William of Ockham
William of Ockham was an English Franciscan and scholastic philosopher, from Ockham, Surrey, a small village in Surrey, in England. He is considered, along with Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, to be one of the major figures of medieval thought. Commonly known for Ockham's Razor, the methodological principle that bears his name (although he was not the originator of the principle), Ockham also produced important works on logic, physics, and theology. He is probably best known for his ardent defence of nominalism, the doctrine that "we should not multiply entities according to the multiplicity of terms", i.e. we should not suppose that everything that looks like a name, actually names something real, outside the mind. In the Church of England, his commemoration day is April 10.
