Sir William Hamilton's Discussions (1852), page 590 (On Causality). In the second edition (1853) it is used on pages 616 and 629. In the latter place it is for the first time distinctly associated with the current form.
10. The following Conclusions I call Provisional, mainly because there is still a possibility that they may be upset by German investigators of Ockham's unpublished manuscripts. These have lain idle for nearly six centuries at Ingolstadt or Munich; still uncopied, and probably unread, by any Englishman; much to the discredit of Merton College and the University of Oxford. Many of his cardinal works have never been printed: including his Commentaries on the Second, Third, and Fourth Books of the Lombard Sentences. The Commentary on the First Book (printed in 1495) is very full; but the appended comments on the other Books are only slender bundles of selected Questions, occupying together only one-third of the volume.
Provisional Conclusions
A. "Occam's Razor" is a modern myth. There is nothing mediaeval in it, except the general sense of the post-mediaeval formula: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. This myth has come to full maturity and secured general assent, within the lifetime of many philosophers of the present day; though it is a matter of purely intellectual interest, without any impulse or reinforcement from commercial greed, family-pride, national vanity, sectarian zeal, or political party-spirit.
B. The age of the English title is not yet three-score years and ten: dating from the publication of Sir William Hamilton's Discussions (1852).
C. The Latin title, Novaculum Nominalium, is little (if at all) more than a century older: being a translation of the French title, Rasoir des Nominaux, bestowed upon the current formula by Condillac in 1746.
D. (1) The current formula was unknown to Ockham and the other Schoolmen.
- (2) It was invented in 1639, substantially in its present wording, by the Scotist Commentator, John Ponce of Cork: a little-known man of great abilities and very independent disposition.
- (3) It first appeared in its present exact order of words, in the Logica Vetus et Nova of John Clauberg of Groningen in 1654.
- (4) It was first formally associated with Nominalism by Leibnitz in 1670; and this connexion seems to have been generally accepted from the beginning of the eighteenth century. The reason of the connexion was indicated in 1676, by Jakob Thomasius (father of the celebrated jurisprudent Christian T.), in his Oration De Doctoribus Scholasticus Latinis to the University of Leipzig: "Hoc principium: Non esse absque necessitate multiplicanda entia. Hinc enim ipsi (Nominales) Realibus ut prodigis
