<P> In the 12th century CE the Andalusian Muslim philosopher and novelist Abu Bakr Ibn Tufail (known as "Abubacer" or "Ebn Tophail" in the West) included the theory of tabula rasa as a thought experiment in his Arabic philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan in which he depicted the development of the mind of a feral child "from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society" on a desert island, through experience alone . The Latin translation of his philosophical novel, entitled Philosophus Autodidactus, published by Edward Pococke the Younger in 1671, had an influence on John Locke's formulation of tabula rasa in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding . </P> <P> A similar Islamic theological novel, Theologus Autodidactus, was written by the Arab theologian and physician Ibn al - Nafis in the 13th century . It also dealt with the theme of empiricism through the story of a feral child on a desert island, but departed from its predecessor by depicting the development of the protagonist's mind through contact with society rather than in isolation from society . </P> <P> During the 13th century Thomas Aquinas adopted the Aristotelian position that the senses are essential to mind into scholasticism . Bonaventure (1221--1274), one of Aquinas' strongest intellectual opponents, offered some of the strongest arguments in favour of the Platonic idea of the mind . </P> <P> In the late renaissance various writers began to question the medieval and classical understanding of knowledge acquisition in a more fundamental way . In political and historical writing Niccolò Machiavelli and his friend Francesco Guicciardini initiated a new realistic style of writing . Machiavelli in particular was scornful of writers on politics who judged everything in comparison to mental ideals and demanded that people should study the "effectual truth" instead . Their contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci (1452--1519) said, "If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings ." </P>

The scientific method is a cycle that can be initiated at any point