Medieval Europe

1. “The seven liberal arts - the trivium composed of grammar, logic, and rhetoric and the quadrivium made up of arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy - were the basis of the curricula in the medieval universities” (Schrader, 1967, p. 264).

        After watching the presentations last week and digging into Descartes and the Cartesian Plane in my own presentation, I had a conversation with my peers about how Descartes among other mathematicians such as Plato were credited for different discoveries in several of the presentations. These mathematicians seemed to have a packed resume as they were philosophers, astronomers, geographers, etc. We wondered how they had so much time for all these activities and disciplines. Reading this first sentence of the article surprised me and gave me that “aha!” moment. It made me realize that individuals during this time did not study these disciplines (astronomy, arithmetic) based on their interest in it, but rather they were crucial topics in their curriculum and in universities. 

2. "In England, from the eighth to the twelfth centuries it was forbidden to the bishop to ordain a priest who could not compute the date of Easter and teach the method to others" (Schrader, 1967, p. 266).

        I noticed that computing the date of Easter was a running theme throughout this article, and every time it was brought up, it made me question why it was so important during that time. In particular, the importance of studying music, astronomy, and arithmetic in order to compute the date. It seemed odd to me that music and astronomy would work hand-in-hand because they are viewed as such disconnected disciplines now. I am interested in how we can incorporate music into a science classroom and vice versa. 

3. To him, a pound is a perfect weight because it has the same number of ounces as there are months in a year (Schrader, 1967, p. 268).

        This quote reminded me of our discussion about base 60 in the beginning of the semester. It made me stop and think about our perspective on different numbers and how we value some numbers more than others.  I think this relates to how we view the world and our relationship with numbers around us. For example, the number 10 is more valuable than 29. Another cooking measurement example I can think of is cups. It is ironic how whenever we are taught to bake, we are told to be very exact with our measurements. However, 1 cup is almost always labelled as 250 ml, 1/2 cup is labelled as 125 ml, and 1/4 cup is labelled as 60 ml which is easily split into tablespoons and teaspoons. Although the math does not make sense, and 1 cup is not actually 250 ml, they are numbers we are used to dealing with and became the norm.

Schrader, D. V. (1967). THE ARITHMETIC OF THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES. The Mathematics Teacher, 60(3), 264–278. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27957550