Background
Petrus Ramus, or Pierre de la Ramee, French humanist, was born at the village Cuth in Picardy (France) in 1515, a member of a noble but impoverished family; his father was a charcoal-burner.
humanist logician mathematician
Petrus Ramus, or Pierre de la Ramee, French humanist, was born at the village Cuth in Picardy (France) in 1515, a member of a noble but impoverished family; his father was a charcoal-burner.
Having gained admission, in a menial capacity, to the college of Navarre, he worked with his hands by day and carried on his studies at night.
On the occasion of taking his degree (1536) he actually took as his thesis " Everything that Aristotle taught is false. "
After graduating the university, Ramus Petrus had opened courses of lectures; but his audacities drew upon him the hostility of the conservative party in philosophy and theology.
He was accused of undermining the foundations of philosophy and religion, and the matter was brought before the parlement of Paris, and finally before Francis I. By him it was referred to a commission of five, who found Ramus guilty of having " acted rashly, arrogantly and impudently, " and interdicted his lectures (1544).
Ramus outdid his predecessors in the impetuosity of his revolt.
This tour de force was followed up by the publication in 1543 of Aristotelicae Animadversiones and Dialecticae Par- titiones, the former a criticism on the old logic and the latter a new textbook of the science.
In 1543 he published his criticism of Aristotelian logic, called Aristotelicae animadversiones.
Modern commentators do not see his departure from Aristotle as being as dramatic as his Parisian contemporaries did-his main differences with Aristotle are now considered to be more in pedagogical method than in logic.
Ramus left Paris and turned to mathematical studies until the decree was rescinded in 1547 by Henry II. In 1551 Henry II appointed him professor of philosophy and eloquence at the College de France, where for a considerable time he lectured before audiences numbering as many as 2000.
He published fifty works in his lifetime and nine appeared after his death.
His adoption of Protestantism in 1561 rekindled his colleagues' hostility toward him, and he fled from Paris again in 1562.
He returned in the next year, when Charles IX was able to conclude a tenuous peace with the Protestants.
Returning to France he fell a victim to his opponents in the massacre of St Bartholomew (1572).