1145. He affirms first that what science is can be made clear…it is proper to science to know with certitude and not follow approximations to the truth, for in this latter way, we are sometimes said to know sensible things about which we are certain. But a well-founded notion of science is taken from the fact that we all agree that what we know cannot be in any other way; otherwise, we would have the doubt of the guesser and not the certitude of the knower. However, certitude of this kind—namely, that cannot be in any other way—is not possible about things that can be in some other way, for in that case, certitude can be attained about them only when they fall under the senses. But when they pass from observation—that is, cease to be seen or felt—then their existence or non-existence escapes us… It is evident, then, that everything known by science is of necessity. From this, he infers that [science] is eternal because everything that is of necessity without qualification is eternal. But things of this kind are neither produced nor destroyed. Therefore, it is about such things that science is concerned.

1146. There can even be a science about producible and perishable things, such as natural science; yet it cannot be based on particulars that are subject to generation and destruction, but on universal reasons that are necessary and eternal.

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1181. Then...he shows what wisdom in the unqualified sense is. He says that, as we consider some men wise in a particular handicraft, so too we consider others completely wise, namely, with regard to the whole category of beings and not just a part of them, even though they are not wise in a particular handicraft. Thus, Homer remarks that the gods did not make a certain man a miner or a farmer, nor make him gifted in any craft, but simply made him wise. Hence, it is clear that, as the man who is wise in some handicraft is most sure in that art, so also that knowledge that is wisdom in an unqualified sense is the most certain of all modes of knowledge, inasmuch as it treats first principles of being—in themselves most known, although some of them, the immaterial, are less known in regard to us. But the most universal principles are also more known in regard to us, such as those belonging to being as being—the knowledge of which pertains to wisdom taken in this sense, as is evident in Metaphysics 4.

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St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, tr. C. I. Litzinger, O.P. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964), bk. 6.