Medieval Europe · c. 1320 – 15th c.
Late-medieval nominalism
Only individual things exist; universals like “humanity” are signs in the mind and in language, not real natures shared by things.
Do universals exist outside the mind?
By 1300 scholastic metaphysics had multiplied entities: common natures, formal distinctions, intelligible species. Theologians who stressed God’s absolute freedom also distrusted claims that creatures share necessary essences.
Whatever exists is individual, and a thing cannot be both one and in many places at once, so a universal cannot be a thing. We explain general knowledge more simply by concepts that signify many individuals, and we should not posit entities beyond necessity.
- Only individuals exist.
- Universals are concepts or words that signify many things.
- Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.
The “modern way” (via moderna) dominated many universities, sharpened logic and semantics, and prepared ground for early modern empiricism and science.
Thinkers
c. 1287–1347William of OckhamEnglish Franciscan logician who defied the popec. 1300–c. 1360Jean BuridanParis arts master, logician and natural philosopherKey texts
Where it came from
Reacted againstScholasticismOckham rejected the realist apparatus of common natures and Scotus’s formal distinction as needless entities.
What it led to
Carried on byBritish empiricismOckham’s view that only particulars exist, and that entities should not be multiplied, lived on in the empiricists’ suspicion of abstract ideas and unseen substances.