William of Ockham, Franciscan Friar, Philosopher
10 April -- Commemoration
If celebrated as a Lesser Festival,
Common of Teachers, page 473
Born at Ockham in Surrey in about the year 1285, William
entered the Franciscan Order and, as a friar, he first
studied and then taught at
Oxford. He writings
were ever the subject of close scrutiny, this being a time
when heresy was suspected everywhere, it seemed, but he
never received any formal condemnation. Later in life, he
entered the controversy between the rival popes and had to
flee for his life. His much-used principle of economy --
often referred to as 'Occam's Razor' -- stated that only
individual things exist and that they are directly
understood by the thinking mind and that this intuitive
knowledge is caused naturally. His doctrine of God led him
to destroy the thirteenth-century concept of the
relationship between theology and philosophy and took the
study of the philosophy of religion onto a new level. He
died on this day in the year 1347.