  With the advent of the fourteenth century, however, important changes begin to take place in the medieval discussion of relations. Philosophers and theologians continue, of course, to allow for situations in which substances are related by their accidents, and hence to worry about the precise nature of the accidents involved in these situations. But at this point there is a decided shift toward regarding such situations as exceptional. As we have seen, there was always strong theological pressure to allow for at least some departures from the Aristotelian paradigm. But what appears to have happened over time is that these departures come to seem less and less peculiar, and eventually to provide the basis for a new analysis of relational situations—one according to which substances themselves are the items responsible for relating. Around this same time, moreover, Ockham and his followers, most notably John Buridan, institute another sort of change, namely, a shift away from the traditional Aristotelian characterization of relations. Prior to the fourteenth century, philosophers and theologians typically assume that the term ‘relation’ signifies whatever it is in a relational situation that does the relating—though here again theological considerations force them to allow for certain exceptions. By the time of Ockham, however, we get a complete break with this standard characterization. Thus, whereas earlier philosophers and theologians would allow the term ‘relation’ to signify a being of reason only in certain cases, such as creation, Ockham and his followers maintain that ‘relation’ is a term of second intention, and so strictly speaking always signifies beings of reason. With Ockham, therefore, we have not only a complete severing of the connection between relations and those items in relational situations that actually do the relating, but also the advent of a new—and, we might add, fairly harmless—form of  anti-realism.[47]