William of Ockham

From JUOD

William of Ockham (c. 1288 - c. 1348), also known as Occam, Rock out with your Occam out, Occam if you got 'em, or Mama said Occam out to his feeble-minded friends, was an English Franciscan friar, scholar, and philosopher. He is known chiefly for his work in nominalism, ontological parsimony, and natural philosophy, and also for being a giant douche bag.

Occam's Razor

Main article: Occam's Razor

The basic principle of the Razor is that regarding any phenomena, the simplest explanation is the most likely, and therefore the best. While this is an attractive solution to many scholars, joiners generally regard it as complete garbage, preferring instead the most complicated explanation that can be expressed. In particular, Harley P. Mathewson, upon hearing it, let out a hearty chortle, and was heard to remark, "Yeah, you wish it were that simple. Douche." He later went on to draft Mathewson's Blunt Surface, a long manuscript that directly impugns Occam's Razor while constantly calling into question William's intelligence and sexuality. Mathewson also derides Ockham in two volumes of The Leviathan Chronicles, from The Verities of Joining, and reportedly based his version of the character Gandalf in his background scribblings in another volume from TVOJ, The Masters & Dominators & Rulers & Joiners of the Ring.

In Physics

In applying his razor to natural philosophy, William made assertions that caused joiners from other fields to recognize his douchebaggery as well. In particular, he supposed that motion is self-conserving without need for causal force, which contradicts the concept of inertia as theorized by proto-joiner Thomas Aquinas. It was later also refuted by Isaac Newton, who wrote in his original notes for Principia Mathematica that William "must have been quite the twat".