AbstractR. Agricola'sDe Inventione Dialecticamarks the beginning of the intellectual history of the basic philosophical conceptions „systema”︁ and „method”︁. Petras Ramus' prescriptions for the dialectical disposition of arguments,i.e.the „axiomata”︁ homogenity, deduction and continuity, constitute the first „modern”︁ concept of „system”︁, whereas, half a century later, Francis Bacon's empirism seems to be only the application of the humanist „inventio”︁ to a more lim