Petrus Ramus
Encyclopedia
Petrus Ramus (Anglicized to Peter Ramus) (1515 – 26 August 1572) was an influential French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....

, logician, and educational reformer. A Protestant convert, he was killed during the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre
St. Bartholomew's Day massacre
The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations, followed by a wave of Roman Catholic mob violence, both directed against the Huguenots , during the French Wars of Religion...

.

Early life

He was born at the village of Cuts, Oise
Cuts, Oise
Cuts is a small village in northern France. It is designated municipally as a commune within the département of Oise....

 in Picardy
Picardy
This article is about the historical French province. For other uses, see Picardy .Picardy is a historical province of France, in the north of France...

; his father was a farmer. He gained admission at age twelve, to the Collège de Navarre
Collège de Navarre
The College of Navarre was one of the colleges of the historic University of Paris, rivaling the Sorbonne and renowned for its library. It was founded by Queen Joan I of Navarre in 1305, who provided for three departments, the arts with 20 students, philosophy with 30 and theology with 20...

, working as a servant. A reaction against 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...

 was in full tide, at a transitional time for Aristotelianism
Aristotelianism
Aristotelianism is a tradition of philosophy that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle. The works of Aristotle were initially defended by the members of the Peripatetic school, and, later on, by the Neoplatonists, who produced many commentaries on Aristotle's writings...

. On the occasion of taking his degree (1536) Ramus allegedly took as his thesis Quaecumque ab Aristotele dicta essent, commentitia esse, which Walter J. Ong
Walter J. Ong
Father Walter Jackson Ong, Ph.D. , was an American Jesuit priest, professor of English literature, cultural and religious historian and philosopher. His major interest was in exploring how the transition from orality to literacy influenced culture and changed human consciousness...

 paraphrases as follows:
"All the things that Aristotle has said are inconsistent because they are poorly systematized and can be called to mind only by the use of arbitrary mnemonic devices."


According to Ong this kind of spectacular thesis was in fact routine at the time. Even so, Ong raises questions as to whether Ramus actually ever delivered this thesis.

Early academic career

Ramus, as graduate of the university, started courses of lectures. At this period he was engaged in numerous separate controversies. One opponent in 1543 was the Benedictine
Benedictine
Benedictine refers to the spirituality and consecrated life in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century for the cenobitic communities he founded in central Italy. The most notable of these is Monte Cassino, the first monastery founded by Benedict...

 Joachim Périon. He was accused, by Jacques Charpentier, professor of medicine, of undermining the foundations of philosophy and religion. Arnaud d'Ossat
Arnaud d'Ossat
Arnaud d'Ossat was a French diplomat and writer, and a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, whose personal tact and diplomatic skill steered the perilous course of French diplomacy with the Papacy in the reign of Henry IV of France.-Early life and studies:Arnaud d'Ossat was born at...

, a pupil and friend of Ramus, defended him against Charpentier. Ramus was made to debate Goveanus (Antonio de Gouveia
António de Gouveia
António de Gouveia was a Portuguese humanist and educator during the Renaissance. After graduating in Paris he taught at the Collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux, and then at Toulouse, Avignon, Lyon, Cahors, Valence, Grenoble, Turin and Mondovi. His controversy with Pierre de la Ramée about Aristotle...

), over two days. The matter was brought before the parlement
Parlement
Parlements were regional legislative bodies in Ancien Régime France.The political institutions of the Parlement in Ancien Régime France developed out of the previous council of the king, the Conseil du roi or curia regis, and consequently had ancient and customary rights of consultation and...

of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, and finally before Francis I
Francis I of France
Francis I was King of France from 1515 until his death. During his reign, huge cultural changes took place in France and he has been called France's original Renaissance monarch...

. By him it was referred to a commission of five, who found Ramus guilty of having "acted rashly, arrogantly and impudently," and interdicted his lectures (1544).

Royal support

He withdrew from Paris, but soon afterwards returned, the decree against him being canceled by Henry II
Henry II of France
Henry II was King of France from 31 March 1547 until his death in 1559.-Early years:Henry was born in the royal Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, the son of Francis I and Claude, Duchess of Brittany .His father was captured at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 by his sworn enemy,...

, who came to the throne in 1547, through the influence of Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine
Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine
Charles de Lorraine , Duke of Chevreuse, was a French Cardinal, a member of the powerful House of Guise. He was known at first as the Cardinal of Guise, and then as the second Cardinal of Lorraine, after the death of his uncle, John, Cardinal of Lorraine . He was the protector of Rabelais and...

. He obtained a position at the Collège de Navarre.

In 1551 Henry II appointed him a regius professor at the university but he preferred to call himself a professor of philosophy and eloquence
Eloquence
Eloquence is fluent, forcible, elegant or persuasive speaking. It is primarily the power of expressing strong emotions in striking and appropriate language, thereby producing conviction or persuasion...

 at the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...

, where for a considerable time he lectured before audiences numbering as many as 2,000. Pierre Galland, another professor there, published Contra novam academiam Petri Rami oratio (1551), and called him a "parricide" for his attitude to Aristotle. The more serious charge was that he was a nouveau academicien, in other words a sceptic. Audomarus Talaeus (Omer Talon c.1510–1581), a close ally of Ramus, had indeed published a work in 1548 derived from 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...

's description of Academic scepticism, the school of Arcesilaus
Arcesilaus
Arcesilaus was a Greek philosopher and founder of the Second or Middle Academy—the phase of Academic skepticism. Arcesilaus succeeded Crates as the sixth head of the Academy c. 264 BC. He did not preserve his thoughts in writing, so his opinions can only be gleaned second-hand from what is...

 and Carneades
Carneades
Carneades was an Academic skeptic born in Cyrene. By the year 159 BC, he had started to refute all previous dogmatic doctrines, especially Stoicism, and even the Epicureans whom previous skeptics had spared. As head of the Academy, he was one of three philosophers sent to Rome in 155 BC where his...

.

After conversion

In 1561 enmity against him was fanned into flame by his adoption of Protestantism
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...

. He had to flee from Paris; and, though he found an asylum in the palace of Fontainebleau, his house was pillaged and his library burned in his absence. He resumed his chair after this for a time, but in 1568 the position of affairs was again so threatening that he found it advisable to ask permission to travel.

He spent around two years, in Germany and Switzerland. The Second Helvetic Confession earned his disapproval, in 1571, rupturing his relationship with Theodore Beza
Theodore Beza
Theodore Beza was a French Protestant Christian theologian and scholar who played an important role in the Reformation...

 and leading Ramus to write angrily to Heinrich Bullinger
Heinrich Bullinger
Heinrich Bullinger was a Swiss reformer, the successor of Huldrych Zwingli as head of the Zurich church and pastor at Grossmünster...

.

Returning to France, he fell a victim in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre
St. Bartholomew's Day massacre
The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations, followed by a wave of Roman Catholic mob violence, both directed against the Huguenots , during the French Wars of Religion...

 (1572). Hiding for a while in a bookshop off the Rue St Jacques, he returned to his lodgings, on 26 August, the third day of the violence. There he was stabbed while at prayer. Suspicions against Charpentier have been voiced ever since.

Pedagogue

A central issue is that Ramus's anti-Aristotelianism arose out of a concern for 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....

. Aristotelian philosophy, in its Early Modern form as 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...

 showing its age, was in a confused and disordered state. Ramus sought to infuse order and simplicity into philosophical and scholastic education by reinvigorating a sense of dialectic
Dialectic
Dialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...

 as the overriding logical and methodological basis for the various disciplines.

He published in 1543 the Aristotelicae Animadversiones and Dialecticae Partitiones, the former a criticism on the old 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 the latter a new textbook of the science. What are substantially fresh editions of the Partitiones appeared in 1547 as Institutiones Dialecticae, and in 1548 as Scholae Dialecticae; his Dialectique (1555), a French version of his system, is the earliest work on the subject in the French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

.

In the "Dialecticae partitiones," Ramus recommends the use of summaries, headings, citations and examples. Ong calls Ramus's use of outlines, "a reorganization of the whole of knowledge and indeed of the whole human lifeworld."

After studying Ramus's work, Ong concluded that the results of his "methodizing" of the arts "are the amateurish works of a desperate man who is not a thinker but merely an erudite pedagogue". On the other hand, his work had an immediate impact on the issue of disciplinary boundaries, where educators largely accepted his arguments, by the end of the century.

Logician

The logic of Ramus enjoyed a great celebrity for a time, and there existed a school of Ramists boasting numerous adherents in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, and the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

. It cannot be said, however, that Ramus's innovations mark any epoch in the history of logic, and there is little ground for his claim to supersede Aristotle by an independent system of logic. The distinction between natural and artificial logic, i.e., between the implicit logic of daily speech and the same logic made explicit in a system, passed over into the logical handbooks.

He amends the syllogism
Syllogism
A syllogism is a kind of logical argument in which one proposition is inferred from two or more others of a certain form...

. He admits only the first three figures, as in the original Aristotelian scheme, and in his later works he also attacks the validity of the third figure, following in this the precedent of Laurentius Valla. Ramus also set the modern fashion of deducing the figures from the position of the middle term
Middle term
The middle term must distributed in at least one premises but not in the conclusion of a categorical syllogism. The major term and the minor terms, also called the end terms, do appear in the conclusion.Example:...

 in the premises, instead of basing them, as Aristotle does, upon the different relation of the middle to the major term
Major term
The major term is the predicate term of the conclusion of a categorical syllogism. It appears in the major premise along with the middle term and not the minor term. It is an end term .Example:...

 and minor term
Minor term
The minor term is the subject term of the conclusion of a categorical syllogism. It also appears in the minor premise together with the middle term. Along with the major term it is one of the two end terms.Example:...

.

Rhetorician

His 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...

al leaning is seen in the definition of logic as the ars disserendi; he maintains that the rules of logic may be better learned from observation of the way in which 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...

 persuaded his hearers than from a study of the Organon
Organon
The Organon is the name given by Aristotle's followers, the Peripatetics, to the standard collection of his six works on logic:* Categories* On Interpretation* Prior Analytics* Posterior Analytics...

.

Logic falls, according to Ramus, into two parts: invention (treating of the notion and definition) and judgment (comprising the judgment proper, syllogism and method). Here 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...

. This division gave rise to the jocular designation of judgment or mother-wit as the "secunda Petri". But 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 and pronuntiatio. In general, Ramism liked to deal with 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...

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). 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....

 said that the Ramist influence here did add 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 effect was that rhetoric was applied in literature.

Mathematician

He was also known as a mathematician, a student of Johannes Sturm
Johannes Sturm
Johannes Sturm, Latinized as Ioannes Sturmius was a German educator, influential in the design of the Gymnasium system of secondary education.- Biography :...

. It has been suggested that Sturm was an influence in another way, by his lectures given in 1529 on Hermogenes of Tarsus
Hermogenes of Tarsus
Hermogenes of Tarsus was a Greek rhetorician, surnamed the polisher . He flourished in the reign of Marcus Aurelius ....

: the Ramist method of dichotomy
Dichotomy
A dichotomy is any splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts, meaning it is a procedure in which a whole is divided into two parts...

 is to be found in Hermogenes.

He had students of his own. He corresponded with 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...

 on mathematics, and at one point recommended to Elizabeth I that she appoint him to a university chair.

The views of Ramus on mathematics implied a limitation to the practical: he considered Euclid
Euclid
Euclid , fl. 300 BC, also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the "Father of Geometry". He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I...

's theory on irrational number
Irrational number
In mathematics, an irrational number is any real number that cannot be expressed as a ratio a/b, where a and b are integers, with b non-zero, and is therefore not a rational number....

s to be useless. The emphasis on technological applications and engineering mathematics was coupled to an appeal to nationalism (France was well behind Italy, and needed to catch up with Germany).

Ramism

The teachings of Ramus had a broadly-based reception well into the seventeenth century. Later movements, such as Baconianism
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...

, pansophism, and Cartesianism
Cartesianism
Cartesian means of or relating to the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes—from his name—Rene Des-Cartes. It may refer to:*Cartesian anxiety*Cartesian circle*Cartesian dualism...

, in different ways built on Ramism, and took advantage of the space cleared by some of the simplifications (and over-simplifications) it had effected. The longest-lasting strand of Ramism was in systematic Calvinist theology, where textbook treatments with a Ramist framework were still used into the eighteenth century, particularly in 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...

.

The first writings on Ramism, after the death of Ramus, included biographies, and were by disciples of sorts: Freigius (1574 or 1575), Banosius (1576), Nancelius (1599), of whom only Nancelius was closely acquainted with the man. Followers of Ramus in different fields included Caspar Olevianus, 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...

, Hieronymus Treutler, 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...

, the statesman Emdens, and 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...

.

Works

He published fifty works in his lifetime and nine appeared after his death. Ong undertook the complex bibliographical task of tracing his books through their editions.
  • Aristotelicae Animadversiones (1543)
  • Brutinae questiones (1547)
  • Rhetoricae distinctiones in Quintilianum (1549)
  • Dialectique (reprinted and modified in 1550 and 1556)
  • Arithmétique (1555)
  • De moribus veterum Gallorum (Paris, 1559; second edition, Basel, 1572)
  • De militia C.J. Cæsaris
  • , au Roy, Paris, (1562)
  • Three grammars: (1548), Grammatica Graeca (1560), (1562)
  • (1565, 1566, 1578)
  • Prooemium mathematicum (Paris, 1567)
  • Scholarum mathematicarum libri unus et triginta (Basel, 1569) (his most famous work)
  • Commentariorum de religione christiana (Frankfurt, 1576)

See also

  • Ramism (available in the German and Swedish editions of Wikipedia)
  • Mnemonics
  • J
    J
    Ĵ or ĵ is a letter in Esperanto orthography representing the sound .While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic...


External links

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