Why Seven Liberal Arts?

kw: education, philosophy, liberal arts, history

In a compendium of Medieval writing that I have been reading on and off for a few years I came across a summary of liberal education by Hugh of St. Victor. I did not previously know of his master work Didascalicon de Studio Legendi (Didactics on the study of reading), written in about 1135. The excerpts in the compendium (which I will review on a later date) include his exegesis of the liberal arts on the following outline (structure mine; his work is narrative in style):

Philosophy is divided into

1. Theoretical
1. Theology
2. Physics
3. Mathematics
1. Arithmetic
2. Music
3. Geometry
2. Practical
1. Solitary (Ethics)
2. Private (Economics)
3. Public (Politics)
3. Mechanical
1. Spinning
2. Arms-making
3. Navigation (Astronomy)
4. Agriculture
5. Hunting
6. Medicine
7. Theatrical Arts
4. Logical
1. Grammar
2. Expression
1. Probable Demonstration
1. Dialectic
2. Rhetoric
2. Sophistical Demonstration

The number of these, so Hugh says, is twenty-one items. I don't know how that is computed. Then he has this enigmatic statement, "…if you wish to compute stages, you will find there are thirty-eight."

This is prefatory to an exhortation to read the best authors in all these fields, but initially to focus on the "Seven Liberal Arts: the Trivium and the Quadrivium". The items bolded and highlighted in color comprise these seven: the trivium in green and the quadrivium in violet. He expected mastery of these to naturally lead to avid reading in all the arts listed (21 or 38).

At first this seemed to me a curious list. But letting it sink in, and thinking more broadly, I realized that the trivium plus the quadrivium still underlie a proper education. What do we care about so much that many universities still require test-taking at a very high level, under the banner of either the SAT or the ACT? A "quantitative section" (mathematical) and a language arts section (reading and writing, which covers logic and grammar at least indirectly), plus science, which hadn't yet been created by Roger Bacon when the Didascalicon was written. 

And what of navigation/astronomy and rhetoric? When I had drivers' training, map-reading was as important as the mechanics of controlling the car. These days, everyone has a GPS unit or Google Maps on their phones, and navigational skills are being lost. Further, hardly anyone uses stellar navigation any more. And while I had public speaking instruction in high school and college, most youngsters today barely have a session or two of "show and tell." So much for logic and rhetoric.

The seven liberal arts, plus instruction in Greek and Latin, constituted a classical education. That, except for the Greek, is what I received during my first few years when I was in a private school. I am glad I had that. And I am sorry that education, in the West at least, has gone downhill since the writing of the Didascalicon some 885 years ago.