CT is a
nominalist theory, for historicism emphasizes particulars and rejects the reality of universals.
That said, the goal of the
nominalist is to offer an account of the entities that are allegedly universal, properties and relations, by appealing only to particular objects.
The
nominalists hold that this universal concept of "man" is not real, but that only the individual exists.
Bostock discusses the debate between
nominalists and realists with respect to universals, specifically the Berkeley-Locke controversy and Russell's regress argument.
The austere
nominalist "analysis" has the following form, then: particular individual o is P just means that o is P--nothing more than that can be said.
Of course, this means engaging with that arch
nominalist finger-poker Friedrich Nietzsche and all his marching armies of metaphors, metonyms and anthropomorphisms.
Chapter one entitled 'Realists and
Nominalists' presents his views on the dispute between realists and
nominalists that flourished most vigorously in the later Middle Ages among a number of eminent schoolmen of opposite persuasions leading to two sets of questionnaires.
Much of this grows out of his inability, as a
nominalist, to accept and appreciate the reality of groups.
Conversely, much of this constructivism, as Ian Hacking has observed, is motivated by an often unstated
nominalist view.
legal realists reconceptualized property into both
nominalist and
a
nominalist about arithmetic would reject the inference on account of her refusal to take number talk at face value.
Connolly adapts Weber in arguing that American capitalism relies upon
nominalist theology's omnipotent god who controls history.
