Skip to main content

William Ames's Technometry

I have been studying the philosophy and history of education as a hobby intermittently for many years. My interest in the subject just continues to grow as I have the blessing of educating my own children at home.  In the last several years, I have been focusing on reading more Reformed and Puritan authors and collecting evidence of their thoughts on education.

I am currently working through the book "Technometry" by William Ames, with translation and commentary by Lee W. Gibbs.  After I finish typing up my summaries of that book here, I plan to type up my notes from writings on education by Machen and Van Til in the 20th Century, some of the Humanist Reformers in the 16th Century, and other Puritans besides Ames in the 17th Century.

Gibbs calls Ames the "Father of American Theology."  I have found that educational philosophy is inseparable from theology, and every theologian has had something to say about education.  Before progressive modern education, the teaching of children was completely directed by parents and by the church. The necessity of Christians returning to that order is a major theme that I hope will be conspicuous as I work through the theologians and their thoughts about education.  It is a crying shame to leave education to politicians and atheistic pseudoscientists - most modern credentialing authorities and education professors - who pretend they have figured out education for everyone.

  1. Intro Definition of Technometry
  2. Famous Ramus
  3. Humanism
  4. The Puritans, the Moderns, and Classical Christian Education
  5. Technometry: Theses 1-3 - Art
  6. Technometry: Theses 4-8 - The Arts are Ideas
  7. Technometry: Theses 9-21 - Eupraxia and Imitation
  8. Technometry: Theses 22-30 - Arranging Eupraxiae
  9. Technometry: Theses 31-37 - Euprattomenon, or Things Made by the Arts
  10. Technometry: Thesis 38-47 - The Best Known Force of Art
  11. Technometry: Theses 48-60 - Types - Metaphysics?


Comments

  1. AnonymousJune 11, 2020 at 1:55 PM

    Good afternoon, where did you find this book, Technometry? I've only come across it's reference here and in a biography on Jonathan Edwards.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. PuritanClassicalJune 11, 2020 at 2:33 PM

      Hi! Technometry is out of print, but you can still find used copies on Abe Books or on loan from university libraries. It was translated with commentary by Lee W. Gibbs and was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1979. You can also read articles about it on JSTOR.

      Delete
    2. PuritanClassicalJune 11, 2020 at 2:44 PM

      I found Technometry after researching Protestant educational movements of the 1600s. What I discovered was that Technometry had a profound impact, especially in America. But its significance was overlooked by historians during the Enlightenment, and that oversight was never rectified - likely due to anti-Puritan biases.

      Delete
    3. AnonymousJune 12, 2020 at 3:14 PM

      Thank you. And absolutely. As far as I'm able to gather from the biography, disdain for God-centered counsel grew in proportion to idolatry of man's capability, especially as Anglicanism and the Enlightenment increased in tandem with each other.

      Thank you for this work, Sister. It is very difficult to find modern assessments for historical gems like this.

      Delete
  2. PuritanClassicalJune 11, 2020 at 7:39 PM

    This may help:
    https://www.jstor.org/stable/2708860?seq=1

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Technometry: Theses 22-30 - Arranging Eupraxiae

In theses 22-30 of Technometry, Ames explains his reasoning for listing the eupraxiae , and the liberal arts, in the order that he does.  It's important to note that he doesn't list them in the order in which they ought to be studied, but in order of specialty and dependency.  Some arts cannot exist without other arts.  Some arts become concrete in other arts.  For example, you can't do physics without math.  So Ames lists math before physics because physics depends on math, but math doesn't depend upon physics.  While this implies that we ought to learn math before physics, it becomes a bit more complicated when we look at trivium rather than the quadrivium. Here is Ames's order of the arts and their defined eupraxiae: 1. Logic, for discoursing (arguing and reasoning). 2. Grammar, for speaking. 3. Rhetoric, for communicating. 4. Mathematics (arithmetic and geometry), for measuring. 5. Physics, for doing the work of nature. 6. Theology, for living....
Post a Comment
Read more

Intro Definition of Technometry

Worldview.  The integration of theology, piety, and work. I guess those are the concepts closest to technometry that we modern Christians might recognize. The Puritans of the 17th Century were interested in personal piety and sound, Biblical theology.   They were interested in the whole human - head, heart, and hands.  Technometry was the study of how we give glory to God by studying, via the liberal arts, what He has created and then applying what we learn to all sorts of work.  It was a study of how to apply God's wisdom to every area of life, from farming to politics.  Ames' Technometry was a textbook at Harvard for quite some time and had a wide influence on American philosophy. David Hill Scott has a good preliminary paper about technometry here .  I recommend reading that to get a general overview of the concept and of Ames' book. Piety and Christian education are inseparable. In The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Class...
Post a Comment
Read more