ThePeripatetic 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 inDe veritate (q. 2 a. 3 arg. 19) byThomas Aquinas,[1] and it is essentially a declaration ofempiricism: the philosophical view thattrue knowledge comes from sensory experiences and observations.
Aquinas adopted this principle fromAristotle'sPeripatetic school ofGreek philosophy, established theLyceum of ancient Athens. Aquinas argued that the existence ofGod could be proved by reasoning from sense data.[2] He used a variation on the Aristotelian notion of the "active intellect" (Latin:intellectus agens),[3] which he interpreted as the ability toabstract universal meanings from particular empirical data.[4]
