Ramism - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Ramist redirects here. It may also refer to followers of the composer Jean-Philippe Rameau

Jean-Philippe Rameau

Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...

Ramism was a collection of theories on rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

, logic

Logic

In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...

and pedagogy

Pedagogy

Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....

based on the teachings of Petrus Ramus

Petrus Ramus

Petrus Ramus was an influential French humanist, logician, and educational reformer. A Protestant convert, he was killed during the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.-Early life:...

, a French academic, philosopher and Huguenot

Huguenot

The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...

convert who was murdered in 1572.

According to Jonathan Israel

Jonathan Israel

Professor Jonathan Irvine Israel is a British writer on Dutch history, the Age of Enlightenment and European Jewry. Israel was appointed the Modern European History Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Township, New Jersey, U.S...

, Ramism

Development

Audomarus Talaeus (Omer Talon

Omer Talon

Omer Talon was a French humanist, a close ally of Petrus Ramus. Biographical details are few; and there are some quite serious bibliographical difficulties in distinguishing Talon and Ramus as authors .-Life:He was from Vermandois, the same region as Ramus...

) was an early French disciple and writer on Ramism. The work of Ramus gained early international attention, with Roger Ascham

Roger Ascham

Roger Ascham was an English scholar and didactic writer, famous for his prose style, his promotion of the vernacular, and his theories of education...

corresponding about him with Johann Sturm

Johann Sturm

Johann Christoph Sturm was a German philosopher. Sturm is the author of Physica Electiva , a book which criticized Leibniz and prompted him to publish a rebuke.-Works by Sturm:...

, teacher of Ramus and collaborator with Ascham; Ascham supported his stance on Joachim Perion, one early opponent, but also expressed some reservations. Later Ascham found Ramus's lack of respect for Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

, rather than extreme proponents, just unacceptable.

After Ramus died, his ideas had influence in some (but not all) parts of Protestant Europe. His influence was strong in Germany and the Netherlands, and on Puritan

Puritan

The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...

and Calvinist theologians of England, Scotland, and New England. He had little effect on mainstream Swiss Calvinists, and was largely ignored in Catholic countries. The progress of Ramism in the half-century roughly 1575 to 1625 was closely related to, and mediated by, university education: the religious factor came in through the different reception in Protestant and Catholic universities, all over Europe. The works of Ramus reached New England

New England

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

on the Mayflower

Mayflower

The Mayflower was the ship that transported the English Separatists, better known as the Pilgrims, from a site near the Mayflower Steps in Plymouth, England, to Plymouth, Massachusetts, , in 1620...

.

Ramus was killed in 1572, and a biography by Banosius (Théophile de Banos) appeared by 1576. His status as Huguenot

Huguenot

martyr certainly had something to do with the early dissemination of his ideas. Outside France, for example, there was the 1574 English translation by the Scot Roland MacIlmaine of the University of St Andrews

University of St Andrews

The University of St Andrews, informally referred to as "St Andrews", is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The university is situated in the town of St Andrews, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It was founded between...

. Ramus's works and influence then appeared in the logical textbooks of the Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

universities, and equally he had followers in England.

As late as 1626 Francis Burgersdyk

Francis Burgersdyk

Franco Petri Burgersdijk or Franciscus Burgersdicius, born Franck Pieterszoon Burgersdijk, , was a Dutch logician.-Life:...

divides the logicians of his day into the Aristotelians, the Ramists and the Semi-Ramists. These last endeavoured, like Rudolph Goclenius

Rudolph Goclenius

Rudolph Göckel or Rudolf Goclenius [the Older] was a German scholastic philosopher, credited with inventing the term psychology .-Life:He was born in Korbach, Waldeck...

of Marburg and Amandus Polanus of Basel, to mediate between the contending parties. Ramism was closely linked to systematic Calvinism

Calvinism

Calvinism is a Protestant theological system and an approach to the Christian life...

, but the hybrid Philippo-Ramism (which is where the Semi-Ramists fit in) arose as a blend of Ramus with the logic of Philipp Melanchthon

Philipp Melanchthon

Philipp Melanchthon , born Philipp Schwartzerdt, was a German reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and an influential designer of educational systems...

Opposition

Ramism, while in fashion, met with considerable hostility. The Jesuits were completely opposed. The Calvinist Aristotelian Theodore Beza

Theodore Beza

Theodore Beza was a French Protestant Christian theologian and scholar who played an important role in the Reformation...

was also a strong opponent of Ramism. Similarly the leading Lutheran Aristotelian philosopher Jakob Schegk

Jakob Schegk

Jakob Schegk was a polymath German Aristotelian philosopher and academic physician.-Origins and education:...

resolutely rejected Ramus and opposed his visit to Tübingen

Tübingen

Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...

. In Heidelberg

Heidelberg

-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...

the efforts of Giulio Pace

Giulio Pace

Giulio Pace of Beriga was a well-known Italian Aristotelian scholar and jurist.-Life:He was born in Vicenza, Italy, and studied law and philosophy in Padua....

to teach Ramist dialectic to Polish private student were forbidden.

Where universities were open to Ramist teaching, there still could be dislike and negative reactions, stemming from the perceived personality of Ramus (arrogant, a natural polemicist), or of that of his supporters (young men in a hurry). There was tacit adoption of some of the techniques such as the epitome, without acceptance of the whole package of reform including junking Aristotle in favour of the new textbooks, and making Ramus an authoritative figure. John Rainolds

John Rainolds

John Rainolds , English divine, was born about Michaelmas 1549 at Pinhoe, near Exeter.He was educated at Merton and Corpus Christi Colleges, Oxford, becoming a fellow of the latter in 1568. In 1572-73 he was appointed reader in Greek, and his lectures on Aristotle's Rhetoric laid the sure basis of...

at Oxford was an example of an older academic torn by the issue; his follower Richard Hooker

Richard Hooker

Richard Hooker was an Anglican priest and an influential theologian. Hooker's emphases on reason, tolerance and the value of tradition came to exert a lasting influence on the development of the Church of England...

was firmly against "Ramystry".

Gerhard Johann Vossius

Gerhard Johann Vossius

thumb|180px|Gerrit Johan VossiusGerrit Janszoon Vos , often known by his Latin name Gerardus Vossius, was a Dutch classical scholar and theologian.-Life:...

at Leiden wrote massive works on classical rhetoric and opposed Ramism. He defended and enriched the Aristotelian tradition for the seventeenth century. He was a representative Dutch opponent; Ramism did not take permanent hold in the universities of the Netherlands, and once William Ames

William Ames

William Ames was an English Protestant divine, philosopher, and controversialist...

had died, it declined.

Mid-century, Ramism was still under attack, from Cartesians such as Johannes Clauberg

Johannes Clauberg

Johannes Clauberg was a German theologian and philosopher. Clauberg was the founding Rector of the first University of Duisburg, where he taught from 1655 to 1665...

, who defended Aristotle against Ramus.

Placing Ramism

Frances Yates

Dame Frances Amelia Yates DBE was a British historian. She taught at the Warburg Institute of the University of London for many years.She wrote extensively on the occult or Neoplatonic philosophies of the Renaissance...

proposed a subtle relationship of Ramism to the legacy of Lullism, the art of memory

Art of memory

The Art of Memory or Ars Memorativa is a general term used to designate a loosely associated group of mnemonic principles and techniques used to organize memory impressions, improve recall, and assist in the combination and 'invention' of ideas. It is sometimes referred to as mnemotechnics...

, and Renaissance hermetism. She considers that Ramism drew on Lullism, but is more superficial; was opposed to the classical art of memory; and moved in an opposite direction to the occult (reducing rather than increasing the role of images). He "abandoned imagery and the creative imagination". Mary Carruthers

Mary Carruthers

Professor Mary Carruthers is the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Literature and Professor of English, emerita, at New York University....

, referring back to Albertus Magnus

Albertus Magnus

Albertus Magnus, O.P. , also known as Albert the Great and Albert of Cologne, is a Catholic saint. He was a German Dominican friar and a bishop, who achieved fame for his comprehensive knowledge of and advocacy for the peaceful coexistence of science and religion. Those such as James A. Weisheipl...

and Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...

, commented that
An alternative to this aspect of Ramism, as belated and diminishing, is the discussion initiated by Walter Ong of Ramus in relation to several evolutionary steps. Ong's position, on the importance of Ramus as historical figure and humanist

Renaissance humanism

Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval...

, has been summed up as the center of controversies about method (both in teaching and in scientific discovery) and about rhetoric and logic and their role in communication.

The best known of Ong's theses is Ramus the post-Gutenberg

Gutenberg

Gutenberg may refer to:People:* Johannes Gutenberg , inventor of movable type printing* Beno Gutenberg , a German-born seismologist* Erich Gutenberg , a German economistPlaces:...

writer, in other words the calibration of the indexing and schematics involved in Ramism to the transition away from written manuscripts, and the spoken word. Extensive charts were instead used, drawing on the resources of typography, to organise material, from left to right across a printed page, particularly in theological treatises. The cultural impact of Ramism depended on the nexus of printing (trees regularly laid out with braces) and rhetoric, forceful and persuasive at least to some Protestants; and it had partly been anticipated in cataloguing and indexing knowledge and its encyclopedism by Conrad Gesner. The term Ramean tree became standard in logic books, applying to the classical Porphyrian tree, or any binary tree

Binary tree

In computer science, a binary tree is a tree data structure in which each node has at most two child nodes, usually distinguished as "left" and "right". Nodes with children are parent nodes, and child nodes may contain references to their parents. Outside the tree, there is often a reference to...

, without clear distinction between the underlying structure and the way of displaying it; now scholars use the clearer term Ramist epitome to signify the structure. Ong argued that, a chart being a visual aid and logic having come down to charts, the role of voice and dialogue

Dialogue

Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....

is placed squarely and rigidly in the domain of rhetoric, and in a lower position.

Two other theses of Ong on Ramism are: the end of copia

Copia

Copia may refer to:* Copia , the ancient city also called Thurii* Copia , an ancient city in Boeotia.* copia, a Latin word for "abundance", especially used in rhetoric...

or profuseness for its own sake in writing, making Ramus an opponent of the Erasmus of Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style

Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style

Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style is a rhetorical guide written by Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus in 1512. It is Erasmus' systematic instruction on how to embellish, amplify, and give variety to speech and writing...

; and the beginning of the later Cartesian emphasis on clarity. Ong, though, consistently argues that Ramus is thin, insubstantial as a scholar, a beneficiary of fashion supported by the new medium of printing, as well as a transitional figure.

These ideas, from the 1950s and 1960s onwards, have been reconsidered. Brian Vickers

Brian Vickers (academic)

Sir Brian Vickers, FBA is a British academic, now Emeritus Professor at ETH Zurich. He is known for his work on the history of rhetoric, Shakespeare, John Ford, and Francis Bacon....

summed up the view a generation or so later: dismissive of Yates, he notes that bracketed tables existed in older manuscripts, and states that Ong's emphases are found unconvincing. Further, methodus, the Ramists' major slogan, was specific to figures of speech

Figures of Speech

Figures of Speech is a hip hop group consisting of MCs Eve and Jyant. They performed at the Good Life Cafe in the early 1990s and were featured on the Project Blowed compilation....

, deriving from Hermogenes of Tarsus

Hermogenes of Tarsus

Hermogenes of Tarsus was a Greek rhetorician, surnamed the polisher . He flourished in the reign of Marcus Aurelius ....

via George of Trebizond

George of Trebizond

George of Trebizond was a Greek philosopher and scholar, one of the pioneers of the Renaissance.-Life:He was born on the island of Crete, and derived his surname Trapezuntius from the fact that his ancestors were from Trebizond.At what period he came to Italy is not certain; according to some...

. And the particular moves used by Ramus in the reconfiguration of rhetoric were in no sense innovative by themselves. Lisa Jardine

Lisa Jardine

Lisa Anne Jardine CBE , née Lisa Anne Bronowski, is a British historian of the early modern period. She is professor of Renaissance Studies and Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters at Queen Mary, University of London, and is Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority...

agrees with Ong that he was not a first-rank innovator, more of a successful textbook writer adapting earlier insights centred on topics-logic, but insists on his importance and influence in humanistic logic. She takes the Ramean tree to be a "voguish" pedagogic advance.

It has been said that:

Disciplines and demarcations

Donald R. Kelley writes of the "new learning" (nova doctrina) or opposition in Paris to traditional scholasticism

Scholasticism

Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context...

as a "trivial revolution", i.e. growing out of specialist teachers of the trivium. He argues that:

The aim was a fundamental change of priorities, the transformation of hierarchy of disciplines into a 'circle' of learning, an 'encyclopedia' embracing human culture in all of its richness and concreteness and organized for persuasive transmission to society as a whole. This was the rationale of the Ramist method, which accordingly emphasized mnemonics and pedagogical technique at the expense of discovery and the advancement of learning.

The need for demarcation was seen in "redundancies and overlapping categories".

This was taken to the lengths where it could be mocked in the Port-Royal Logic

Port-Royal Logic

Port-Royal Logic, or Logique de Port-Royal, is the common name of La logique, ou l'art de penser, an important textbook on logic first published anonymously in 1662 by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, two prominent members of the Jansenist movement, centered around Port-Royal. Blaise Pascal...

(1662). There the authors claimed that "everything that is useful to logic belongs to it", with a swipe at the "torments" the Ramists put themselves through.

The method of demarcation was applied within the trivium, made up of grammar

Grammar

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

, logic

Logic

(for which Ramists usually preferred a traditional name, dialectic), and rhetoric

Rhetoric

. Logic falls, according to Ramus, into two parts: invention (treating of the notion and definition) and judgment (comprising the judgment proper, syllogism and method). In this he was influenced by Rodolphus Agricola

Rodolphus Agricola

Rodolphus Agricola was a pre-Erasmian humanist of the northern Low Countries, famous for his supple Latin and one of the first north of the Alps to know Greek well...

. What Ramus does here in fact redefines rhetoric. There is a new configuration, with logic and rhetoric each having two parts: rhetoric was to cover elocutio (mainly figures of speech) and pronuntiatio (oratorical delivery). In general, Ramism liked to deal with binary tree

Binary tree

s as method for organising knowledge.

Rhetoric, traditionally, had had five parts, of which inventio (invention) was the first. Two others were dispositio (arrangement) and memoria (memory). Ramus proposed transferring those back to the realm of dialectic (logic); and merging them under a new heading, renaming them as iudicium (judgment). (This was the final effect: as an intermediate memoria was left with rhetoric.)

Ramist laws and method

In the end the art of memory was diminished in Ramism, displaced by an idea of "method": better mental organisation would be more methodical, and mnemonic techniques drop away. This was a step in the direction of Descartes. The construction of disciplines, for Ramus, was subject to some laws, his methodus. There were three, with clear origins in Aristotle, and his Posterior Analytics

Posterior Analytics

The Posterior Analytics is a text from Aristotle's Organon that deals with demonstration, definition, and scientific knowledge. The demonstration is distinguished as a syllogism productive of scientific knowledge, while the definition marked as the statement of a thing's nature, .....

.

They comprised the lex veritatis (French du tout, law of truth), lex justitiae (par soi, law of justice), and lex sapientiae (universalité, or law of wisdom). The third was in the terms of Ramus "universel premièrement", or to make the universal the first instance. The "wisdom" is therefore to start with the universal, and set up a ramifying binary tree by subdivision.

As Ramism evolved, these characteristic binary trees, set up rigidly, were treated differently in various fields. In theology, for example, this procedure was turned on its head, since the search for God, the universal, would appear as the goal rather than the starting point.

Émile Bréhier

Émile Bréhier

Émile Bréhier was a French philosopher. His interest was in classical philosophy, and the history of philosophy. He wrote a Histoire de la Philosophie, translated into English in seven volumes....

wrote that after Ramus, "order" as a criterion of the methodical had become commonplace; Descartes needed only to supply to method the idea of relation, exemplified by the idea of a mathematical sequence based on a functional relationship of an element to its successor. Therefore, for Cartesians, the Ramist insights were quite easily absorbed.

For the Baconian method

Baconian method

The Baconian method is the investigative method developed by Sir Francis Bacon. The method was put forward in Bacon's book Novum Organum , or 'New Method', and was supposed to replace the methods put forward in Aristotle's Organon...

, on the other hand, the rigidity of Ramist distinctions was a serious criticism. Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...

, a Cambridge graduate, was early aware of Ramism, but the near-equation of dispositio with method was unsatisfactory, for Baconians, because arrangement of material was seen to be inadequate for research. The Novum Organum

Novum Organum

The Novum Organum, full original title Novum Organum Scientiarum, is a philosophical work by Francis Bacon, written in Latin and published in 1620. The title translates as new instrument, i.e. new instrument of science. This is a reference to Aristotle's work Organon, which was his treatise on...

implied in its title a further reform of Aristotle, and its aphorism viii of Book I made this exact point.

Ramism in Cambridge

A Ramist tradition took root in Christ's College, Cambridge

Christ's College, Cambridge

Christ's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.With a reputation for high academic standards, Christ's College averaged top place in the Tompkins Table from 1980-2000 . In 2011, Christ's was placed sixth.-College history:...

in the 1570s, when Laurence Chaderton

Laurence Chaderton

Laurence Chaderton was an English Puritan divine, and one of the translators of the King James Version of the Bible.-Life:...

became the leading Ramist, and Gabriel Harvey

Gabriel Harvey

Gabriel Harvey was an English writer. Harvey was a notable scholar, though his reputation suffered from his quarrel with Thomas Nashe...

lectured on the rhetoric of Ramus. Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan

Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...

's dissertation on Thomas Nashe

Thomas Nashe

Thomas Nashe was an English Elizabethan pamphleteer, playwright, poet and satirist. He was the son of the minister William Nashe and his wife Margaret .-Early life:...

(via the classical trivium), who was involved in a high-profile literary quarrel with Harvey, was shaped by his interest in aligning Harvey with dialectic and the plain style (logic in the sense of Ramus), and Nashe with the full resources of Elizabethan rhetoric. After Chaderton, there was a succession of important theologians using Ramist logic, including William Perkins, and William Ames

William Ames

William Ames was an English Protestant divine, philosopher, and controversialist...

(Amesius), who made Ramist dialectic integral to his approach.

William Temple annotated a 1584 reprint of the Dialectics in Cambridge. Known as an advocate of Ramism, and involved in controversy with Everard Digby

Everard Digby (scholar)

Everard Digby was an English academic theologian, expelled as a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge for reasons that were largely religious. He is known as the author of a 1587 book, written in Latin, that was the first work published in England on swimming; and also as a philosophical teacher,...

of Oxford, he became secretary to Sir Philip Sidney about a year later, in 1585. Temple was with Sidney when he died in 1586, and wrote a Latin Ramist commentary on An Apology for Poetry

An Apology for Poetry

Sir Philip Sidney wrote An Apology for Poetry in approximately 1579, and it was published in 1595, after his death....

. Sidney himself is supposed to have learned Ramist theory from John Dee

John Dee

John Dee was a Welsh mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occultist, navigator, imperialist, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I.John Dee may also refer to:* John Dee , Basketball coach...

, and was the dedicatee of the biography by Banosius, but was not in any strict sense a Ramist.

This Ramist school was influential:
Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...

encountered Ramist thought as a student at Cambridge (B.A. in 1584), and made Peter Ramus a character in The Massacre at Paris

The Massacre at Paris

The Massacre at Paris is an Elizabethan play by the English dramatist Christopher Marlowe. It concerns the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, which took place in Paris in 1572, and the part played by the Duc de Guise in those events....

. He also cited Ramus in Dr. Faustus: Bene disserere est finis logices is a line given to Faustus, who states it is from Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

, when it is from the Dialecticae of Ramus.

There is a short treatise by John Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

, who was a student at Christ's from 1625, published two years before his death, called Artis Logicae Plenior Institutio ad Petri Rami Methodum concinnata. It was one of the last commentaries on Ramist logic. Although composed in the 1640s, it was not published until 1672. Milton, whose first tutor at Christ's William Chappell

William Chappell (bishop)

William Chappell was an English scholar and clergyman. He became Church of Ireland bishop of Cork and Ross.-Academic:...

used Ramist method, can take little enough credit for the content. Most of the text proper is adapted from the 1572 edition of Ramus's logic; most of the commentary is adapted from George Downham's Commentarii in P. Rami Dialecticam (1601)—Downham, also affiliated with Christ's, was a professor of logic at Cambridge. The biography of Ramus is a cut-down version of that of Johann Thomas Freigius (1543-1583).

Ramism in Herborn

Herborn Academy

The Herborn Academy was a German institution of higher learning very similar to a university in Herborn, which existed from 1584 to 1817...

in Germany was founded in 1584, as a Protestant university, and initially was associated with a group of Reformed theologians who developed covenant theology

Covenant Theology

Covenant theology is a conceptual overview and interpretive framework for understanding the overall flow of the Bible...

. It was also a centre of Ramism, and in particular of its encyclopedic form. In turn, it was the birthplace of pansophism. Heinrich Alsted taught there, and John Amos Comenius studied with him.

Ramism was built into the curriculum, with the professors required to give Ramist treatments of the trivium. Johannes Piscator

Johannes Piscator

Johannes Piscator was a German Reformed theologian, known as a Bible translator and textbook writer.He was a prolific writer, and initially moved around as he held a number of positions...

anticipated the foundation in writing introductory Ramist texts, Johannes Althusius

Johannes Althusius

Johannes Althusius was a German jurist and Calvinist political philosopher.He is best known for his 1603 work, "Politica Methodice Digesta, Atque Exemplis Sacris et Profanis Illustrata"; revised editions were published in 1610 and 1614...

and Lazarus Schöner likewise wrote respectively on social science topics and mathematics, and Piscator later produced a Ramist theology text.

In literature

Brian Vickers argues that the Ramist influence did add something to rhetoric: it concentrated more on the remaining aspect of elocutio or effective use of language, and emphasised the role of vernacular European languages (rather than Latin). The outcome was that rhetoric was applied in literature.

In 1588 Abraham Fraunce

Abraham Fraunce

Abraham Fraunce , was an English poet.-Life:A native of Shropshire, he was born between 1558 and 1560. His name appears in a list of pupils of Shrewsbury School in January 1571, and he joined St John's College, Cambridge, in 1576, becoming a fellow in 1580/1...

, a protegé of Philip Sidney, published Arcadian Rhetorike, a Ramist-style rhetoric book cut down largely to a discussion of figures of speech (in prose and verse), and referring by its title to Sidney's Arcadia

Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia

The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, also known simply as the Arcadia or the Old Arcadia, is a long prose work by Sir Philip Sidney written towards the end of the sixteenth century, and later published in several versions. It is Sidney's most ambitious literary work, by far, and as significant in...

. It was based on a translation of Talon's Rhetoricae, and was a companion to The Lawiers Logike of 1585, an adapted translation of the Dialecticae of Ramus. Through it, Sidney's usage of figures was disseminated as the Ramist "Arcadian rhetoric" of standard Engish literary components and ornaments, before the source Arcadia had been published. It quickly lent itself to floridity of style. William Wimsatt

William Wimsatt

William Wimsatt may refer to:* William C. Wimsatt , philosopher and teacher* William Kurtz Wimsatt, Jr. , American professor of English* William Upski Wimsatt , graffiti artist, author, and activist...

and Cleanth Brooks

Cleanth Brooks

Cleanth Brooks was an influential American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-twentieth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education...

consider that the Ramist reform at least created a tension between the ornamented and the plain style (of preachers and scientific scholars), into the seventeenth century, and contributed to the emergence of the latter. With the previous work of Dudley Fenner

Dudley Fenner

Dudley Fenner was an English puritan divine. He helped popularize Ramist logic in the English language. Fenner was also one of the first theologians to use the term "covenant of works" to describe God's relationship with Adam in the Book of Genesis.-Life:He was born in Kent and educated at...

(1584), and the later book of Charles Butler

Charles Butler (beekeeper)

Charles Butler , sometimes called the Father of English Beekeeping, was a logician, grammarist, author, minister , and an influential beekeeper. He was also an early proponent of English spelling reform...

(1598), Ramist rhetoric in Elizabethan England accepts the reduction to elocutio and pronuntiatio, puts all the emphasis on the former, and reduces its scope to the trope

Trope (literature)

A literary trope is the usage of figurative language in literature, or a figure of speech in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning...

.

Geoffrey Hill

Geoffrey Hill

Geoffrey Hill is an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be among the most distinguished poets of his generation...

classified Robert Burton

Robert Burton (scholar)

Robert Burton was an English scholar at Oxford University, best known for the classic The Anatomy of Melancholy. He was also the incumbent of St Thomas the Martyr, Oxford, and of Segrave in Leicestershire.-Life:...

's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) as a "post-Ramist anatomy". It is a work (he says against Ong) of a rooted scholar with a "method" but turning Ramism back on itself.

Dutch

Jacobus Arminius
Jacobus Arminius
Jacobus Arminius , the Latinized name of the Dutch theologian Jakob Hermanszoon from the Protestant Reformation period, served from 1603 as professor in theology at the University of Leiden...

;
Isaac Beeckman
Isaac Beeckman
Isaac Beeckman was a Dutch philosopher and scientist, who, through his studies and contact with leading natural philosophers, may have "virtually given birth to modern atomism".-Biography:...

, Rudolf Snellius, Willebrord Snellius
Willebrord Snellius
Willebrord Snellius was a Dutch astronomer and mathematician. In the west, especially the English speaking countries, his name has been attached to the law of refraction of light for several centuries, but it is now known that this law was first discovered by Ibn Sahl in 984...

;
Justus Lipsius
Justus Lipsius
Justus Lipsius was a Southern-Netherlandish philologist and humanist. Lipsius wrote a series of works designed to revive ancient Stoicism in a form that would be compatible with Christianity. The most famous of these is De Constantia...

, wrote his Politicorum sive Civilis doctrinae on a strict Ramist scheme.

English

John Barton (c.1605–1675);
Nathaniel Baxter
Nathaniel Baxter
Nathaniel Baxter was an English clergyman and poet. In earlier life tutor to Sir Philip Sidney, and interested in the manner of Sidney's circle in literature and Ramist logic, he became more sternly religious in his opinions...

;
Charles Butler
Charles Butler (beekeeper)
Charles Butler , sometimes called the Father of English Beekeeping, was a logician, grammarist, author, minister , and an influential beekeeper. He was also an early proponent of English spelling reform...

;
George Downame
George Downame
George Downame was a Doctor of Divinity, Lord Bishop of Derry, chaplain to James I and King James VI, and a brother of John Downame....

;
Dudley Fenner
Dudley Fenner
Dudley Fenner was an English puritan divine. He helped popularize Ramist logic in the English language. Fenner was also one of the first theologians to use the term "covenant of works" to describe God's relationship with Adam in the Book of Genesis.-Life:He was born in Kent and educated at...

;
Henry Finch
Henry Finch
Sir Henry Finch was an English lawyer and politician, created serjeant-at-law and knighted, and remembered as a legal writer.-Life:He was born the son of Sir Thomas Finch of Eastwell and the brother of Moyle Finch...

, jurist, attempted in Nomotexnia to arrange common law
Common law
Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...

along Ramist lines;
William Gouge
William Gouge
William Gouge was an English clergyman and author. He was a minister and preacher at St Ann Blackfriars for 45 years, from 1608, and a member of the Westminster Assembly from 1643.-Life:...

;
Thomas Granger;
John Rainolds
John Rainolds
John Rainolds , English divine, was born about Michaelmas 1549 at Pinhoe, near Exeter.He was educated at Merton and Corpus Christi Colleges, Oxford, becoming a fellow of the latter in 1568. In 1572-73 he was appointed reader in Greek, and his lectures on Aristotle's Rhetoric laid the sure basis of...

;
Alexander Richardson
John Udall
John Udall (Puritan)
John Udall was an English clergyman of Puritan views, closely associated with the publication of the Martin Marprelate tracts, and prosecuted for controversial works of a similar polemical nature...

German

Johann Heinrich Alsted
Johann Heinrich Alsted
Johann Heinrich Alsted was a German Calvinist minister and academic, known for his varied interests: in Ramism and Lullism, pedagogy and encyclopedias, theology and millennarianism.-Life:...

, "the culmination of the Ramist tradition", but also a critic of naive Ramism;
Johannes Althusius
Johannes Althusius
Johannes Althusius was a German jurist and Calvinist political philosopher.He is best known for his 1603 work, "Politica Methodice Digesta, Atque Exemplis Sacris et Profanis Illustrata"; revised editions were published in 1610 and 1614...

organised his Politics in accordance with Ramist logic;
Bartholomäus Keckermann
Bartholomäus Keckermann
Bartholomäus Keckermann in Danzig was a German writer, Calvinist theologian and philosopher. He is known for his Analytic Method...

, constructed a modified Ramist logic.
Johannes Piscator
Johannes Piscator
Johannes Piscator was a German Reformed theologian, known as a Bible translator and textbook writer.He was a prolific writer, and initially moved around as he held a number of positions...
Caspar Schoppe
Caspar Schoppe
Caspar Schoppe was a German controversialist and scholar.-Life:He was born at Neumarkt in the upper Palatinate and studied at several German universities. Having converted to Roman Catholicism in about 1599, he obtained the favour of Pope Clement VIII, and distinguished himself by the virulence of...

Scottish

James Martin
James Martin (philosopher)
James Martin was a Scottish philosophical writer and early Ramist.-Life:He was a native of Dunkeld, Perthshire, and is said to have been educated at the University of Oxford. A James Martin, whose college is not mentioned, commenced M.A. at Oxford on 31 March 1522.He was professor of philosophy...
Andrew Melville
Andrew Melville
Andrew Melville was a Scottish scholar, theologian and religious reformer. His fame encouraged scholars from the European Continent to study at Glasgow and St Andrews.-Early life and early education:...

;
Roland MacIlmaine.

External links

Peter Ramus Conference 2008

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.