Page:The Myth of Occams Razor.djvu/5

 afterwards completely worked out by his pupil William of Ockham. It has lately been stigmatized by the modern semi-Scotist Professor Pohle of Breslau, as: "an inconceivable hybrid, which excludes every attempt of the mind to grasp it": p. 153 of The Essence and Attributes of God: vol. i. of his Dogmatic Theology, translated by Arthur Preuss. Both the Oxford Fransciscans (Ockham and Scotus) used indifferently the two formulas: "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate": and, "Frustra fit per plura, quod potest fieri per pauciora"; while a former very similar to the latter was used by the Most Resolute Doctor, the great Dominican Nominalist Durand; "Frustra ponuntur plura, ubi unum sufficit": In Sententias, ii., D. 3, Q. 5, N. 4. Occam's main contribution to the Doctrine was a special application to the Logic of Universals, in his characteristic formula: "Sufficiunt Singularia, et ita tales res universales omnino frustra ponuntur": In SS., i., D. 2, Q. 4 (top of col. 18). Few or no competent critics will question Mansel's judgment of Ockham, on page 40 of his Introduction to the Rudimenta of Aldrich: "The ablest writer on Logic whom the Schools have produced.... The Summa Totius Logicæ of Occam is the most valuable contribution of the Middle Ages to the Logica Docens. His editor, Mark of Beneventum, said that, if the Gods used Logic, it would be the Logic of Ockham."

9. The doctrine was first completely applied to Physics by Sir Isaac Newton in 1713. He quotes the very words of Scotus and Ockham in the brief annotation of his first Regula Philosophandi: which is itself a very similar statement of the principle. In the Third Edition (1726) of the Principia Mathematica (De Mundi Systemate, lib. iii., p. 387, the Rule runs: "Causas rerum naturalium non plures admitti debere, quam quae et verae sint et earum phenomenis explicandis sufficient". Newton then subjoins: "Dicunt utique philosophi: Natura nihil agit frustra, et frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora": a comment not found in the First Edition (1687). There is, however, no mention of Ockham or Nominalism in the Principia. The term Novaculum Nominalium was quite unknown in the seventeenth century, as the international learned translation of Condillac's Gallic wit: Rasoir des Nominaux, in a note on page 214 of his Origine des Connasissances Humaines (1746): Section V. (Des Abstractions), chap. i., §5. The English variant (Occam's Razor) is a century younger; having made its first appearance in