A Periodic Table in every EnglishClass

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Why Every English Classroom Should Have a Periodic Table

"I was going home to dinner, past a shallow pool, which was green with springing grass... when it occurred to me that I heard the dream of the toad. It rang through and filled all the air, though I had not heard it once. And I turned my companion's attention to it, but he did not appear to perceive it as a new sound in the air. Loud and prevailing as it is, most men do not notice it at all. It is to them, perchance, a sort of simmering or seething of all nature. That afternoon, the dream of the toads rang through the elms by Little River and affected the thoughts of men, though they were not conscious that they heard it. How watchful we must be to keep the crystal well that we are made clear!" Thoreau

How reminiscent of emerson's:
"To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. ... In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, –– no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, –– my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, –– all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye–ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of World."

Thoreau and emerson, both transcendentalists, stressed the interrelatedness of all things. The relationship of the springing grass to the shallow pool... and the dream of the Toad which one does not hear and yet is so loud and prevailing– perhaps Thoreau is only referring to those late fall sounds from out back. Perhaps that's all that he means. Or perhaps he is looking well below the surfaces at those patterns that hold nature together, those that pass beneath our view. I think it must be the latter, for why else the "DReAM of the toads". And why didn't he just hear it? Why did it "occur" to him that he heard it? It must not be an actual sound and it must not come from an actual toad. He must have had a thought of some sort. An idea of the interrelatedness of all things in nature... The grand system.. The "simmering or seething of ALL nature."

When the chemist looks below the surface at the relationships among the pool, the springing grass, and the toads, there are streams of chemical equations that underlie and attach seemingly dissimilar objects within the system. The physicist might well ponder that the entire universe may be held together and completely described by 12–15 mathematical equations. Imagine the density of interrelationships that must exist beneath the surface from that perspective!

Perhaps the greatest work of abstract art to date is the periodic table.
I think it must be, by far, although I don't believe that it is recognized as a work of abstract art. It is certainly abstract enough. All of those symbols of atoms. And the atoms themselves, to which the symbols refer, are not all that un–abstract themselves. And the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated things, F then Ne then Na! the thoughtful, knowledgeable viewer, observing the periodic table will experience such a wealth of ideas, of patterns and processes. How is this in any way unlike abstract art? Is it because the original evidence for the periodic table came from experiment? Perhaps the entire physical world is housed within it, mysteriously, deeply, with an incredible variety of patterns and Themes interrelating its objects. There is room within it to construct every mountain range and room also to make the most delicate living forms. Like most sources of modern art, if you are not in the know, the most wonderful relationships will go unnoticed. Both Thoreau and emerson make just this point above. "How watchful we must be to keep the crystal well that we are made clear!"

To grasp the immensity of the periodic table, one must understand ionization potentials, atomic radii, patterns of electron structure, combining capacities, electronegativities, charges on ions, etc. Etc.

Imagine, they are all there. And they are essential to our understanding of the interrelatedness of our world and ourselves. The boxes in the table are important indeed for not quite the same reason that the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in Manhattan humorously displayed, for many years, a kind of periodic table of ears. Ears do not change shape as a step function but atoms do. One atom does not change continuously into another atom. Rather, the atomic number leaps by an integer, from 1 to 2, without ever passing through 1.3459, more like the step changes in notes from a piano than the continuous changes on a violin string. Like the notes on a piano, and combinations of those notes, and the spaces between notes, and the relationships among patterns of notes, what a wealth and variety of music can emerge from just a single piano, all from those few keys. But of course the piano is simply no match, artistically, for the bewildering array of structures and patterns that leap from the periodic table. The piano itself, and every other musical instrument, and every musician, is the stuff of the periodic table. As I stare at the table, the lines grow dimmer and dimmer and patterns swirl about and sweep across the table as it grows larger, simmering and seething, until it encompasses the entire world and then the universe. All of nature. It is all there. It is an abstract landscape of my world.

So here we are, in our Englishclass, wondering what Thoreau meant by the Dream of the Toad, wondering what is this simmering and seething of all nature, what is it, beneath the surface that ties and interrelates all things. And we have the greatest work of abstract art hanging on our wall across the hall in a science classroom, the ultimate evidence for the transcendental model. Why must a student of Englishseek evidence only in the writings of other literary authors. Writers and scientists study the same world using, of course, different methods and apparently, different languages. But when the ultimate evidence for a particular period of literature is well known to scientists and is taught matter–of–factly to 13 year olds in high schools everywhere, why is it inaccessible, even inadmissible in a literature class? Is it possible, any longer, to study Thoreau without a Periodic Table? Are the lines between the fields of study so great that evidence in one field is not translatable into another?

Try to Convince YOUR EnglishDepartment!

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Books and other Periodic Table Items >>   Element Playing Cards | Eric Scerri and his Book | The Periodic Table: Its Story and its Significance | Periodic Table, Chemistry, Atoms, and Element Book Briefs

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