Skip to main content

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?

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 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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Technometry: Theses 48-60 - Types - Metaphysics?

Ames defines  type as things created and ruled by God or (secondarily) things created or conceived by humans in imitation of God. Type is "that in which all art shines and from which its principles, which produce human understanding, are gathered by man." God creates a thing, and from it shines arts and principles which help us to understand the arts and the thing itself. Then we use the arts to imitatively create and these works of creation bring glory to God. To understand this further, I recommend the illustrations in this article by David Hill Scott: http://www.leaderu.com/aip/docs/scott.html Theses 50-54 deal with metaphysics. Ames attacks scholastic metaphysics and he makes a logical case that the field of metaphysics was overstepping its rightful bounds ("put its sickle into a harvest not its own").  He says that the arts themselves, and by implication his theory of technometry, ought to replace much of metaphysics' stolen ground. He also has a long ...
Post a Comment
Read more