[Encyclios]

Scholasticism and Renaissance

Even St. Thomas Aquinas, while reevaluating empirical knowledge, remains faithful to the Aristotelian assumption that only the intellect allows us to grasp the first principles. Famous is its peripatetic axiom, “Nihil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu” which means “In the mind, there is nothing that has not already been in the senses”.

Against the exaggerated dogmatism of the scholastic metaphysics and the abuse of the schemes of the logic of the fourteenth century, the Renaissance encamps the certainty and fruitfulness of experience for knowledge and for life: theGalilean school, in fact, was fundamental in this field with the creation of the scientific method, which was subsequently adopted by the whole community of science. Along with Galileo Galilei, other exemplary protagonists of the scientific revolution were also Francis Bacon and Descartes, who, however father of modern idealism, aimed at a method for explaining the world of experience in the service of science.