…the black death the first phase of the hundred year war ended then Giotto is painting meister Eckhart is writing William of Ockham is formulating his philosophy, tamerlane, Chaucer, Wycliffe, so forth and so on, right there. So this is the full flowering…

…quickly forces its limitations upon you and it's very basic to the western mind is this thing formulated as occam's razor. William of Ockham was a 14th century philosopher who founded a point of view called nominalism but the thing that Ockham said that…

…occam's razor. William of Ockham was a 14th century philosopher who founded a point of view called nominalism but the thing that Ockham said that is germane for this argument is he said it in Latin and there's different arguments about exactly what he…

…mushrooms that had been hiding under the surface previously because it was too wet. That's why the loud hum I hear is William of Ockham spinning in his grave, I see you think that DNA and the expression of genes is a simpler explanation than a divine…

…simpler explanation than a divine intervention at the level of the novelty wave. I think that the DNA is divine. Ah, but William of Ockham escaped from his trap. Rupert, what do you as a middleman think. You see I can't quite get your position because…

…rival to science is in fact paves the way for science. There would have been no science had there not been William of Ockham who was a 14th century nominalist theologian. Really, western civilization has had a thousand years to work its magic and now…

…with that. I understand why science latched on to probability with such a vengeance it's because you know, thanks to William of Ockham, there is this notion called Ockham's Razor which is this idea that is most simply stated as hypotheses should not…

…may wish to correct me a hundred years either way but I'm very interested in sort of bringing back and re appreciating William of Ockham who, aside from the things I'm saying, about him here which are very nice also had a notion not much appreciated of…

…very close to novelty theories, the belief that the universe progresses until emerging with the nature of god. But the thing about Ockham that bears on all this is of course his famous razor, which simply says it's been interpreted in many ways that…

…of epistemological dialogue, we should get rid of statistical analysis we should dial science back to the late Medieval Period of Ockham and we should do science that way and applying Ockham's Razor, we're quickly able to cut away the underbrush that these…

…They say our ethics are gone, so we're going to go back to the first speeches of mahomet or something. So Raymond of Ockham I feel uncomfortable with his idea of simplicity. I mean the modern form is probably a rather large measure of complexity. Which…

…Mesa. Well I agree but I'm not sure that it's good to rant against the Face on mars because there's no way, by William of Ockham or whatever, that you could have ruled out the possibility that there was really a pocket watch on mars and now, in fact…

…being, then we need to talk about what the rules are that obtain in the imagination. You know the 14th century nominalist William of Ockham dealt with questions like: can god do anything? Yes god can do anything. Then can god make a rock so heavy that…

…up? And then if not why not? And what does this mean? Well this is an effort to tame the imagination, and Ockham concluded from exercises like that that even god must follow the rules of logical necessity, otherwise becoming trapped in self negating…