ABSTRACT
Francesco Buonamici professes to follow Aristotle and his great commentators, above all A verroes, in developing his methodology of science.• It is thus not surprising that his theory is, at least at first sight, little different from the theories of others, be they predecessors or contemporaries. In accordance with the general attitude of medieval and Renaissance philosophers he restricts the application of the term "science" to infallibly certain knowledge. He stresses the importance of method for the attainment of such knowledge. His lengthy treatise "De motu" is largely meant to show how it is possible to begin with things known to man and to arrive at things that are more knowable by nature.2 This distinction, repeated over and over again from Aristotle through the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, is rather alien to the modem usage of the term "science". I think that this distinction must be understood from the background of the restrictions set for knowledge to be scientific. Scientific knowledge can only be had of universals; it must be certain and timeless. This in turn means that scientific knowledge is only of perpetual, timeless, universally occurring things or facts, whereas prescientific knowledge is of things which are unstable, change in time and are particular or even singular. These are known to us because we are more or less immediately acquainted with them. But this, although it may be knowledge, is not scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge requires
Francisci Bonamici Philosophi Florentini in Pisano Gymnasio profitentis De Motu libri 10, Florence 1591 (hereafter: Buonamici, De motu), 20, 13C-D.
