Juan Luis Vives

Born Mar. 6, 1492, in Valencia; died May 6, 1540, in Bruges. Spanish philosopher, humanist, and educator.

Vives, who was a professor at the universities of Louvain and Oxford, wrote approximately 60 works in Latin. He was a friend of Erasmus of Rotterdam and T. More. In opposing scholasticism and perceiving the basis of knowledge in direct observation and experimentation, Vives anticipated to a great extent the experimental method of F. Bacon. He opened new roads in psychology (Concerning the Soul and Life, 1538) and pedagogy. He considered most important not the question of whether there is a soul, but the question of what its manifestations are. He studied in detail the association of ideas and the nature of memory. Vives influenced J. Comenius as well as I. Loyola and his theory of Jesuit education. His ideas were further developed in the work of the Spanish materialist philosopher J. Huarte.