Ockham Rap

This has to be one of the Geekiest things I have ever written. I am co-teaching a class called "The God Debate" about religious belief and unbelief. Several of the thinkers we have examined on both sides of the debate have referred to William of Ockham and his [in]famous "razor". For those who do not know, Ockham was a 14th century Franciscan Friar, a professor at the University of Oxford, one of the founders of the scientific method, and also excommunicated by the Pope for reasons that are partially philosophical and mostly political. 

A great summary of Ockham’s contributions to western thought is summed up by Roger Olson in “The Journey of Modern Theology”: Among other controversial ideas, Ockham expressed what came later to be known as Ockham’s razor—that simple principle that when one cause sufficiently explains a phenomenon, more should not be posited. At the time, and long before and afterwards, people tended to appeal to two causes for most events—a natural one and a supernatural one. For example, if a person became ill, it could be both because of an imbalance in the body’s humors and a demon. Also, celestial bodies such as planets were widely believed to be moved both by natural forces among them (such as some kind of magnetic field) and by angels. Ockham, much to the dismay of the church’s magisterium, suggested that the simplest explanation was always the wisest and only one. Many scholars see in Ockham and his razor the subtle beginning of a cultural earthquake whose shocks were to be felt much later in the scientific revolution.

Anyway, I thought, "Hey, I should write a rap song to explain Ockham." So, I did. What makes this even stranger is that I am more of a mystical Thomist with a serious affection for postmodern deconstruction. So, it is odd that after an hour and a half of doodling, this came out:

The Ockham Rap
Copyright (c) 2011 by Nathan L. Bostian

His name is William of Ockham
And his philosophy's rockin'
Metaphysical speculations
Are what he's blocking

We rely on too many causes
To explain our problems
Like using angels and demons
To try and solve 'em

When a simple explanation
Based on sense and sight
Would completely describe
Almost anything, right?

This is called Ockham's razor
A speculative saber
Cutting off extra entities
Like they were shot with a phaser

Like when you use three factors
To describe what two factors do:
Why do you use that third factor
Like some kind of fool?

Simply! Says this guy!
On crutches don't rely!
Rid yourself of superstitions
And all excessive replies.

The only things that exist
Are the things themselves.
No need to resort
To abstract universals!

In fact we have no need
For disembodied spiritual forms:
They are all just names
We give to categories and norms

We call this Nominalism
To break you out the the prison
Of confusing individual things
With the Names we give em

For instance: A dog is just a dog
Not an instance of dogness
And fog is water droplets
Not the essence of fogness

So don't think a human person
As part of abstract humanity
And don't use the category "fish"
When you deal with a manatee

Stick to simple, direct,
Particular observations
And never multiply entities
To try and explain them.

This is the Philosophy of Ockham
In a nice little rhyme
And it led to empirical science
In a few centuries time.