Re: Arithmetic - What does it mean to you?

Using that vast store house of accurate knowledge, Wikepedia, the
Seven Liberal Arts and Science (liberalia studia) are described as
the proper education for a free man ?unlike the education proper for a
slave.? Perhaps that is why so many in my class of Mason, us
Secreataries, do not take much time to study them. I always point out
that in our positions we cannot be fired. Slaves have to be sold.
The subjects that would become the standard "Liberal Arts" in Roman
and Medieval times comprised the basic curriculum in the "enkuklios
paideia" or "education in a circle" of late Classical and Hellenistic
Greece. In the 5th century AD, Martianus Capella defined the seven
liberal arts as: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic,
astronomy, and music.
The term ?dialectic? is decidedly different from Logic. It is
argument. Slaves, of course, would not be taught how to argue and I
wonder who altered (probably Hutchinson) our count of the seven to
omit argument and replace it with logic? Rehetoric is a singular
oration or monologue; and Grammar is the structure of words in context
to their use. So nearly half of the seven are focused on language and
the various forms used to communicate.
But of the other categories for study, Geometry, Arithmetic,
astronomy and music, it seems to me that the big ?G?, little ?a? & ?m:
have little to do with each other. While Arithmetic, the big ?A? is a
shared component of the other three.
Arithmetic, then, is important as the unifier; and like an
intelligent leader who has the capacity to bring men who would
otherwise remain at a perpetual distance together for one laudable
purpose or another, the use of Arithmetic and study of this particular
science should then be important for us all.

Fraternally,
Torence Evans Ake
Secretary ? Auburn Park Lodge No. 789 ? Crete, Illinois
PM ? Arcadia Lodge No. 1138 ? Lansing, Illinois


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