36 JOHN A. OESTERLE 



vations enhanced by physical instruments, suggesting new 

 hypotheses that suggest further research and crucial experi- 

 ments, shows that we may have to remain content with a 

 knowledge that, ever progressive, remains nonetheless pro- 

 visional. Now in the measure that this is true of most of our 

 investigation of nature, it is clear that the domain of uni- 

 versality ut nunc has far greater dimensions than that of true 

 universals, and this is the point of emphasis in this paper, a 

 point which seems to have been somewhat ignored in the 

 scholastic tradition. There are two complementary reasons for 

 the greater dimension of the universal ut nunc. First, there is 

 the very nature of our mind, which is an experimental one, 

 seeing that our knowledge must be derived from things them- 

 selves. Second, there is the unexpected complexity of the things 

 we seek to know, even of those which apparently are at close 

 range, the sensible things. Even these are somehow fathomless 

 in the experimental sense of the word. A simple example is 

 enough to illustrate this point, our organs of external sensation. 

 We agree that our skin is an organ of touch and that our eyes 

 are organs of sight. This seems safe enough to say so long as 

 we do not look too closely into the subject. We have initially 

 recognized and understood these organs with reference to our 

 sensations. But now we must delve into anatomy and physi- 

 ology, and then into chemistry and physics. In this process 

 we are wading toward a limit we shall never reach. Yet we 

 know that the limit is somehow there though we have nothing 

 more than an intimation of just what it is. And so it is that 

 the whole interval between actual sensation along with the 

 vaguely recognized organs, and the limit we are moving 

 toward, is replete with provisionally contracted terms, with 

 universals " for the time being," ever in need of reconstruction 

 and implementation. 



Even a true universal such as " what a man is " does not 

 settle all that man is, once for all.^ The example of sensation 



° The definition of " man " as " rational animal " has often been criticized as 

 inadequate and even ridiculed as being incomplete. But this definition, though an 



