The Concept of First Philosophy and the Unity of the Metaphysics of Aristotle

That traditional methods do not suffice was pointed out years back by Jan Salamucha in his pioneering work on the ex motu argument of St. Thomas, in The New Scholasticism XXXII (1958) but first published in 1934. Although modern logic is a comparatively young science, he noted, it provides us "with many new and subtle tools for exact thinking. To reject them is to adopt the attitude of one who stubbornly insists on traveling by stage-coach, though having at his disposal a train or airplane... The great philosophers of the past did not rely exclusively on those weak logical tools left to them by their predecessors. The very problems themselves and their own scientific genius forced them to build rational reconstructions that went far beyond those of their time.