Adriaan van Roomen was born in Louvain in 1561, died in Mainz in 1615, worked as a teacher of mathematics and medicine at the University of Louvain and a professor of medicine at the University of Wurceburgo. Furthermore, wrote works in many areas of science, but his chief merit is in mathematics, in which we can illustrate your calculation for the number π to 16 decimal places and their studies about the mathesis universalis.

In the Mathesis Polemica’s liber primus published in 1602, the author devotes a chapter to each of the disciplines which he considers part of the mathematical disciplines of his time. He initially classified the mathematics into main and mechanical. The main are divided into pure and mixed. The pure are subdivided into the universal which includes logistice and prima mathesis or mathesis universalis, and special, including arithmetic and geometry. Already mixed mathematics are subdivided according to their object of study: some address objects incorruptible, i.e. the heavenly bodies, and are included here cosmography, uranography, geography, astronomy and chronology; other disciplines studies objects corruptible as geodesy, optics, euthymetria (which literally means the measure of straight lines) and music. The mathematical mechanics are divided into those which aim is the use, what is sphaeropoeia (the art of making beads), or action, which included manganaria (which refers to the art of craftsmen, but it seems that van Roomen refers to mechanaria), mechano poetica, organo poetica (the art of making organs) and automato poetica (the art of making machines).

According to van Roomen, not all mathematical disciplines are also needed, "the mixed are required maximally and immediately" and, on the other hand, "the pure are only required because of the mixed". Van Roomen also states that there are quasi mathematics, i.e., those disciplines which have some resemblance to mathematics, as the perspective and the arts of war.

The classification of mathematical approached by van Roomen is important to understand the status and the hierarchy between these disciplines during that period of history, and realize its importance in relation to other scientific fields such as philosophy.