#WingedWordsWindsday: 2023/07/05 -- Ancient STEAM: Powering the Future!

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled & Edited by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 2, No. 36: July 5, 2023

 

Ancient STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Math

 

An Introductory Note from the Editor

                Much has been written in recent years about preparing young people for careers in STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. However, when we add an “A” (for “Art”) to STEM, it becomes STEAM – which demonstrates that art is the fertilizer that can make STEM grow! 😊 In the ancient world, STEM and STEAM were inseparable, because both were considered to be divine gifts that had been bestowed on humanity for the purpose of improving the world (in Hebrew, this concept is known as Tikkun Olam).

                In this week’s feature, we have some articles about the sciences and the humanities, plus some poems from the ancient world which illustrate how scientific knowledge was shared with a popular audience – not through articles in peer-reviewed journals, but through poetry that was composed and performed by highly trained, professional poets. We conclude with two poems from more recent times, which demonstrate how this tradition of blending STEM with STEAM can be carried onward into the future.

 

“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.

 

“Hesiod: The Poet-Sage of Ancient Greek Agriculture”

By Rob Chappell, M.A.

Adapted & Condensed from Cursus Honorum XIII: 1 (Autumn/Holiday 2013)

Hesiod’s Writings Available Online @ https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Hesiod

                 The practice of agriculture and the art of poetry are as old as human civilization itself, and many writers of the ancient Mediterranean countries composed works of poetry dealing with agricultural subjects. One of the earliest agricultural poets known to us is Hesiod, a Greek sage who flourished in the eighth century BCE. He is best remembered for two major poems that he composed: the Works and Days and the Theogony (Birth of the Gods).

Hesiod Listening to the Inspirations of the Muse

Edmond-François Aman-Jean (France, 1860-1935)

France, circa 1890

                The Works and Days is an agricultural almanac in verse, addressed to Hesiod’s brother Perses, who managed their family farm. The poem goes through the annual cycle of the seasons, explaining what kind of agricultural work needs to be done at any given time of year. Since Hesiod and his contemporaries lived long before the invention of atomic clocks and desktop calendars, the poet described how to keep track of time by watching the stars:

 

“When the Pleiades, Atlas' daughters, start to rise, begin your harvest; plow when they go down. For forty days and nights, they hide themselves, and as the year rolls round, [they] appear again when you begin to sharpen sickle-blades; this law holds on the plains and by the sea, and in the mountain valleys, fertile lands far from the swelling sea.” à Works and Days: Lines 383 ff.

In addition to agricultural advice and astronomical lore, the Works and Days also includes retellings of some famous Greek myths (e.g., “The Five Ages of Humankind” and “Pandora’s Box”), along with witty proverbial sayings, which ensured its popularity among rural and urban audiences alike for centuries to come.

                The Theogony contains traditional stories about the beginning of the world and the origins of various members of the Greek pantheon in a brilliant synthesis of epic mythology and philosophical allegory. The poem opens with the tale of how Hesiod, while still a shepherd, became a poet:

 

“From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing, who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon. … Thence they arise and go abroad by night, veiled in thick mist, and utter their song with lovely voice. … One day they taught Hesiod glorious song while he was shepherding his lambs under holy Helicon. … They plucked and gave me a rod, a shoot of sturdy laurel, a marvelous thing, and breathed into me a divine voice to celebrate things that shall be and things there were aforetime.” à Theogony: Selections from Lines 1-35

                 Hesiod’s poems are wonderful food for thought, not only because they are highly edutaining, but also because they show that at an early stage in the development of Classical civilization, the arts and the agricultural sciences were very closely linked together in the seamless web of everyday life. Hesiod, the master poet of his age, grew up on his family’s farm, worked as a shepherd, and earned national acclaim as a poet by besting Homer in a poetry contest at Delphi (although he probably didn’t quit his “day job” as a shepherd). J

                Across a gulf of 28 centuries, Hesiod presents us with a timely challenge: to “think outside the box” of our individual academic disciplines to create a holistic worldview that satisfies both the mind and the heart. 

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

 

“The Four Elements” (Opening Stanza)

By Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

 The Fire, Air, Earth and water did contest

Which was the strongest, noblest and the best,

Who was of greatest use and mightiest force;

In placid Terms they thought now to discourse,

That in due order each her turn should speak;

But enmity this amity did break

All would be chief, and all scorned to be under

Whence issued winds & rains, lightning & thunder

The quaking earth did groan, the Sky looked black

The Fire, the forced Air, in sunder crack;

The sea did threat the heavens, the heaven’s the earth,

All looked like a Chaos or new birth:

Fire broiled Earth, & scorched Earth it choaked

Both by their darings, water so provoked

That roaring in it came, and with its source

Soon made the Combatants abate their force

The rumbling hissing, puffing was so great

The worlds confusion, it did seem to threat

Till gentle Air, Contention so abated

That betwixt hot and cold, she arbitrated

The others difference, being less did cease

All storms now laid, and they in perfect peace

That Fire should first begin, the rest consent,

The noblest and most active Element.

 

“A Student’s Evening Hymn”

By James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)

 

Now no more the slanting rays

With the mountain summits dally,

Now no more in crimson blaze

Evening’s fleecy cloudless rally,

Soon shall Night front off the valley

Sweep that bright yet earthly haze,

And the stars most musically

Move in endless rounds of praise.

 

While the world is growing dim,

And the Sun is slow descending

Past the far horizon’s rim,

Earth's low sky to heaven extending,

Let my feeble earth-notes, blending

With the songs of cherubim,

Through the same expanse ascending,

Thus renew my evening hymn.

 

Thou that fills our waiting eyes

With the food of contemplation,

Setting in thy darkened skies

Signs of infinite creation,

Grant to nightly meditation

What the toilsome day denies —

Teach me in this earthly station

Heavenly Truth to realize.

 

Give me wisdom so to use

These brief hours of thoughtful leisure,

That I may no instant lose

In mere meditative pleasure,

But with strictest justice measure

All the ends my life pursues,

Lies to crush and truths to treasure,

Wrong to shun and Right to choose.

 

Then, when unexpected Sleep,

Over my long-closed eyelids stealing,

Opens up that lower deep

Where Existence has no feeling,

May sweet Calm, my languor healing,

Lend note strength at dawn to reap

All that Shadows, world-concealing,

For the bold enquirer keep.

 

Through the creatures thou hast made

Show the brightness of thy glory,

Be eternal Truth displayed

In their substance transitory,

Till green Earth and Ocean hoary,

Massy rock and tender blade

Tell the same unending story —

"We are Truth in Form arrayed."

 

When to study I retire,

And from books of ancient sages

Glean fresh sparks of buried fire

Lurking in their ample pages —

While the task my mind engages

Let old words new truths inspire —

Truths that to all after-ages

Prompt the Thoughts that never tire.

 

Yet if, led by shadows fair

I have uttered words of folly,

Let the kind absorbing air

Stifle every sound unholy.

So when Saints with Angels lowly

Join in heaven’s unceasing prayer,

Mine as certainly, though slowly,

May ascend and mingle there.

 

Teach me so thy works to read

That my faith — new strength accruing, —

May from world to world proceed,

Wisdom's fruitful search pursuing;

Till, thy truth my mind imbuing,

I proclaim the Eternal Creed,

Oft the glorious theme renewing

God our Lord is God indeed.

 

Give me love aright to trace

Thine to everything created,

Preaching to a ransomed race

By thy mercy renovated,

Till with all thy fulness sated

I behold thee face to face

And with Ardor unabated

Sing the glories of thy grace.