William of Ockam Quotes
What can be explained by the assumption of fewer things is vainly explained by the assumption of more things.
Historically, man has reacted to phenomena whose causes were not understood in one of two diametrically opposed ways. Some of these are attributed to God or the Gods of the culture. Others were associated with the occult, the world of demons and the Devil. In this case, when Newton published his great work, he had no explanation of the cause of gravity. There were some who accused him of delving into the occult. Ironically, Newton himself was heavily into the occult—one of the puzzles about a great mind. The cause of gravity did not begin to be understood until the Higgs Boson was proven to exist in 2012 with the Super Hadron Collider.
William of Ockham ( c. 1287 – 1347) was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher, and theologian, who is believed to have been born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey. He is considered to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the centre of the major intellectual and political controversies of the 14th century. He is commonly known for Occam's razor, the methodological principle that bears his name, and also produced significant works on logic, physics, and theology. William is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 10 April.
