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Post Index

Post Index
  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: Thesis 22-30 - Arranging Eupraxia
  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?

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Famous Ramus

Okay so Ramus actually isn't super famous, but maybe he should be. If we are going to study any Puritan educational philosophy, we have to spend time on Peter Ramus. Pierre de la Ram é e was a 16th Century Humanist Protestant.  Even though he had significant disagreements with prominent reformers such as Bullinger and Beza, Ramus was counted as a protestant martyr when he was killed during the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.  He had been a student of Johannes Sturm, the "German Cicero" and major reformer of education in Strasbourg.  (Richard Gamble has a fun reading from Sturm in The Great Tradition ).  Apparently, Sturm sparked Ramus' great interest in the study and application of logic.  Ramus, being the orderly, logical mathematician that he was, looked at the Trivium as it was taught in his day, and thought it was disorganized.  In Logic and Rhetoric in England: 1500-1700 , Howell says, As Ramus looked at the scholastic logic, the traditio...

Technometry: Theses 31-37 - Euprattomenon, or the things made by the arts

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 ...

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...