 Indeed, we can appreciate just how acute these difficulties may become if we survey the items that needed to be distinguished in what may be described as the common conceptual framework of the “realist” via antiqua, the “old way” of doing philosophy and theology, before the emergence of the “modern way”, the “nominalist” via moderna challenging some fundamental principles of the older framework, resulting mostly from the semantic innovations introduced by William Ockham. The survey of these items and the problems they generate will then allow us to see in greater detail the main motivation for Ockham’s innovations.