Système comes from a Latin word whose Greek roots mean “to stand with” and which refers to a constituted group or organization. A technical term in music theory, and later in astronomy and philosophy, its first recorded use in French is in Pontus de Tyard's 1555 Solitaire second ou discours sur la musique. The subject is of considerable philosophic import. The proximity of music theory and philosophy for the ancient world and Middle Ages is echoed in Tyard, who finds in music ‘the image of all the Encyclopedia.” Looking back to this text, one must be struck by the fortuitous resonance of music, the original context of “system,” and the evocation of the circle of knowledge or encyclopedia in which the figurative derivations of “system” would play so great a role. Tyard specifically calls attention to the word système and indicates that it is a technical term that he does not expect his interlocutor to know. The definition comes a few pages later in the course of the discussion of diasteme (“a distance of two or more intervals”): “among reputable Authors the word System means several things, always however signifying a group or assembly, and signifying among Musicians an assembly of voices containing both intervals and Diastems” (90).