Technometry: Theses 9-21 - Eupraxia and Imitation

Art is the idea of eupraxia.

- Technometry, Thesis 1, William Ames

Eupraxia means "good action." Specifically, eupraxia is good, principled analysis and acts of creation. Eupraxia is both the object and culmination of the liberal arts.  Each art is an idea that represents something, and as such, it directs action.  An art culminates in a good action - not because the purpose of an art is to rule our behavior, but because that is the nature of an art.  That's just what ideas do.

In thesis 15, Ames goes metaphysical and gives his answer to the question of the "one and the many." Lee Gibbs gives a brief explanation of Ames's argument which helped me begin to sort it out.  Ames says that art is one unique and simple act in the being and work of God. But it works out like a refraction of rays from God as many concrete, divisible created things. So the art exercised by man is also refracted and divided.  One God; several liberal arts.

There are two parts of eupraxia: analysis, and acts of creation.  Analysis is the work of taking a whole and moving to its parts.  The work of creation is the reciprocal, or the procession from basic parts to a whole thing made up of those basic parts.

Ames doesn't get into teaching methods in this book, but he does touch on concepts which are important for us to understand in the trenches of daily teaching.  One of these is the concept of imitation.  This was one of the first ideas recovered in the modern renewal of classical education, and one of the most obvious teaching concepts in Scripture.  We are to imitate our teachers - Christ, St. Paul, our pastors, our parents.

Andrew Kern said,

The most important thing every teacher should understand is that teaching is the art of being imitated. If you want a student to perceive a truth, you have to embody it. That’s what teaching is.

When we imitate people, we are imitating their work - their eupraxia. Imitation is the creative work we do after we have analyzed another's work. Good action is either regressive (analytical) or progressive (creative) and each one can follow the other, but only creative work that follows analysis is properly called imitation.  Ames intentionally places imitation in the category of eupraxia so that it is part of the object and culmination of an art. Imitation is common to and inseparable from all the liberal arts. 

Gibbs traces this categorization of imitation back to Ramus:

Ramus teaches that genesis or composition begins with the imitation of analysis in reverse.  After one has learned by close imitation, he may then move on to expressions of greater freedom.

Often we think of imitation as an exercise in handwriting, basic composition, or for moral behavior in daily life.  But Ames wants us to remember that imitation is part of the good work common to all the arts.  What does this mean for us?  How do we practice eupraxia for our kids to analyze?  How do they imitate for physics, math, theology, or logic?  I don't think it is the same as copying for sameness, but rather making a likeness.  And it's not the same as memorizing.  What example of imitation can we analyze to imitate how to imitate?