 universal science is that which investigates what is common to all the things that are, such as being and unity, and its kinds and its attributes, and things which are not accidents [proper to] any of the subjects of the particular sciences, [i.e., things] like priority and posteriority and potency and act and the perfect and the deficient and what is like these, and the common principle of all the things that are: this is the thing that must be called by the name of  God.[10]