Gilbert mentions a broad range of branches of human knowledge. In Comm. De trinitate (p. 115, ll. 3 s.), he lists the following facultates: naturalis, mathematica, theologica, civilis, rationalis, which differ on the basis of the different genera of their respective objects of study. In Comm. De hebdomadibus (p. 189, ll. 52-60), he considers the disciplinae: mathematics, ‘‘a discipline of the highest rank,'' which consists of the four arts of the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy; as well as the ‘‘other disciplines such as those of the Categories and the Analytics.'' In all these disciplines, one proceeds by way of demonstration, beginning from terms or rules that constitute the starting-points for deduction and induction. Central to Gilbert's system, however, is the triad of speculative sciences that consists of physics or philosophy of nature, mathematics and theology, which is set out by Boethius in his Commentary to Porphyry’s Isagoge, second edition, and in the De trinitate, but goes back to Aristotle (Haas 1987; Jolivet 1990; Jacobi 1995b). Natural philosophy studies concrete subsistents and their inherent forms. It is the fundamental science in the sense that from it takes place the transfer (transumptio) of terms and forms to all the other sciences. In Gilbert’s sense of the term (which is not the usual one) mathematics considers forms, which in reality can only exist in subsistents, as abstracted from them. Thus, in mathematics predications (e. g., ‘‘homo est individuorum forma’’) express only an apparent inherence.
The case of theological predication is analogous, because in God there is no difference between form and subsistent, so that in theology predication does not express any inherence and is therefore not predication In the strict sense. Due to the lack of adequate expressions for speaking about God, the patristic auctoritates and the theologians transfer and apply improperly names and categories proper to natural scientia and, thus, to natural language. But they do so, on the basis of rational proportion (rationisproportio). And so when, for example, it is stated that God is a substance, or a certain substance, this should not be understood in the same sense as when it is stated that something is a substance in nontheological discourse. The ratio for which something can be said to be a substantia is its substare; subsistences as well as subsis-tents are called “substances” inasmuch as they serve as substrates - substant - for accidents. But in GoD there is no distinction between substance and accident. Therefore, when the category of substance is predicated of God, it is done improperly, on the basis of the ratio according to which God ‘‘sustains’’ all things (‘‘substat omnibus”; Comm. Contra Euticen, p. 284, ll. 74-90) as cause and principle. At the same time, however, it is God alone who properly is in the fullest sense, just as it is of God alone that one can say in a full sense that he is good. All other things that are not God are and are good in a lesser and derived sense, that is, through A denominativa transumptio o transumptiva denominatio (Jolivet 1987; Valente 2008a:123-149). As can be seen, in philosophy of nature and in theology a chiastic relation between language and being is established: on the level of language, discourse about nature founds the discourse about God, whereas on the ontological level it is the divine being which is the foundation and source of created being (which derives from it through fluxus). Moreover, given that names in natural discourse denote objects on the basis oF their forms, discourse about nature could not be constituted if there were not, thanks to mathematics, a way of considering separately forms, which in reality Are inseparable from subsistents. Yet natural discourse not only lends the terms and formal structures for theology but also for mathematics itself, in the discourse of which they are useD differently from their original definition and from the valid norms of natural discourse. The three speculative discourses are thus interrelated in a complex way, by reciprocal foundational relations and transfer of terms and formal structures. The role of mathematics as a discipline, however, was not well defined by Gilbert and would be given closer attention by some of his followers (Marenbon 2002).
See also: > Alain of Lille > Being > Boethius > Categories > Epistemology > Logic > Metaphysics > Modal Theories and Modal Logic > Natural Philosophy > Platonism > Realism > Substance, Accident and Modes > Supposition Theory > Trinitarian Logic > Trinity > Twelfth Century Schools > Universals
World History
