Adjective
That can be the subject of speculation.
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More examples (9)
And hence is it that when the rational faculty having perpended the convenience and inconvenience, or good and evil of its objects, and ended its act of Deliberation, adhæres unto, or fixes upon one as more convenient then the others; this ſecond act or Adhæſion may be in the general (i. e. on reſpect of things both ſpeculable and practical)[…]
Firſt, becauſe it is a kind of Memory, for the Intellect reflecting on things Agible, that is, on things done, or to be done, hath a relation to the Conſcience, as the Intellect reflecting on things ſpeculable, hath its relation to the Memory.
The source from which a scientific proof proceeds is neither something individual as such, nor something universal as such; rather, it is something, a speculable object, taken according to an absolute consideration. And both individuality and universality are outside the absolute consideration of any speculable object which functions as the subject genus of a science, i. e., as the source from which a scientific proof proceeds.
They are not metaphysical proofs because they do not concern transcendental aspects of things, i.e., speculable objects intrinsically independent of matter for being and for being known.
To be sure, for Aristotle and other Post-Socratic lovers of theory, the world with which they were immediately concerned was not only changing and sensible but also intelligible, objectifiable and speculable. It was not merely a life-world in which they found themselves already existing; it was also a world of speculable objects for their speculable faith.
Just as the speculative intellect is constituted by all speculable things as they are speculable, so the practical intellect is constituted by operable things as they are operable.
The immaterial nature of the intellect requires that the speculable as such be immaterial. Furthermore, the habit of science requires that the speculable be necessary since science is concerned with what cannot be otherwise.
Therefore the speculative sciences must be divided according to differences of speculable objects, precisely as such. Now for that speculable entity which is the object of a speculative power, something is required on the part of the intellective power and something on the part of the habitus of science whereby the intellect is perfected.
Before looking at the ground for mathematical definitions in natural things, let us have before us Thomas’s account of a third order of speculable objects: But there are some 'speculable objects that do not depend on matter in order to be, because they can exist without matter, whether they are never in matter, such as God and the angels, or in some things are in matter and in some not, such as substance, quality, being, potency, act, one and many, and the like, with all of which theology, that is divine science, is concerned, God being the chief among the things it knows;