Johannes Poncius

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Johannes Poncius (or Pontius , civil John Ponce , also called Punch ; * 1599 or 1603 in Cork ; † May 26, 1661 in Paris ) was an Irish Franciscan (OFM Obs , branch of the Observants ) and a representative of Scotism .

biography

Poncius entered the convent of Saint Anthony of the Irish Franciscans in Leuven as a novice and studied philosophy in Cologne and theology in Leuven. By Lucas Wadding he was sent to Rome to the 1625 from this newly formed de Collegium Sancti Isidori Urbe brought that was to serve the education of Irish Franciscans and the renewal of the Scotist studies. Ponce was admitted as one of the first students on September 7, 1625 and worked there as a teacher of philosophy and theology after completing his studies. He participated in Wadding's edition of the works of Johannes Duns Scotus . He was also rector of the Irish College (Ludovisian College) , an institution also founded by Wadding for the training of Irish secular priests. In 1648 Poncius left Rome and went first to Lyon for some time , then to Paris , where he taught. He died in Paris in 1661.

Poncius and "Occam's razor"

The well-known formula “entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem” (“One should only accept as many entities as absolutely necessary”), which for a long time was initially cited as the formulation of a nominalistic basic idea and then as a concise formulation of the concept of Occam's razor and often Wilhelm von Ockham was ascribed to, in fact has its oldest known document in Poncius, who in 1639 in Wadding's edition of Opus Oxoniense (by Duns Scotus) this sentence in the slightly different form "non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate" than one in schools (" by scholastics ”) frequently quoted theorem. In the form that has become common since then, this theorem is first documented in the Logica Vetus et Nova (1654) by Johannes Clauberg .

Works

  • Integer philosophiae cursus ad mentem Scoti . Rome 1642 etc. Excerpt from the version Lyon 1672, revised in Paris
  • Scotus Hiberniae restitutus . Paris 1660.
  • Commentarii theologici quibus Io. Duns Scoti Quæstiones in Libros Sententiarem elucidantur & illustrantur . Paris 1661.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “… illud axioma vulgare, quo tam frequenter utuntur Scholastici; non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate ”, quoted from WM Thorburn: The Myth of Ockam's Razor . In: Min . 27 (1918), pp. 345-353, here p. 347, cf. P. 350
  2. ↑ Thorburn, ibid p. 347

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Poncius, Johannes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ponce, John (real name); Punch, john; Pontius, Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish Roman Catholic theologian (Franciscan) and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH 1599 or 1603
PLACE OF BIRTH Cork , Kingdom of Ireland
DATE OF DEATH May 26, 1661
Place of death Paris , France