{"id":18,"date":"2018-07-20T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2018-07-20T17:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/?p=18"},"modified":"2022-12-03T10:06:14","modified_gmt":"2022-12-03T16:06:14","slug":"the-classical-distinction-between-an-art-and-a-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/2018\/07\/20\/the-classical-distinction-between-an-art-and-a-science\/","title":{"rendered":"The Classical Distinction Between the Liberal Arts and Sciences"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the encouraging recent developments in education is the recovery of the classical educational tradition of the liberal arts and sciences amongst Christian classical schools. Of course, we\u2019re already laboring upstream, since to most people the term \u2018liberal arts\u2019 simply refers to general studies or the humanities. However, even the Christian classical school movement hasn\u2019t always held on to an important classical distinction, the distinction between an \u2018art\u2019 and a \u2018science\u2019. As a movement of classical Christian schools, we\u2019ve talked a lot about the liberal arts, especially the trivium, and more recently the quadrivium or mathematical arts. Recent books, like Kevin Clark\u2019s and Ravi Jain\u2019s The Liberal Arts Tradition<\/em><\/a>, have been careful to add in the sciences, including natural philosophy or the body of knowledge about the natural world, moral philosophy, or the body of knowledge about human beings, and divine philosophy, or metaphysics.<\/p>\n

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Of course, we\u2019ve heard Dorothy Sayers call the liberal arts the lost tools of learning<\/a>, and we\u2019ve tried to apply her insights about how the trivium arts<\/a> can map on practically to the different stages of a child\u2019s development, and that therefore the arts aren\u2019t exactly subjects in themselves but more like a way of approaching each subject. But in the classical tradition the difference between an \u2018art\u2019 and a \u2018science\u2019 was a little bit more subtle. A \u2018science\u2019 is simple enough because it comes from the Latin word \u2018scientia<\/em>\u2019 meaning knowledge. A science is therefore a body of knowledge that a person might master. The way to master a science is simply to learn or discover all the truth that one can about that area and integrate it so far as possible with everything else one knows. An \u2018art\u2019 however is not a body of knowledge but an ability to create or produce something. So, for instance, a person who has mastered the art of architecture, will have the ability to design sound and esthetically pleasing buildings. The person skilled in the art of underwater basket-weaving will be able to weave baskets while submerged under water. An art is about the ability to make something; it is not primarily about knowing truths.<\/p>\n