Robert Kilwardby and the Aristotelian Theory of Science

Kilwardby's Commentary on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics evinces a desire to synthetize Aristotelian natural philosophy with traditional Augustinian material. Such a synthesis had already been a goal of Robert Grosseteste's commentary on the same text; for instance, we find Kilwardby accommodating two senses of the term "universal": in one sense it refers to something in the divine intellect, and in another it means a form that is immanent in things and determines their character; the former notion springs from Neoplatonic origins, via Augustine. Besides that, Kilwardby's commentary, in turn, was used by Albert the Great and in this way transmitted to Thomas Aquinas.