– 1328
Why
would a friar and theologian have to flee for his liberty—and maybe
even his life—from the Pope?
Well,
it may not surprise you a bit. Many people have argued and fought
over religious ideas—is THIS the right way? or is THAT?—and
sometimes the Powers That Be have had people who disagreed with them
arrested or even executed. In this case several Franciscans disagreed with ideas being taught by Pope John XXII, but the Pope was the one with the power. So the Franciscans,
including English friar William of Ockham, stole away in the dark of night, and ran
off to live in the court of another who disagreed with the Pope: Holy
Roman Emperor Louis IV.
Now,
here's a question:
You
probably know that the Vatican, where the Pope heads the Catholic
Church, is in Rome. Wouldn't you also think that the Holy Roman
Emperor would ALSO be in Rome? Just how far did Ockham and the other
Franciscans have to flee, going from the Pope's place to the
Emperor's court?
It
turns out that, during this turbulent time of the Middle Ages,
neither this particular Pope nor this particular Emperor lived in Rome.
You
see, Louis IV—who had lived and ruled in Munich, in Bavaria (part of what is now
known as Germany)—was in a constant state of feud with Pope John
XXII . John excommunicated Louis (which means kicked him out of the
Catholic Church), and Louis deposed John (which means kicked him out
of being the Pope). John didn't accept the deposition, of course, and
moved from Rome, Italy, to Avignon, France. (To this day we consider
that John XXII remained Pope at this time, and the guy that Louis installed as
Pope, Nicholas V, is now called the Antipope.) Robert, King of Naples,
sent a fleet and an army to kick Louis out of Rome, and both Louis IV
and the Antipope fled—all the way back to Munich.
So,
when William of Ockham fled from the Pope of the Holy Roman Catholic
Church to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, he traveled from Avignon, France,
to Munich, Bavaria (Germany).
The
story is much more complex than even that, but I don't want to get
into any more of those messy details. Instead, I want to tell you why
we know Ockham's name:
Because
of “Occam's Razor.”
(AKA
Ockham's Razor.)
We're
not talking about the thing Ockham used to shave. Instead, we are talking about a philosophical principle. Ockham
wrote many scholarly papers, and one logical
principle that he used over and over in his papers is that the
simplest explanation is often best.
According
to Occam's Razor, if there are several hypotheses about why the
universe is the way it is, all other things being equal, we should
select the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions.
In
other words, if there are two competing theories that make exactly
the same predictions, the simpler one is better.
The principle is
called a “razor” because, with it, one can shave away
unnecessary assumptions.
Here's
an often-used example of Occam's Razor:
If
you live in America and you hear hoofbeats—but you can't see what
made the sounds—you should assume horses, not zebras. And certainly
not unicorns!
Here
are some other examples:
If
you zipped a dollar bill into your jacket pocket and a few hours
later you discover a hole in your pocket, and no dollar, you should
assume that the money fell through the hole, not that someone
hypnotized you, unzipped your pocket, and stole the
money.
If,
on the other hand, you accidentally left your wallet (bulging with
money) on the bench of a diner and then went back three hours later,
only to discover that it was gone and, no, nobody turned it in—well, in that sad case you should assume that somebody
stole your wallet and money rather than more elaborate possibilities.- Did the wallet somehow disappear into another dimension?
- Was the person who bussed the table blind, and did she or he accidentally sweep up the wallet and throw it into the trash?
- Did, perhaps, a small flying saucer whisk into the restaurant, undetected, and disintegrate your wallet with a carefully calibrated laser beam that left the bench unmarked?
Oh, boy, without Occam's Razor, we
could come up with soooo many different scenarios of what happened to
that wallet and money!
But
we really don't need to spin a hundred unlikely explanations when
there is a mundane-but-likely explanation that fits the evidence.
Important
Note:
Occam's
Razor is just a guideline for our thinking. It can prove nothing!
Careful observation, measurement, experiment, replication, modeling,
mathematical calculation—all are more important to figuring out
what's what, and why, then just thinking up “the simplest
solution.”
For
example, a homicide detective should be alert to the possibility that the
simple solution “the butler did it,” even when backed up with a
piece or two of circumstantial evidence and an eyewitness report,
might not be correct. A shrewd detective would realize that the
eyewitness who just gained a million dollars from a death might have
lied about what he or she saw, and maybe even planted a few “clues” to frame
the butler he or she hopes to pin the murder on.
In this murder case, we shouldn't pounce on the easy answer as necessarily correct, but we also shouldn't insist that the most likely person is
somehow, perversely, the least likely (even if it seems that way in
murder mysteries). Instead, we should dig deeper, find more
evidence, follow the money, question the eyewitness several more times,
interview everybody else...Work, work, work—and see if more
evidence points the finger more conclusively at the butler, or
elsewhere.
How Stuff Works offers a longer exploration of Occam's Razor.
Plan
Ahead...
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