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Full Idea
From an impossibility anything follows ('quod ex impossibili sequitur quodlibet').
Gist of Idea
From an impossibility anything follows
Source
William of Ockham (Summa totius logicae [1323], III.c.xxxvi)
Book Ref
Ockham,William of: 'Ockham's Philosophical Writings', ed/tr. Boehner,P [Hackett 1990], p.88
A Reaction
The hallmark of a true logician, I suspect, is that this opinion is really meaningful and important to them. They yearn to follow the logic wherever it leads. Common sense would seem to say that absolutely nothing follows from an impossibility.
| 15388 | Universals are single things, and only universal in what they signify [William of Ockham] |
| 16300 | Ockham had an early axiomatic account of truth [William of Ockham, by Halbach] |
| 9105 | Some concepts for propositions exist only in the mind, and in no language [William of Ockham] |
| 9106 | The word 'every' only signifies when added to a term such as 'man', referring to all men [William of Ockham] |
| 9113 | Just as unity is not a property of a single thing, so numbers are not properties of many things [William of Ockham] |
| 9107 | A proposition is true if its subject and predicate stand for the same thing [William of Ockham] |
| 9110 | The words 'thing' and 'to be' assert the same idea, as a noun and as a verb [William of Ockham] |
| 9109 | If essence and existence were two things, one could exist without the other, which is impossible [William of Ockham] |
| 9108 | From an impossibility anything follows [William of Ockham] |