Editing Trivium (section)

== Description ==
[[Grammar]] teaches the mechanics of language to the student. This is the step where the student "comes to terms", defining the objects and information perceived by the five senses. Hence, the [[law of identity]]: ''a tree is a tree, and not a cat''.

[[Logic]] (also [[dialectic]]) is the "mechanics" of [[thought]] and of [[analysis]], the process of composing sound arguments and identifying [[Fallacy|fallacious arguments]] and statements, and so systematically removing contradictions, thereby producing factual knowledge that can be trusted. Its aim is to calculate what is certainly true or false.

{{Rhetoric}}
[[Rhetoric]] is the application of language in order to instruct and to persuade the listener and the reader. It is the knowledge (grammar) now understood (logic) and being transmitted outwards as wisdom (rhetoric). Its aim is to identify what is most probably true or false where logical certainty is not possible.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Nauert |first1=Charles |title=Desiderius Erasmus |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archIves/spr2010/entries/erasmus/#RheSke |website=plato.stanford.edu |language=en}}</ref>

[[Aristotle]] defined rhetoric as "the power of perceiving in every thing that which is capable of producing persuasion".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Taylor |first=Thomas |title=The Rhetoric, Poetic and Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle |publisher=Robert Wilks |year=1811 |location=London |pages=6}}</ref>

[[Sister Miriam Joseph]], in ''The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric'' (2002), described the trivium as follows:<ref>{{cite book |last=Joseph |first=Sister Miriam |title=The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric |publisher=Paul Dry Books |year=2002 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lg0a-RJcn4gC&pg=PA3 |pages=3, 9 |chapter=1.&nbsp;The Liberal Arts |isbn=9781589882737 }}</ref>
<blockquote>
Grammar is the art of inventing symbols and combining them to express thought; logic is the art of thinking; and rhetoric is the art of communicating thought from one mind to another, the adaptation of language to circumstance.

...

Grammar is concerned with the thing as-it-is-symbolized. Logic is concerned with the thing as-it-is-known. Rhetoric is concerned with the thing as-it-is-communicated.
</blockquote>

John Ayto wrote in the ''Dictionary of Word Origins'' (1990) that study of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) was requisite preparation for study of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). For the medieval student, the trivium was the curricular beginning of the acquisition of the seven [[liberal arts]]; as such, it was the principal undergraduate course of study. The word ''[[wikt:trivial|trivial]]'' arose from the contrast between the simpler trivium and the more difficult quadrivium.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ayto |first=John |title=Dictionary of Word Origins |publisher=University of Texas Press |year=1990 |page=542 |isbn=1-55970-214-1}}</ref>