Wacky Word (Friday!): Hylomorphism

Hylomorphism, n.

The doctrine that primordial matter is the First Cause of the universe.

GKC "Orthodoxy" -- All the world's a stage

"According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free.

God has written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it."

GKC: "Orthodoxy" -- the Universe

"According to these people the cosmos was one thing since it had one unbroken rule. Only (they would say) while it is one thing, it is also the only there is. Why, then, should one worry particularly to call it large? There is nothing to compare it with.

It would be just as sensible to call it small. A man may say, 'I like this vast cosmos, with its throng of stars and its crowd of varied creatures.' But if it comes to that why should not a man say, 'I like this cosy little cosmos, with its decent number of stars and as neat a provision of live stock as I wish to see'? One is as good as the other; they are both mere sentiments."

Artes et Scientiae Liberales

What is a liberal arts education?

It was a question for a class I took last spring, "Artes Liberales." I practically drowned in that class. So much heady, philosophical, spiritual, intellectual, ontological stuff that I could hardly keep my head above water -- let alone keep up with the reading.

Yesterday, we had convocation (no worries; graduation is yet to come, but however it works, convocation comes early here). In we trooped, a long-expected flash mob of silly caps and gowns, the graduating class of 2012 (or whatever percentage of that population that decided to show up) to present ourselves to the world as an educated group of adults. We grouped together, smirking at our smartness, like the inside joke that it is. We took our places and waited to nod over the never-failing, annual praise and laud of the humanities.

It never came.

The speaker, a bombastically-snow-white-haired physics professor, stood up at the podium and asked the question:

What would the liberal arts be without the sciences?

Now, in no possible parallel world of any dimension could you accuse me of being a science-y kind of gal. I still can't understand binary beyond the "ten kinds of people" joke (and I've tried so many times!); the noble gasses are as much a mystery as gasoline; and the only pyrotechnics I perform are in the kitchen. I prefer paper to plastic, letters to numbers, and every time I talk about the sky being blue, or polar bear's fur being white, or light being yellow, my dad carefully and concisely corrects me.

But I do appreciate the professor's point, and, what is more, I defend it.

In this world of the MRI and the GPS and the WWW, how can any liberally-educated individual dismiss the importance and necessity, the very wonder and fascination of science? A number of humanities majors, shrugging their shoulders after the speech, laughed and said, "sure, I can imagine the arts without the sciences. What a fine life! No worries about having to flunk out of boring biology labs." They dismissed the question with an artistic shudder. They, you see, had chosen a better life, and were above and beyond that common sort of nonsense.

Without someone to ace that very lab, though, we would have no antibiotics. No fireworks. No frozen pizzas. No air conditioning. For goodness's sake, people, no air conditioning! Consider that.

Even worse, no marshmallows. What horrors.

The professor showed us a fabulous slideshow of photos of the universe. We saw the earth from the close side of the moon. We saw the Milky Way from above, lying before us like a great oozy swirl of blood and glitter in a glass of, well, milk. We saw the furthest point in the universe ever to be photographed. These photos filled me with wonder and fascination. I've seen such photos before; every third grader has. But here, I saw them with a liberally-educated point of view. Before my eyes, I saw the truth, the beauty, and the goodness of the world. What marvel is this! What Aristotelian nonsense have they been pouring into my head: to think that there is goodness and beauty and truth in the physical world, and in the study of the material?

My dear humanity fellows, beyond the practical, pragmatic application of the sciences to life, you should also see the greatness and the splendor and the magic of it all. There is something alive and breathing and wriggling in an earthworm, that even the most marvelous book cannot ever hope to imitate. There is more color and power in the darkest corner of the blackest hole than in all the ink of every newspaper ever printed. When you stand in the bright morning sun beneath a well-boughed, leafy tree, you should see what Newton saw, just as well as what van Gogh saw. Light is bursts of zinc yellow just as much as it is both waves and particles.

So I tip my hat to the scientists.

On the flip side of the argument, though (you didn't think I'd let you off that easy, did you?), scientists likewise need to learn to appreciate the arts. How many physicists scoff at Dickens! How many chemists turn up their noses at Monet! How many times have I been asked, "So, what exactly do you do as an English major? Sit around and read books all day? How is that going to get you a real job in the real world? How are you going to be able to live?"

Please God, I hope to live well. I hope to apply the wisdom and knowledge (such as it may be) that I have picked up piece by piece these past four years, and I hope to put them together in new and colorful connections to form a world of understanding.

We often speak of the two branches of a religious life: the active and the contemplative. While some religious orders adhere more to one lifestyle than the other, all orders incorporate some aspects of both. For the layman, I wonder if the arts and sciences are not similarly applicable. A liberal arts education is one in which these two aspects of life are brought together in harmony. A liberal arts education means making connections between seemingly disparate parts, and understanding how all together they form the multi-faceted, multi-dimensional, infinitely-complex structure of life.

Like bread and butter, Holmes and Watson, hobbits and holes, cups and saucers, the arts and the sciences belong together.

G K Chesterton: "Orthodoxy"

"If I leave a man in my will ten talking elephants and a hundred winged horses, he cannot complain if the conditions partake of the slight eccentricity of the gift. He must not look a winged horse in the mouth."

You Know You're a Homeschool Family When #3

... the six year old has decided he wants to listen to Mozart at lunch. Not Beethoven, not Bach: Mozart.

Thomas Merton's "Seven Storey Mountain"

"Obscure it was. Oakham's only claim to fame was the fact that it was the county town, and in fact the only real town in the smallest county in England. And there were not even any main roads or main railway lines running through Rutland, except for the Great North Road which skirted the Lincolnshire border.

In this quiet back-water, under the trees full of rooks, I was to spend three and a half years getting ready for a career. Three and a half years were a short time: but when they were over, I was a very different person from the embarrassed and clumsy and more or less well-meaning, but interiorly unhappy fourteen-year-old who came there with a suitcase and a brown felt hat and a trunk and a plain wooden tuck-box." 

How similar this sounds ... ! 

A Toast

Here's to freshman year: yogurt and bison at three in the morning; 10 pm bedtimes; confusion over cliques; confusion over classes; confusion over just about everything. Jean skirts and T-shirts. "Princess Bride" again and again and again.

Here's to sophomore year: midnight Mickey D runs; emotional meltdowns; ice storms; academic meltdowns; sophomoric enthusiasm; life-crises meltdowns. The Therapist is in.

Here's to junior year: drive-by shoutings; giant wasps; life-crises meltdowns; missing persons. A foot in either world, with no paddle to move it. Fire alarm, fire alarm, fire alarm, and no fire.

Here's to senior year: balmy winter; elective classes; Friday-night cheese pizzas and much too much TV. "There's no such thing as coincidence." Meltdowns of different sorts, much too many too count. Engagements, showers, therapy, advice, more engagements. Senior meetings; senior parties; senior stress; senioritis. Convocation, graduation, no elation. Tears, of both kinds; losing salt.

Here's to next year: the unknown, the frightful abyss; the harsh and ambiguous reality of the "real" world; post-academic stress disorder, with no homework, no classes, no papers, no grades. Free time ... ? Hobbies ... ? Asleep before midnight ... ? O, the possibilities ...

Here's to adventure!

You Know It's Time to Leave When ...

... The prospective students all look like a bunch of geeky teenagers.

Oh, wait. They are.

You Know You're a Big Family When #2

... you have to take two cars (preferably car + soccer-mom minivan) whenever you travel altogether.

T. S. Eliot: "Ash Wednesday" Part VI

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit
of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.