Occult Sympathies: The Private World of the Mature Alsted, 1614–38

The quest for method: the legacy of Peter Ramus

“…Instead, Ramus's diagrams move discursive practices toward the silent, object world of the didactic, textbook, teaching tradition in which knowledge is conceived in diagrammatic visual terms: 'Only once Ramist dialectic had become the basis of instruction and thus the common training of all advanced students could it profitably be applied to textbooks in the later stages of the curriculum.' 65 In effect, Ramus's knowledge diagrams became the organizing structure of the textbook, which, in turn, became curriculum. Ramist curriculum maps were used to direct students along a distinct and established course of study.…”