SCHOLASTICISM. An abstract noun formed from the Latin-Greek stem scholastic-, pertaining to "school," scholasticism signifies principally the type of training used in the schools, and secondarily, the doctrine given, usually in the universities of the Latin Middle Ages. In a pejorative sense, it connotes dictatorial or authoritarian methods, or a hidebound and unimaginative view, much like the "correct" answer that a schoolmaster would demand from his pupil in the classroom.

Method

Principally Scholasticism indicates a method of training and learning that developed in Christian schools between about 1000 and 1650 and reached its peak in the thirteenth century. It arose naturally and spontaneously in the early Middle Ages as teachers lectured on a fixed text, pausing to explain a difficult passage by posing a question and lining up authorities pro and con, sic et non. Divergent resolutions of difficulties were often written in the margins of the Bible or lawbook...