Liberal Arts and Sciences

We are chiefly indebted to the scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages for the nomenclature by which they distinguished the seven sciences then best known to them. With the metaphorical spirit of the age in which they lived, they called the two class into which they divided them the trivium, or meeting of three roads, and the quadrivium, or meeting of four roads; calling Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric the trivium, and Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy the quadrivium. These they styled The Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences, to separate them from the Mechanical Arts which were practised by the handicrafts-men. The Liberal Man, Liberalis Homo, meant, in the Middle Ages, the man who was his own master - free, independent, and often a nobleman.

The seven liberal arts and sciences are Grammar, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Logic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy. They are beautifully explained in the second, or Fellowcraft's degree.


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See Also: Grammar - Logic - Rhetoric - Arithmetic - Geometry - Music - Astronomy


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