laical

1. (unusual or technical) Of or pertaining to a layperson, layman, laywoman, or laypeople, i.e. the laity in general.Examples: "Laical literature."; "One of the most important of these results was the emergence of the laical intellectual,' and hence of laical science. We may distinguish developments of three different kinds. First, there always had been laical physicians and lawyers; but in the Renaissance they began to crowd out the clerical element. Second, starting from their professional needs and problems, laical artists and craftsmen — there was really no sociological distinction between them — began to develop a fund of tooled knowledge (for example, in anatomy, perspective, mechanics) that was an important source of modern science but grew up outside of scholastic university science: such a figure as Leonardo da Vinci will illustrate this point; and the figure of Galileo will illustrate another point, namely, how this kind of development produced the laical physicist. It had its analogue in economics; the businessman and civil servant, also starting like the artist craftsman from his practical needs and problems, began to develop a fund of economic knowledge. . . . . .The word "laical" has been chosen after some hesitation. 'Secular' would not do because it derives another connotation from the distinction: secular clergy — regular clergy. 'Laymen's science' conflicts with our use of the term layman (a man not trained in scientific method). 'Laicist' conveys the idea of an antagonism to the Church (cf., for instance, the phrases 'laicist state' or 'laicism'). So "laical" will have to serve in order to denote people or any activity (scientific or propagandist) of people who are not in holy orders. The noun shall be "laics". There is a more serious difficulty, however. On the one hand, the educational system of the Catholic Church proved so strong that many laical intellectuals continued to be shaped by it. Many of them retained habits of mind that did not differ essentially from those of the intellectuals in holy orders. On the other hand, an increasing number of the latter renounced allegiance to the scholastic system of thought as completely as any laic could have done: Erasmus of Rotterdam (1467-1536) affords an early instance."Synonyms: laic, lay