  With regard to the problem of  universals,[38]  Buridan does not so much create a new theory as show how our theoretical commitments can be expressed with a minimum of ambiguity and fuss. Like Ockham, he is a nominalist, although this term must be used with caution in later medieval philosophy because of the modern tendency to identify it with the denial of real universals. It must be remembered that most fourteenth-century philosophers were nominalists in this sense because they associated the contrary doctrine with Plato, with whom they were familiar only secondarily as one of the authors whose views are thoroughly discredited by Aristotle in Book I of the  Metaphysics.[39]  But medieval nominalism involved much more than rejecting Platonic universals. Its history can be traced to twelfth-century disputes over the reading of sacred texts, in which the techniques of logicians such as Abelard were pitted against those of grammarians such as Peter  Helias.[40]  As these disputes evolved and matured, nominalism was gradually absorbed into the teaching of philosophers working in the faculty of arts, so that by Buridan's time, it is better to think of nominalism as a practice, or way of doing philosophy, rather than as a piece of doctrine.