#WingedWordsWindsday: 2022/07/27 -- Some Reflections on STEAM

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 39: July 27, 2022

 

Some Reflections on STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Math

 

“The correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting — no more — and then it motivates one towards originality and instills the desire for truth.”

à Lucius Mestrius Plutarch (46-120 CE): “On Listening to Lectures” (Moralia 48C)

 

“The Sciences and the Humanities:

Partners in Time”

An Interview with Rob Chappell by Kelly Scott, Sophomore ACES James Scholar in NRES

Reprinted from Cursus Honorum VI: 2 (September 2005)

Let’s stop and think for a moment. Is there really any linkage or relationship between the sciences and the humanities? They seem so different. For example, a major in the sciences such as Biology seems so unrelated to an English major in the field of the humanities. Yet after interviewing Rob Chappell, they seem so connected and dependent on one another.

Rob began by explaining the history of this relationship. During the Middle Ages, there was no clear demarcation between the sciences and the humanities. All educated people during this time period studied all the “liberal arts,” which included sciences and humanities alike. But upon the rise of the Scientific Revolution, they began to separate from one another, making it seem as though they were completely disassociated altogether. Rob feels that we need to continue to work towards a day when the sciences and humanities are no longer seen as two different fields. We need to get back to the ideals of the Middle Ages when the two seemed compatible and held an essence of togetherness.

After discussing the history of this relationship, Rob provided some very interesting examples of how the sciences and humanities work together. In the first example, Rob explained how we study the Universe through science by using telescopes and different scientific means to learn. Yet, if we think about it, the story-tellers and mythmakers who lived centuries ago named the stars and planets. This inspired us to dream and wonder about space travel, which in turn has helped us learn more about our Universe scientifically. Rob illustrates the relationship well in this example.

Another example that Rob conveyed was the relationship between scientists and authors. More specifically, Rob described how his favorite genre, science fiction, has helped scientists through the ages. Well-known science fiction authors such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells have written many books, which have then given scientists ideas for experiments after reading their books. Rob really makes a strong and solid point when he says, “Humanities provide context, enrich life, make life more interesting, and make YOU more interesting.”

So what does all this mean for us as students at the U of I? Well, Rob explains the importance for us to understand and embrace this relationship. He says that employers are looking for well-rounded employees. When we graduate and go looking for a job, there is a much better chance that we will get hired if we know and have taken classes in both the humanities and the sciences. Rob tells us, “Don’t look at the humanities classes as a burden, but as an opportunity.” Most parts of our lives merge the sciences and humanities: “Every-thing is interconnected, because the sciences ask how and why things happen the way they do, but the humanities ask what those facts mean for us,” Rob says. I hope that we all can recognize the great importance of this relationship between the sciences and the humanities. In the end, this recognition will help to make us holistic and well-rounded people.

 

The Greek philosopher Empedocles (494-434 BCE) was a native of Sicily who shared his scientific theories with the general public by composing two epic poems, both of which survive only in fragments today. (Image Credit: Thomas Stanley’s 1655 History of Philosophy – Public Domain)

 

Lucretius (99-55 BCE): De Rerum Natura I.716 ff.

Translated by William Ellery Leonard (Public Domain)

 

Add, too, whoever make the primal stuff

Twofold, by joining air to fire, and earth

To water; add who deem that things can grow

Out of the four- fire, earth, and breath, and rain;

As first Empedocles of Acragas,

Whom that three-cornered isle of all the lands

Bore on her coasts, around which flows and flows

In mighty bend and bay the Ionic seas,

Splashing the brine from off their gray-green waves.

Here, billowing onward through the narrow straits,

Swift ocean cuts her boundaries from the shores

Of the Italic mainland. Here the waste

Charybdis; and here Aetna rumbles threats

To gather anew such furies of its flames

As with its force anew to vomit fires,

Belched from its throat, and skyward bear anew

Its lightnings' flash. And though for much she seem

The mighty and the wondrous isle to men,

Most rich in all good things, and fortified

With generous strength of heroes, she hath ne'er

Possessed within her aught of more renown,

Nor aught more holy, wonderful, and dear

Than this true man. Nay, ever so far and pure

The lofty music of his breast divine

Lifts up its voice and tells of glories found,

That scarce he seems of human stock create.

 

“Come, I shall now tell thee first of all the beginning of the Sun, and the sources from which have sprung all the things we now behold, the Earth and the billowy sea, the damp vapor and the Titan air that binds his circle fast round all things.”

à Empedocles: Fragment #38

 

 

“Two Scientific Poets: Aratus and Lucretius”

By Rob Chappell, M.A.

Adapted & Condensed from Cursus Honorum IX: 10 (May 2009)

 The sciences and the humanities coexisted harmoniously during Classical antiquity as early researchers observed the natural world and poets popularized those discoveries by turning them into epic verse and singing them for interested audiences. Greek and Latin scientific poems could thus be regarded as the precursors of modern popular science writing. Two of the most notable versifying popularizers of ancient science whose works have been preserved for us are Aratus (ca. 315-240 BCE) and Lucretius (ca. 99-55 BCE).

Aratus of Soli was a Greek poet from Anatolia (modern Turkey), and his most famous work is the Phenomena, a versified tour of the stars and constellations, which concluded with a description of atmospheric “signs” that could be used to make weather predictions. His descriptions of the stars, their characteristics, and their apparent motions across the sky are extremely valuable for historians and scientists alike. Aratus’ retellings of well-known astronomical myths and legends are very engaging, as his poetry turns the night sky into a cosmic storybook for everyone to enjoy.

Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet who wrote his Latin masterpiece, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), to explain his understanding of the Universe. Lucretius expounded the atomic theory of matter, described the unfolding of life on Earth through eons of time, proposed that the Universe was infinite and contained countless inhabited worlds, and used logic and reason to refute common superstitions of his time. Lucretius’ teachings on atomism and the infinity of the Universe were widely discussed and debated during the European Renaissance, as they helped to inspire many pioneers of the Scientific Revolution, like Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642).

Across a gulf of more than two millennia, Aratus and Lucretius present us with a timely challenge: to think outside the boxes of our individual academic disciplines to envision a holistic worldview that satisfies both the mind and the heart. They also show us how rewarding a career in science education or science communication can be – and how edutaining it is to learn about scientific subjects in epic verse! J

 

This 1660 celestial chart by Andreas Cellarius (1596-1665) depicts Aratus’ understanding of the cosmos, with the spherical Earth at the center and everything else in the Universe revolving around it. (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

“On the Beach at Night”

By Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

 

On the beach at night,

Stands a child with her father,

Watching the east, the autumn sky.

 

Up through the darkness,

While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,

Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,

Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,

Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,

And nigh at hand, only a very little above,

Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.

 

From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,

Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,

Watching, silently weeps.

 

Weep not, child,

Weep not, my darling,

With these kisses let me remove your tears,

The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,

They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,

Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,

They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,

The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,

The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.

 

Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?

Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

 

Something there is,

(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,

I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)

Something there is more immortal even than the stars,

(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)

Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter

Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,

Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.