On 9/2/2017 8:31 PM, Helmut Raulien wrote:
[Metaphysics is] "First in dignity, last in the order of learning":
What is meant by "learning"? Is it the learning of the researcher,
or the learning of the pupil, who is being taught by the researcher
the results of the research?
The word Aquinas used was 'addiscendo'. I checked a Latin dictionary
for the verbs 'discere' (to learn), 'adiscere' (to learn by heart or
memorize), and 'addiscere' (to learn further or in addition to).
This implies that 'addiscendo' may be considered advanced learning.
In those days, the university curriculum began with the seven liberal
arts. More advanced science and philosophy would come later. The
order would be approximately the same for both pupil and researcher.
I think, that Thomas of Aquino has seen everything much more
complicatedly than necessary
Aquinas is considered one of the best and clearest commentators
on Aristotle. Even today, his commentaries are highly regarded.
He limited the religious issues to his theological writings.
But I also received an offline note that recommended an article
"The Historicity of Peirce’s Classification of the Sciences" by
Chiara Ambrosio: https://ejpap.revues.org/625
Some excerpts:
At least since Beverley Kent’s landmark study Charles S. Peirce:
_Logic and the Classification of the Sciences_ (Kent 1987),
Peirce’s classification has been regarded as the key to solve
some of the most complex puzzles surrounding his approach to
logic, epistemology and metaphysics...
I aim to re-contextualise Peirce’s classification and investigate
it as a quintessentially nineteenth century pursuit... Peirce
himself, in a later note which will turn out to be quite important
for my argument, admits to have examined “upward of a hundred
attempts to classify the sciences” ...
I hope to show that the classification of the sciences, far from being
a philosophical pursuit conducted in isolation, is more productively
investigated as Peirce’s effort to balance and reconcile the internal
consistency of his scheme with broader, external trends to reconfigure
the sciences and their relationships as a conduit to social order...
The strongest influence on Peirce’s classification of the sciences
was Comte’s scheme... [which] placed the sciences on a ladder in order
of abstractness or generality... It started from mathematics, the most
abstract of the sciences, and continued with astronomy, physics,
chemistry, biology and social physics or sociology. More concrete
sciences depended on more abstract ones...
[Peirce 1892] "My own classification is a direct reformation of that
of Comte... But I separate from Comte, in making pure mathematics a
science, in making philosophy a science, in recognizing the psychical
sciences as a series parallel to the physical sciences..."
I believe that the dependencies I highlighted in the dotted lines
of CSPsciences.jpg can be clarified by Ambrosio's article and
by the previous article that discussed Avicenna and Aquinas:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs11406-013-9484-8.pdf
John
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