RAMUS (Peter)

, a celebrated French mathematician and philosopher, was born in 1515, in a village of Vermandois in Picardy. He was descended of a good family, which had been reduced to extreme poverty by the wars and other misfortunes. His own life too, says Bayle, was the sport of fortune. In his infancy he was twice attacked by the plague. At 8 years of age, a thirst for learning urged him to go to Paris; but he was soon forced by poverty to leave that city. He returned to it again as soon as he could; but, being unable to support himself, he left it a second time: yet his passion for study was so violent, that notwithstanding his bad success in the two former visits, he ventured upon a third. He was maintained there some months by one of his uncles; after which he was obliged to become a servant in the college of Navarre. Here he spent the day in waiting upon his masters, and the greatest part of the night in study.

After having finished classical learning and rhetoric, he went through a course of philosophy, which took him up three years and a half in the schools. The thesis, which he made for his master of arts degree, offended every one; for he maintained in it, that all that Aristotle had advanced was false; and he gave very good answers to the objections of the professors. This success encouraged him to examine the doctrine of Aristotle more closely, and to combat it vigorously: but he confined himself chiefly to his logic. The two first books he published, the one entitled, Institutiones Dialecticæ, the other Aristotelicæ Animadversiones, occasioned great disturbances in the university of Paris. The professors there, who were adorers of Aristotle, ought to have refuted Ramus's books, if they could, by writings and lectures: but instead of confining themselves within the just bounds of academical wars, they prosecuted this anti-peripatetic before the civil magistrate, as a man who was going to sap the foundations of religion. They raised such clamours, that the cause was carried before the parliament of Paris: but, perceiving that it would be examined equably, his enemies by their intrigues took it from that tribunal, to bring it before the king's council, in 1543. The king ordered, that Ramus and Anthony Govea, who was his principal adversary, should choose two judges each, to pronounce on the controversy, after they should have ended their disputation; while he himself appointed a deputy. Ramus appeared before the five judges, though three of them were his declared enemies. The dispute lasted two days, and Govea had all the advantages he could desire; Ramus's books being prohibited in all parts of the kingdom, and their author sentenced not to teach philosophy any longer; upon which his enemies triumphed in the most indecent manner.

The year after, the plague made great havoc in Paris, and forced most of the students in the college of Presle to quit it; but Ramus, being prevailed upon to teach in it, soon drew together a great number of auditors. The Sorbonne attempted in vain to drive him from that college; for he held the headship of that | house by arrêt of parliament. Through the patronage and protection of the cardinal of Lorrain, he obtained from Henry the 2d, in 1547, the liberty of speaking and writing, and the regal professorship of philosophy and eloquence in 1551. The parliament of Paris had, before this, maintained him in the liberty of joining philosophical lectures to those of eloquence; and this arrêt or decree had put an end to several prosecutions, which Ramus and his pupils had suffered. As soon as he was made regius professor, he was fired with a new zeal for improving the sciences, notwithstanding the hatred of his enemies, who were never at rest.

Ramus bore at that time a part in a very singular affair. About the year 1550, the royal professors corrected among other abuses, that which had crept into the pronunciation of the Latin tongue. Some of the clergy followed this regulation; but the Sorbonnists were much offended at it as an innovation, and defended the old pronunciation with great zeal. Things at length were carried so far, that a minister, who had a good living, was very ill treated by them; and caused to be ejected from his benefice for having pronounced quisquis, quanquam, according to the new way, instead of kiskis, kankam, according to the old. The minister applied to the parliament; and the royal professors, with Ramus among them, fearing he would fall a victim to the credit and authority of the faculty of divines, for presuming to pronounce the Latin tongue according to their regulations, thought it incumbent on them to assist him. Accordingly, they went to the court of justice, and represented in such strong terms the indignity of the prosecution, that the minister was cleared, and every person had the liberty of pronouncing as he pleased.

Ramus was bred up in the Catholic religion, but afterwards deserted it. He began to discover his new principles by removing the images from the chapel of his college of Presle, in 1552. Hereupon such a persecution was raised against him by the Religionists, as well as Aristotelians, that he was driven out of his professorship, and obliged to conceal himself. For that purpose, with the king's leave he went to Fontainbleau; where, by the help of books in the king's library, he prosecuted geometrical and astronomical studies. As soon as his enemies found out his retreat, they renewed their persecutions; and he was forced to conceal himself in several other places. In the mean time, his curious and excellent collection of books in the college of Presle was plundered: but after a peace was concluded in 1563, between Charles the 9th and the Protestants, he again took possession of his employment, maintained himself in it with vigour, and was particularly zealous in promoting the study of the mathematics.

This continued till the second civil war in 1567, when he was forced to leave Paris, and shelter himself among the Hugonots, in whose army he was at the battle of St. Denys. Peace having been concluded some months after, he was restored to his professorship; but, foreseeing that the war would soon break out again, he did not care to venture himself in a fresh storm, and therefore obtained the king's leave to visit the universities of Germany. He accordingly undertook this journey in 1568, and received great honours wherever he came. He returned to France, after the third war in 1571; and lost his life miserably, in the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, 1572, at 57 years of age. It is said, that he was concealed in a granary during the tumult; but discovered and dragged out by some peripatetic doctors who hated him; these, after stripping him of all his money under pretence of preserving his life, gave him up to the assassins, who, after cutting his throat and giving him many wounds, threw him out of the window; and his bowels gushing out in the fall, some Aristotelian scholars, encouraged by their masters, spread them about the streets; then dragged his body in a most ignominious manner, and threw it into the river.

Ramus was a great orator, a man of universal learning, and endowed with very fine qualities. He was sober, temperate, and chaste. He ate but little, and that of boiled meat; and drank no wine till the latter part of his life, when it was prescribed by the physicians. He lay upon straw; rose early, and studied hard all day; and led a single life with the utmost purity. He was zealous for the protestant religion, but at the same time a little obstinate, and given to contradiction. The protestant ministers did not love him much, for he made himself a kind of head of a party, to change the discipline of the protestant churches: his design was to introduce a democratical government in the church, but this design was traversed, and defeated in a national synod. His sect flourished however for some time afterwards, spreading pretty much in Scotland and England, and still more in Germany.

He published a great many books; but mathematics was chiefly obliged to him. Of this kind, his writings were principally these following:

1. Scholarum Mathematicarum libri 31.

2. Arithmeticæ libri duo.—Algebræ libri duo.—Geometriæ libri 27.

These were greatly enlarged and explained by Schoner, and published in 2 volumes 4to. There were several editions of them; mine is that of 1627, at Frankfort.—The Geometry, which is chiefly practical, was translated into English by William Bedwell, and published in 4to, at London, 1636.

RANDOM-Shot, is a shot discharged with the axis of the gun elevated above the horizontal or point-blank direction.

Random

, of a shot, also sometimes means the range of it, or the distance to which it goes at the first graze, or where it strikes the ground. See Range.

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Entry taken from A Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary, by Charles Hutton, 1796.

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RAFTERS
RAIN
RAINBOW
RAM
RAMPART
* RAMUS (Peter)
RANGE
RARE
RAREFACTION
RARITY
RATCH