Episode 33: The Quadrivium - Interview with Peter Ulrickson

Five Books for Catholics

The books recommended in this episode are:

1. The Elements (alternative edition, Books I-VI with coloured diagrams) by Euclid
2. Almagest by Ptolemy
3. Timaeus by Plato
4. On order (De ordine) (alternative edition) by St. Augustine
5. To Save the Phenomena: An Essay on the Idea of Physical Theory from Plato to Galileo by Pierre Duhem

Five Books for Catholics may receive a commission from qualifying purchases made using the affiliate links to the books listed.

In their search for the ideal education (paideia), the Ancient Greeks were sometimes split over whether to attribute primacy to mathematical thought or language skills. Pythagoras and Plato defended the primacy of mathematics; the Sophists and Aristotle, in different ways, the importance of language.

Similarly, the Ancient Greeks began to distinguish and systematise fundamental disciplines within each of the two fields.

These disciplines became known as the liberal arts because they equipped the free for their civic duties and the life of the mind.

Medieval scholars, such as John of Salisbury and Hugh of St. Victor, called the language-centred disciplines (grammar, logic, rhetoric) the threefold way (trivium), and the mathematical ones (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy) the fourfold way (quadrivium).

However, the classical liberal arts education was displaced by Renaissance humanism, the rise of modern science, and educational programs of a pragmatist orientation.

Over the last few decades, there has been a movement to retrieve classical liberal arts education. Early proponents of this movement often took inspiration from Dorothy L. Sayers’s advocacy of the trivium in The Lost Tools of Learning. In recent years, however, others have insisted that the quadrivium is equally important for a well-rounded education in the liberal arts.

In this episode, Prof. Peter Ulrickson will discuss five books that can help us learn and appreciate the quadrivium.

Peter Ulrickson, a mathematician, teaches at the Catholic University of America. He is the author of A Brief Quadrivium and Teaching the Quadrivium, books that reveal the enduring significance of the mathematical disciplines of the traditional liberal arts, and make them newly accessible for students and teachers today. Ulrickson also publishes research in various fields of modern mathematics.

Read the interview at ⁠www.fivebooksforcatholics.com/the-quadrivium/

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