Date: c. 1016-1021

"[The Active Intellect's] relation to our souls is that of the Sun to our vision."

— Avicenna [Ibn Sīnā] (c. 980-1037)

Date: c. 1016-1021

"So, initially coming to know something is like treating the eye, but then when the eye is healthy, whenever it wants it looks at something from which a given form is taken, while when it turns from that thing, that [thing] comes to be in potency proximate to act."

— Avicenna [Ibn Sīnā] (c. 980-1037)

Date: c. 1016-1021

"These bodily members are, as it were, no more than garments; which, because they have been attached to us for a long time, we think are us, or parts of us [and] the cause of this is the long period of adherence: we are accustomed to remove clothes and to throw them down, which we are entirely un...

— Avicenna [Ibn Sīnā] (c. 980-1037)

Date: 1077

"Most appropriately, therefore, the mind can be said to be its own mirror, in which it contemplates, so to speak, the image of its highest essence which it cannot see face to face."

— St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)

Date: 1159

"What is more remarkable, every one of us carries in his heart a book of knowledge, opened by the exercise of reason."

— John of Salisbury (c. 1115-1180)

Date: 1159

"In this [book of reason] are portrayed not only the forms of all visible things and nature in general; the invisible things of the Fabricator of all things are also written down by the very hand of God."

— John of Salisbury (c. 1115-1180)

Date: w. c. 1210

"The measuring line of his mind lays out the work, and he mentally outlines the successive steps in a definite order."

— Vinsauf, Geoffrey of [called Galfridus Anglicus] (fl. 1208-1213)

Date: w. c. 1210

"The mind's hand shapes the entire house before the body's hand builds it."

— Vinsauf, Geoffrey of [called Galfridus Anglicus] (fl. 1208-1213)

Date: w. c. 1210

"Let the mind's interior compass first circle the whole extent of the material."

— Vinsauf, Geoffrey of [called Galfridus Anglicus] (fl. 1208-1213)

Date: April 29, 2024

"Merleau-Ponty is a deep influence; one can feel him tumbling around in the back seat of much of Butler’s thinking."

— Parul Sehgal (b.1981)