Did you know?

• Medieval philosophers often wrote commentaries rather than original treatises, because intellectual progress was understood as a deepening of inherited truth rather than the production of novelty.​ 

• Debates over universals in the Middle Ages shaped later theories of language, logic, and meaning long before these became modern technical concerns.​ 

• Logic was treated as a moral discipline, since faulty reasoning was thought to deform the intellect and the soul together.​ 

• Medieval universities were legally protected spaces in which scholars could publicly dispute theology, politics, and natural philosophy with notable openness.​ 

• The thirteenth-century rediscovery and translation of Aristotle transformed medieval philosophy by introducing a comprehensive system that demanded reconciliation with theology.​ 

• Medieval courts sometimes put animals on trial, complete with legal representation, because law was understood to govern moral order rather than biological capacity.​ 

• Medieval natural philosophers investigated the state of the senses during sleep, including questions about how the eyes behave in dreaming.​ 

• Public disputations stood at the centre of medieval intellectual life, functioning simultaneously as education, performance, and a test of philosophical character.