The Peripatetic axiom is: "Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses" (). It is found in ''De veritate'' (q. 2 a. 3 arg. 19) by

Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas ( ; ; – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican Order, Dominican friar and Catholic priest, priest, the foremost Scholasticism, Scholastic thinker, as well as one of the most influential philosophers and theologians in the W ...

. Aquinas adopted this principle from the Peripatetic school of

Greek philosophy Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC. Philosophy was used to make sense of the world using reason. It dealt with a wide variety of subjects, including astronomy, epistemology, mathematics, political philosophy, ethics, metaphysic ...

, established by

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

in his

Lyceum The lyceum is a category of educational institution defined within the education system of many countries, mainly in Europe. The definition varies among countries; usually it is a type of secondary school. Basic science and some introduction to ...

in ancient Athens. 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 In medieval philosophy, the active intellect (Latin: ''intellectus agens''; also translated as agent intellect, active intelligence, active reason, or productive intellect) is the formal (''morphe'') aspect of the intellect ('' nous''), according ...

" (Latin: ''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