Skip to main content

Technometry: Theses 1-3 - Art

Technometry,
which adequately circumscribes the Boundaries and the Ends of all the Arts and of every individual Art
- William Ames

The "arts" Ames is discussing are the liberal arts, which include grammar, logic, rhetoric, math, physics, and theology.

His first thesis is that an art is an idea of good action, specifically defined by universal rules.  In thesis three, Ames explains that an art is:
a model to represent an action,
formed in the mind of a person,
before he needs to act,
for the purpose of acting correctly.

Elsewhere he says that art is
the regular disposition or instruction of a thing, in existence and operation, agreeably to its end.
The art of grammar, for example, is a model of action taught to students in order to form in their minds the representation of the right action they should take when reading or writing.  Ames clarifies that an art is not a subject.  For example, the art of grammar is applied to the subject of languages and it may govern actions that include skills like handwriting and publication technology.  But the art of grammar isn't part of the subject of English or Latin.

How can I apply this to my little homeschool experiment?  For the art of grammar for example, I will have to look at the rules that govern the proper translation of communication from one mind to another.  I will need to find examples and types to define the rules and provide practice observing those examples of translation rules while we study languages.  I will need to provide models of true, beautiful, and good words, especially as translations between languages, to fill our imaginations with frameworks to govern our reading and writing.  And that's about all I can come up with, as an uneducated mom who needs to go cook dinner.  If you read this and have any thoughts, please share!  I would love feedback, pushback, or comments of any sort.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
5 comments
Read more

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