“The experimental universal is acquired by us,”

— Robert Grosseteste

i. 14, ff. 13<sup>vb</sup>-14<sup>rb</sup>.
Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libros (c. 1217-1220)
Context: The experimental universal is acquired by us, whose mind's eye is not purely spiritual, only through the help of the senses. For when the senses several times observe two singular occurrences, of which one is the cause of the other or is related to it in some other way, and they do not see the connection between them... And from this perception repeated again and again and stored in memory, and from the sensory knowledge from which the perception is built up, the functioning of the reasoning begins. The functioning reason therefore begins to wonder and to consider whether things really are as the sensible recollection says, and these two lead the reason to experiment... But when he has administered many times with the sure exclusion of all other things [that could be mistaken for the cause]... then there is formed in the reason this universal... and this is the way in which it comes from sensation to a universal experimental principle.

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Robert Grosseteste 22

English bishop and philosopher 1175–1253

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