Labeled “Platonic humanism” by historian R. W. Southern, this worldview was based on the idea that the world came from God and thus can lead us back to God. Without going as far as the ancient Platonic hierarchy of being, twelfth-century scholars believed that the world reflected the God who created it — the “Platonic” part of the worldview — and therefore that studying the world can tell us about God. God created the world separate from himself, and since he is rational, the world he created is also rational and subject to rational analysis.
