The Trivium method: (pertains to mind) – the elementary three.
General Grammar, Aristotelian Logic, and Classical Rhetoric comprise the first three rules-based subjects of the 7 Liberal Arts and Sciences. As these disciplines are learned and practiced together, they form the overarching, symbiotic system for establishing clarity and consistency of personal thought called the Trivium.
| [1] General Grammar | [2] Formal Logic | [3] Classical Rhetoric |
|---|---|---|
| Answers the question of the Who, What, Where, and the When of a subject. | Answers the Why of a subject. | Provides the How of a subject. |
| Discovering and ordering facts of reality comprises basic, systematic knowledge. | Developing the faculty of reason in establishing valid [i.e., non-contradictory] relationships among facts is systematic understanding. | Applying knowledge and understanding expressively comprises wisdom or, in other words, it is systematically useable knowledge and understanding. |
For if you [the rulers] suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves [and outlaws] and then punish them.
-Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), Utopia, Book 1
“Art” – Webster’s International Dictionary, 1893.