Medieval curricula: Trivium and Quadrivium

 
Three quotes I want to discuss from the piece:

"In fact, 'computus,' which originally meant merely computation, soon came to be associated exclusively with the technical study of Easter reckoning." The math of Europe around the 10th century seems like quite a step down from the mathematics of Ancient Greece, and from the mathematics that was being done in Arabia and China at the same time! It's surprising to me that an entire field of study that is as rich and as applicable as math was reduced to one simple use case. As discussed a few paragraphs later, mathematics held quite a mystical fascination among people living a few centuries before - I wonder why that disappeared in Europe towards the end of the first millenium?

The description of the medieval universities is fascinating, particularly the fact that "there were after-class discussions, reviews, and recapitulations of the lectures by the young bachelors." I wish my university classes prompted these sorts of discussions, rather than just being lecture followed by assignments and exams. The medieval style seems more in line with our discussions of the thinking classroom from other classes.

"Among the Greeks computation or reckoning, the arithmetic of business, was called logistic and was considered to be entirely different from the study of number as such, which philosophical study was called arithmetic." It seems like many of the dichotomies we see in academia today, like the distinction between arts and sciences and the distinction between pure and applied math, have their roots much earlier than I would have expected. Indeed, even the academic snobbery (logistic being not worthy of being studied in universities) was found back then. I think these distinctions are often harmful, in part because they undervalue practical knowledge and connections between theory and practice.