Frustra fit per plura (V)

Here's yet another of Auriol's statements of ontological parsimony:

‘Constat enim quod omnis natura refugit superfluitatem – quanto magis divina?  Pluralitas quidem ponenda non est absque causa, quia frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora.’  (S I.45.iii)

Frustra fit per plura (IV)

My occasional posts on ‘Ockham's razor’ are knocked into a cocked hat by the more systematic research of the idiosyncratic Scotus scholar Antonie Vos, whose massive book The Philosophy of John Duns Scotus (2006) includes a section entitled ‘Methodological parsimony: the razor Scoti’ (§8.2).  This should be the first port of call for anyone researching the history of the principle.

Here are the formulations quoted by Vos on pp. 304f.:

Numquam est ponenda pluralitas sine necessitate  (QM I.4)
Pluralitas numquam ponenda est sine necessitate  (IV.2)
Numquam ponenda sunt plura sine necessitate  (VII.12)
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate  (VII.12)
Nihil non manifestum ponendum est a philosophantibus sine necessitate  (VII.18)
Non est ponenda pluralitas entium sine ratione  (Lect. II.2)
Plura non sunt ponenda sine necessitate  (II.14)
Sed haec positio ponere videtur pluralitatem sine necessitate  (Ord. II.2)
Pluralitas specierum non videtur ponenda sine necessitate manifesta  (III.34)

Vos points further to Lectura I.2.202 and Ordinatio IV.11.3 and IV.11.14, which I'm afraid I don't have to hand.

Frustra fit per plura (III)

Here's another of Auriol's statements of ontological parsimony:

‘multitudo ponenda non est nisi ratio evidens necessaria illud probet aliter per pauciora salvari non posse.  Deus enim et natura nihil faciunt frustra’ (S II.14.1.ii)

(Mark Henninger, Relations: Medieval Theories (1989), p. 156 n. 25.)

Frustra fit per plura (II)

An update to an older post: I have found in Auriol the exact phrase attributed to him by Ueberweg.  It occurs in S I.9.1.i, where he asks quomodo se habet generare seu dicere ad ipsam intellectionem.  As his third and final negative thesis, he argues quod dicere non sit formam specularem et realem producere, quam intellectus aspiciat:

‘non est philosophicum pluraritatem rerum ponere sine causa, frustra enim fit per plura, quod potest fieri per pauciora.  Sed nulla necessitas ducit ad ponendum talem rem ...  Ergo si talis forma ponatur, erit absque omni causa et ratione; et per consequens vanum est ponere eam, et superfluum in natura.’
(ed. Friedman 2003; the 1596 edition, p. 319, has 'inducit')

Moreover, I may have found the source of Ueberweg's mistaken citation: Barthélemy Hauréau, De la philosophie scolastique, II (1850).  In chapter 27, ‘Disciples et Adversaires de Duns-Scot’, pp. 404–410, Hauréau discusses Auriol.  He quotes on p. 406 from Auriol's remarks on prime matter in S II.12.1.i and II.12.1.ii, and then he moves on to discuss Auriol's negative thesis about real specular forms – but unfortunately his subsequent footnotes simply say ‘Ibid.’  And there, on p. 408, is the very phrase quoted by Ueberweg.

Frustra fit per plura

Ocham of Beyond Necessity has spotted an occurrence in Auriol's Scriptum (1316) of the principle still known as Ockham's Razor:

‘Praeterea, non debet poni superfluum aut aliqua distinctio sine causa, quia frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora.’
(S I.8.21 §33)

Ocham writes: ‘it may be a Franciscan expression, and I think Scotus used it.’  Well, here is an instance from the Franciscan Ramon Llull's Liber reprobationis aliquorum errorum Averrois (1310?):

‘Quod Deus non agat immediate in istis inferioribus, sic probatur: Impossibile est, quod entia nobiliora frustrentur a suis operationibus.  Sed si Deus in istis ageret immediate, intelligentia et caelum frustrarentur in operationibus suis, quae sunt nobiliora entia.  Ergo impossibile est Deum agere in istis.
Quod autem intelligentia et caelum frustrarentur, patet; quia frustra fit per intelligentiam, caelum et etiam per Deum, quod posset fieri per Deum solum.  Si enim frustra fit per plura, quod potest per pauciora fieri et si sic non haberent operationes proprias, et per consequens non haberent naturas proprias; quod est impossibile.’ (d. 2 pars 7)

Llull – who apparently met Scotus in 1297 – rejects this argument on the grounds that celestial motions would not be in vain if God acted immediately on terrestrial things.  So presumably he accepts the principle.  Did Averroes, too, or at least some Averroists?