The Arts
Martin Cothran, editor of The Classical Teacher magazine/catalog for Memoria Press, is fond of boiling the essence of classical education down to the three arts and the three sciences. The three arts (from the Latin ars, or "skill") are the liberal arts, the fine arts, and the manual arts. The manual arts (from Latin manus, hand) are trade skills and other practical life skills. These are not ends in themselves, but used to reach other ends. The fine arts (from Latin finis, end) are those that are an end in themselves, consisting in part of music, theater, dance, painting, drawing, and sculpture - things we do for the sheer joy of doing them.
The liberal arts
The liberal arts are seven in number, composed of the three arts found in the trivium (the verbal arts) and the four arts of the quadrivium (the math arts). The verbal arts are grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Sister Miriam Joseph, in The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric (2002), described the liberal arts in this way:
Grammar is the art of inventing symbols and combining them to express thought; logic is the art of thinking; and rhetoric is the art of communicating thought from one mind to another, the adaptation of language to circumstance…Grammar is concerned with the thing as-it-is-symbolized. Logic is concerned with the thing as-it-is-known. Rhetoric is concerned with the thing as-it-is-communicated.
Grammar, therefore, in addition to what we think of as the structure of language, includes necessary decoding and encoding language skills such as phonics, spelling, and simple composition. For the classicist, it also includes Latin, which has been the main vehicle for the learning of grammar for centuries, and Greek. (Of course, the learning of any language is not merely to improve one’s vocabulary and grammar, but to be able to communicate in that language, including being able to read and understand seminal classical writings in their original languages).
Logic is the art of reasoning and dialogue, and rhetoric involves using language to persuade and to speak truth in an appealing way. These two, logic and rhetoric, are preceded by, and run somewhat concurrently with, the progymnasmata, or a series of writing exercises designed to help a student learn to express himself or herself in writing, beginning with very simple tasks that build on one another, and ending with advanced persuasive writing based in matters of law.
The mathematical arts, the less familiar quadrivium, are arithmetic, geometry, music and harmonics, and astronomy. Arithmetic is discrete number, and geometry is the study of continuous number, and includes instruction in deductive reasoning. Astronomy is the application of continuous number, math in time and space; and music is not merely music as we listen to it, but is the application of discrete number, mathematical ratios, proportions, and harmonics.
Logic is the art of reasoning and dialogue, and rhetoric involves using language to persuade and to speak truth in an appealing way. These two, logic and rhetoric, are preceded by, and run somewhat concurrently with, the progymnasmata, or a series of writing exercises designed to help a student learn to express himself or herself in writing, beginning with very simple tasks that build on one another, and ending with advanced persuasive writing based in matters of law.
The mathematical arts, the less familiar quadrivium, are arithmetic, geometry, music and harmonics, and astronomy. Arithmetic is discrete number, and geometry is the study of continuous number, and includes instruction in deductive reasoning. Astronomy is the application of continuous number, math in time and space; and music is not merely music as we listen to it, but is the application of discrete number, mathematical ratios, proportions, and harmonics.
The sciences
The word sciences (from Latin scire, "to know or understand") refers not just to scientific experimentation, but to any organized body of knowledge. The moral sciences have to do with human concerns - literature, history, and philosophy, also referred to as the humanities. The natural sciences have to do with knowledge of the natural world - life sciences (biology, zoology, botany) and the physical sciences (physics, chemistry, earth science, astronomy). Finally, the theological sciences have to do with God, and include dogmatics (Christian belief), ethics (Christian morality), and apologetics (intellectual defense of the Christian faith).
Great Books
The way we access this vast and ever-growing body of knowledge is generally through the written word - in most cases, that which was written some time ago, if not from antiquity. These are “the classics”, also known as the “Great Books”, a list that varies slightly from source to source but tends to have the same basic core. They include works of literature, poetry, mathematics, plays, science, religion and philosophy.
Click here to find out how "memory work" fits into all this.
Click here to find out how "memory work" fits into all this.