  The interminable discussion of the methodology of arts and sciences in the sixteenth century may be seen as an attempt to defend the scientific status of either the recently found autonomous sciences, like natural philosophy, or, on the other hand, the empirically based productive arts. The discussions of orders and methods, resolutions, compositions and the regressus-method are, therefore, not merely further elaborations of an old Aristotelian tradition, but also expressions of opinions in a lively debate concerning the changing relationships between various arts and sciences in sixteenth-century Italian universities (Mikkeli 1997, p. 228).