Why does William of Occam represent an important turning point in the history of psychology? What is Occam’s razor?
William of Occam was a Franciscan monk, born in Britain. He accepted Aquinas’s concept of faith and reason. William believed in keeping things simple, that is, complex explanations should be avoided as should be unnecessary assumptions.
He went beyond the empiric understanding of Aristotle. Aristotle had opined that sensory experiences of humans are the basis of knowledge but reason is needed to be applied to understand individual experiences and the concept of universals. William held the opinion that sensory perceptions only provide information about the world and nothing else.
Occam’s philosophy marks the end of the Scholastic period and his philosophy gives a hint of the upcoming Renaissance. Though he was a highly empirical theologian, he remained a Franciscan monk throughout his life and believed in God. However, he said that God’s existence can never be proved by studying the nature, because there is nothing in nature that proves his existence. Thus, God’s existence must be accepted or believed on faith.
William of Occam represents an important turning point in the history of psychology because he changed the question regarding the nature of knowledge to a psychological problem from a metaphysical problem. He thought how the human mind classifies experience and he believed that our mind responds to similar objects in a similar fashion.
Occam’s razor is referred to the belief that assumptions should be thrown away from arguments or explanations. Occam applied his razor to the debate between the Realists and the Nominalists and he sided with the Nominalists, being highly critical of the Realists’ assumption of the Universals.
William further opined that we should trust our senses to gather information about surroundings to know our world better rather than to stay in oblivion, thinking about an “assumptive” world that lurks outside the realm of our physical understanding.