The Peripatetic axiom is: "Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses" (Latin: "''Nihil est in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu''"). It is found in

Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wi ...

's ''De veritate, q. 2 a. 3 arg. 19''. Aquinas adopted this principle from the

Peripatetic Peripatetic may refer to: *Peripatetic school, a school of philosophy in Ancient Greece *Peripatetic axiom * Peripatetic minority, a mobile population moving among settled populations offering a craft or trade. *Peripatetic Jats There are several ...

school of

Greek philosophy Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC, marking the end of the Greek Dark Ages. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period and the period in which Greece and most Greek-inhabited lands were part of the Roman Empir ...

, established by

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

. Aquinas argued that the existence of God could be proved by reasoning from sense data. He used a variation on the Aristotelian notion of the "

active intellect The active intellect (Latin: ''intellectus agens''; also translated as agent intellect, active intelligence, active reason, or productive intellect) is a concept in classical and medieval philosophy. The term refers to the formal (''morphe'') aspec ...

" ("intellectus agens") which he interpreted as the ability to abstract universal meanings from particular empirical data.''Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (1969), "Thomas Aquinas", subsection on "Theory of Knowledge", vol. 8, pp. 106–107.

References

{{Reflist Empiricism Thomism Concepts in epistemology Aristotelianism