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The presuppression curriculum required 3 years in the study of philosophy: the
first year covered logic, the second year treated Aristotelian natural philosophy plus
mathematics, and the third year treated metaphysics. By the end of the seventeenth
century, however, this pattern underwent a significant alteration with an important,
if unspoken, doctrinal implication: the move of metaphysics into the first year, with
logic. This adjustment was the result of the impetus of the pre-Enlightenment new
rationalism and empiricism, which tended to reduce the typical entities of scholastic
ontology (substance-accident, material-form, relationships, etc.) to mental constructs, psychological structures, or language structures. Such an “ontological
reduction,” however, also involved reducing much of the basis of traditional
Aristotelean physics. This was accelerated in the mid-1700s with the increasing
penetration of Newtonian physics (Baldini 2019).
After 1814, that situation had changed even further. In the eighteenth century, in
the Society’s schools, parts of scholastic physics (objective reality of qualities or
forms, finalism, irreducibility of the psychic to the physical, and more) had still
survived alongside increasing elements of the modern one; but by the nineteenth
century, given the enormous advances of the natural science, almost every trace of
the old curriculum was eliminated from second-year physics. In addition, the shift
from the Aristotelian sense of “physics” as a general science of nature to that of the
name of a specific field of study eliminated from the curriculum the few geological
subjects that had been associated with the reading of Meteore, the biological subjects that had been associated in part with the reading of the De Anima, and sometimes the Parva Naturalia and other writings of Aristotle.
A minimizing response to all this would have been to maintain the traditional
teaching of physics—albeit revised—linked to a revised metaphysics, giving it a
role of synthesis and adding in more strictly technical areas of recent science.
Instead, the program of the philosophical course adopted in the Roman College
after 1824 broke the traditional link between physics and metaphysics, keeping the
latter in the curriculum only for pure ontology (for the purposes of speculative theology) and leaving to the teachers of apologetics the task of indicating the manifestation of an Intelligence in nature. However, breaking the links between metaphysics
and physics carried with it the danger of undermining a fundamental element of the
Society’s educational enterprise: the sense that every individual discipline could
serve as a step of a cognitive ladder to God.
In the new curriculum, the first year included the teachings of logic and metaphysics and elementary mathematics; the second those of pure mathematics (up to
the rudiments of the Calculus), mathematical physics, and physical chemistry (the
latter introduced, as mentioned, by a Papal Brief) with laboratory exercises; the
third those of astronomy and moral philosophy. Astronomy was separated from
mathematical physics and entrusted to a special teacher—a solution maintained in
the following decades and decisive for Secchi’s career.
Meanwhile, the most philosophical aspects of the old scholastic physics were
added to the traditional study of logic and metaphysics. The teaching of logic now
included not only categories and syllogistics but also epistemology; metaphysics, in
addition to ontology, now included natural theology, psychology, and a series of
U. Baldini
The presuppression curriculum required 3 years in the study of philosophy: the
first year covered logic, the second year treated Aristotelian natural philosophy plus
mathematics, and the third year treated metaphysics. By the end of the seventeenth
century, however, this pattern underwent a significant alteration with an important,
if unspoken, doctrinal implication: the move of metaphysics into the first year, with
logic. This adjustment was the result of the impetus of the pre-Enlightenment new
rationalism and empiricism, which tended to reduce the typical entities of scholastic
ontology (substance-accident, material-form, relationships, etc.) to mental constructs, psychological structures, or language structures. Such an “ontological
reduction,” however, also involved reducing much of the basis of traditional
Aristotelean physics. This was accelerated in the mid-1700s with the increasing
penetration of Newtonian physics (Baldini 2019).
After 1814, that situation had changed even further. In the eighteenth century, in
the Society’s schools, parts of scholastic physics (objective reality of qualities or
forms, finalism, irreducibility of the psychic to the physical, and more) had still
survived alongside increasing elements of the modern one; but by the nineteenth
century, given the enormous advances of the natural science, almost every trace of
the old curriculum was eliminated from second-year physics. In addition, the shift
from the Aristotelian sense of “physics” as a general science of nature to that of the
name of a specific field of study eliminated from the curriculum the few geological
subjects that had been associated with the reading of Meteore, the biological subjects that had been associated in part with the reading of the De Anima, and sometimes the Parva Naturalia and other writings of Aristotle.
A minimizing response to all this would have been to maintain the traditional
teaching of physics—albeit revised—linked to a revised metaphysics, giving it a
role of synthesis and adding in more strictly technical areas of recent science.
Instead, the program of the philosophical course adopted in the Roman College
after 1824 broke the traditional link between physics and metaphysics, keeping the
latter in the curriculum only for pure ontology (for the purposes of speculative theology) and leaving to the teachers of apologetics the task of indicating the manifestation of an Intelligence in nature. However, breaking the links between metaphysics
and physics carried with it the danger of undermining a fundamental element of the
Society’s educational enterprise: the sense that every individual discipline could
serve as a step of a cognitive ladder to God.
In the new curriculum, the first year included the teachings of logic and metaphysics and elementary mathematics; the second those of pure mathematics (up to
the rudiments of the Calculus), mathematical physics, and physical chemistry (the
latter introduced, as mentioned, by a Papal Brief) with laboratory exercises; the
third those of astronomy and moral philosophy. Astronomy was separated from
mathematical physics and entrusted to a special teacher—a solution maintained in
the following decades and decisive for Secchi’s career.
Meanwhile, the most philosophical aspects of the old scholastic physics were
added to the traditional study of logic and metaphysics. The teaching of logic now
included not only categories and syllogistics but also epistemology; metaphysics, in
addition to ontology, now included natural theology, psychology, and a series of
U. Baldini