Classical education is not, preeminently, of a specific time or place. It stands instead for a spirit of inquiry and a form of instruction concerned with the development of style through language and conscience through myth.
--David Hicks, Norms and Nobility, p. 18.
The three essential attributes of classical inquiry:
1. general curiosity (emphasis on general rather than systematic or specific)
2. imaginative hypotheses (often broader than scientific hypotheses)
3. methods of testing the hypotheses (reason, observation, logic, experimentation)
In the process of asking a wide range of questions, of forming hypotheses, and of testing their consistency with known facts, the student learns about the nature of his subject and about the methods appropriate for mastering it. This process-- because it is the indispensable tool for unearthing all human knowledge-- is the only true basis for a classical, or universal, education.
--David Hicks, Norms and Nobility, p. 18.
*NOTE: The idea of hypothesis, etc., in this context, is not quite the same as what is known to us as the scientific method, which is based almost completely on gathering empirical evidence-- evidence that is observable by the five senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. To quote Charlotte, "the greater includes the less, but the less does not include the greater."
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