Scholasticism was a method of learning taught by the academics of medieval universities circa 1100-1500. It originally began to reconcile the philosophy of the ancient classical philosophers with medieval Christian theology. The main purpose of scholasticism was to find the answer to a question or resolve a contradiction.

The scholastics would choose a book by a renowned scholar, called auctor, as a subject of investigation. By reading the book thoroughly, the disciples learned to appreciate the theories of the auctor. Then other documents related to the source document would be referenced. The points of disagreement and contention between these multiple sources would be written down. These individual sentences of text are called sententiae. Once the sources and points of disagreement had been laid out, through a series of dialects the two sides of an argument would be made whole so that they would be found to be in agreement and not contradictory. This was done in two ways, first through philological analysis, second through logical analysis.