Summary, Conclusions, and Prospects

The first part of this conclusion (section 12.i) surveys the development of the Ramist and post-Ramist tradition in Reformed central Europe before 1630 (narrated in Commonplace Learning), the scattering of that tradition during the Thirty Years War (1618–48), and its further development in relation to figures such as Descartes, Bacon, Comenius, and Leibniz (recounted in The Reformation of Common Learning). The second part (section 12.ii) reviews the argument of this pair of studies from a thematic perspective. Ramism is approached, not as a philosophical school, but as a pedagogical tradition, the most dynamic, innovative, disruptive, and influential to arise in the Protestant world between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Its trajectory, in both the Holy Roman Empire and the Dutch Republic, parallels the graphs of new educational foundations and the growth of their student bodies and catchment areas. Its motive power is student demand, fuelled by the social, political, and confessional circumstances of the era and channelled most effectively through relatively modest institutions responsive to student needs. This explains why this tradition of pedagogical innovation emerged in such fragmented landscapes, why Ramist methods and institutions served as channels thorough which mercantile and artisanal impulses percolated into the academic world, and how they could generate the power to overthrow seemingly superior cultural forces, such as the prestigious humanist educational ideals of the era and entrenched confessional commitments. The book closes with the prospect of complementing traditional top-down intellectual history with a bottom-up approach which can contextualize leading works and thinkers within whole landscapes of digitally analysable data.