Like many of his time in the late Middle Ages, the Franciscan William of Occam was a commentator on Aristotle and a scientific philosopher. He believed, in contrast to Aristotle, that human reason and logic were insufficient to know all things, and that ultimately intuitive thought, feeling, and faith must be relied upon to understand the nature of reality, that is, the nature of God, who is the source and essence of reality. William’s piety, his belief that God alone knows, did not allow him to have the faith in human knowledge and reason for which philosophers and scientists subsequently gained notoriety.
But before we dive into William of Occam’s philosophies, let’s explore his predecessors and influences.
Robert Grosseteste
An important precursor to William’s work was the thinking and writing of the Oxford pious scientist Robert Grosseteste, the English Bishop of Lincoln. He believed in combining metaphysics, represented by Plato, with empiricism, represented by Aristotle. He introduced scientific and philosophic studies, such as Aristotle’s inductive methods, to the Oxford curriculum. Not a Franciscan, he nevertheless taught Franciscans at Oxford; in fact, he was a teacher of Roger Bacon.
Roger Bacon
The pious scientist and mathematician Roger Bacon, who lived in the thirteenth century, like William of Occam, was an English Franciscan monk. Also like William, Bacon was an Aristotelian commentator. Unlike William, Bacon advocated a much more thorough-going approach to understanding God’s Creation by empirical methods, believing that the study of Creation is the path to knowing about the Creator.
Bacon’s masterpiece was Opus Majus (“Greater Work”), in which he analyzed the pagan Greek and Roman precursors to Christian pious science, calling classical philosophy the “mistress” of Christian thought. He believed in the legends that Hebrews, such as Moses, taught the Chaldean and Egyptian pious scientists, who in turn taught Greek philosophers, such as Thales of Miletus, who passed down his learning to the likes of Plato and Aristotle.
He was a student of Greek mathematical thought as well, believing, like Plato and Euclid, that mathematics is a basis of philosophy, that mathematics is metaphysical.
Roger Bacon also advocated an empirical approach to acquiring knowledge, even religious knowledge. To him, all objects of inquiry can be explored by the experimental scientist: magic, such as alchemy and astrology, and its offshoot astronomy; medicine, such as ophthalmology; physical sciences, such as physics and chemistry; social sciences, such as geography; moral theology, such as the principles of good and evil, right and wrong; and religion, such as Christianity. Bacon argued:
There are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience. (trans. Robert Burke)
Unlike William of Occam, Roger Bacon flirted with the teachings and supposed work of Hermes Trismegistus, a reputed Egyptian philosopher who lived at the same time as Moses. The ancient, medieval, and renaissance European pious scientists often were influenced by magic, the notion that there are hidden powers within the material and spiritual realms of the earth and heavens; this included alchemy and astrology.
The Oxford Calculators
Several generations after the deaths of Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon, there were a series of Oxford pious scientists, known as the Oxford Calculators, who explored philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and physics. These mathematical thinkers included Richard Swineshead, Roger Swineshead, Thomas Bradwardine, and Richard Kilvington—all of them heavily influenced by Aristotle’s works, often exploring the relationships between physical phenomena, mathematics, and Christian theology.
William of Occam
The greatest mind of the fourteenth century was arguably another Oxford pious scientist, and Franciscan, William of Occam. William was concerned with many of the questions exercising the minds of ancient and medieval philosophers and scientists. He relied heavily on Aristotle, as well as other philosophers, although he broke from Aristotle in his belief that human reason cannot ascertain the nature of all things present and past—which philosophers referred to as “actualities”—and certainly not the nature of things in the future. God is omniscient, William believed.
But what does this really mean, and could humans truly understand what the omniscience of God entails?
On Free Will
Aristotle, the logical scientific thinker, argued that all things are either true or false: true or false in the past, in the present, and, if in the past and present, in the future as well. There are no indeterminate phenomena except for those things not yet understood by humans. William countered that there are indeterminate phenomena in that, even if something is true in the past and present, it might not be true in the future.
William allowed for the will of created beings, such as humans, to exercise free choice in the future, which would mean that something true for a human now might become false in the future. To demonstrate his point: if, because of my actions, I have been saved by God in the past and present, by my actions I might not be saved in the future.
However, if God is omniscient and omnipotent, does He not already predestine what I will do in the future? For many theologians, yes; for William, no. He based his argument on his scientific understanding of human experience based on observation, reason, and logic, all of the tools that medieval thinkers acquired by studying Aristotle.
On God’s Will and Knowledge
William argued that God wills all things contingently. As time passes in each moment, we might observe what appears to be true, and based on this current truth, humans anticipate that the future will be true as well. If I am good today, then I will be good tomorrow, and the next day—and I might anticipate based on this pattern that I will be saved. But God has not determined my actions. God allows me free will, the created will, which means that at some indeterminable time in the future I might, by my free will granted to me by God, turn to the dark side, sin and evil, and therefore not be saved.
Does the fact that I might change in the future mean that God, at this moment, does not have foreknowledge of what my created will might do? No, according to William of Occam; God has knowledge of all “future contingents.” Humans cannot conceive of how God does this. We can only assume that we have “created knowledge,” knowledge we gain as participating in God’s creation, but we don’t have “uncreated knowledge,” that is, God’s knowledge.
All things past and future are objects of intuitive cognition for God in the way in which a presently existent thing can be an object of intuitive cognition for a human being.
William argued that “God’s knowledge whereby future contingents are known is necessary”—“just as this or that future contingent contingently will be, so God knows that it contingently will be” (trans. M. M. Adams and Norman Kretzmann). God relies on intuition, not objectivity, to know the future; likewise, humans have to rely on intuition, not objective knowledge, to know the past and present. Hence objective knowledge for humans is ultimately elusive; humans must rely on intuition to know things. Science is therefore limited.
The Limitations of Science and the Need for Piety
William represented the ultimate in Medieval European thought, ranging from Augustine to Boethius to Anselm to Aquinas. Subsequent scientists came to believe in the presence of objective knowledge in scientific inquiry. But William of Occam had already shown, centuries before, that true objectivity is impossible; ultimately, the thinker must rely on God.
Editor’s Note: Read the previous installments of The Pious Scientist series here!
Photo by Oliver Sjoberg on Unsplash
