"Ockhamism" is a term used by some historians of medieval philosophy to characterize the critical and skeptical attitude toward natural theology and traditional metaphysics that became prevalent in the fourteenth century and is ascribed to the influence of William of Ockham (c. 1285–1349). There is little historical basis for speaking of an Ockhamist school, since Ockham had scarcely any avowed disciples; nor was the critical attitude toward natural theology initiated by him, although his logical criteria of demonstration and evidence undoubtedly gave it a powerful implementation. With these reservations one may, in a general sense, attach Ockham's name to the movement of thought that, in the fourteenth century, closed out the medieval enterprise of synthesizing Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology and initiated new lines of development that led toward the scientific empiricism of the seventeenth century. The Ockhamist or nominalist movement was known in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries...