Ramus and “applied knowledge,” Father Ong has published an 
article, “Ramist Method and the Commercial Mind,” (50) which 
makes an admirable approach to the obsession with 
quantification in the Renaissance:

     One of the persistent puzzles concerning Peter Ramus 
     and his followers is the extraordinary diffusion of their 
     works during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
     The general pathway of this diffusion has been well known 
     since Waddington’s Ramus  in 1855. It proceeds chiefly 
     through bourgeois Protestant groups of merchants and 
     artisans more or less tinged with Calvinism. These groups 
     are found not only in Ramus’ native France, but especially 
     in Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, England, 
     Scotland, Scandinavia, and New England. Perry Miller’s 
     work, The New England Mind: the Seventeenth Century , is