The medieval mindset makes connections between things. It is a whole world and when it encounters a new insight, it assimilates into an existing climate. So, any particular fits into the whole and the whole has room for every particular.
Rather than being a bucket of memorized, disconnected facts, the medieval mind, esprit d'finesse, is a great string with many pearls. It ties everything together and makes sense of the whole through poetic knowledge. Stories communicate facts better than charts. They may be less precise, but they capture the meaning more fully.
Esprit d'finnese is the ability to know where you are, where you came from, and where it's all going. It is more robust than mere intellectual attainment. It is philosophical and poetic. While these are harder to pin down, they are more lively. Dead butterflies make for cleaner displays, but what you gain in order, you lose in vitality. The medieval mind understands the facts, but it also understands them in their place in the world. The medieval mind doesn't isolate knowledge to sterile white rooms, but knows it in its natural habitat where dirt still gets under its nails.
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