Knowing is Growing: Aquinas on the Being and Life of Intellects

In premodern philosophy, simple contemplative acts such as "thinking about horseness" are often the main focus when discussing the metaphysics of thinking. But what should we make of other intellectual acts, such as formulating and assenting to propositions, or reasoning through arguments? I will explore how Thomas Aquinas offers an alternative to "information-processing" models of reasoning and propositional thinking, by examining his analogies of the human intellect to biologically living things. For Aquinas, knowing is, literally, growing!