Western Culture Global Presents The Top 100 Heroes of Western Culture These individuals have most contributed to replacing ignorance with knowledge, savagery with civilization, disease with health, tyranny with liberty, poverty with abundance, and despair with happiness. #29: William of Occam (1288-1348) William of Occam was an English Franciscan friar and philosopher who helped to reintroduce Aristotelianism or a scientific world view to Europe after at least an 800-year absence. He achieved this, in essence, by arguing that faith and reason are separate spheres because they are fundamentally incompatible. Theological ideas, he said, are at least on occasion irrational and consequently conflict with reason. Further, he argued that reason can stand on its own without theological / supernatural aid. Occam's views had the result of significantly freeing reason and science from dogma, allowing them, along with a more secular and worldly outlook, to develop. It should also be noted that his belief that faith and reason are separate and incompatible logically led him to be an early proponent of church / state separation. In addition, Occam is well known for creating "Occam's razor": a methodological principle which states that when presented with two hypothesis, both of which account for a given fact, give preference to the simpler. This principle proved practical and helped to advance scientific understanding of nature. By the same token, it helped to lay waste to medieval, religious-oriented explanations of nature which invariably involved the needless complexity of hidden purposes, occult forces and divine love. Go to #30: Leeuwenhoek Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — Home Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Numerical Order Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Century Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Category
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