Work · Renaissance & Humanism
That Nothing Is Known
Argues against the Aristotelian ideal of science that the nature of things cannot be perfectly known by the human mind, and proposes a modest method of observation and judgement.
Introduction
Sanches published “That Nothing Is Known” in Lyon in 1581, shortly after Montaigne’s “Essays” (1580); a connection between the two works has been suggested but not documented. As a physician, he examines the Aristotelian definition of knowledge as a disposition acquired through demonstration and finds it circular and empty: definitions only explain words, syllogisms produce nothing new, and perfect knowledge would require grasping each thing in all its causes and connections, which the coarse senses and the finite mind cannot do. The book nevertheless does not end in resignation: Sanches recommends experience and judgement and announces a work on method, which never appeared. Bayle called him a great Pyrrhonist; modern scholars such as Richard Popkin and Elaine Limbrick read him rather as a sceptic who wanted to clear the way for a modest, empirical science.
Connections
Criticizes
- Organonc. 350 BCE · Aristotle
As of November 2026 · Improve this page · How Agora is made