Argument A history of “common sense” concerns as much the epistemological concept as the very architecture of human rational judgment. The historian of medieval philosophy Étienne Gilson (1884–1978) cast nineteenth-century Jesuit appeals to common sense as a costly defense against the Cartesian problem of certainty: when intellectual first principles are fused with sensus communis , metaphysical realism is at risk. The first aim of this paper is to revise Gilson’s historiography by showing that fusions of sense and reason began much earlier, already within the Latin tradition from the thirteenth century onward. I show that in their commentary practices , historical actors from Albert the Great (1200–1280) to Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) increasingly aligned conceptiones communes, assensus , consensus , and sensus communis , to the point that sensus communis could serve as a topos in philosophical argument. The second aim of the paper is to revisit Gilson’s concern about metaphysical realism. Here, I argue that common sense is essential in philosophical practice, but cannot supplant the first principles of reason. For when common sense becomes the sole foundation of human reasoning, reason loses the answerability to truth that it obtains from its contact with reality.
The answer to the question, "Is Roger Bacon's scientific practice scientific?" concerns an assessment of whether Bacon's scientific practice exhibits traits of modern science. This paper uses the theoretical framework proposed by Hon and Goldstein (2023) for defining modern science, which identifies three salient, constitutive features: commitment, methodology and technique. These features function together as a skeleton of the argumentative structure which combines presuppositions and rules of inference to reach a conclusion. The fundamental assumption is that scientific knowledge is argumentative. Against this background we examine three scientific results that Bacon included in his Opus majus. Although Bacon's methodology involves the use of geometrical proofs and his technique employs diagrams and geometrical analysis of the relations embedded in them-both features seemingly indicative of modern scientific practice-a characteristic alien to modern practice surfaces in the feature Hon and Goldstein refer to as "commitment." Specifically, Bacon's commitment is rooted in theology and its dependence on sacred scripture. It is this characteristic that sets Bacon's scientific practice apart from modern science. In a nutshell, Bacon's commitment implies that final causes are not directly and fully known from the natural world but are revealed through scripture. Consequently, since understanding the nature of a thing requires knowing all four Aristotelian causes, those ignorant of sacred scripture cannot grasp the final cause and thus miss the true nature of the thing. It thus follows that Bacon's approach is not what we associate with modern science.
This article examines a fundamental transformation in thirteenth-century theory of science by tracing the shifting role of the subiectum scientiae in scholastic theology. While Aristotelian epistemics defined a science through a unitary subject conceived as a logical genus, medieval debates-especially within the Parisian university context-revealed increasing tensions when applying this framework to theology. Focusing on key figures such as Robert Kilwardby, Thomas Aquinas, and Giles of Rome, the article reconstructs an epistemological turn whereby the subject of science was progressively reinterpreted in relation to the intellect and its objects. Kilwardby's essentialist redefinition of the subject as a unified nature laid the groundwork for this development. Aquinas advanced it further by integrating the notion of obiectum and emphasizing the role of the intellect, introducing a dual account in which both subject and formal object contribute to the unity of a science. The decisive shift occurs in Giles of Rome, who effectively collapses the distinction by identifying the subject with the principal object of cognition, thereby centering epistemology on the relation between intellect and object. This reorientation foregrounded the limits of human cognition and intensified debates about the scientific status of theology, particularly in contrast to divine and beatific knowledge. The article argues that these developments culminate in an emergent notion of "subjective science," wherein the identity and validity of scientific knowledge become inseparable from the capacities of the knowing subject. This medieval trajectory, far from being anachronistic, offers a historically grounded account of the epistemic conditions that anticipate later conceptions of subjectivity.
We expound the notion of "distinct experience" (experientia distincta) as introduced in the writings of the early modern polymath Joachim Jungius (1587-1657) and operative in his scientific practice. After contextualizing "distinct experience" historically (e.g., vis-à-vis Francis Bacon's [1561-1626] concept of "experience") and embedding the notion conceptually into the broader category of "division" (divisio), we reconstruct the "Problem of Distinct Experience": Jungius' epistemology of science involves a circularity or an infinite regress because scientific methods (inductions and demonstrations) presuppose divisions, which are, in turn, built on distinct experiences, themselves presupposing divisions. However, we argue through a careful historical case study on his investigations of fossilia that his research practice shows why the problem posed only a limited threat for him and his contemporaries. We finish with a brief philosophical appraisal, contrasting his views with those of Jacopo Zabarella (1533-1589).
The aim of this paper is to accurately assess the epistemological status of Albertus Magnus' (ca 1200-80) alchemy. In modern bibliography there is a "black or white" approach to the question of whether Albertus regarded alchemy as an art or scientia, and thus the adoption of an absolute thesis on the matter tends to create a series of interpretational problems. In contrast, I argue that Albertus' approach to alchemy does not exclude either art or scientia and, depending on the context, the Dominican master sometimes considers alchemy as an art-when it is connected with manual labor-and sometimes as a scientia-when it is connected to natural-philosophical and metaphysical aspects. At the end of my paper, I offer a way of properly assessing the Albertian alchemy, and determining how and when to accurately connect it with the notions of art and scientia.
