ORDER IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 269 



cide from the point of view of order. Is there an ordo doctrinae 

 that is different from these? Sometimes it is asserted that in 

 building up a body of scientific knowledge one would use the 

 order of discovery, but in teaching others the fully achieved 

 science one would use an inverse order, the order of doctrine. 

 Such a position would equate the order of doctrine with two 

 other orders: the order of nature or with the via iudicii. 

 We shall show that both these identifications are incorrect. 

 Actually, the ordo doctrinae and the ordo discipUnae coincide. 

 As St. Thomas wrote at a later period of his life, " The names 

 ' doctrine ' and ' discipline ' pertain to the acquisition of knowl- 

 edge. For doctrine is the action of him who makes something 

 known; discipline, however, is the reception of knowledge from 

 another." ^ The ordo doctrinae is not, therefore, the inverse of 

 the via inventionis}'^ In fact, ordo doctrinae should be trans- 

 lated " order of teaching." 



Mention has been made of the order of nature or the real 

 order. What is the relation between this and the order of 

 learning.f^ At the beginning of his commentary on the Physics 

 of Aristotle, St. Thomas lays down a principle of learning that 

 he reiterates many times in his other works. ^^ Our knowledge 

 starts from what is more known to us and proceeds to things 

 that are ontologically more perfect and hence more knowable. 

 We must start from sensible things, lower in the order of nature, 

 but more accessible to our knowledge; it is through these 

 sensible things that we ascend to the contemplation of higher 

 and ultimately of divine things .^^ Moreover, the study of 



* Exposition of the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle, transl. Pierre Conway, O. P. 

 (Quebec: Le Librairie Philosophique M. Doyon, 1956) , I, I, n. 9. 



^° Cf . R. Garrigou-Lagrange, La Realisme du Principe de Finalite (Paris: Desclee, 

 1932) , p. 235; P. Coffey, The Science of Logic (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 

 1918), n, pp. 15-16. 



"7n I Phys., 1, n. 7-11. Cf. In I Anal. Post., 2, n. 8; In VII Meta., 2, n. 1297- 

 1305; Summa Theol., I, 85, 5; In De Trin., 6, 1, ad qu. 1. 



^' " Cum enim omnis disciplina fiat per ea quae sunt magis nota addiscenti, quern 

 oportet aliqua praecognoscere ad hoc ut addiscat, oportet disciplinam nostram 

 procedere per ea quae sunt magis nota quo ad nos, quae sxmt saepe minus nota 

 secundum naturam, ad ea quae sunt notiora secundum naturam, nobis autem 

 minus nota" (In VII Meta., 2, n. 1301). 



