing
was heretical. Wait, wait. He made it a heresy
to say Jesus was poor? Effectively, yes. He attacked
the rule of St. Francis, the very foundation
of their order. He was trying to crush them.
So Michael of Sassina is in Avignon to fight
this, and he sees William. He sees the smartest
guy he knows, a brilliant logician who happens
to already be there. So he goes to William and
says, William, I need you to look at this. Read
the Pope's bulls and tell me if they stand up
to theology and scripture. That is a dangerous
assignment. You are already on trial for your
own ideas, and now you're being asked to grade
the Pope's homework. William was reluctant at
it. first, according to the sources. But he's
a Franciscan. This is an attack on his order.
So he spends weeks, maybe months, locked away
just reading these papal documents. And what
does he find? He comes to a conclusion that probably
made his blood run cold. He concludes that the
pope is not just wrong. Not just a bad theologian.
No. Much, much worse. He concludes that Pope
John XXII is a heretic. Whoa. He decides the
Pope's is the heretic. Yes. William argued that
by denying the poverty of Christ, the Pope was
contradicting Scripture and the clear teachings
of previous Popes. And in William's mind, and
this is key to his character, truth trumps authority.
Always. So if a Pope contradicts Scripture, he
isn't the Pope anymore. He forfeits his authority.
He becomes a false Pope, an enemy of the faith.
That is, I mean, bold doesn't cover it. That
is suicidal. Calling the Pope a heretic while
you are essentially his prisoner in his own city.
It was. They knew at that moment that if they
stayed in Avignon after reaching that conclusion,
they would have been arrested, tried, and burned
at the stake. No question. So they had to get
out. They had to run for their lives. So on the
night of May 26, 1328, they make their move.
The great escape. William of Ockham. Michael,
Cecina, and a handful of other leading Franciscans
slip out of the Franciscan convent under cover
of darkness. They flee the city, they race to
the docks, and find a small boat to take them
to a galley waiting offshore. They're on the
run from the most powerful man in Europe. A full
-blown extraction. And they head straight for
the one man who has a big enough army to protect
them. Louis I of Bavaria, the Holy Roman Emperor.
Who, conveniently, was also in a massive knock
-down, drag -out fight with the Pope over who
was the true ruler of Christendom. The enemy
of my enemy is my friend. The ultimate example.
They reach Louis' court in Munich, and legend
has it that William meets the emperor and says
one of the hardest lines in history. I love this
line. Defend me with the sword and I will defend
you with the pen. That is cinematic. It's like
something out of Game of Thrones. And he lived
up to it. William spent the rest of his life
in exile in Munich under the emperor's protection.
He was officially excommunicated by the pope
on June 6, 1328. Kicked out of the church, eternal
damnation, the whole works. But he didn't stop.
He unleashed a torrent of writing, a storm of
political treatises, arguing that the pope was
a criminal, a heretic, and a fraud who needed
to be deposed. It's important to clarify, though,
was he excommunicated because of his philosophy,
the razor stuff? No, and that's a crucial distinction
for the listener. That's a common misconception.
He was excommunicated for his disobedience, for
fleeing Avignon without permission. And for his
political stance on apostolic poverty. So for
his actions, not his core ideas about reality.
Exactly. His actual philosophy, the nominalism
we're about to discuss, was controversial. But
it was never officially condemned as heresy by
the church. So he's a political outlaw, but his
ideas are still in play. And this is where we
need to pivot, right? From the political thriller
to the philosophy that changed everything. Exactly.
While all this drama is unfolding. William had
already laid down a system of thought that was
going to change the world. We need to get into
the deep part of the deep dive. We need to talk
about nominalism. This is the big idea. And I
want to take this slowly because when you read
about nominalism in textbooks, it can get very
abstract very quickly. It can. But it solves
a very real problem. And to understand Occam,
you have to understand the problem of universals.
It's a debate that had been raging for centuries.
Okay, lay it out for me. What is the problem
of universals? The question is this. Do general
concepts exist as real things out in the world?
Or are there only individual things? Okay, that
still sounds a bit abstract. Give me an example.
Let's use a concrete example. Picture two red
apples sitting on a table. Okay, I have two red
apples. Now, we look at them and we say they
share a quality, redness, and they share a nature.
Appleness. They're both red and they're both
apples. The philosophical question is, does redness
exist as a real independent thing? Is there a
universal redness floating around in the universe
that both of these apples are participating in?
Same for appleness. Most people today would say,
no, it's just a color. The apples are red. It's
a property they have. Right. But in the Middle
Ages, the dominant school of thought, the realists
who were followers of Plato and a modified Aristotle,
said yes. They believed that redness or apple
-ness or humanity were real universal forms or
essences. So there's a ghostly perfect apple
somewhere that makes my apple an apple. In a
sense, yes. Or at least a shared real extramental
essence. They believed that for two things to
be similar, they had to share a connection to
a real existing universal. The universal was
the metaphysical glue of reality. They built
their whole worldview on this. The whole thing.
Humanity was a real thing. The church was a real
mystical thing, separate from the individual
people in it. Justice was a real form. And Occam
comes along and says... Garbage. Just blunt.
Occam was a radical empiricist. He trusted his
senses. He looked at the table and said, I see
one apple. I see another apple. That's it. That's
all that's real on that table. So what are these
universals then? What is redness? He argued that
universals like redness, humanity, dogness are
just names. The Latin word for name is gnomon.
That's where we get the term nominalism. They
are just labels we invent. Exactly. He said there
are concepts in our minds. Our brain sees two
things that look alike. And to be efficient,
it creates a category, a mental shortcut, a word
to group them together. But that category has
no reality outside your skull. So there is no
humanity floating in the ether. There are just,
what, 8 billion individual humans? That's the
alchemist's view. There are only individuals.
To be precise, he's sometimes called a conceptualist
or a terminist because he saw these universals
as mental concepts or terms in language. But
the basic idea is the same. They're not out there.
This seems like common sense to us today, but
why was this so dangerous back then? Why did
people get so angry about it? Because if you
destroy universals, you destabilize the entire
structure of medieval society and theology. How
so? Well, think about it. If humanity isn't real,
do we all share a common human nature derived
from Adam? Does original sin work the same way?
If the church isn't a real mystical entity, what
is it? Just a collection of guys in robes. Just
a bunch of fallible individuals. It strips the
mystique away. It questions the very basis of
institutional authority. It individualizes everything.
And it forces you to look at the specific singular
thing right in front of you. Exactly. And this
brings us to the tool he used to slice away those
unnecessary universals. The razor. Occam's razor.
Now, you mentioned earlier that there is a bit
of a Mandela effect with the famous quote. Right.
If you ask someone to quote Occam's razor, they'll
say. Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda si necessitate.
It sounds very profound. It is a great Latin
phrase. But William never wrote it. He never
said it. Not in those exact words. That specific
phrasing was invented much later, in the 17th
century, by an Irish Franciscan who was a follower
of his philosophy. So what did Occam actually
say? He said the same thing in different ways
throughout his work. A more accurate, though
less catchy, version is something like, Nothing
ought to be posited without a reason given, unless
it is self -evident, known by experience, or
proved by the authority of sacred scripture.
That is a bit wordier. Nothing ought to be posited
without a reason given. Right, but the core idea
is parsimony. The principle of parsimony. Parsimony.
Meaning frugality. Like being cheap. Yes. But
in a philosophical sense. Stinginess with your
concepts. William was obsessed with ontological
parsimony. Ontology is the study of what exists,
the furniture of the universe. William wanted
to keep the inventory list of things that exist
as short as absolutely possible. So going back
to the apples, the realist says, OK, on my list
of existing things, I have apple A, apple B and
the universal form of redness. That's three things.
Right. And Auchin comes in with his razor and
says, I see apple A and apple B. They just happen
to look like each other. The redness is just
a description, not a thing. He shaves off the
universal. So the rule is, if you can explain
a phenomenon without inventing a new invisible
entity, you must do so. You must. It's the ultimate
decluttering method for philosophy. Does this
abstract concept spark joy? No. Throw it out.
It's Marie Kondo for metaphysics. Essentially.
And he used this to attack the bad physics of
his day. For example. The Aristotelians thought
that when you throw a rock, it has a quality
called motion added to it, like it's wearing
a coat of motion. Motion is a thing. To them,
yes. Occam said, no, that's absurd. Motion isn't
a thing. Motion is just the rock being in one
place and then being in another place later.
It's a description of change, not an entity.
He's stripping away the magic. He is. And that's
why Bertrand Russell and modern scientists love
him. He paved the way for the scientific method.
Stop assuming there are hidden essences or forms
or motion spirits governing nature. Right. Just
look at the data. What is the simplest explanation
that fits the facts we can observe? But here
is the paradox I found in the notes. William
wasn't a modern secular scientist. He was a devout
Franciscan friar. He believed in God. Angels,
miracles, the soul. All of it. So how does the
razor fit with religion? If you shave away everything
you can't see or prove by experience, don't you
shave away God? That is the big question. And
this is where it gets absolutely fascinating
because it's the opposite of what you'd expect.
We tend to think that logic and religion are
opposites. But for William, using the razor was
a way to protect faith. How does that work? He
was a fideist. Fideist. That comes from fides,
the Latin word for faith. Exactly. He believed
that faith and reason were totally separate lanes.
He argued, in a direct challenge to someone like
Thomas Aquinas, that you cannot prove God exists
using logic or reason. You can't prove God with
logic. I thought that was the whole point of
scholastic theology. That was Aquinas' project.
The five ways, the logical proofs for God. Occam
thought that was a huge mistake. He said human
logic is limited to what we can see and experience
in the world. God is, by definition, outside
of that system. So trying to prove God with logic
is like trying to measure the ocean with a teaspoon?
Perfect analogy. He thought that if you try to
trap God in a logical syllogism, you are bringing
God down to your level. You are insulting him.
You're making God subject to the rules of human
reason. So he separated them to save God from
human limitations. Exactly. His position was
only faith gives us access to theological truths.
You believe in God because it's revealed in scripture
and you choose to believe, not because you solved
a math problem. That actually makes sense. It
liberates faith from having to be logical in
a human sense. And it liberates reason to do
its own thing, to study the world as it is. But
it also leads to his most radical theological
idea. Voluntarism. Voluntarism. From Volundus'
will, the power of the will. Specifically, God's
will. Occam believed that God is absolutely terrifyingly
free. God is omnipotent. He can do anything that
isn't the logical contradiction, like making
a square circle. But aside from that, anything
goes. And this is where we get the famous and
honestly kind of bizarre donkey example. Yes.
This is classic Akko. It's so provocative. He
was debating God's absolute power. And he said,
look, the way the world works isn't necessary.
God didn't have to make it this way. Gravity
didn't have to work this way. Humans didn't have
to have two legs. He was all choice. A completely
free choice. And to prove his point, he takes
on the incarnation. He says if God had wanted
to, he could have become incarnate as a donkey
or an ox. Or even a donkey and a man at the same
time. God could have been a donkey. Theoretically,
yes. I can just imagine the other theologians
flipping tables when he said that. It sounds
so blasphemous. They were horrified. Of course
it does. But William's point was a serious philosophical
one. Who are you to tell God? He can't be a donkey.
Right. If you say God can't do that because it's
undignified, you are putting your human standards
of dignity above God's absolute power. You are
saying God is limited by your idea of what's
proper. Occam refused to do that. For him, God's
freedom is the ultimate reality. This actually
has a huge impact on science, doesn't it? Because
if the world could be anything. Then you can't
just sit in your armchair and think about how
the world must work. What do you mean? The Greeks
and the early scholastics loved to do that. They'd
say, circles are the most perfect shape, so planets
must move in perfect circles. It's an argument
from reason. And Occam says? Occam says, no.
God could have made them move in squares if you
wanted to. There's no must about it. The only
way to find out how they move is to go look.
Empiricism. You have to observe the world because
the world is contingent. It's a choice God made,
not a logical necessity. Precisely. By emphasizing
God's absolute freedom, He unintentionally created
the philosophical justification for experimental
science. You have to test reality to see what
it actually is, because logic alone can't predict
God's free choices. That is a massive aha moment.
So by saying logic can't explain God, he actually
freed up logic to look at the physical world.
And he freed up faith. to just be faith it's
a brilliant if controversial separation of powers
so let's zoom out a bit we have the fugitive
friar in munich he's dismantled metaphysics with
his razor he separated faith and reason now let's
look at how he applied this to politics because
you mentioned he's a pioneer of the separation
of church and state he is and again it comes
directly from his personal situation and his
philosophical principles just as he separated
logic from faith he wanted to separate the spiritual
rule from the earthly rule. Which, in the 1300s,
was not the vibe. The pope claimed plenitudo
potestatis, fullness of power. He was the CEO
of the world. He was the spiritual and temporal
ruler of everything. The pope claimed he could
depose kings, run empires, and that all earthly
power flowed from God through him to the rulers.
And Ockham, writing under the protection of the
emperor, had a different idea. A very different
idea. He went back to Scripture, specifically
a passage in 2 Timothy, where St. Paul says a
soldier of God shouldn't get entangled in civilian
affairs. A pretty clear line. Ockham used that
to argue that the Pope's job is purely spiritual.
Preach the gospel, administer the sacraments,
care for the souls of the faithful. That's it.
He has zero business running a government, owning
a palace, or commanding an army. So he's telling
the Emperor Louis... You don't answer to the
pope on political matters. Your power doesn't
come from the church. Right. But here is the
really radical part. He then has to answer the
question, where does the emperor's power come
from then? If not from God through the pope.
Occam argued that after the fall of man, God
gave humanity as a whole the right and the reason
to set up their own governments and elect their
own rulers to maintain peace and order. The people
choose. In a way, yes. He argued that political
power comes from the consent of the governed.
The ruler has a job to serve the common good.
If the ruler fails at that job, or if, say, the
pope becomes a heretic and a criminal, the community
has the right to remove him. That sounds like
the seeds of democracy. Or at least the social
contract of Locke and Rousseau. It's a direct
precursor. You see echoes of Occam and Thomas
Hobbes and John Locke and eventually the American
founding fathers. The idea that power is a loan
from the people, not a divine right of kings
or popes. It's an astonishingly modern political
theory. And he also had to dive into legal theory,
right? To save the Franciscans from that poverty
trap. The property debate. This is really interesting
for anyone interested in law or economics. Remember,
the pope said, if you eat the apple, you own
it. It's a legal checkmate. How did Occam get
out of it? He had a lawyer his way out. He developed
the concept of usus facti, which means factual
use or use in fact. Okay, what does that mean?
He argued that you can have a natural right to
use something to survive, like eating food or
wearing a robe, without having a legal right
or title to it. He separated the physical act
of using from the legal concept of owning. Like...
Being a guest in someone's house. I can sit on
the couch, I can drink a glass of water, but
I don't own the couch or the glass. That's a
perfect modern analogy. He argued the Franciscans
were permanent guests in God's world. They used
things, but they claimed no legal power over
them, no right to sue someone for them, no right
to sell them. This whole debate forced him to
define what rights actually are. And what was
his definition? He moved the definition of a
right. from being some kind of cosmic entitlement
to being a specific legal power granted by society.
Again, he's making things concrete, observable,
and secular. He's laying the groundwork for modern
legal and economic theory. It's amazing. We're
talking about a guy in the 1340s in exile. coming
up with theories of property rights and the consent
of the governed. He's centuries ahead of schedule.
He really was. And we should briefly mention
his contributions to pure logic, because he was
doing things that look remarkably like modern
computer science. Do tell. Well, in his massive
simulogicae, he wrote down logical formulas that
define how and -e and or statements work when
you negate them. Today, in any intro to logic
or computer programming course, we call them
De Morgan's laws. Wait, I learned De Morgan's
laws in a logic class. Those are named after
Augustus De Morgan, a 19th century British mathematician.
They are. He gets the credit because he formalized
them using modern notation in the 19th century.
But Occam had written them down in words in the
14th century. He was essentially coding logic
before computers existed. That is wild. Absolutely
wild. And it gets weirder. He played around with
ternary logic. Most logic we use is binary. True
or false? Zero or one? That's the basis of all
computing. Occam explored a system with three
truth values, true, false, and some kind of middle
indeterminate value. A three -valued logic. Yes.
And that's something mathematical logic didn't
really return to in a serious way until the 19th
and 20th centuries. He was just on another level.
And I also saw in the outline that he had a beef
with time, or at least how people thought about
time. Yes. Another application of the razor,
the medievals had a very complicated view of
duration. They thought there was time for us
mortals on Earth, which is measured by change
in motion. Okay. Then there was eternity for
God, which is completely outside of time all
at once. Makes sense. And then, because they
loved creating categories for everything, they
had a weird middle thing called the Avum. Avum?
What on Earth is that? It was a special time
measure just for angels. Angel time? You're kidding.
I am not. It was supposed to be somewhere between
our time and God's eternity. It had a beginning,
but it didn't have change or succession in the
same way our time does. It was. Yeah, while it
was angel time. And Occam said... Razor it. Unnecessary
entity. He said it's nonsense. There is only
one measure of duration for all created things.
Time. And it is shared by all of creation. Angels,
humans, rocks. We are all on the same clock.
Eternity is for God alone. It's a democratization
of the universe. We are all in the same boat
chronologically. Exactly. It simplifies the cosmos.
It's classic Occam. So William of Occam dies
around 1347 in Munich, right? Yes. The sources
point to April of 1347. And grimly enough, he
probably died at the Black Death. The great plague
that he had watched approaching from the east
finally reached Munich and caught him. Wow. He
died still excommunicated, still a rebel. Yes.
Buried in a Franciscan church in Munich. A fugitive
to the end. But the ideas didn't stay buried
with him. Not at all. In fact, they exploded
across Europe. His way of thinking, the via moderna
or modern way, became hugely influential. And
there's a direct line to the Protestant Reformation.
To Martin Luther. Absolutely. Martin Luther actually
called Occam my master and my dear master. He
said he belonged to the Occamist party. He read
him avidly. Why? Luther was a German monk almost
200 years later. What did he see in this medieval
English friar? He saw the whole toolkit for challenging
the papacy. Occam denied papal infallibility
long before it was an official doctrine to deny.
Ockham argued that church councils could make
mistakes because they're just made of fallible
men. Which means institutions aren't guaranteed
to be right. Exactly. And most importantly, Ockham
argued that scripture is the ultimate authority
and that a Christian is bound to believe scripture
over a pope's decree if they conflict. That sounds
exactly like Luther's argument at the Diet of
Worms. It is. This foreshadows Luther's core
doctrine of sola scriptura, scripture alone.
So the fugitive friar of the 14th century planted
the bomb that blew up the unity of the Western
church two centuries later. And for the literature
fans listening, there is one more massive direct
legacy. The name of the rose. Umberto Eco's masterpiece.
If you haven't read the book or seen the movie
with Sean Connery, you absolutely have to. The
main character is a brilliant Franciscan friar
named William of Baskerville. Baskerville obviously
referencing Sherlock Holmes. Right. But the character
is a direct loving homage to William of Ockham.
He's an English Franciscan, he's in trouble with
the Pope in Avignon, he's a nominalist philosopher,
and he uses logic and empirical observation to
solve a series of murders in a medieval abbey.
He is literally Occam as a detective. If you
think about it, Occam is the original detective.
Sherlock Holmes owes him a royalty check. Without
a doubt. When you have eliminated the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the truth. That... is pure occam shave away the
impossible assumptions until you are left with
the hard fact it is a shortcut to being well
informed indeed so let's try to recap this incredible
life we have a man who is a beginner who never
got his degree a friar sworn to poverty who ended
up shaping the modern laws of property A fugitive
hiding from the Pope who wrote the playbook for
modern secular politics. And a deeply religious
theologian whose logic drives the scientific
method. A life of contradictions held together
by one driving principle. Simplicity. Truth.
Strip away the fake stuff, the complex theories,
the institutional power, and deal with what is
real, what is right in front of you. So what
does this all mean for us today? We usually end
with a takeaway, but today I want to leave the
listener with a question based on Occam's volunteerism.
Go for it. Occam believed that the laws of nature
aren't necessary. Gravity doesn't have to pull
down. The speed of light doesn't have to be constant.
It happens that way because God wills it moment
by moment. The universe is contingent. It could
have been a universe where God became incarnate
as a donkey. It could have been. The laws could
be different tomorrow. So here's the question.
How does that change the way we look at science
today? We often think of the laws of physics
as these rigid, unchangeable, almost divine truths.
But if we view them through Occam's lens, they
are just observations. They are just how it happens
to be right now. Does that make the universe
feel more fragile to you, or does it make it
feel more miraculous? That is a deep thought
to end on. It certainly makes you appreciate
the stability we do have. It's not guaranteed
by some abstract logic. It's a gift of existence.
And it reinforces his main point. We have to
open our eyes and look at it to truly understand
it. We can't just assume. Something to mull over.
And the next time you are faced with a complex
problem or conspiracy theory with 12 different
moving parts, remember our friend William of
Ockham. Shave away the water fairies. Look for
the simplest explanation. Don't multiply entities
beyond necessity. Thanks for listening to The
Deep Dive. We'll see you next time.