ABSTRACT
Classifications of philosophy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been almost completely neglected; during those two centuries the manner in which philosophy — and related concepts such as the arts, the liberal arts, the sciences, and encyclopedia — was divided into parts underwent some significant changes. In his philosophical encyclopedia published in 1620, Johann Heinrich Alsted considered the liberal arts to be seven philological disciplines: memory, lexicography, grammar, rhetoric, logic, oratory, and poetics. A few seventeenth-century authors used the terms such as encyclopaedia, disciplinae, disciplinae liberales, pansophia, and polymathia to encompass non-philosophical as well as philosophical disciplines. Rational philosophy was sometimes part of theoretical philosophy; in other cases it was placed within practical philosophy. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, theoretical philosophy was usually divided into three parts: metaphysics, physics, and mathematics. In 1503, the Margarita philosophica of Gregorius Reisch listed seven mechanical arts: woolmaking, weaponry, navigation, agriculture, hunting, medicine, and theatricals.
