The Seven Liberal Arts
In medieval Europe, a university education was divided into seven distinct areas, each represented by a particular planet and known as the seven liberal arts.
Dante Alighieri speculated that these arts, which grew into the sciences we know today, fitted the same structure as the planets. As the arts were seen as operating in ascending order, so were the planets and so, in decreasing order of planetary speed, grammar was assigned to the Moon, the quickest moving celestial body, dialectic was assigned to Mercury, rhetoric to Venus, music to the Sun, arithmetic to Mars, geometry to Jupiter and astrology/astronomy to the slowest moving body, Saturn.
Read more about this topic: Cultural Influence Of Astrology
Famous quotes containing the words liberal arts, liberal and/or arts:
“Sculpture and painting are very justly called liberal arts; a lively and strong imagination, together with a just observation, being absolutely necessary to excel in either; which, in my opinion, is by no means the case of music, though called a liberal art, and now in Italy placed even above the other two—a proof of the decline of that country.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Laws should be interpreted in a liberal sense so that their intention may be preserved.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“Musick is certainly a very agreeable Entertainment, but if it would take the entire Possession of our Ears, if it would make us incapable of hearing Sense, if it would exclude Arts that have a much greater Tendency to the Refinement of human Nature; I must confess I would allow it no better Quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his Common-wealth.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)