William of Baskerville - Name and Allusion

Name and Allusion

The fictional friar, William of Baskerville, alludes both to the fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes and to William of Ockham. The name itself is derived from William of Ockham and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book The Hound of the Baskervilles. Another view is that Eco has created Brother William as a combination of Roger Bacon, William of Ockham and Sherlock Holmes. (William himself notes that Bacon was a mentor of his and cites his ideas several times in the course of the book.)

William of Ockham, who lived during the time of the novel, first put forward the principle known as "Ockham's Razor": often summarised as the dictum that one should always accept as most likely the simplest explanation that accounts for all the facts (a method used by William of Baskerville in the novel), which William applies in a manner analogous to that in which Sherlock Holmes applies his familiar (and arguably related) dictum that when one has eliminated the impossible, whatever remains – however improbable – must be the truth.