448 AMBROSE J . MC NICHOLL 



leaping from the individual event to the general law or hidden 

 essence. He did not neglect the individual or contingent aspects 

 of reality, but he saw beyond this to the universal which they 

 revealed, and of which they were instances. The principles and 

 procedures guiding the mind in its search into the realm of 

 essences and causes could be stated and codified as a strictly 

 scientific process leading to the knowledge of the essence of 

 things and of the causes of events.^ 



Three main assumptions thus came to determine the ideal of 

 scientific knowledge which was taken over by the great Scho- 

 lastics: 1) scientific knowledge is a body of doctrine, of system- 

 atically connected truths about a determinate subject, founded 

 on experience, and reduced to principles from which they could 

 be deduced, and which refer to the proper causes of that sub- 

 ject; 2) the universe is a cosmos, an ordered hierarchy of 

 essences, between which there are intelligible relations, as also 

 between essence and properties; 3) the human intellect is able 

 to know such essences and to perceive such relations. 



These assumptions were fully accepted by the great Schol- 

 astics who also worked out the implications of the Aristotelian 

 ideal of science. They stressed the fact that the notion of 

 science is analogical, being differently realised on the various 

 levels of abstraction, and capable of being predicated even of 

 God. The distinction of levels of abstraction, together with the 

 distinction of subject-matters and of kinds of causality, and 

 therefore of explanation, made it possible to elaborate a system- 

 atic doctrine of scientific knowledge and method remarkable for 

 its clarity and comprehensiveness. In the natural order, all 

 the sciences were seen as dependent on the supreme science of 

 metaphysics, which was also the vital link which made possible 

 the grandiose synthesis of Christian thought placing reason at 

 the service of faith in the divine science of theology. 



^ Cf. H. D. Kitto, The Greeks (London: Pelican Books, 1952) , chap. 10; E. A. 

 Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (Garden City: Double- 

 day, 1954) , pp. 15-35. To avoid exaggeration of this aspect, see E. I. R. Dodds, 

 The Greeks and the In-ational (Los Angeles: University of California, 1951). 



