William of Ockham, Summa Logicae
Today universals are par for the course,
As when horseness is said of a horse.
And dogness is solemnly logged for a dog,
And logness is doggedly barked of a log.
And now the whole lot of us
Are expected to talk as though hippopotamateity inhered in a hippopotamus.
But all of these quiddity-quoddity hacks
Could not tell a duck from the fact that it quacks.
– Justin E.H. Smith (American essayist and philospher, b. 1972)
