[107] the most sharp-minded of all medieval theologians and philosophers, Duns Scotus^a, tried to show the inadequacy of the Thomistic synthesis and tried to put the religious insights to the one side, and the insights in the structure of the universe to the other side. Out of this criticism, which was carried through by the nominalistic^b movement, not only in the Middle Ages but also later in English empiricism, the intellectual fathers of all of us -- as I said already, I think, and will repeat: you all are nominalists by birth! [some laughter] -- these nominalists put the one of the one side, and the other on the other side. But life is not like this! And so it always happened that there were realms of conflict. And it developed, at the end of the Middle Ages, preparing the Renaissance^c, the classical doctrine of the double truth, a doctrine which says that the same statement -- for instance, about the immortality of the soul -- can be true in theology and not true in philosophy, and that the same statement about the validity of natural laws can be true in physics but not true in religion. Now this doctrine, of course, means a complete schizophrenia, a split of the mind, and couldn't be maintained in the long run, it was necessary, in the period of the late Middle Ages, in order to survive, if one tried to make empirical studies, because this was the only way in which one could escape the at-that-time absolutely tyrannical power of the Church^d, which always becomes tyranical, oppressive, producing the inquisition only in that period, when it feels threatened. And it rightly felt threatened at that time, and so its reaction was such that everybody who wanted to make scientific inquiries was in real danger, and the doctrine of the double truth was the subterfuge . . .