Gnostologia: The Discipline of the Objects

of Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century Germany

Marco Sgarbi, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy

ABSTRACT
In the seventeenth century, with the sunset of the Renaissance and the rise of early mod-
ern thought, new philosophical disciplines emerged from the ashes of the Aristotelian
tradition, which had dominated the previous three centuries. Some of these, like ontol-
ogy, still exist today; others had a short life. An innovative philosophical agenda was
imposed: the old system of knowledge was rehashed, and a new encyclopedia of sci-
ences was established. Part of this process was the rise and fall of the discipline of
gnostologia. The aim of this essay is to narrate its history.

I
n the seventeenth century, with the sunset of the Renaissance and the rise of early
modern thought, new philosophical disciplines emerged from the ashes of the Aris-
totelian tradition, which had dominated the previous three centuries. Some of these,
like ontology, still exist today; others had a short life. An innovative philosophical agenda
was imposed: the old system of knowledge was rehashed, and a new encyclopedia of
sciences was established.1 The emergence of disciplines such as ontologia, archelogia,
hexiologia, horistica, didactica, and methodologia at the beginning of the seventeenth cen-
tury was part of a large pedagogic and systematic program of redefining the system of
knowledge in Protestant areas, with the attempt to develop a comprehensive philosophy
capable of examining reality in all its elements.2 Part of this process was the rise and
fall of the discipline of gnostologia.

I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for all their suggestions in the writing of this article and
for the material provided for its improvement.
1. On this topic, see the recent Facca, Early Modern Aristotelianism and the Making of Philosophical
Disciplines.
2. On the encyclopedic character of this philosophical attempt, see the insightful comments in Hot-
son, Reformation of Common Learning.

History of Humanities, volume 7, number 1, spring 2022.

© 2021 Society for the History of the Humanities. All rights reserved. Published by The University of
Chicago Press for the Society for the History of the Humanities. https://doi.org/10.1086/718539
77
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Traditionally scholarship has assigned the origin of the discipline of the “theory
of knowledge,” or of “epistemology,” to the nineteenth century, following on from the
Kantian revolution.3 Clearly this does not imply that previous philosophers had ne-
glected problems and concerns relating to the theory of knowledge, and indeed the sev-
enteenth century has been called “the age of epistemology.”4 In the Platonic tradition,
knowledge represented a foundational element in metaphysics. In Aristotelianism, the
problem of knowledge was investigated by means of logic and psychology. With early
modern philosophers such as Francis Bacon, René Descartes, John Locke, and David
Hume, knowledge was a pivotal subject for their inquiry into the human mind and sci-
entific method. However, there was no specific discipline devoted to the investigation
of this subject.5
This picture is nonetheless misleading, because in all its facets gnostologia represents
the earliest philosophical attempt to establish a theory of objects of knowledge—that is,
of knowables or cognizables—at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Its principal
question concerns the proper place for the philosophical investigation of the objects of
the mind. That this attempt has escaped the attention of scholars is evident in the lack
of specific studies on the topic, in the very few generic historical reconstructions, in the
fact that gnostologia was often reduced to a kind of logic or metaphysics. It has also often
been confused with its twin discipline—that is, noologia—although the latter had a to-
tally different subject of investigation, being the science of the first principles of knowl-
edge conceived as a combination of the various knowables considered in gnostologia.6
The aim of this essay is to narrate the story of the discipline of gnostologia, presenting
an account of all treatises on the subject listed in the main library archives.7

ORIGIN
Although the eighteenth-century literary historian Jacob Friedrich Reimmann assigned
the origin of the gnostologia to the Lutheran Abraham Calov (1612–86),8 the first author

3. Pasnau, After Certainty, 2.

4. Annas and Barnes, Modes of Scepticism, 4.
5. Pasnau, “Epistemology Idealized,” 988–1021.
6. See Petersen, Geschichte der aristotelischen Philosophie im protestantischen Deutschland; Wundt,
Die deutsche Schulmetaphysik des 17. Jahrhunderts; Risse, Die Logik der Neuzeit; Leinsle, Das Ding und
die Methode; Appold, Abraham Calov’s Doctrine of Vocatio; Savini, “Una metafisica sotto tutela,” 361–
80; Pozzo, “Adversus Ramistas”; Sgarbi, “Renaissance Facultative Logic and the Workings of the Mind,”
270–90.
7. Scholarship has shown that its life was short, but its legacy was strong, having a considerable
impact on major philosophers like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Immanuel Kant. See Campo, Cristiano
Wolff and il razionalismo precritico; Courtine, Suaréz et le système de la métaphysique; Tonelli, Kant’s
“Critique of Pure Reason”; Sgarbi, Kant and Aristotle.
8. Reimmann, Versuch einer Einleitung in die Historiam Literariam derer Teutschen, 64–65.
 GNOSTOLOGIA | 79

to write a treatise on the knowable qua knowable was Valentin Fromme (1601–75).9
Fromme published his Gnostologia, hoc est doctrina generalia totius philosophiae fun-
damenta methodice per praecepta, praeceptorum exegesis, exempla & consectaria exhibens
in 1631 in Wittenberg. Wittenberg, a stronghold of Lutheranism, represents the birth-
place and the beacon of gnostologia in Germany. Almost all the philosophers who wrote
treatises on gnostologia either studied or taught or worked in Wittenberg, a context that
was seemingly dedicated to the reelaboration of Protestant metaphysics in reaction to
Jesuit philosophical developments.
In the Letter to the reader, Fromme makes explicit that he wrote his treatise having
in mind Georg Gutke’s Habitus primorum principiorum seu intelligentia (1625), the
founding text of noologia. Gutke’s work was published in Berlin, but it has at its origin
a disputation held in Wittenberg in 1618 , and deals with knowledge of the first prin-
ciples of the understanding. According to Fromme, though he considers Gutke (1589–
1634) an intelligent and illustrious man, the investigation of the principles of the un-
derstanding is not a sufficient foundation for a discipline dedicated to the theory of the
object of knowledge. Indeed, principles are often composed of obscure concepts, which
must be further examined. Fromme points out the necessity of having a discipline—in
addition to specialist sciences—which deals with the object of knowledge in general.
Indeed, ontology or metaphysics, which were usually accredited with being this kind
of discipline for the study of objects of knowledge in general, consider only a special
kind of object—that is, “being.” But being is not what is thought in the most abstract
way, and before “being” there is the concept of any possible object of the mind in gen-
eral, even before knowing whether it is “being” (and which kind) or “nothing.” This
discipline is gnostologia and its object is the knowable.
In particular, Fromme characterizes gnostologia as the discipline or “knowledge of
the knowable qua knowable.”10 However, in describing its fictional Greek derivation
similar to other disciplines such as pneumatologia and anthropologia, Fromme points
out that gnostologia is the “discourse or doctrine of the knowable, intelligible or cog-
nizable.”11 This specification is extremely important and comes from a long commen-
tary tradition on Aristotle’s Physics 1.1 dating back to Thomas Aquinas, and which
gained pivotal momentum with Jacopo Zabarella. According to Zabarella, there was

9. Wilhelm Risse identified an early attempt to establish a new discipline on the objects of knowl-
edge in Heinrich Nolle’s Γνωστικὴ seu Ars et per propriam indagationem et per revelationem aliquid
discendi (1617), but this work outlines a new theory of learning in a pedagogic system; see Die Logik
der Neuzeit, 509. See also Freedman, “Pedagogy (Teaching and Learning), Christianity, Physics, Her-
metics, and Gender,” 41–68.
10. Fromme, Gnostologia, 1: “Gnostologia est notitia de scibili quatenus scibile est.”
11. Ibid., 2: “sermo, doctrina de scibili, intelligibili seu cognoscibili.”
80 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2022

a great difference between cognizing, knowing, and understanding. Cognizing was the
translation for the Greek verbs εἰ δέναι or γιγνώσκειν, and the object was the cogniza-
ble (cognoscibile)—that is, knowledge or cognition in general. Knowing was the transla-
tion for the Greek verb ̓επίσταμαι, and the object was the knowable (scibile)—that is,
scientific knowledge, usually acquired through a demonstration. Understanding was the
translation for the Greek verb νοειν̃ , and the object was the intelligible (intelligibile)—
that is, an intellection, and properly speaking that typical of the indivisibles and uni-
versals or of first principles in the Aristotelian tradition, but also more generally compa-
rable with everything that is thinkable.12
Fromme’s widening of the spectrum of the subject of gnostologia is remarkable be-
cause he covers all objects of knowledge, going beyond what could be grasped by mere
understanding, as in the case of noologia. Indeed, Fromme emphasizes that the genus of
gnostologia is first and foremost a discourse or knowledge of something that human be-
ings acquire through a reflexive or discursive act. By reflexive act, Fromme means not
merely the immediate intellection of something, but apprehension through division and
composition, through a medium of reasoning, like a concept of a concept.13 Fromme is
clear in stating that gnostologia concerns discursive and not intuitive knowledge.14
It would be misleading to reduce Fromme’s idea of the knowable and knowledge to
the possession of an object through knowledge of theoretical nature. Indeed, for Fromme,
like the other scholars working on gnostologia, knowable, cognizable, or intelligible are
simply different labels for referring to generic objects of the mind, independently of
whether they subsist only in the mind or exist in the world. The theory of these generic
objects is gnostologia generalis. The gnostologia generalis is gnostologia strictly speak-
ing, considering the objects in their essence and according to their first principles and
common attributes.15 Gnostologia specialis instead considers the object according to the
various sciences, and the knowable thus becomes contemplatable (contemplabile) in
relation to the theoretical sciences and operable (operabile) in relation to practical dis-
ciplines, which can be either actable (agibile) or makeable ( factibile).16 These refer to
various kinds of knowledge, theoretical, practical, and productive.
Following the common textbooks of logic of the time,17 Fromme considers the generic
object of gnostologia as constituted by a double aspect: the material aspect, or the thing
under investigation, in opposition to the formal aspect—that is, the way of knowing

12. Zabarella, Commentarii, 6–45.

13. Fromme, Gnostologia, 2.
14. Ibid., 7.
15. Ibid., 4.
16. Ibid., 129, 142.
17. Pozzo, “Res considerata and modus considerandi rem,” 251–67.
 GNOSTOLOGIA | 81

or considering. The matter under investigation is every possible object of knowledge

that might be considered in any specific science, and this material part being already
the subject of investigation of these special sciences, it is not of interest in the gnosto-
logical investigation. The particularly original part of gnostologia is the mode of know-
ing, because it considers the object of knowledge in general, while all the other disciplines
consider it only under a specific aspect, for example, metaphysics as being, pneumatics
as spiritus, physics as a natural body, and mathematics as a quantum.18 Later in his treatise
Fromme will characterize this manner of considering as conceivability (conceptibilitas)—
the possibility of being an object of the mind (104).
In particular, for Fromme the knowable is the object of knowledge in general, and
its nature is representative of something either existing in the world or subsisting in the
mind. In other words, the representation is the psychological transposition of the object
of the mind. According to Fromme, every knowable can be declared real by representa-
tion, and what cannot be represented and has no foundation in things must be rejected
(22). Following Georg Gutke, Fromme outlines five ways of representing, but only two
are sufficiently general to be considered in the gnostologia. With the first one, the rep-
resentation must be objective—that is, to refer to a thing (independently of its existence
or subsistence)—and must not be contradictory (16–17). Furthermore, he warns that
negations, fictional entities, or second notions are only analogically considered know-
able (18–19). This means, however, that Fromme also includes nonexisting things in
the category of object of knowledge in general, since they subsist in the mind. Their
knowledge is different from what is known to exist in the external world. The former
are merely thinkable; the latter lead to a specific cognition.
The operation of knowing according to Fromme is an act of determination. Indeed,
the knowable is in itself every possible object of knowledge that the intellect, which is
at the outset a tabula rasa, can acquire. In the acquisition of the knowable there is a
determination of the intellect. The correct knowledge of an object is ruled by the princi-
ples of knowledge.
These principles are either productive or apprehensive and represent a particular
way of knowing (modus cognoscendi). They are productive when they concur in the
generation of an idea, and they are apprehensive when they assist the representation
and knowledge of an idea (39). These principles are fundamental according to Fromme
because all things are singular outside of the mind by their very nature, and therefore their
representations should be infinite. But the human mind is not infinite in knowing all

18. Fromme, Gnostologia, 2–3. Further citations from this work in the following passage are cited
parenthetically in the text.
82 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2022

existing and subsisting things, even if potentially—being a tabula rasa—it can become
all of them. The role of these principles for knowing is to help the mind in the correct
representation and cognition of things.
Productive principles concern the intellect, which in the act of knowing can be ei-
ther agent or passive. The intellect is agent in abstracting the intelligible species from
individuals, while it is passive when the species are impressed on the mind (40). The
proper action in the production of the knowable therefore is abstraction, which can be
positive or nonpositive (41). Positive abstraction is when a species is abstracted from
its contrary, for example, when the mind conceives whiteness from a black crow. Non-
positive abstraction is strictly speaking a mental abstraction, which identifies the species
or the genus of the thing in a univocal manner. The result of the abstraction is always
a universal or at least more generic in comparison to the thing. Abstraction works by
freeing the knowable from its individualizing conditions—matter, place, time, and so
on—which cannot be grasped in their infinite variety by the mind (42). The purpose
of abstraction is a distinct conception of the knowable, that is, a mental representa-
tion (43).
Besides abstraction, Fromme introduces the notion of the concept as the “appre-
hensive principle of the knowable” (60). The concept is the means through which the
nature of the knowable is truthfully represented in the intellect, thus producing knowl-
edge. The concept conceived in its universal form is the “idea,” that is, the means through
which—within the intellect—the concept of something pertains to and can be used to
understand many things (43). There are various names under which a concept can be
understood, including intention, notion or thought, but there are only two kinds of
concept: (1) first concept; (2) second concept. The first is an immediate representation
of the thing subsisting in the intellect, whereas the second is a way of understanding
generated by the first. While the first concept generates immediate knowledge of the
object of knowledge, the second does not necessarily produce new knowledge, but most
of the time it directs the mode of knowing (72). Gnostologia, therefore, for Fromme
concerns the object of knowledge in general and the ways of knowing and representing
it in the mind through concepts.

SYSTEMATIZATION
In Königsberg in 1633, Abraham Calov published his Gnostologia seu doctrina de cog-
noscibili qua tali. Despite the striking similarity between Fromme’s treatise and Calov’s
work, there is no clue as to the dependence of the latter on the former. They both rely on
Gutke’s treatment, but in Calov’s case there is an implicit preoccupation with respond-
ing to Clemens Timpler’s (1563–1624) project to found metaphysics on the concept
 GNOSTOLOGIA | 83

of the intelligible (intelligibile).19 Behind this reaction there was both a struggle be-
tween Calvinists and Lutherans and different interpretations and reuses of Catholic think-
ers like Jacopo Zabarella, Benedict Pereira, Pedro da Fonseca, and Francisco Suaréz.20
Between Fromme’s and Calov’s works there is an evident difference in the subject-
matter of the gnostologia. While for Fromme it deals with the knowable (scibile), for
Calov gnostologia focuses on the cognizable (cognoscibile). Calov writes that “knowable
or more exactly cognizable is the object of gnostologia.”21 Whereas others—this is clear
reference to Fromme—use knowable to refer to an object of knowledge in general, he
prefers to employ it only in reference to scientific knowledge, and to opt for the more
generic term cognizable.
Calov’s perspective is closer to Gutke, and this is quite obvious in his definition
of gnostologia as the “main mental habit, contemplating the cognizable as such” (1).
Gnostologia is by its nature the first of all disciplines, and gnostological investigation
must be the presupposition or premise for every species of philosophical knowledge.
In other words, within the encyclopaedic system of sciences a preliminary inquiry into
the theory of the objects of knowledge became essential for Calov for the foundation of
the philosophical edifice.
For Calov the cognizable is largely the object of the intellect in general cognition (5),
and is distinct from the intelligible. The latter is thinkable, and it is everything that is, while
the former has a representational basis (6). Against Timpler’s division of the intelligible
(intelligibile) into something (aliquid) and nothing (nihil), Calov excludes the idea that
nothing can be intelligible because nothing does not move or determinate the under-
standing (7). The intelligible as what is thinkable includes nonexistent things which sub-
sist in the mind, like beings of reason, objects in power, privations, and negations.22 Calov
introduces four modalities of “being”: (1) what is realiter as existing in nature; (2) what
is effective and virtualiter, such as the heat of the sun, which does not exist as such but
has an effect; (3) what is verbaliter by virtue of being spoken; (4) what is objective by
subsisting or being present in the mind. There are many ways of considering something
objective. What is objective constitutes an idea in the mind before something is brought
into existence, like the idea for the house in the mind of the architect before its construc-
tion.23 What is objective is also what is presented in a figure like the appearance of Christ

19. Freedman, European Academic Philosophy, “Godfather of Ontology?,” 3–40, “Religious Confes-
sion and Philosophy,” 375–430.
20. Lamanna, La nascita dell’ontologia nella metafisica, 64–179.
21. Calov, Gnostologia, 3. Further citations from this work in the following passage are cited par-
enthetically in the text.
22. Calov, Scripta philosophica, 230.
23. See Marrone, Realitas obiectiva; but also Dewan, “‘Obiectum’: Notes.”
84 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2022

in human shape. It is similarly to be found in ideas that occupy the soul as notions, symbols,
and intentions. Finally, what is objective can be manifest in beliefs like faith in an eternal
life.24 What is objective is more generally the cognitive presupposition of what is realiter,
effective and virtualiter, and verbaliter, and none of them can be without a respective ob-
jective. Objective characterizes what we can call the minimum of object of knowledge.
According to Calov, there are two kinds of principles for knowing: intrinsic and ex-
trinsic. Internal principles are the matter and form of the object of knowledge in general.
Matter is the real being, while form is its way of knowing—that is, it is its knowability
(scibilitas).25 Here Calov uses the term scibilitas and not cognoscibilitas and narrows
the topic to scientific knowledge. Knowability is limited in Calov’s view to all real and ex-
isting things in the world known to human reason. What can be known to human reason
is called nature, and nature is the representational foundation of all knowables (10). Only
that which is in nature is scientifically knowable. That which is outside nature is not sci-
entifically knowable; it is only thinkable or cognizable in a generic sense. To know (sapere)
what is beyond nature is fragile because it has no representational foundation and it per-
tains only to God (10). It is based on mere speculation, which lacks the possibility of a
having a yardstick in experience. Only what is represented in the intellect as existing in
the world can be scientifically known. The consequence of this is that Calov excludes
mathematics from scientific knowledge.
The preliminary investigation into the principles for knowing shows how gnostologia
concerns the preconditions of the subject for cognizing and knowing the object. These
ways for considering the object are properly speaking subjective, not only because they
always refer to the preconditions of the subject but also because they are based in the in-
tellect—which is a habit acquired through experience and which can vary from subject to
subject. This explains how it is that there are different kinds of knowledge for the same
object of experience. However, the differences between these subjective conditions lie
with the level of perfection attained in the act of knowing, not in the modes themselves,
which are the same in every rational being. These modes of considering or knowing are
either more or less developed in individual cases, and the development of these subjec-
tive conditions depends on the exercise of the mind in experiencing objects of knowl-
edge. Indeed, the external principles for knowing foster knowledge and the creation
of the mental habit (11). External objects stimulate the sensation through which the
mind knows singular things. This knowledge is purified and transferred to the intellect,
which produces the representation of the objects in a concept (13). This complex process

24. Calov, Scripta philosophica, 230–31.

25. Calov, Gnostologia, 7. Further citations from this work in the following passage are cited par-
enthetically in the text.
 GNOSTOLOGIA | 85

involves sensation, observation, experience, and induction, but its final and most impor-
tant step is abstraction.
Abstraction is that particular function of the intellect through which the mind re-
moves a thing from individuating conditions, or from the imperfections of accidents,
and allows the transition from singular to universal. Through this operation the intellect
can understand distinctly and in a precise manner (15–16). More specifically, abstraction
is not merely a removal of the material aspect of the thing, nor of its peculiarities, but an
inquiry into the adequate (formal) concept of the thing itself, and subsequently an idea or
universal concept (18). Calov points out that there are two ways of knowing through ab-
straction, one positive and one negative. Positive abstraction is when the mind identifies
the essential attributes of a thing directly, while negative abstraction proceeds through a
removal of the unessential attributes of things.
The basic unit of knowledge gained through abstraction is the concept, which charac-
terizes the object of the mind, or more exactly is “the species formed in the intellect that
represents the knowable in the mind and that in itself produces knowledge” (20). Follow-
ing the Scholastic tradition, Calov characterizes the concept as formal when it is “the ap-
prehensive principle of the objective concept” or the “sign of the objective concept” (20–
21). The formal concept is the act or intention of the understanding in conceiving a thing.
It is a concept because it is conceived as the representation of the thing in its essential form
as mental entity. The objective concept, conversely, is what describes the matter of the
object, what is known through the formal concept. For instance, in the case of the human
being, the formal concept is the act of understanding what a “human being” is, while the
objective concept is “human being” as it is represented in the mind through that act. The
objective concept is always first and foremost objective and does not necessarily entail an
existing thing.
The ability to know and generate concepts that correspond to things is not innate in
Calov’s view, but depends on the experience of the subject and the creation of an episte-
mic subjectivity based on the Aristotelian theory of habit. Indeed, he emphasizes that an
intellectual habit is a quality in the mind that needs firming up and that is subject to a level
of refinement in knowing things. According to Calov, this explains why—although the
intellect produces universals, which are the same in every possible mind—knowledge
can vary. Only when their mental capacities are fully developed will all human beings ac-
quire the same knowledge from experience—knowledge that, even if subjectively condi-
tioned, expresses a universal and necessary cognition of a thing by means of concepts.

INSTITUTIONALIZATION
The institutionalization of gnostologia as a branch of metaphysics within the curriculum
is evident from its insertion into the regular cursus philosophicus and in the production of
86 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2022

final disputations on the topic. One of the best examples of this new attitude is Heinrich
Nicolai’s Cursus philosophicus (1652), in which gnostologia is considered a propaedeutic
discipline for the entire encyclopedia of philosophical sciences and was a discipline reg-
ularly taught and discussed in classroom at Elbing Gymansium. Nicolai (1605–65) clearly
identifies gnostologia as the fundamental discipline of the philosophical course in being a
theory of objects in general. Gnostologia is notably distinct from noologia, which occupies
the third place in Nicolai’s syllabus and deals with the principles of the understanding.
In his work Nicolai endorses Calov’s perspective quite explicitly. He characterizes
gnostologia as the main habit of the mind concerning the cognizable itself as an object
of knowledge in general.26 The cognizable is “what the human understanding can per-
ceive, and which can stand for the object” (2). Nicolai emphasizes that his gnostologia
focuses only on human understanding, and he shies away from investigating how
knowledge works in divine intelligences and God. Gnostologia generalis examines in spe-
cific terms the principles and attributes of the cognizable. The principles for knowing
(principia cognoscibilis) are conceived as the foundations from which every other kind
of knowledge emerges (3), and can be either internal or external. External principles
are those which provoke and move knowledge. Knowledge starts from the external world
by means of sensation, observation, experience, induction, up to abstraction, which re-
moves accidents from the thing and produces the concept that represents it (4). Through
abstraction, mind acquires truth and generates a universal concept, which is called an
“idea.”27
Abstraction is the main subject of Gerhard Wichmann’s Disputatio gnostologica
(1660). Wichmann (d. 1683) explains that the proper object of gnostologia is the cogni-
zable that is produced by abstraction.28 Because its main interest is this productive activity
of the mind—granted their considerable similarities—gnostologia differs from noologia,
which concerns the first principles of the mind for knowing (principia cognoscendi).
There are two kinds of abstraction: physical and logical. Physical or real abstraction is
a separation that takes place between two concrete things, as when one separates the tree
from its branches. Logical or mental abstraction is when, in a hypothetical way, the mind
distinguishes things which are conjoined in a concrete object (§ 1). Gnostologia deals only
with the latter kinds of abstraction. Abstraction is fundamental because the mind acquires

26. Nicolai, Cursus philosophicus, 1. Further citations from this work in this paragraph are cited
parenthetically in the text.
27. The special part of gnostologia concerns specific cognizable, which can be liberal or illiberal,
following Calov’s dictate. Among these special cognizables, Nicolai emphasizes the rational or notion
knowable, which is typical of logic and makes possible knowledge in general (ibid., 7).
28. Wichmann, Disputatio gnostologica, proemium. Further citations from this work in the follow-
ing passage are cited parenthetically in the text.
 GNOSTOLOGIA | 87

knowledge of individual things through sensation, yet the understanding cannot grasp
the infinity of variety in these individualities (§ 3). Therefore, through a reflexive pro-
cess, the mind produces a representation of the object, which becomes a universal concept
in the understanding. This universal concept is properly speaking an “idea.” Without this
act of the understanding knowledge would remain confused and obscure. The philosoph-
ical reflection of gnostologia is therefore essential in order to determine the boundaries of
knowledge and its appropriate objects—that is, what can really be cognized, known, and
understood.
Like Calov, Wichmann points out that to abstract does not mean only to remove mat-
ter or the individuating elements from the object of knowledge. Abstraction points to the
true nature of the thing, but in a very peculiar way. He gives the example of quantity. In
considering quantity, abstraction identifies two essential elements: extension and divisi-
bility. One can say, therefore, that a quantity is divisible, but in saying this extension re-
mains an essential element of quantity and follows from divisibility. For Wichmann this
means that divisibility and extension are not conceivable separately in the concept of
quantity (§ 5). Thus, from the attributes of extension and divisibility, the mind can derive
the concept of quantity, even if a particular quantity does not exist in the world. This is a
mental object with the same objective concept as the concept of quantity abstracted from
nature, but the formal concept—that is, the act of the understanding—is different. This
act shapes the conceivability, which is the most important aspect of this process termed
precisive abstraction (§ 26). Indeed, Wichmann, always following Calov, maintains that
abstraction does not merely produce the intelligible species or the essence of the object
of knowledge. What abstraction produces in gnostologia does not refer to an entity but
rather to the possibility of knowing a thing, that is, its conceivability or knowability in
the mind. Abstraction is that without which the mind cannot know the thing as it is rep-
resented and how it is represented. The emphasis is on the relation between the knowing
subject and the possibility of knowing the object in a specific way and not the nature of the
object itself (§§ 6–8). Abstraction therefore can be characterized as an inquiry into the
generation of the idea as a universal concept, and its purpose is to search for the essential
attributes for the knowability of the thing, which pertains to epistemic subjectivity.
The determination of these attributes makes the object of cognition clearer and more
distinct. The function of abstraction is hence an act of determination concerning what
was previously undetermined in the understanding, conceived as a tabula rasa not yet
acquainted with that specific concept of a thing. This determination does not entail
an addition of attributes, through which a generic thing becomes more determined or
individualized. It is rather an act of making the thing more precise from the standpoint
of knowability: the mind knows the object through those attributes. For this reason, the
determination searches for the attributes without which a clear and distinct knowledge
88 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2022

would not be possible. The final purpose is the perfect understanding of the object in its
universality as an idea because only this kind of cognition leads to scientific knowledge
(§ 17).
Gnostologia came to infiltrate various literary genres, as is the case of Johann
Fromme’s theological dissertation, De Cherubim et gladio flammante (1661). In one
short section Fromme emphasizes how gnostologia has a different object in compari-
son with all the other philosophical disciplines and that this object is the cognizable or
knowable—the most generic object of all. Fromme uses these two terms interchange-
ably. The object of gnostologia is not considered in itself a being, but through its pos-
sibility of being known—that is, its knowability. Fromme repeats the common idea
that the cognizable can be understood through its matter or through its form. If
one considers the cognizable by examining its matter—that is, the material thing—
gnostologia lacks a proper object of knowledge. What makes gnostologia a separate dis-
cipline is the form of the cognizable. This form is the way of knowing or considering
the object, and thus the interest shifts to epistemic subjectivity. The way in which
gnostologia considers the cognizable is through abstraction. For this use of abstraction,
gnostologia is of pivotal importance for the establishment of the various philosophical
disciplines, in particular of metaphysics.
The most voluminous work on gnostologia is Georg Meier’s Gnostologia cognitionis
humanae fundamenta (1662), a 700-page collection of disputations defended at the
University of Wittenberg. Meier (1632–95) constructs his theoretical framework
around Zabarella’s reflections on the proem of Aristotle’s Physics. Gnostologia would
respond, in his eyes, to the problem of confusion and obscurity that affect the cognitive
process. What the discipline would teach, therefore, was how to achieve knowledge
that was clear and distinct.29
Like previous philosophers in Calov’s wake, Meier characterizes gnostologia gener-
alis as the theory of the cognizable and of its principles and affections. The cognizable
is what is perceivable by the understanding and can be the object of distinct knowl-
edge. Meier challenges Fromme for his decision to focus gnostologia on the narrow
term “knowable”—that is, the object of scientific knowledge. Indeed—he contends—
Fromme seems in this way to exclude from gnostological investigation what cannot
be known scientifically. Specifically, Fromme should have excluded the objects of
knowledge relating to practical disciplines, which cannot—properly speaking—be sci-
ences in the Aristotelian sense, dealing with accidental things as they do (39). Narrow-
ing the objects considered to the territory of scientific knowledge has the consequence

29. Meier, Gnostologia, dedicatory letter. Further citations from this work in the following passage
are cited parenthetically in the text.
 GNOSTOLOGIA | 89

of excluding certain categories of objects, ceding that universality is required in dealing

with objects as such. Like Calov therefore, Meier prefers to define the object of gnostologia
by the more generic term “cognizable.” Yet Meier also states that “all that is is a cogniza-
ble” (46), whereas Calov asserts that “the intelligible is all that is” (6). Despite the apparent
distinction, Meier and Calov endorse the same position. Calov himself at the beginning of
his gnostologia compares thinkables and intelligibles with cognizables (5). What charac-
terizes cognizables in their most intrinsic aspect is their givenness—that is, an “objectivity
without a real object”30—what Calov called tqͅ ̃ objective.
Meier’s characterization of the cognizable proceeds with an analysis of the principles,
which are in general the foundations from which clear and distinct knowledge is gener-
ated (68). There are many kinds of principles. The most important distinction is between
internal and external principles. Internal principles can be either material or formal. A
material principle designates the thing from which knowledge originates, while a formal
one characterizes the knowability that pertains to the natural light of the understanding.
Knowledge of a thing has two sources (1) revelation; (2) nature. Nature, in particular,
is the only foundation for the representation of a natural cognizable (77), and knowledge
beyond nature is reckless (82). Meier’s main interest is to know whether the understand-
ing seizes and constructs the cognizable or not—in other words, whether there is an active
function that shapes the object of knowledge, or—vice versa—it is nature that shapes hu-
man understanding. The first hypothesis seems to be suggested by Aristotle in Metaphys-
ics 10.1, in which “knowledge also, and sensation, we call the measure of things because
we know something by them,”31 and this could be the ultimate interpretation of certain
gnostological attempts focused on the subjectivization of knowledge. However, Meier re-
verses this constructivist position by stating that the understanding is merely passive in its
reception of the cognizable. Furthermore, it is the cognizable that modifies and shapes the
understanding. For this reason, the understanding depends on things and nature, and not
vice versa. It is absurd, according to Meier, to believe the opposite, because “if the under-
standing were the rule of knowable things, then things will be mutable according to the
rules of our understanding, according to our way of conceiving” (91). In this way no firm
knowledge and science of nature would be possible. There could not be a more distant
perspective than this from what Immanuel Kant proposes in his theory of knowledge a
century later, foregrounding the active role of the understanding in shaping nature.
Meier explores how understanding receives the cognizable, starting from sensation.
He reproduces the cognitive dynamics outlined by Aristotle in Posterior Analytics 2.19,
giving special emphasis to the process of abstraction, which is absent from the Aristotelian

30. Courtine, Suaréz et le sysème de la métaphysique, 256.

31. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 10.1.1053a31–33.
90 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2022

discourse. All knowledge starts from sensation and nothing is innate—everything is ac-
quired. External sensation is the first step in the acquisition of the object of knowledge.
This first acquisition is singular and constitutes the first known (primum cognitum;
141). Many collected sensations produce experience, which, through induction, facilitates
the formation of the concept in the understanding. This formation is a transition—the
technical term Meier uses is “deduction”—from singulars to a universal (108–9).
An external object becomes thus a cognizable—that is, an object of the understanding.
The cognizable can inhabit the understanding in three different ways: (1) subjectively, ac-
cording to the operations of the mind in reasoning, knowing, and willing; (2) effectively,
when the external object produces the idea; (3) objectively, when it represents the content
of the external object (134–35).
The initial knowledge of this concept is generic and confused, and a process of ab-
straction is necessary in order to make the cognizable fully understandable in a clear and
distinct way. Abstraction therefore is that particular function, as in Calov, which inquires
into the nature of the cognizable as such (142). Abstraction creates concepts, and a con-
cept properly speaking is “a species generated by the understanding, which represents the
knowable in the mind, as it is in itself and is distinctly known” (185). If the principle of the
production of knowledge in the understanding is abstraction, the concept is the principle
of the apprehension of knowledge, without which the mind could not grasp the object of
knowledge distinctly. The concept requires two elements: (1) the object that must be con-
ceived; (2) a mind that conceives the object in this peculiar way. According to Meier, and
following Zabarella’s distinction, there are two kinds of concepts. The first concept or in-
tention is the distinct representation of the thing in the mind, while the second concept is
based on the first and constitutes the way the object of knowledge is understood in the
mind (195). Meier, however, introduces a further distinction between an adequate and
inadequate concept. An adequate concept is perfect and distinct because it affords the
mind an immediate and perfect knowledge of the thing. An inadequate concept is an im-
perfect and confused representation of the thing, conceived through mediated knowl-
edge. Apprehension of the adequate concept leads to knowledge of the essential elements
of the thing (essentialia), allowing the mind a distinct conception. Conversely, if knowl-
edge is mediated by accidental things, the conception is always imperfect (198–99).
Meier introduces a further important distinction between the concepts archetypus and
ectypus, a classification that will reemerge in Kant in relation to the understanding.32 The
concept archetypus is the exemplary cause in the mind of the producer, through which the
thing is produced, while the concept ectypus is the existence of the mental thing arriving
through apprehension (203). For natural things, however, the concept archetypus is the

32. Kant, Ak. 3, A256/B312.

 GNOSTOLOGIA | 91

prerogative of God’s mind, never of human understanding, which can only apprehend
the concept ectypus.
Like previous gnostological theories, Meier considers the object of the human mind in
a dimension that is fourfold. The first considers the cognizable as it can be known as ex-
isting in the individual, in which it has an objective foundation (objectivus funda-
mentalis). In a second respect, the cognizable is represented in the mind in its objective
ideal state (objectivus idealis) as a concept. In a third way, the cognizable is exhibited in the
intellectual act of representation in the state of its formal ideal (idealis formalis). The
fourth aspect considers the cognizable as a universal (universalis), which pertains to many
things and not merely to a single individual (67). This fourth aspect is specifically called
“idea.” The idea leads to the perfect knowledge of the thing itself in a definitive way—that
is, in a clear and distinct manner—and it is the representation to which many singular
things refer according to their common attributes (151).33
Meier distinguishes these attributes or affections as being either conjoined or dis-
junctive. Conjoined attributes are those that are convertible with cognizables, but Meier
does not examine this convertibility in the same detail as Wagner. These attributes are
(1) the “truth” and (2) the “aptitude to the idea.” In general terms, truth is conformity
between the act of understanding that objectifies the thing and the object of knowledge
in general, that is the cognizable (401). The cognizable in itself is always true when there
is this agreement, independently of whether or not it refers to an actually existing object or
to one subsisting in the mind. There is agreement between the concept and the content of
the object (412). In relation to aptitude, Meier points out that this is a habit of the under-
standing in representing the thing. This representation can be direct if it is an objective
manifestation of a thing that determines the understanding. It is an indirect representa-
tion if the manifestation does not follow immediately from the thing itself, but is deduced
by further reasoning (461). More particularly, indirect representation can be deduced by
negation, causation, or eminency (eminentia). With negation, an indirect representation
does not present the thing, but rather its contrary, and the representation of the thing is
produced by its opposite. With causation, the representation is conceived through its ef-
fects, while with eminency, it is conceived through a relation of dependence with some-
thing else (464).
After the examination of these two attributes of the cognizable, Meier shifts his atten-
tion specifically to gnostologia specialis. Within the special cognizables, which were usu-
ally theoretical, practical, and productive, Meier emphasized the importance of those
composed by second notions, which are called instrumental cognizables. They have a pe-
culiar status because they do not directly convey knowledge, but rather they are the means

33. See also Meier, Gnostologia, 472.

92 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2022

by which the mind knows. The existence of these cognizables is related to their function
within the act of cognizing (618). They subsist in the mind, but have other no real exis-
tence. They are transcendental and essential in relation to the possibility of knowledge,
and without them the understanding cannot know. Meier emphasizes that these instru-
mental cognizables are mere forms of understanding, they are no more than ideal and
virtual. They are not operations of the understanding, because the understanding deals
only with the external thing and the real being (ens reale); rather, they are qualities or
predicates for understanding the cognizables (623). Like his predecessors, and especially
following Calov, Meier emphasizes the subjective nature of knowledge in relation to the
object of the mind. This leads him to expand on and considerably surpass what previous
scholars had attempted in the field of gnostologia.
This emphasis on epistemic subjectivity is exploited by Georg Wagner in his Dispu-
tatio gnostologia (1670), in focusing on the affections of a specific cognizable, namely
the intelligible: what is conceived by the understanding. Wagner (1630–83) points out
that he considers affections not in an ontological sense as determinations or qualities of
an object, but rather from a strictly cognitive standpoint, insofar as they represent and in-
volve a relationship in the mode of knowing between subject and object.34 Affections as
means through which something is distinctly conceived are called attributes, and they
are considered properties when convertible with the intelligible itself (§ 3). These pertain
on the one side to the intelligible itself, which is the matter (or the content) of the concept
conceived in the mind, and on the other to the form—that is, the necessary and immediate
relation among the attributes in constituting the concept. The determination or individu-
ation of affections does not lead to the knowledge of a new thing, but rather to a better
understanding of the intelligible, through its attributes—that is, to a new way of conceiving
the object of knowledge (§ 2, axiom 2).
The unity of attributes makes the truth of the representation, because they together
constitute and characterize univocally and necessarily the concept of the object. Accord-
ing to Wagner, this kind of representative truth differs from the truth that the mind ac-
quires through apprehension. Representative truth characterizes the aptitude of the thing
to become an idea (aptitudo ad ideam). Representative truth is ideal and mental in estab-
lishing the agreement between the various affections and the objective concept of the ob-
ject (§ 7). Contrary to representative truth, Wagner outlines the apprehensive truth,
which concerns the relation between the object itself and the understanding. This kind
of truth is objective in the sense that it makes possible the intelligibility of the object—that
is, it guarantees the intelligibility and conceivability in the understanding, the fact that

34. Wagner, Disputatio gnostologica tradens affectiones, §1. Further citations from this work in the
following passage are cited parenthetically in the text.
 GNOSTOLOGIA | 93

something can be the object of the mind. Furthermore, apprehensive truth can be either
material when it determines the tabula rasa of the understanding or formal in defining the
conformity of knowledge with the object (§ 2). The truth and aptitude in relation to the
idea therefore makes knowledge possible because they reconstruct in the understanding
the very possibility of grasping the object of knowledge and its relationship with the subject.
Wagner emphasizes how attributes define the mode of knowing and not the object
itself. Indeed, in relation to the cognitive process, he identifies what he calls disjunctive
attributes that characterize knowledge. Disjunctive attributes are certainty or uncertainty,
evidence or obscurity, easiness or difficulty, and agreement or disagreement. Certainty,
for instance, points to the invariability of the representative truth of the intelligible
and, therefore, to the firmness of scientific knowledge. It can be either objective or sub-
jective. Objective certainty is somewhat independent from the knowing subject and per-
tains only to God. Formal certainty, on the other hand, is subjective and characterizes
steadiness of mind in the assent to knowledge (§§ 1–3). All these attributes pertain only
to the mind in the act of knowing, rather than to the objects of knowledge.
Another example of academic disputation on gnostology is Johann Graft’s Gnosto-
logia Primordium Philosophandi Tradens (1677). It is a short companion to the discipline,
which summarizes the main features of what became gnostology at that time. Graft re-
peats that gnostology (or gnostic) is the doctrine of the knowable or cognizable—that
is, the intellectual habit that considers the knowable as such for the sake of acquiring bet-
ter knowledge in other disciplines. It is akin to other disciplines such as hexiologia,
technologia, and horistica. According to Graft, this discipline is particularly important be-
cause it reveals the foundations of philosophy. He explains that the object of knowledge is
not immediately received by the mind but rather is abstracted and transformed into a
concept of the intellect. Yet just because gnostology relies on abstraction—the main func-
tion of the intellect that frees the thing from individuating conditions producing the uni-
versal—the knowledge it provides is complex in being far removed from sensible knowl-
edge, which is easy to grasp. Graft points out then that cognizable refers to a way or
possibility of knowing an entity. The cognizable therefore is a mode of knowing through
which the thing is known. There are three kinds of cognizable: (1) perceptible; (2) intel-
ligible; and (3) knowable. The perceptible characterizes the way in which something is
known in a distinct way from another thing, but scientific knowledge comes only from
the grasping of the concept in the mind. Graft’s work is not notable in originality, and
indeed he declares himself a follower of Fromme’s, Calov’s, and Meier’s perspectives.
All the academic writings that have been examined in this section provide an in-
depth study of Calov’s perspective in elaborating a new discipline of the theory of the ob-
jects of knowledge. They show a clear subjectivization of the cognitive process, examining
cognizables, knowables, and intelligibles exclusively in relation to the mind in its formal
94 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2022

aspects and not to the things that they represent. All attributes, which were customarily
associated with the things, are now essential elements for the knowing subject in acquir-
ing the object of knowledge.

DECLINE
Gnostologia intercepted international trends with Samuel Strimesius (1648–1730), an
eclectic philosopher and reformed theologian who was critical of Cartesian philosophy
and close to the English Platonists. His stay in Cambridge, London, and Oxford and
his friendship with Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, Edward Stillingfleet, and Richard
Cumberland made him responsive to the new approaches of theories of knowledge. In
1680 he published his major philosophical work, Somatologia s. Physica, Metaphysica
et Logica, in which he tries to reconcile Platonism, Cartesianism, and Aristotelianism.
The last part of the book is titled Lineae gnostologicae seu logicae Peripateticae reformate
rudimenta. Strimesius clearly identifies gnostologia with a special kind of logic. He lists
gnostologia among theoretical disciplines. However, while physics and metaphysics con-
cern things and the direct acquisition of scientific knowledge, gnostologia is a reflection on
the instrument for acquiring knowledge.35 For Strimesius gnostologia and logic are two
interchangeable terms, and this is a clear sign that logic was shifting its focus from being
a theory of reasoning based on terms, propositions, and syllogisms, to becoming a theory
of knowledge.36
In contrast to his predecessors, Strimesius contests the idea according to which logic,
namely gnostologia, is an extra-philosophical, instrumental habit, but presents it rather
as one of the most important philosophical disciplines. He characterizes logic as the
“wisdom of the cognizable as such.”37 The cognizable is the adequate object of logic and
can be considered materially or formally. Materially, the cognizable is the metaphysical en-
tity, while formally it is considered through the affections that make possible the knowledge
of a thing. The cognizable as the adequate object of logic is then called second notion.
Specifically, the cognizable is everything that generates an idea, and this can either
be sensible if coming from outside the mind, or intelligible if coming from within (8).
At the very beginning, this idea is an inadequate cognizable reproducing only the ob-
ject itself, but later it becomes adequate providing perfect knowledge of the cognizable
through its attributes. From this it follows that the uncognizable is something that can-
not produce an idea in the mind.

35. Strimesius, Somatologia, 3.

36. Michael, “Why Logic Became Epistemology,” 1–20.
37. Strimesius, Lineae gnostologicae, 6. Further citations from this work in the following passage are
cited parenthetically in the text.
 GNOSTOLOGIA | 95

Strimesius divides logic into the general and the special. General logic concerns the
cognizable as being a way of knowing according to its general principles and affections.
Special logic, conversely, considers only the specific object of knowledge. Strimesius
points out that only general logic can be named gnostologia (13). It concerns the two
main operations of the mind. The first is apprehension and it is a way of knowing some-
thing through a concept. This act of knowing characterizes an inadequate cognizable and
works through simple apprehension, judgment, and syllogism, as in traditional Aristo-
telian logic. The second operation is comprehension and it is a way of knowing some-
thing through multiple concepts, designating thus an adequate cognizable. It works by
means of definition, division, and method (17).
Strimesius examines all these operations of apprehension and comprehension in de-
tail. Simple apprehension is a form of cognition beyond affirmation and negation. Here
he admits to following Descartes, who established that in the formation of the idea in the
mind no falsehood is possible. Its object is the term. Judgment, however, is an apprehen-
sive way of knowing through a concept, which is conceived by means of another. Finally,
syllogism is an apprehensive way of knowing which involves at least three related con-
cepts. All these apprehensive forms of cognition have the peculiarity of attributing, directly
or indirectly, just one predicate to the subject. Comprehensive forms of cognition, in con-
trast, consider more than one predicate (63). Definition is a comprehensive way of know-
ing a thing through its essence. It is a synthetic kind of knowledge because it associates the
subject with many predicates. Division, again, is a comprehensive way of knowing a thing
through its essence, but it brings about analytic knowledge in separating the subject from
its predicates. Finally, method is a comprehensive way of knowing a thing not only
through its essence but according to every possible predicate that can be associated with
the subject.
One of the most fascinating gnostological projects is Johann Gottfried Zeidler’s Gnos-
tologia oder Allwisserey (1699), a handbook of eighty pages written in Latin with a parallel
German text.38 Zeidler (1655–1711) does not distinguish between gnostologia (Allwis-
serey) and gnostica (Wisserey). He characterizes gnostica (Wisserey) as the contemplative
habit concerning the knowable (scibile, Wißliche) qua knowable. Against Calov and
Meier, but following Strimesius, Zeidler conceives gnostologia not as an instrumental
discipline, but as a science in its own right. His intention is to break with the original

38. The interesting nature of this work is the German philosophical lexicon used for characterizing
the theory of knowledge and its satiric nature. The Preface explains why it is necessary to provide a
translation of a book on the discipline of gnostologia, its importance, and where and when and to
whom it should be taught. In general, Zeidler considers gnostologia a fundamental discipline because
it explains the origin of every aspect of knowledge. For this reason, it deserves to be known by everyone,
and for the sake of intelligibility Zeidler frequently uses diagrams to explain difficult concepts.
96 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2022

Aristotelian tradition of gnostologia and to set a new paradigm.39 The knowable is what
the object of understanding can be. Like other gnostological positions, the knowable has
its objective foundation in the individual, is deduced in an objective ideal state, is formally
represented, and is considered universally. When the object of knowledge is deduced in
an objective ideal state, it then becomes a concept. When this concept is considered uni-
versally, it becomes an idea.
Internal principles of the knowable are (1) the matter considered as the content of
knowledge that designates the real thing and (2) knowability according to human under-
standing. Furthermore, Zeidler points out that a nonbeing cannot be a cognizable (cog-
noscibile, Wißliche), and the more a thing has being, the more it is intelligible, and on ac-
count of this beings existing in reason are less cognizable than actual existing things.
External principles of knowledge, which concur with the production of the knowable,
are abstraction (abstractio, Abziehung) and concept (conceptus, Fassung). Abstraction is
that function of the understanding through which the mind acquires distinct knowledge
by removing the individuating conditions of things. The concept is the medium through
which the knowable is represented and apprehended in the understanding.40 After this
short examination, Zeilder proceeds with a list of all kind of special knowables (theoret-
ical, practical, and productive) that characterize his theory of objects, but without making
any original contribution.
After the first decade of the eighteenth century, gnostologia as the discipline of the
theory of knowledge disappeared—no new publication in connection with the topic ap-
peared. The reasons for this rapid decline and its limited diffusion in the German terri-
tories have blurred contours. We can at least advance some possible correlated hypoth-
eses for this collapse.
The first hypothesis concerns its origin. Gnostologia, despite its many similarities
with logic, was always considered ancillary to metaphysics. What emerges from the read-
ing of these books is a response to Timpler’s idea that the subject of metaphysics was the
intelligible in its twofold dimension of something (aliquid) and nothing (nihil). Gnos-
tologia was conceived as an exploration of the cognizable (or knowable) as a broader
concept of the narrower notion of being, which is the true subject of metaphysics. When
Timpler’s proposal ceased to be speculatively interesting, and a new metaphysics like
that of Descartes or Christian Wolff came into view, gnostologia thus became an unes-
sential investigation.
A second hypothesis concerns the encyclopaedic spirit that animated early modern
thinkers. The idea of the creation of a complete philosophical system with disciplines such

39. Zeidler, Gnostologia, oder Allwisserey, 3.

40. Ibid., 8.
 GNOSTOLOGIA | 97

as gnostologia, noologia, hexiologia, technologia, horistica, and so on, segued into the elab-
oration of a unique new scientia generalis based on different presuppositions. Leibniz
considered scientia generalis “the science of what is universally thinkable (cogitabile) in-
sofar as it is such.”41 Therefore the problem of Timpler’s “intelligible” was no longer ex-
amined in gnostologia, but in a different and wider discipline.
A third hypothesis is that gnostologia, dealing with many subjects usually pertaining to
logic and metaphysics, was very soon considered useless duplication, especially in a pe-
riod when, with the dissemination of Descartes and Locke’s works and with the fall of
Aristotelianism, the development of the theory of knowledge went in another direction
that did not favor the establishment of gnostologia as a separate discipline.42
All of these hypotheses can be valid at once. Despite this rapid decline, echoes of its
philosophical investigations are evident even in Kant. The focus on the formal and tran-
scendental aspects of knowledge based on epistemic subjectivity, the consideration of the
object of knowledge in general terms without any notion of a relationship to matter, the
attempt to rigorize the distinction between thinking and knowing—each of these makes
of gnostologia an important step toward what will become the discipline of epistemology
as it is now narrated in our textbook.43

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