The Old Humanities and the New Science — John Shaqi
The Old Humanities and the New ScienceOsler, William, Sir
Philosophy
The Old Humanities and the New Science
Osler, William, Sir
Classical education; Science
Nothing reveals the unfortunate break in Humanities more clearly than
the treatment of the greatest nature-poet in literature, a man who had
"gazed on Nature's naked loveliness" unabashed, the man who united, as
no one else has ever done, the "functions and temper and achievement of
science and poetry" (Herford). The golden work of Lucretius is indeed
recognized, and in Honour Moderations, Books I to III and V are set as
one of seven alternatives in section D; and scattered through the
"Greats" papers are set translations and snippets here and there; but
anything like adequate consideration from the scientific side is to be
sought in vain. Unmatched among the ancients or moderns is the vision by
Lucretius of continuity in the workings of Nature--not less of _le
silence éternel de ces espaces infinis_ which so affrighted Pascal, than
of "the long, limitless age of days, the age of all time that has gone
by"--
"... longa diei
infinita ætas anteacti temporis omnis."
And it is in a Latin poet that we find up-to-date views of the origin of
the world and of the origin of man. The description of the wild
discordant storm of atoms (Book V) which led to the birth of the world
might be transferred verbatim to the accounts of Poincaré or of
Arrhenius of the growth of new celestial bodies in the Milky Way. What
an insight into primitive man and the beginnings of civilization! He
might have been a contemporary and friend, and doubtless was a tutor, of
Tylor. Book II, a manual of atomic physics with its marvellous
conception of
"... the flaring atom streams
And torrents of her myriad universe,"
can only be read appreciatively by pupils of Roentgen or of J. J.
Thomson. The ring theory of magnetism advanced in Book VI has been
reproduced of late by Parsons, whose magnetons rotating as rings at high
speed have the form and effect with which this disciple of Democritus
clothes his magnetic physics.
And may I here enter a protest? Of love-philtres that produce insanity
we may read the truth in a chapter of that most pleasant manual of
erotology, the "Anatomy of Melancholy." Of insanity of any type that
leaves a mind capable in lucid intervals of writing such verses as _"De
Rerum Natura"_ we know nothing. The sole value of the myth is its causal
association with the poem of Tennyson. Only exsuccous dons who have
never known the wiles and ways of the younger Aphrodite would take the
intensity of the feeling in Book IV as witness to anything but an
accident which may happen to the wisest of the wise, when enthralled by
Vivien or some dark lady of the Sonnets!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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