Introduction

A teacher in various colleges in Paris for most of his adult life, Petrus Ramus (or Pierre de la Ramée, 1515-1572) was known as a strong critic of Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition in the university curriculum, and as a constructive philosopher interested in “logic” and “method” as well as rhetoric. His writings were distinctive for, among other things, their emphasis on the practice or exercise of arts and doctrines. La dialectique was one of many versions of a theory of the use of discourse in general that Ramus published from the 1540s to the 1560s. Although this theory was intended to challenge a number of Aristotle's logical writings, Ramus' critics pointed out that he remained heavily indebted to his ancient opponent.

This excerpt from La dialectique is to do with “method,” which was the subject of a large literature in the sixteenth century, long before Descartes took it up. In the pre-Cartesian period, “method” often meant a technique for the effective presentation of different subjects in the university curriculum, and sometimes effectiveness was tied to abbreviation, or the identification of a key idea. Method was not primarily a series of steps for making discoveries. In Ramus, effective presentation is linked with the passage – perhaps deductive – from the general to the specific, especially in the natural sciences. Observations about particular things are methodically understood when they are seen as the consequences of the genera and species to which the things observed belong.