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From the time of Plato through the Middle Ages, the quadrivium was a grouping of four subjects or arts—arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy—that formed a second curricular stage following preparatory work in the trivium, consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Together, the trivium and the quadrivium comprised the seven liberal arts, and formed the basis of a liberal arts education in Western society until gradually displaced as a curricular structure by the studia humanitatis and its later offshoots, beginning with Petrarch in the 14th century. The seven classical arts were considered "thinking skills" and were distinguished from practical arts, such as medicine and architecture.
The trivium is the lower division of the seven liberal arts and comprises grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
Bartholomaeus Anglicus, also known as Bartholomew the Englishman and Berthelet, was an early 13th-century Scholastic of Paris, a member of the Franciscan order. He was the author of the compendium De proprietatibus rerum, dated c.1240, an early forerunner of the encyclopedia and a widely cited book in the Middle Ages. Bartholomew also held senior positions within the church and was appointed Bishop of Łuków in what is now Poland, although he was not consecrated to that position.
Posidonius "of Apameia" or "of Rhodes", was a Greek politician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, historian, mathematician, and teacher native to Apamea, Syria. He was considered the most learned man of his time and, possibly, of the entire Stoic school. After a period learning Stoic philosophy from Panaetius in Athens, he spent many years in travel and scientific researches in Spain, Africa, Italy, Gaul, Liguria, Sicily and on the eastern shores of the Adriatic. He settled as a teacher at Rhodes where his fame attracted numerous scholars. Next to Panaetius he did most, by writings and personal lectures, to spread Stoicism to the Roman world, and he became well known to many leading men, including Pompey and Cicero.
Etymologiae, also known as the Origines ('Origins'), usually abbreviated Orig., is an etymological encyclopedia compiled by the influential Christian bishop Isidore of Seville towards the end of his life. Isidore was encouraged to write the book by his friend Braulio, Bishop of Saragossa. Etymologiae summarized and organized a wealth of knowledge from hundreds of classical sources; three of its books are derived largely from Pliny the Elder's Natural History. Isidore acknowledges Pliny, but not his other principal sources, namely Cassiodorus, Servius, and Gaius Julius Solinus.
Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, commonly known as Cassiodorus, was a Christian Roman statesman, a renowned scholar and writer who served in the administration of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths. Senator was part of his surname, not his rank. He also founded a monastery, Vivarium, where he worked extensively the last three decades of his life.
Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, usually referred to as Macrobius, was a Roman provincial who lived during the early fifth century, during late antiquity, the period of time corresponding to the Later Roman Empire, and when Latin was as widespread as Greek among the elite. He is primarily known for his writings, which include the widely copied and read Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis about Somnium Scipionis, which was one of the most important sources for Neoplatonism in the Latin West during the Middle Ages; the Saturnalia, a compendium of ancient Roman religious and antiquarian lore; and De differentiis et societatibus graeci latinique verbi, which is now lost. He is the basis for the protagonist Manlius in Iain Pears' book The Dream of Scipio.
Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases. However, this is often without conventions or rules dictating how or which theories were combined.
The Dream of Scipio, written by Cicero, is the sixth book of De re publica, and describes a dream vision of the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus, set two years before he oversaw the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC.
Encyclopedism is an outlook that aims to include a wide range of knowledge in a single work. The term covers both encyclopedias themselves and related genres in which comprehensiveness is a notable feature. The word encyclopedia is a Latinization of the Greek enkýklios paideía, which means all-around education. The encyclopedia is "one of the few generalizing influences in a world of overspecialization. It serves to recall that knowledge has unity," according to Louis Shores, editor of Collier's Encyclopedia. It should not be "a miscellany, but a concentration, a clarification, and a synthesis", according to British writer H. G. Wells.
Nicomachus of Gerasa was an Ancient Greek Neopythagorean philosopher from Gerasa, in the Roman province of Syria. Like many Pythagoreans, Nicomachus wrote about the mystical properties of numbers, best known for his works Introduction to Arithmetic and Manual of Harmonics, which are an important resource on Ancient Greek mathematics and Ancient Greek music in the Roman period. Nicomachus' work on arithmetic became a standard text for Neoplatonic education in Late antiquity, with philosophers such as Iamblichus and John Philoponus writing commentaries on it. A Latin paraphrase by Boethius of Nicomachus's works on arithmetic and music became standard textbooks in medieval education.
Martianus Minneus Felix Capella was a jurist, polymath and Latin prose writer of late antiquity, one of the earliest developers of the system of the seven liberal arts that structured early medieval education. He was a native of Madaura.
Aurelian of Réôme was a Frankish writer and music theorist. He is the author of the Musica disciplina, the earliest extant treatise on music from medieval Europe.
Post-normal science (PNS) was developed in the 1990s by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz. It is a problem-solving strategy appropriate when "facts [are] uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent", conditions often present in policy-relevant research. In those situations, PNS recommends suspending temporarily the traditional scientific ideal of truth, concentrating on quality as assessed by internal and extended peer communities.
Jerome (Jerry) Ravetz is a philosopher of science. He is best known for his books analysing scientific knowledge from a social and ethical perspective, focussing on issues of quality. He is the co-author of the NUSAP notational system and of Post-normal science. He is currently an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, University of Oxford.
Christian views on the classics have varied throughout history. In the early years of Christianity, the writings of Classical and Hellenistic authors were widely spread by Christian teachers. However, during the Dark Ages, the decline in the study of this literature as a whole, as well as the waning of Christianity's popularity throughout Europe, resulted in the extinction of its effect in Christian life until the spread of Islam—the reintroduction of Classical texts—and the "rebirth" of Ancient Greek and Roman philosophies and arts during the Renaissance, where "artists and philosophers, each in their own way, combined Christian belief and ancient philosophy into a balanced, rational, humanistic system". Today, churches' views are generally consistent with those of Renaissance humanists' in that "Christians should be able to read the classics ... because it is part of the Western heritage ... [and] because it is part of Christianity’s inheritance."
The legacy of the Roman Empire has been varied and significant. The Roman Empire, built upon the legacy of other cultures, has had long-lasting influence with broad geographical reach on a great range of cultural aspects, including state institutions, law, values, religious beliefs, technological advances, engineering and language.
Monastic schools were, along with cathedral schools, the most important institutions of higher learning in the Latin West from the early Middle Ages until the 12th century. Since Cassiodorus's educational program, the standard curriculum incorporated religious studies, the Trivium, and the Quadrivium. In some places monastic schools evolved into medieval universities which eventually largely superseded both institutions as centers of higher learning.
European science in the Middle Ages comprised the study of nature, mathematics and natural philosophy in medieval Europe. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the decline in knowledge of Greek, Christian Western Europe was cut off from an important source of ancient learning. Although a range of Christian clerics and scholars from Isidore and Bede to Jean Buridan and Nicole Oresme maintained the spirit of rational inquiry, Western Europe would see a period of scientific decline during the Early Middle Ages. However, by the time of the High Middle Ages, the region had rallied and was on its way to once more taking the lead in scientific discovery. Scholarship and scientific discoveries of the Late Middle Ages laid the groundwork for the Scientific Revolution of the Early Modern Period.
William Harris Stahl was an American historian of science and professor of classics at New York University and Brooklyn College, known for his translation of Macrobius' Commentary on the Dream of Scipio and his 1962 book Roman Science.
References
- 1 2 3 Stahl, William H. (1978). Roman Science: Origins, Development, and Influence to the Later Middle Ages. Praeger. ISBN 978-0-313-20473-9.
- 1 2 Boyer, C. B. (December 1969). "Éloge: William Harris Stahl, 1908–1969". Isis . 60 (4). University of Chicago Press: 528–534. doi:10.1086/350539. ISSN 0021-1753.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Wasserstein, A. (1 March 1965). "Essay Review: Greek Science, the Romans and the Middle Ages: Roman Science: Origins, Development and Influence to the Later Middle Ages". History of Science. 4 (1). SAGE Publications Ltd: 129–138. doi:10.1177/007327536500400107. ISSN 0073-2753.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Neugebauer, O. (1964). "Review of Roman Science: Origins, Development, and Influence to the Later Middle Ages". The American Journal of Philology. 85 (4). Johns Hopkins University Press: 418–423. doi:10.2307/293022. ISSN 0002-9475.
- ↑ Funtowicz, Silvio O.; Ravetz, Jerome R. (1990). Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy . "Theor and Decision Library, Series A: Philosophy and Methodology of the Social Sciences", Vol. 15. Kluwer. p. 242. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-0621-1_3.