ABSTRACT
The Period including the ninth to the twelfth century was devoted to a reconciliation of the claims of faith and reason, and during this period there was a close study of the different elements of which language was composed; this resulted in wordy dialectics and endless disputations between two schools of thought who came to be known as Scotists (Nominalists) and Thomists (Realists). From the twelfth to the sixteenth century the introduction of Aristotelian writings, chiefly through Arabic sources, led to the further development of idle discussions, but also to mysticism and to the study of natural phenomena. It was the strife between Nominalism and Realism, combined with the steady advance of medicine and science generally, that brought about the downfall of mediaeval medical scholasticism. The mediaeval dialecticians credited all goals of human endeavour with inherent unity, and avowed specialism was foreign to the temper of the times.
