Experience and Experimentation: The Meaning of Experimentum in Aquinas

1 E.g., STh II-II, q. 95, a. 5, obj. 2: “Human knowledge begins by experimentation, according to Aristotle. But after a great deal of experimentation involving astronomical readings, men have discovered that certain future events can be predicted from the stars” (Summa Theologiae, vol. 40, trans. T. O’Meara [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1968], 51). Cf. “Human science originates from experiments [ex experimentis], according to the Philosopher (Metaphysics 1.1). Now it has been discovered through many experiments [per multa experimenta] that the observation of the stars is a means whereby some future events may be known beforehand” (Summa Theologica, trans. English Dominican Fathers, 3 vols. [New York: Benziger Bros., 1947], 2:1603). Section I, below, addresses these translations’ inadequacies. 37 The Thomist 76 (2012): 37-71 EXPERIENCE AND EXPERIMENTATION: THE MEANING OF EXPERIMENTUM IN AQUINAS MARK J. BARKER Notre Dame Seminary New Orleans, Louisiana W HEN SEEKING TO UNDERSTAND a philosopher’s use of a given term, one must both engage in precise textual analysis and consider the broader historical setting. Failing to distinguish technical from ordinary language meanings effectively underspecifies the term one is attempting to define. Diachronic changes in a term’s nontechnical meaning and the tendency to retroject contemporary ideas into the past add to the interpretive challenge. Skewed translations misrepresent a philosopher’s thought, especially to scholars not conversant with the source language. A case in point is experimentum, which prominent classical and medieval dictionaries define as ‘experiment’. This definition has been adopted in recent translations of Thomas Aquinas.1 Given the controversial relationship between ordinary experience and experimentation, it is difficult properly to understand MARK J. BARKER 38 2 “The subject of [medieval] experimentation and its corollary, experimental science, is fraught with semantic difficulties” (David C. Lindberg, “Experiment and Experimental Science,” in Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Robert E. Bjork [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010], 2:604). “Some clarification can be gained regarding [the problem of the origins of experimental methodology] through a careful analysis of just how important notions such as ‘experience’ and ‘experiment’ have functioned in various contexts, among different schools, within various historical periods, and in different disciplines. . . . A major desideratum in this regard would be to have a comprehensive study of the changing roles which ‘experience’ and ‘experiment’ have played in the development of Western thought, what meanings the terms have taken on under various circumstances, and what relation ‘experience’ and ‘experiment’ have had to other sources of knowledge” (Charles B. Schmitt, “Experience and Experiment: A Comparison of Zabarella’s View With Galileo’s in De Motu,” Studies in the Renaissance 16 [1969]: 81). 3 There has been almost no investigation of experimentum as such to date. James Stromberg’s protracted “Essay on Experimentum,” Laval théologique et philosophique 22 (1967): 76-115 and 23 (1968): 99-138, is little more than a collection of Scholastic quotations. Cornelio Fabro focuses exclusively on the role of experimentum in the induction of speculative first principles in Percezione e pensiero (2d ed.; Brescia: Morcelliana, 1962), chap. 5, sect. 3. Fabro studies a text from Cajetan, alleging (wrongly, as I will argue) that Aquinas’s treatment of experimentum “does not contribute substantially new elements to experimentum and experientia.2 This study aims to surmount the hermeneutical difficulties inherent in Aquinas’s use of these terms by linguistic, historical, and substantive analysis. Section I first distinguishes between experience, tests, and experiments by establishing defining characteristics of each in light of a Thomistic philosophy of science. The section then argues that defining experimentum in Aquinas as ‘experiment’ is anachronistic. To prove this point requires apposite reference to medieval science, since Aquinas’s terminology did not exist in a vacuum. Section II provides accurate and exhaustive definitions of experimentum and experientia as they occur in Aquinas, together with representative textual citations for each meaning. Yet there is more at stake with experimentum than the adequacy of dictionary definitions; the semantic confusion regarding the term has contributed to the oversight of a crucial process in Thomistic epistemology. Aquinas most fully explains experimentum’s role in the acquisition of knowledge in his commentary on book 1, section 1 of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (nn. 15...

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