Petrus Ramus

Petrus Ramus , or Pierre de La Ramée , 1515-72, French humanist and philosopher. Attempting to break through Aristotelian and scholastic traditions, Ramus wrote a number of works that became influential, among them Dialecticae Institutiones (1543) and Aristotelicae Animadversiones (1543). In consequence, his teaching position was threatened, but in 1551, through the efforts of Cardinal de Lorraine, Ramus was established in a chair of rhetoric and philosophy at the Collège de France. In the religious wars of the period Ramus attached himself to the reformers and fled (1568) to Germany. He returned to Paris in 1570 and was killed in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. Ramist logic, although faulted by modern thinkers, was exceedingly influential in the 16th and early 17th cent., holding sway in Protestant lands—Switzerland, Scotland, and much of Germany. From its English stronghold at Cambridge it markedly affected Francis Bacon, John Milton, and others. The emphasis of Ramist logic on clarity, precision, and testing and on definite boundaries between subjects can be said to have encouraged the scientific spirit.

Bibliography: See studies by N. E. Nelson (1947) and W. J. Ong (1958, repr. 1974); W. S. Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500-1700 (1956, repr. 1961).

Ramus, Petrus, Latin form of Pierre de la Ramée (1515–72), French philosopher and grammarian. His Dialectique of 1555 systematically challenged and refuted Aristotelian and Scholastic logic. It was introduced into England in the late 16th cent. by Andrew Melville and William Temple, and obtained wide academic currency, especially at Cambridge. His followers were known as Ramists and his anti-Scholastic system of logic as Ramism.

Ramus, Petrus ( Pierre de la Ramée) (1515–72), French humanist. Despite his attacks on the university curriculum at Paris, he became a professor at the Collège Royal in 1551. On becoming a Calvinist in 1562, he went to Germany. He returned to Paris in 1571, but he was killed in the Massacre of St Bartholomew's Day. To Aristotle's system, which he accused of falsifying the innate logic of the human mind, he opposed his own, a development of Ciceronian topics which he presented in typographically schematic form (the so-called ‘dichotomies’).