English philosophers and schools of philosophy / by James Seth.

  • James Seth
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: English philosophers and schools of philosophy / by James Seth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sine necessitate), that 4 entities are not to be unnecessarily multiplied ’ (Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessi- tatem). To predicate the independent or substantive existence of the universal or conceptual is to postulate plurality without necessity. The concept is not a liquid, but quoddam fictum ; the universal is only a 4 term’ or 4 sign,’ not a 4 thing ’ ; its 4 existence ’ is only in the mind. On the other hand, the new nominalism (or terminism) differs from the old in recognising the importance of the concept, and is therefore indistinguishable from the doctrine of conceptualism. The name or term is not without meaning or real significance ; it is a 4 sign ’ of reality, and has its warrant in the nature of reality. There are real likenesses or agreements between the individual things; they are not mere individuals. As Haureau says, 4 The universal notion has a real basis in the nature of things.’1 The concept signifies several individuals, whose 4 natural resemblance ’ makes it, though in itself particular, representative of them all. The discovery of these real likenesses, the investigation of the actual warrant in the nature of things for the representative function of the universal concept, is the work of science in the modern sense. It is in this sense that Ockham is, like Roger Bacon, a founder of English experientialism. Instead of reasoning down from uni- versals, accepted on authority, he insists upon the necessity of generalising from experience, of such a study of the language of nature as shall discover to us the really signifi¬ cant universals or those which are truly representative of the actual nature of things. It is a doctrine which we find restated in somewhat modified forms by Hobbes and Berkeley, as well as by Bacon ; but none of these later statements of the doctrine is equal to that of Ockham in adequacy and discrimination. 1 Op. cit., ii. 467.