Peripatetic axiom

The Aristotelian principle that the intellect contains no knowledge that did not first originate in sensory experience.

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Aristotelianism: The philosophical tradition founded on Aristotle’s writings and doctrines. The axiom expresses Aristotelianism’s account of how human knowledge begins.
Aristotelian epistemology: Aristotle’s theory of knowledge, including its sources, limits, and relation to demonstration. It supplies the broader account in which the axiom explains the origin of intellectual knowledge.
Aristotle: An ancient Greek philosopher whose works shaped logic, natural philosophy, ethics, and metaphysics. His account of intellect and sensation is the source of the principle.
Rationalism: The view that reason can provide knowledge or justification independently of sensory experience. Rationalist accounts give reason a source of knowledge the axiom does not foreground.
Empiricism: The view that experience is a primary source or test of knowledge. The axiom became a foundational formula for later empiricist accounts of knowledge.
Sensation: The process by which sensory systems register stimuli from the environment. Sensation is the first source named by the axiom’s account of knowledge.
De Anima: Aristotle’s treatise on the soul, its faculties, and the relation between perception and thought. Its discussion of intellect and sensation provides a central textual basis for the axiom.
Platonism: The philosophical tradition associated with Plato’s account of Forms and the soul’s relation to them. Platonic recollection offers a contrasting account in which learning can recover knowledge beyond sensory origins.
Tabula rasa: The idea that the mind begins without innate ideas or prior mental content. The axiom is often read as denying innate ideas, though it does not settle every question about them.
Perception: The organization and interpretation of sensory information into representations of objects and events. Perception gives sensory encounters the organized content from which thought can begin.