![]() ![]() While recognizing similarities among things in nature, Ockham saw that similarity as the result of a generic relationship that does not endanger the peculiar individuality of each object. Ockham rejected the idea that there is similarity among things of the same species because there exists a "common nature," prior to existing individual things, which inheres in the latter and makes them similar. It is because of Ockham's rejection of the "realistic" interpretation of the universal or general concept that the term "nominalist" is applied to him. It also meant that man initially and primarily knows the particular, and only on the basis of that and similar experiences does he begin to form a more general concept known as the universal. ![]() This direct apprehension of the existing particular thing by means of intuitive cognition increased the empirical quality of medieval thought at the expense of the Platonic reliance on forms or ideas. In addition to intuitive cognition, which is the initial and primary means of knowledge, there is abstractive cognition, closely related to memory, which can reflect on an object but does not convey any knowledge of whether the object presently exists. Intuitive cognition is the direct apprehension by the mind of a particular, existing thing according to which the mind forms a judgment that such a thing exists and apprehends those facts contingent upon its existence, such as size, shape, color, and so on. In place of the Aristotelian description of how man comes to know (a description that sees the human mind primarily as a passive receptacle that abstracts the universal form or concept from particular things that are experienced and transmitted through a multistage process), Ockham described the mind as an active agent that knows the particular immediately and directly through intuitive cognition. The 13th-century tendency to base scientific knowledge, knowledge of the physical world, on sense experience was accepted and extended by Ockham. He borrowed from the past and perfected constructive tendencies already present in the previous period. Ockham's ideas should not, however, be seen as a rejection or destruction of 13th century thought. Like Thomas and Scotus, the different areas of Ockham's thought are closely interrelated and marked by distinctive features that give his thought a special character. In these various works Ockham set forth ideas which, within 20 years, earned him an international reputation and placed him alongside Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus as one of the most significant minds of the age. There he revised the first book of his commentary on the Sentences, lectured on logic and Aristotle's Physics, and engaged in quodlibetic disputes with other theologians. After the completion of his theological studies, he became lecturer at the Franciscan convent in Reading, where he taught off and on until 1324. The following fall Ockham began his 13 years of theological study at Oxford.ĭuring the years 1317 to 1320 Ockham lectured on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the standard theological textbook from the 12th to the 16th centuries. Saviour at Southwark in London, where Southwark Cathedral now stands. In February 1306 he was ordained a subdeacon at the church of St. Having received his early education in Latin grammar and the liberal arts, possibly at the nearby monastic house of Augustinian canons at Newark, he joined the Franciscan order and studied arts and philosophy at their convent in London. William was born in the village of Ockham in Surrey. ![]()
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