| The principle was, in fact,
invoked before Ockham by Durand de Saint-Pourcain, a French Dominican theologian
and philosopher of dubious orthodoxy, who used it to explain that abstraction
is the apprehension of some real entity, such as an Aristotelian cognitive
species, an active intellect, or a disposition, all of which he spurned
as unnecessary. Likewise, in science, Nicole d'Oresme, a 14th-century French
physicist, invoked the law of economy, as did Galileo later, in
defending the simplest hypothesis of the heavens. Other later scientists
stated similar simplifying laws and principles.
Ockham, however, mentioned the principle so frequently
and employed it so sharply that it was called "Ockham's razor." He used
it, for instance, to dispense with relations, which he held to be nothing
distinct from their foundation in things; with efficient causality, which
he tended to view merely as regular succession; with motion, which is merely
the reappearance of a thing in a different place; with psychological powers
distinct for each mode of sense; and with the presence of ideas in the
mind of the Creator, which are merely the creatures themselves.
(c) 1996 Encyclopaedia Britannica
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