edited by: ALBERTKIRSCH Boston University
Boston. Massachusetts 02215
Introducing "Chemical Bondsw-A Chemist's Approach to the Novel, "Ragtime" Albert S. Kirsch College of Basic Studies Boston University Boston. MA 02215
With this column, THIS JOURNAL is beginning a new feature devoted to exploring the "bonds" between chemistry and other areas of the curriculum and of life in general. While our primary audience is chemistry teachers, we hope to reach teachers in other areas: imagine the JOURNAL stategically placed on the coffee table in the faculty lounge. Indeed, it is hoped that the contributions will not be limited to those of chemistry teachers but will come also from English or social studies teachers and others. A Little Background One project of this type that I was involved in may he of interest, a t least by way of example. Our students read E. L. Doctorow's novel, "Ragtime" ( 1 ), and their professors gave lectures on it which were then discussed in smaller groups. Since the logistics of this project depend on the setup of our program, let me describe this first by way of hackground. Boston University's College of Basic Studies (CBS) offers a two-year general education program for students who either apply for it directly or (in most cases) are referred by other colleges at the University after failing to meet their admissions requirements. (Of those so referred, about half are admitted to CBS.) During the first year, the students take a prescrihed set of five courses: physical science, social science, humanities, rhetoric, and psychology; in the second year, they are required to take hioloeical science. social science. and humanities courses and to elect one course each semester in their intended maior. Those successfullv cornoletine CBS oroceed directlv into the junior year a t the BU college of their choice. A unique feature of the program is the team system. An incoming freshman class of, say, 600 students is divided into teams of 120, each of which meets as a unit for lectures (in some cases, with other teams) and in sections of 30 for discussions. Each team has its own set of five professors (one for each course) who share a suite of offices, and this entire unit stays together as a kind of "mini-college" for the academic vear. A similar arraneement is made for so~homores.The " system is intended to provide the student with more personal contact with the faculty, closer supervision, and more support in the event of academic or personal difficulties (the psychology professor is also a trained counselor) than would otherwise he the case a t a large university. The svstem also Drovides an ou~ortunitvfor interdisci~linary pojects to hiset up by thefaculty, ilthough they-are hroadlv constrained hv the fact that the courses are collegewide, not peculiar to each team. The project descrihed here IS one of these. "Ragtime" was assigned for the Humanities course, and the faculty members of the team were invited to give lectures and attend the discussion sections of that course. T h e lecture I cave was in Dart related to the historical hackground of chemistry, and I will focus on that here. Chanter 20 of the novel describes a fictitious dialoeue hetu,ren .I. P. hhmgm and Hew? Fnrd at \ h g d l l ' j residence i n Ncu, Yorl, I n rhii nmver>atiun \ l . w a n inritr. Fcml 1%)rtr m an expedition to Egypt to unearth the secrets of the pyramids,
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Journal of Chemical Education
which he (Morgan) hopes will take him a step closer to the "secret wisdom" of the Rosicrucians. What does all this have to do with chemistry? Philosophy and Science Science, has, of course, been influenced by philosophical assumptions as well as it has influenced them in turn. Heisenherg put it simply: "[Wlhat we observe is not nature in itself hut nature exoosed to our method of auestionine" (2).
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traditions in science: the organic, the magical, and the mechanical. In the first,nature is described as living, the language used in that of growth and decay, and an underlying purpose is assumed. One normally associates Aristotle as the major figure in this tradition. In the second, the scientist is seen as seeking to possess the secrets of nature and to gain power over it; the changeless world of the philosopher was seen as essentially a mystery which could he approached sympathetically through intuition and numerology, rather than logically and dispassionately. This tradition has heen called the Hermetic or Neonlatonic and underlies alchemy and the Renaissance revolt against medieval Aristotelian scholasticism. The mechanical tradition, the latest to emerpe, reduces nature to forces and motions and is associated with Galileo, Descartes, and Newton in the seventeenth century. In the main lectures in the CBS science course, we have discussed the chemical revolution some months earlier and were now tracing it backwards, in a sense, to the Copernican revolution. The lectures followed a rather simplified version of Kuhn's presentation (4). The essential point was made that, during the Renaissance, the Hermetic/alchemical tradition :I p m \ e r i ~ intluwwe ~l ,>nt'w h t i , org~ni,.tr~tdiriml>~tid pernims' thinkine. Io ienir, l,iolt,gicni ,t\.lt id r ~ p l . t u : ~ t i w ~ acre heirtg rcplnctd cur suplhmt.nted, I,? vlwmic:~lsrylc.. Henaissanc~hutnanint. murht r u lend :iurlmrity r u rhcir i n sights by citing sages even more ancient than Aristotle. The most popular was Hermes Trismegistns, an apocryphal figure variously identified with the Egyptian god of wisdom, Thoth, or even Moses. Copernicus himself (5)cites Hermes as calling the sun "the Visible God" as justification for placing it a t the center of the universe. I t is in this cultural context that ParThis feature explores all sorts of connections with chemistry-bonds with other sciences: with society, energy. and the environment: and with philosophy and litera-
ture. Albert Kirsch is an Assistant Professorat Boston University. He is involved in the Freshman Science program in College of Basic Stwliesand also leaches accelerated programs in Boston University's Metropolitan College. His previous academic in-
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College, Brooklyn College, and Rice University. Dr. Kirsch received his Ph.D, from the City Universitv of New York in 1971 and his B.A. from Columbia university in 1 9 6 1 He has particiwith General and ~iber.31 Studies has resulted in his active interaction in these areas. He has published and presented numerous papers which
reflect his concerns and interests in these areas.
acelsus, for one, rebelled against Galenic medicine and the alchemists' search for gold, and sought to apply chemistry to (,6,) medicine ---~ By the early seventeenth century, the Neoplatonic mode of explanation had become at least coequal in stature with the scholastic, and many felt that the secrets of nature would he revealed in essentially the way the alchemists viewed it. In "Ragtime," Morgan complains: "The rise of mechanistic science, of Newton and Descartes, was a great conspiracy, a great devilish conspiracy to destroy our apprehension of reality and our awareness of the transcendentally gifted among us" (pp. 171-172). In short, the newly rediscovered alchemical secrets were shortly to he submerged again by the rise of the third tradition, this allegedly soulless mechanical mode of explanation that took over physics in Newton's time and chemistry a century later. ~~
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A Springboard
In my lecture I used Morgan's remark as a springboard to discuss the Hermetic tradition, its role in the history of science, and some philosophical consequences of this. The tradition is often neglected in freshman courses (I think we are more embarrased by the mysticism than by Aristotle!). The scholastic universe was finite and eartb-centered: God ~ Hermetic~vas n a s m t l w ~ ~ ~ l~~r ,ski~~in. nl g~s u r p
