#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.

 

 

#WingedWordsWindsday: 2022/07/20 -- The Game of Life: A Yulefest in July Message

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 38: July 20, 2022

 

The Game of Life:

A Yulefest in July Message

 

“The Game of Dominoes and the Game of Life”

By Rob Chappell, M.A.

(Adapted and Expanded from the “Legacy of Leadership” Column in the October 2012 Issue of the Illinois Administrative Professionals Newsletter)

 

“We have to make people lift their eyes back to the horizon, and see the line of ancestors behind us, saying, ‘Make my life have meaning.’ And to our inheritors before us, saying, ‘Create the world we will live in.’ I mean, we’re not just holding jobs and having dinner. We are in the process of building the future.”

à Captain John Sheridan in Episode #37 of Babylon 5 (“And Now for a Word”)

Have you ever created an elaborate picture with dominoes that have to be tipped over, one by one, in the proper order, so that the picture turns out exactly the way you wanted it to be? Human life resembles a picture made of dominoes, and (for the sake of analogy) the dominoes in such a comparison could represent individual people and the plans that these individuals make for their lives (and the lives of others, too). I had a memorable conversation about this topic with my [then] sixteen-year-old cousin, whom I like to call “Ambrosiastra” (which means “Immortal Star” in Latin) during Spring Break [in March of 2012]. The substance of my conversation with her follows, along with a few enhancements and practical applications mixed in for good measure. J

If we understand the dominoes in our comparison as individual people and the plans that they make, then the picture I described could be used to help us understand how and why we got here and what we are supposed to be doing. We are alive right now, and doing the things that we do at this point in time, because our ancestors lived their lives in such a way as to make our existence and accomplishments possible (whether they knew it or not). Our ancestors grew up, learned a trade or skill, emigrated from one country to another, met and married their spouses, raised children, sent them to school, etc. Because our ancestors survived and thrived amid life’s challenges, we are here today.

Here is where the comparison gets really interesting (and Ambrosiastra agreed with me on this point wholeheartedly). We are not always aware of the consequences of the plans that we make; we cannot see into the future to measure all the ways in which we will influence other people and their circumstances. However, we can (to a certain extent) arrange ourselves (like dominoes in a row) in such a way as to make our inheritors’ lives better than our own. We can align ourselves with the row of ancestors behind us, and the row of inheritors in front of us, so that we can “fall into line” and keep the overall pattern unfolding.

 

“The Domino Players” (1898) by Friedrich Sturm illustrates the idea that human history unfolds like a picture made with dominoes. Our ancestors started the game, and we can align ourselves with their knowledge and wisdom to keep the game going in a positive direction for all humankind. By listening to our forebears’ voices from across the centuries, we can appreciate their ideals and use them to create our own future.

One implication of this comparison between human life and dominoes in a picture is that when we meet a new friend, it is the result of some very statistically unlikely occurrences. So we should, by implication, be grateful for all the friends that we have and the opportunities that come our way to improve their lives along with our own. It also goes without saying that we should also be grateful for the opportunity to have families and to be connected with other people through our common ancestors. We should also remember that we are all part of the one great human family, and for this reason, our friends can become like relatives to us, given enough time.

But setting up a picture made of dominoes requires patience – just like the unfolding of human life. We all have so many dreams and aspirations for ourselves, our families, and our friends – but sometimes, it seems to take forever for events that we are waiting for to happen, no matter how hard we may try. As J.C., a wise and witty ACES James Scholar, once wrote on her Twitter page, “No one likes to play the waiting game. ‘Tis why it’s not sold in stores.” J Nonetheless, patience is an essential ingredient in any recipe for making progress through life (and in creating a picture made from dominoes, too).

So let us do our best to be good ancestors to our inheritors, and line ourselves up like dominoes in a row so that the best possible future can unfold through our efforts. We cannot know exactly what the finished picture of humankind’s overall story may look like, but I am certain that it will be something really magnificent when it has been completed.

 

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

à J. R. R. Tolkien (1872-1973): The Lord of the Rings (Book V, Chapter 9)

 

Excerpts from The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902)

By L. Frank Baum (1856-1919)

 

Book I, Chapters 6 & 7

Everything perishes except the world itself and its keepers. But while life lasts, everything on Earth has its use. The wise seek ways to be helpful to the world, for the helpful ones are sure to live again.

Yet every man has his mission, which is to leave the world better, in some way, than he found it.

 

Book II, Chapter 11

It is true that great warriors and mighty kings and clever scholars of that day were often spoken of by the people; but no one of them was so greatly beloved as Santa Claus, be-cause none other was so unselfish as to devote himself to making others happy. For a generous deed lives longer than a great battle or a king's decree or a scholar's essay, because it spreads and leaves its mark on all nature and endures through many generations.

 

Book III, Chapter 3

“In all this world there is nothing so beautiful as a happy child,” says good old Santa Claus; and if he had his way, the children would all be beautiful, for all would be happy.

 

“For a life worthy to be lived is one that is full of active aspiration, for something higher and better; and such a contemplation of the world we call meliorism.”

à Paul Carus (1852-1919): Monism and Meliorism (1885)

 

Some Poetical Wisdom from Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

 

From “Ulysses”

 Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 

From “Locksley Hall”

 Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,

Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade,

Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime

With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;

When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed:

 

For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see,

Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew

From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,

With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunder-storm;

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled

In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,

And the kindly Earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.

 

From “Locksley Hall Sixty Years After”

 Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single tongue,

I have seen her far away -- for is not Earth as yet so young?

Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion killed,

Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert tilled,

Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles,

Universal ocean softly washing all her warless Isles.

 

Only That which made us, meant us to be mightier by and by,

Set the sphere of all the boundless Heavens within the human eye,

Sent the shadow of Himself, the boundless, through the human soul;

Boundless inward, in the atom, boundless outward, in the Whole.

 

Follow you the Star that lights a desert pathway, yours or mine.

Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is divine.

Follow Light, and do the Right -- for Man can half-control his doom --

Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb.

Forward, let the stormy moment fly and mingle with the Past.

I that loathed, have come to love him. Love will conquer at the last.

 

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and everyone, and make that Best a part of my life.

à Helen Keller (1880-1968): Optimism (1903)

 

“The Elixir”

By George Herbert (1593-1633)

 Teach me, my God and King,

In all things thee to see,

And what I do in anything,

To do it as for thee:

 

A man that looks on glass,

On it may stay his eye;

Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,

And then the heaven espy.

 

All may of thee partake:

Nothing can be so mean,

Which with his tincture (for thy sake)

Will not grow bright and clean.

 

A servant with this clause

Makes drudgery divine:

Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,

Makes that and the action fine.

 

This is the famous stone

That turneth all to gold:

For that which God doth touch and own

Cannot for less be told.

 

Conclusion of Abraham Lincoln’s (1809-1865) “Address Before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society” (9/30/1859)

Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the Earth endures, shall not pass away.