More on the elements

But what are the four (or five) elements that Eliot was so interested in (see previous post)? The idea that the world is composed of just a handful of basic elements is common to all the great civilizations, and in the Egyptian, Greek and Indian traditions these elements are given the names Earth, Air, Fire, and Water – with the addition of a fifth "subtle" element or "quintessence" sometimes called Aether, the first element in creation. This latter is identified with "space" and may be taken as the substratum of all vibration (or "sound" in the broadest metaphysical sense, thus including what we now call electromagnetic radiation or light).

Plato posited an even more basic level of composition to the universe; particulate or geometrical in nature, rooted in the triangle. A footnote in my book All Things Made New reads as follows: "In the Timaeus, Plato
hypothesizes that the elements themselves are made of particles built up from triangles into the forms of the five regular solids. Since the pyramid is the figure with the fewest faces, it must be the most mobile, the sharpest, most penetrating, and lightest. He therefore identifies it as the basic constituent of Fire. Air is composed of octahedrons, Water of icosahedrons. The fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron, being the closest in form to the sphere, was associated with the fifth element Aether, the Hindu Akasha, or Space. Though the existence of a too crudely imagined ‘Ether’ as the bearer of electromagnetic waves seemed to have been disproved by Michelson and Morley in 1887, the ancient concept reappeared as Einstein’s notion of a unified space-time continuum. The Platonic elements are basic to our experience of the world. The same can hardly be said of two further ‘states of matter’ recently created in the laboratory by super-refrigeration close to absolute zero, namely Bose-Einstein and fermionic condensates. Symbolically, therefore, the ancient scheme remains intact."

There are four basic states of matter – solid, liquid, gas, and plasma – and four fundamental forces known to physics – termed weak, strong, electromagnetism, and gravity. Neither of these patterns of four seems to capture the full resonance of the ancient elements. Even so, the four-by-four symmetry of the Standard Model of particle physics is intriguing (the gauge bosons in the pink column are the particles that carry the four fundamental forces), with the Higgs field/ boson playing the role of the mysterious "fifth element". The comparison is no doubt superficial, and the Standard Model itself may well fail in years to come, but physics remains Platonist in inspiration so long as it seeks to determine the fundamental elements making up the natural world in the simplest and most elegant combination.

The next issue of Second Spring (due out this summer) will be on the theme of faith and science.

Elements in Eliot

An important book by Benjamin G. Lockerd Jr, Aethereal Rumours: T.S. Eliot's Physics and Poetics, does for The Waste Land and the Four Quartets something of what Michael Ward does for the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis in Planet Narnia. In his book, Michael Ward shows that each of the seven tales of Narnia was intended by Lewis to correspond with one of the seven astrological planets – taking these as spiritual symbols of perennial value (as he does in his academic works on Medieval and Renaissance literature, and in the Space Trilogy). Similarly, Lockerd shows that Eliot was always concerned with reconciling poetry with science, and unlike other modern poets "increasingly placed his poetry quite consciously and deliberately within
the cosmos described by the ancient philosophical physics" of Heraclitus and Aristotle. He was an admirer of modern science, but not of scientism, meaning the cult of a science deemed purely "objective" in contrast to the "subjective" arts. He sought to overcome this false dualism in his own work, and so was drawn to a "science of essences" that he did not believe had been superseded by modern chemistry or physics. The Waste Land has five sections which correspond symbolically and thematically to the five elements (including the fifth, aether, which Plato in Timaeus 55c associated with the fifth regular solid, the dodecahedron, on which the Demiurge embroidered the constellations). Each of the Four Quartets corresponds to one of the four earthly elements with the fifth present throughout; especially, I would speculate, in the fifth section of each poem. Lockerd's book was encouraged by Russell Kirk and partly written at Piety Hill. It is a valuable contribution to the literature connecting ancient and modern science, as well as science and poetry.

Catholic English teacher

Allow me to draw your attention anyway to The Catholic English Teacher by Roy Peachey, as well as this article by him on great Catholic writers outside the Western canon.

Ruralist art

An important part of education is learning to look at the world around us, and artists teach us to do this. I have posted several times on landscape artists in particular. Whether it is the Group of Seven venturing out into the Canadian wilderness, or the Impressionists following in Turner's footsteps as they try to capture the flickering moods of light and atmosphere (perhaps even travelling "inside light" the way Tolkien travelled "inside language"), or Samuel Palmer crafting natural landscapes into symbolic idylls intense with yearning, or Nicholas Roerich doing the same with the mountains of Tibet, the landscape artist allows us to see the "scenery" of our lives through new eyes. Recently David Hockney has startled many of his admirers by turning

to landscape, and a recent exhibition of his paintings of Yorkshire called "A Bigger Picture" has perhaps opened a new chapter in modern British art. Some have called his landscapes regressive. And yet every new departure in art looks backwards as well as forwards. With his new exhibition Hockney seems to have joined the Brotherhood of Ruralists. What underlies these paintings is an interest in what the camera cannot capture. What is revealed is not just what the scene looks like at a given moment and from a given angle, but what it looks like to this particular person, viewed through his unique imagination. Art always depends on the love of the artist for his subject. Even if the subject is "ugly", the artist would hardly lavish time and attention on it if not motivated to do so. And the love of Hockney for these particular landscapes is evident in every line. It doesn't seem to be the atmosphere, or the play of light, that particularly interests him, but the forms and shapes that reveal themselves to someone who, at least briefly, inhabits the landscape – shapes often made of colour. People who visit the places he painted report that they are often strewn with rubbish thrown from passing cars. Is it "untruthful" to leave out the rubbish when painting the scene? Isn't it more important to rekindle our love for the places around us, through which we walk and drive with so little attention?

Illustration: Samuel Palmer, "Garden in Shoreham", c. 1830

The sixth planet

One way into astronomy for a lot of people, I suspect, is the beauty of the planet Saturn, second largest planet in our system (95 times the mass of the Earth). NASA's Cassini space probe, still orbiting the planet, has sent back a multitude of extraordinary photos that show us this gem of the solar system in close up. Other planets have rings, but these are simply spectacular, and visible from Earth through even a small telescope. Made largely of ice, some of it vented through giant geysers from the moon Enceladus, their complexity is still not completely understood. Even less understood is the hexagonal cloud formation around the Saturnian north pole. (It is a bit like finding a big "6" painted on the side of the sixth planet.) No doubt it has a simple explanation (here is one attempt), and probably isn't a marker left by some alien civilization, but in the meantime, just like those "faster than light" neutrinos from Gran Sasso, not to mention the hunt for the Higgs boson which is the lynchpin of the Standard Model of particle physics, it will continue to intrigue us, and to entice a new generation of children into the study of science. Modern physics and cosmology are at a turning point, it seems. The need to explain the "dark matter" and "dark energy" that apparently make up up most of the universe may be pointing to the need for a new "paradigm" or a radically new set of cosmological theories. More than ever, scientists need imagination as well as intelligence, and faith (in the ultimate intelligibility of the universe) as well as reason.

Marshall McLuhan

Best known these days for his phrases "The medium is the message" (the title of one of his books was The Medium is the Massage), and "the global village", not to mention a cameo appearance in Woody Allen's movie Annie Hall, Marshall McLuhan was a prophet of the new communications technology and the founder of Media Studies with his book Understanding Media (1964). Last year was the 100th anniversary of his birth, and he died in 1980. But there is a lot more to him than this, and as an educator and philosopher he repays careful attention. He was, by the way, a Catholic convert in 1937 thanks to the influence of G.K. Chesterton. Wikipedia (a phenomenon that would have interested him greatly) tells us not only that he claimed intellectual guidance from the Virgin Mary, but that he had a lifelong interest in the number 3 – his conversion began as he was studying the Trivium (the first three Liberal Arts) for his thesis at Cambridge University. That thesis was published for the first time in 2006 by Gingko Press, and examines the history of the Trivium from Classical times to the Renaissance. McLuhan himself was an exponent of Rhetoric in the traditional and broadest sense – hence his interest in the communications media. He saw how each new technology (writing, print, telephone, TV, computer) effectively transforms human cognition and society. He predicted the World Wide Web and analysed its effects as early as 1962.

The latest issue of The Chesterton Review contains a couple of pieces on McLuhan in "News & Comments". One (by Jeet Heer) concludes that to appreciate the full profundity of McLuhan's thought you need to read books like Hugh Kenner's The Mechanic Muse, Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, and Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. But don't neglect to read McLuhan.

Forming Priests, Poets, Philosophers

The Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, has announced a rather impressive programme of formation for Priests, Poets and Philosophers, described as "an academic and Renaissance convivio where the perennial wisdom of the Catholic intellectual tradition challenges and entices the mind and soul." It includes a roundtable and a course, with lectures and discussions across a wide range of disciplines. The whole is partly designed for priests and seminarians, but teachers and parishioners and other students are also welcome. Visit the website for details.