Human Knowledge and Philosophia Prima

(1) The knowledge of man is like the waters.

• Some descends from above

  • This is inspired by divine revelation.

• Some springs from beneath.

This is informed by the light of nature which consists in:

• the notions of the mind
• the reports of the senses.

This is because the knowledge which man gets from learning is cumulative and not original. This is similar to water that is fed through other springs and streams.

This creates 2 kinds of knowledge, from divinity and from philosophy.

(2) In philosophy, the contemplations of man either:

• penetrates to God, or
• are circumferred to nature, or
• reflected or reverted on himself.

This results in 3 knowledges:

1. Divine philosophy
2. Natural philosophy
3. Human philosophy or humanity*

This is because all things are stamped with this triple character:

1. The power of God
2. The difference of nature
3. The use of man

Philosophia Prima

But the distributions and partitions of knowledge are not like several lines that meet in one angle. They do not touch in a point. Instead, they are like branches of a tree that meet in a stem.

This stem has a dimension and continuance before it breaks into arms and boughs.

Therefore, we should erect one universal science before we enter into the breaks.

We shall call it philosophia prima*, primitive or summary philosophy, as the main and common way. This is before the ways part and divide themselves.

Currently, philosophy is a mix of:

• natural theology,
• logic
• natural philosophy concerned with principles
• natural philosophy concerned with the soul or spirit

All these strangely commixed and confused.

Nevertheless their differences are superficial.

For example, logic considers many things as they are in notion, while natural philosophy considers things as they are in nature.

Logic consideres appearance. Natural Philosophy considers existence.

But this difference is artificial.

For if philosophers consider quantity, similarity, diversity, and the other external characters of things, their inquiries would have been very different.

Natural philosophers, in handling quantity, do not speak of the force of union, how and how far it multiplies virtue.

Natural philosophers do not give the reason why some things in nature are so common, and in so great mass, while others are so rare, and in so small quantity.

Natural philosophers, in handling similarity and diversity, do not assign the cause why iron should not move to iron, which is more like, but move to the loadstone, which is less like.

They do not answer why in all diversities of things, certain participles in nature are almost ambiguous to which kind they should be referred.

But there is a deep silence touching the nature and operation of those common adjuncts of things, as in nature; and only a resuming and repeating of the force and use of them in speech or argument.

In a writing of this kind, I avoid all subtlety. My defintion is:

“Natural Philosophy is a receptacle for all such profitable observations and axioms that do not fall into any specific philosophy or science, but are more common and of a higher stage.”

(3) Now that there are many of that kind need not be doubted.

For example: There is a rule “Si inœqualibus æqualia addas, omnia erunt inæqualia”. This is an axiom of both justice and mathematics.

There is a true coincidence between:

• commutative and distributive justice
• arithmetical and geometrical proportion.

Another rule is: “Quæ in eodem tertio conveniunt, et inter se conveniunt”. It is a rule taken from the mathematics. But it is so potent in logic as all syllogisms are built on it.

Machiavel wisely talked about governments on the ground that their establishment and preservation is to reduce them ad principia. It is a rule in religion and nature, as well as in civil administration.

The Persian magic was a reduction or correspondence of the principles and architectures of nature to the rules and policy of governments.

A musician’s precept is to change from a discord to a concord or sweet accord, just as in true in affection.

The trope of music is to avoid or slide from the close or cadence. This is common with the trope of rhetoric of deceiving expectation.

The delight of the quavering on a stop in music is the same with the playing of light on the water.

“Splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus.”

The organs of the senses are of one kind with the organs of reflection. This is like the eye is determined and bounded with a glass, and the ear with a cave or strait.

These are not only similarities that are seen by men of narrow observation. They are the same footsteps of nature, treading or printing on several subjects or matters.

This science therefore is deficient.