Page:The Myth of Occams Razor.djvu/3

Rh with the dissertation by Leibnitz prefixed as in Introduction. In Hurter's Nomenclator (iii., 8), Nizolius is described as: "Philosophiæ scholasticæ acer adversarius, Occami Nominalismi assecla". But he is better known through the many editions of his Ciceronian Concordance (Thesaurus Ciceronis).

5. I have since found in Clauberg's Elementa Philosophiæ seu Ontosophia (Groningen, 1647), part ii., §169, p. 74: "Entia non sunt temere (sine necessitate) multiplicanda". And again on page 174 (part iii., §121): in both cases without quotation-marks, or any reference to Nominalism, to Ockham, or to any source whatever. Possibly he regarded the phrase as a proverb, needing no sponsor. But I cannot find any such proverb in those vast collections of mediæval and earlier phrases: the Adagia of Erasmus, and the Polyanthes of Mirabellius. The common formula is exactly given in Clauberg's Logica Vetus et Nova (1654), page 320, under Definition; but not as a quotation, nor with any reference.

6. De Wulf in §335 accuses Duns Scotus of: "creating fictitious, misleading, and superfluous beaconlights, - in defiance of a precept which he himself pretended to approve of: entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem". But he gives no reference, and I cannot find the formula anywhere in the text of the Subtle Doctor's writings. It appears substantially indeed in Wadding's edition (1639), tom. vii., p. 723 (27): but only in a new Franciscan Commentary on the Opus Oxon., iii., D. 34, Q. 1, Scholium 4. Wadding's chief collaborator, John Ponce of Cork, there mentions "illud axioma vulgare, quo tam frequenter utuntur Scholastici; non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate". He does not, however, name any of these Scholastici; and I can merely affirm (with almost mathematical certainty) that they do not include Ockham, Scotus, or Aquinas; and the axiom does not occur in the two most popular textbooks of the Middle Ages, the Sentences of Peter Lombard (Bishop of Paris, †1164), and the Summulæ Logicales of Petrus Hispanus (†1277, as Pope John XXI.). I may add, with sufficient moral certainty, Abelard, Hales, Albert, Bonaventura, and Durand. Ockham's disciples, Gabriel Biel of Tuebingen (†1495), and John Major of Haddington and St. Andrews (†1540), each of whom has been called, "The Last of the Schoolmen," are satisfied with their Master's Pluralitas or Frustra fit. Reference may be made for the German, to his In Sententias, iii., D. 3, Q. 2, N. 4 (Conclusio 1), or (for applications) to i., D. 26, Q. 1, A. 1 (Conclusio 3). And for the Scot, to his Logica (1516), Tractatus Primus Summularum, folio 28, col. 4.

7. On the other hand, De Wulf might have said with perfect accuracy, that Scotus, no less than Ockham, accepts and systematically applies the Law of Parcimony; whose origin he ascribes to Aristotle's Physica and De Anima, especially the first Book of