Abstract

Within the Aristotelian tradition of the Latin Middle Ages ‘scientific knowledge’ was understood as knowledge derived from the conclusions of syllogism that deals with what is necessary and unchanging. According to Aristotle, however, the ‘arts’, which deal with doing and making, were not seen as ‘sciences’, because they deal with what is ‘contingent’. In his famous Ars lulliana Raymond Lull also wants to understand the productive ‘arts’ as demonstrative ‘sciences’ – he describes here a transcendental practical method, which is intented to imitate God’s great work of art as creator. Even so, the Ars does not treat an abstract, Aristotelian science, but one that deals with creative production. Such a science should not be limited to universals, but also include the concrete individuals. Whereas the scholastics tried to take all the different disciplines as Aristotelian ‘sciences’, Lull wanted to take all the disciplines as ‘artes’. Here, therefore, it seems we have an anticipation of the change from the scientific paradigm of the Middle Ages to the arts model of the Renaissance