Imagine my surprise when I heard these strange words uttered by my street bum friend on the occasion of our most recent encounter. Some of you here are familiar with Diogenes, a peripatetic beggar, who for years has accosted me for his stipend of spare change, to the point that I am considering declaring him a dependent on my tax returns.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the person so named, let me offer herewith a brief biography.
Diogenes was not always a bum. In fact, he had, at one time, achieved the apogee of financial success and popular acclamation. His material demise, as he once explained to me, came when his wife left him in the midst of a cruise of the Greek Islands, for a poetess with whom she became enamored. It was all downhill for him from there.
He is no ordinary bum. He is learned and multilingual, as you can divine from the recondite title above, which he translated forthwith--after I had deposited my stipend in his grimy hand.
"Very simple," he explained, 'it means that 'plurality should not be posited without necessity.'"
"Indeed, it is not simple," I objected. "What has that got to do with anything?" I began to feel a little resentment. Diogenes had assumed a patronizing attitude, a characteristic not consonant with his social status. This affectation is rare for him, and, to add insult to injury, is only displayed AFTER he has already received his spare change.
"Don't be so sensitive," he said. "I am only quoting a medieval theological principle, 'Occam's Razor.' I will expound if you consider adding a few more coins to that miserable offering you have made."
He continued without waiting for a response, another example, it seemed, of arrogance.
"William of Occam was a 14th Century philosopher and controversial theologian, a minimalist like me, in that he also chose a life of poverty. Less or fewer is the more perfect state--to elucidate-is better--to simplify. The concept has perfect application to secular monk status and current politics."
"Elucidate!" I challenged, echoing his proposition.
"Take the brouhaha about the last presidential election. The general clamorous tocsin centers about the greater number of votes received by Al Gore. There is no greater illustration of excess and meaningless plurality. The 'plaints of the hysterical hoi polloi have no Constitutional veracity. Less is better--The Electoral College, for example, is an example of the 'razor', the means by which the superfluity of the headless mob is constrained--Madison's Tyranny of the Majority. Need I say more?"
"You are saying that the privileged minority is imbued with the Greater Good?"
"Let me," continued Diogenes, "answer with a theological application of Occam's Razor from the Middle Ages, an argument by Peter Abelard. You remember him, no doubt played on stage or in movie by someone like Peter O'Toole. The question? 'Whether a higher angel kows through fewer species than a Lower?' This was answer in the affirmative.
I did not really understand the quote. "Diogenes," I asked. "Does that mean that there is more room on the head of a pin for the higher angels?" He ignored the question.
"What's more," he continued, "Peter Abelard added the conclusion of Aristotle that 'the more perfect a nature is the fewer means it requires for its operation.'"
"Who is Abelard?" I asked.
"You do not know the saga of Abelard and Heloise? A sure fired movie potential--it was done on stage you know, showing how God's business is inimical to hormonal manifestations in the population of Holy Orders. But I digress. Occam's razor has been used to suggest that 'material substance is an unnecessary plurality," and you know what the Democrats would do with that? Let me say, in closing, that I object occasionally to minimalism, but given my status, could you spare a little more change?"
I am always awed by Diogenes' displays of intellectual prowess. I felt the least I could do was to augment my donation to him. I fingered a fifty-cent piece in my pocket. Had it been a shade less weighty, I should have give it to him, in appreciation. I settled for an additional quarter. I am also on occasion a believer that less is better.
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