Lesson · 4 min Stretch
Names, Not Things
In one line Ockham held that only individual things exist, and that we should not add entities we do not need.
William of Ockham was an English Franciscan of the early fourteenth century. He argued that universals, such as humanity or redness, are not real things outside the mind. Only individual things exist: this person, that red apple. A universal is a concept or a word that stands for many individuals.
This view is called nominalism. Ockham used it to cut back the long lists of entities that some scholastics had added to explain the world. A principle he used often, that plurality should not be posited without necessity, is the source of the name of Occam’s Razor.
He was also bold in politics. He quarreled with Pope John XXII over the poverty of Christ, fled Avignon, was excommunicated and found shelter at the court of Louis of Bavaria. The habit worth keeping is to ask whether each part of an account is earning its place.
Go deeper
The famous wording, that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity, does not appear in Ockham’s own writings; later writers coined it. The idea was not new with him either, though he leaned on it often. Ockham’s nominalism shaped late medieval logic and is often linked to the rise of a more empirical science. Critics answer that if only individuals exist, it is hard to explain why so many things share real likenesses.
The report with three forces
A company explains a delayed launch by pointing to “the culture,” “the climate” and “the momentum.” Each sounds like a thing, and each gets its own report.
A new analyst asks what each one names. The answers keep coming back to particular people, meetings and missed handoffs. She rewrites the report around those, and the cause becomes something the team can act on.
Try this today Look at one explanation you use at work and cross out any part that does no work. See if it still explains.
Cite or share this lesson
A plain reference you can paste into notes or an essay:
Quest2Reason. “Names, Not Things.” https://quest2reason.com/learn/lesson/names-not-things. Accessed 13 November 2026.
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “William of Ockham” — Covers his nominalism, the principle of parsimony and his conflict with Pope John XXII.
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “William of Ockham” — Explains universals as concepts and notes that the famous razor wording is later.