Aristotle's works have influenced science, religion, and philosophy for nearly two thousand years. He could be thought of as the father of logical thought. Aristotle wrote: "There is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses." He wrote that everything that is learned in life is learned through sensory perception. Aristotle was the first to establish the founding principle of logic. The great writer Dante called Aristotle "The Master of those who know." The Roman writer Cicero viewed Aristotle's work so highly that he called them "A river of gold".
Thomas Aquinas was an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus and Doctor Communis.
He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology, and the father of the Thomistic school of philosophy and theology. His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy was conceived as a reaction against, or as an agreement with, his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law and political theory.
The philosophy of Aquinas has exerted enormous influence on subsequent Christian theology, especially that of the Roman Catholic Church, extending to Western philosophy in general, where he stands as a vehicle and modifier of Aristotelianism, which he fused with the thought of Augustine.
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