While on vacation a couple of weeks ago, I visited an unbelieving family member. He explained to me his belief that humanity moved from riding on horseback 200 years ago, to using smartphones now, because space aliens intervened and gave us secret technological knowledge. But I've found a better explanation for modern tech than space aliens.
Ames' Technometry provides a bridge (one of several, but an important one) from the medieval world to our modern, technologically advanced era. This section on euprattomenon is the girder of this bridge. The Puritans were adamant that good works must come from good ideas. Ames taught that since a rational God created good works, we humans can study His rationality and use that knowledge to create good works. And beyond basic morality, good works produce good things. Puritans encouraged the creation of systems of knowledge so that people could learn concrete bodies of knowledge (science), along with the liberal arts, in as efficient a manner as possible, and then measure the goodness of the things produced to see how good they really were. And all this was also to be a benefit for both the soul and the body, in this life and the next.
Ames taught that there is no such thing as an art that is merely theoretical and not also practical. This is how Puritan theology transformed American life and work - Puritans showed us how everything is practical, especially theology. In theses 31-37, Ames begins to define the things well-made by the arts, which he terms "euprattomenon." He also notes, opposing Aristotle, that the things made by the arts are not necessarily "external and perceptible to the senses." (Thesis 34) To modernists, he might have said that the things made by the arts are not only external.
So far in Technometry:
Ames has defined the arts (governing ideas),
the good actions governed by these arts (eupraxia)
and the well-made artifacts of the arts (euprattomenon).
All creation is the artifact of the Artist, and we imitate Him when we learn the arts, including theology, to produce practical, made things (external or not). The liberal arts, as defined by the Puritans, are not meant to be for aristocrats or those leading easy lives of leisure, but all ought to study them in order to live good lives as workers and as worshippers. Rather than fencing the benefits of liberal arts and theology off as a separate life for the privileged few, the Puritans believed that each human needs to contemplate, worship, work, and create. The liberal arts are for all of life, best exemplified, as Ames says, by the art of theology which is the "doctrine of living to God."
Ames' Technometry provides a bridge (one of several, but an important one) from the medieval world to our modern, technologically advanced era. This section on euprattomenon is the girder of this bridge. The Puritans were adamant that good works must come from good ideas. Ames taught that since a rational God created good works, we humans can study His rationality and use that knowledge to create good works. And beyond basic morality, good works produce good things. Puritans encouraged the creation of systems of knowledge so that people could learn concrete bodies of knowledge (science), along with the liberal arts, in as efficient a manner as possible, and then measure the goodness of the things produced to see how good they really were. And all this was also to be a benefit for both the soul and the body, in this life and the next.
Ames taught that there is no such thing as an art that is merely theoretical and not also practical. This is how Puritan theology transformed American life and work - Puritans showed us how everything is practical, especially theology. In theses 31-37, Ames begins to define the things well-made by the arts, which he terms "euprattomenon." He also notes, opposing Aristotle, that the things made by the arts are not necessarily "external and perceptible to the senses." (Thesis 34) To modernists, he might have said that the things made by the arts are not only external.
Communicating leaves embellished speech; measuring leaves measured things; doing the work of nature leaves natures; living leaves life.Lee Gibbs further clarifies what Ames is teaching us:
All art deals with bringing something into existence, and that to pursue an art means to study how to bring into existence a thing that lies in the maker and not in the thing made...every thing has its praxis and prattomenon given to it by its Creator.
So far in Technometry:
Ames has defined the arts (governing ideas),
the good actions governed by these arts (eupraxia)
and the well-made artifacts of the arts (euprattomenon).
All creation is the artifact of the Artist, and we imitate Him when we learn the arts, including theology, to produce practical, made things (external or not). The liberal arts, as defined by the Puritans, are not meant to be for aristocrats or those leading easy lives of leisure, but all ought to study them in order to live good lives as workers and as worshippers. Rather than fencing the benefits of liberal arts and theology off as a separate life for the privileged few, the Puritans believed that each human needs to contemplate, worship, work, and create. The liberal arts are for all of life, best exemplified, as Ames says, by the art of theology which is the "doctrine of living to God."
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