Day 1: Why Care About Elements?

If they exist, then they are a fundamental part of everything we touch and of us.

We had serious weather in East Texas, and my flight was delayed yesterday. I’m now here in my temporary office this morning with a view of sunshine, water, and palm trees. Everything at home is fine. I broke my fast with some eggs, fruit, and cheese, made some coffee, took a walk, and am ready to work. My goal today is to write the first chapter, which will serve as the introduction and explanation of method and purpose. Organizing my thoughts feels a bit like cleaning out a closet. I need to dump everything out and sort it into piles. I've read a lot in preparation, and honestly, I'm confused.

Also honestly, philosophy frustrates me. It is not a straightforward discipline with textbooks like in chemistry or Church documents for theology. If you grant assent of the intellect and commit to learning those disciplines, the material is there to learn. Philosophy feels like Jello. Everyone I talk to gives me a reading list, which I greatly appreciate and heed by investment. The confusion is due to varied opinions. Each person has a disagreement with something another person told me to read. This is not a criticism. It is also the nature of graduate work. I'm just saying that it makes me uncomfortable. I tell my own students all the time that it is my job as their professor to guide them out of their comfort zone. Lucky them. They get to learn chemistry instead of philosophy, though.

Enough complaining. I'm not sure where I'll end up on elements, but I know where I'm starting today. Why should you care about them? Elements! Who talks about that? Right? Well, this is how I see it. If elements truly exist in nature, whatever form they happen to take, not as a philosophical idea in ancient treatises or a scientific description in textbooks, but really exist as physically present in the natural world, then everything we see, taste, touch, smell, or hear is most fundamentally made of, and caused by, the elements, not only the things we interact with but also our very bodies themselves. Whatever they are, if they are there, they are part of us. This has always been the root of my love for atoms.

It is all or nothing. If anything is made of or caused by elements, then everything material is as well because they are the so-called building blocks of our world — the trees, your walls, the roads, your blood, your boogers. Elements are fundamental, and that's why humans have always searched for them.

Yet there are two vastly differing views of the elements in classical natural philosophy and modern chemistry. In my thesis, I will compare the four classical elements named by Aristotle and accepted by Thomas Aquinas, fire, air, earth, and water, with the modern elements named by modern chemistry on the periodic table to answer the question: are the elements still elements? I know the word is used equivocally, but I want to figure out why.

I think I’ll break each chapter into specific sections. What is prime matter? Is it three dimensional? What is an element? How did Aristotle and Aquinas think of the elements in general? How did they think of each element, fire, air, earth, water? The idea is to enter Aristotle and Aquinas’s mind and see nature as they did. Then, I’ll cover mixing. What does it mean for elements to mix? Are elements substances? How do elements exist in a substance? And what does this have to do with God? Trust me, it does, or I wouldn’t be writing at all. Truth…not contradicting truth, an assurance that we are all studying the same universe.

Then for modern elements, the trick is going to be to select only the relevant information to paint a full enough picture without writing a textbook.

I like for things to hang together and make sense. I see this project as drawing a line connecting science, philosophy, and theology, and then turning around and wrapping the line into a circle. Each discipline informs the other. When we unite them while respecting each discipline’s autonomy, then we can see better how to think of atoms, elements, and particles in the context of natural philosophy, metaphysics, and divine revelation. Modern science pretty much assumes there is no formal and final causality and only material and efficient. That is how physics, chemistry, and biology are presented in textbooks. That is how I learned it. Although I didn't use the word “form,” I remember asking the questions. Where does the order and structure come from? What is the cause of causes? Why do natural things tend toward an end? This all fits in the theology of creation. Without those bigger questions, chemistry started to perplex me.

I also think, however, that some (certainly not all, just a trend) philosophers and theologians commit the same error. They, albeit inadvertently, leave out half the consideration of causes. They acknowledge material and efficient causality, but they do not undertake a formal instruction in the basics of science. Without understanding what modern science is talking about, it’s hard to critique it sufficiently. I have a vision someday to develop courses like Physics for Philosophers, Thermodynamics for Theologians, or Chemistry for Thomists. They would be fun classes!

The part about final and formal cause? I know. Atheists won't likely agree with this either. I see this conversation as an issue of alignment. If I am convinced something is true, then I want to explore the extremes of it and push the veil back a little further, like I did when my love for chemistry led me to question ultimate origins and purpose. If someone else doesn't start or end where I do, but we align in the middle on some truth, then that is good. That is to say, if an atheist accepts naturalism and I accept theism, then I don’t see why we both cannot find alignment on a view of nature.

This is debatable but I'm thinking of polymer chemistry. Elastomeric fibers (e.g., the spandex in your clothing) are polymers with two kinds of phases. They are designed after natural rubber. Along the polymer strand, some of the segments are liquid at room temperature (soft segments) and other segments are solid (hard segments). As a side brag, I once co-authored the entry for “elastomeric fibers” in the 2007 and 2013 edition of the Encyclopedia of Polymer Science and Technology. Spandex fibers are stretchy because the soft segments flow past each other and the hard segments keep the fiber together. The hard segments are aligned. They literally find each other in solution while the polymer is able to move around, snap together, and hydrogen bond. They crystalize. Then as the solvent is evaporated during the spinning process to make the fiber, the hard segments give the fiber the ability to stretch and return to its original length. Research in elastomeric chemistry involves tweaking the monomers in both segments as well as the ratio of segments. Too soft, and your swimsuit will fall off. Too hard, and your jeans won’t stretch.

So…um…atheists, maybe we could research how to find alignment and hold a true view of nature together perhaps? Even if we are flowing past each other on the other stuff? Be all stretchy and tenacious and crystalize? I'm stalling now…

Off to write Chapter 1. I'm sure I'll be gushing with ideas tomorrow. I hope you have a wonderful day and think about all the elements around and in you!