As a philosophic school, it has certain definite characteristics. First, it is confined within the limits of what appears to the writer to be orthodoxy; if his views are condemned by a council, he is usually willing to retract. … Third, there is a great belief in ‘dialectic’ and in syllogistic reasoning; the general temper of the scholastics is minute and disputatious rather than mystical.

Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosop…, loc. 1658