Subject: another old discussion
Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 08:39:45 +0200
From: Sune Nordwall <Sune.Nordwall@home.se>

[someone] wrote:

Haven't read the book [later comment by S.N.: this refers to a University of Massachusetts Press work entitled, "Earth, Air, Fire, Water: Humanistic Studies of the Environment."], but briefly checked out the review. Doesn't appear to me anyone is suggesting the "four elements" model replace the atomic model in science education. The book is about a humanistic approach to environmental studies, and the "four elements" are a metaphor for the "mystical" ancient connection of humanity to nature.

The metaphor continues to be appealing, certainly, and probably relevant too, understood in this poetic fashion. That would be a far cry from arguing that children should be taught the "four elements" model as fact (which is what you achieve by having them copy them repeatedly into their notebooks with lavish illustrations and without discussion).

I sincerely doubt the authors of the book you cite would want their own children taught that, but this is typical of how WE defenders grab at respectability by tossing out something academic or sophisticated-sounding that actually has no relation to WE and doesn't in any way support WE practices.

Nobody suggests that the perspective of 'atoms' be replaced with the perspective of 'elements', as the repeated off the point polemical argumentation by different critics on this list tries to make it out. In WE one starts with the first in the lower grades and then passes on to the second in the upper grades as perspectives on matter.

To understand matter in a deeper sense and the different ways it has been approached in history and philosophy, you need both perspectives. WE tries to do build an understanding for both in a systematic way.

[someone else[ brought it up Thu, 04 Jan 2001 in a thread on '([someone]) on an 'unenlightened' comment'. I answered the same day.

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> The elements are earth, water, fire and air;

'Elements' in the traditional sense 'are' what since long back in history (for at least 1300 years since Greek Antiquity) was called 'earth', 'water', 'air' and 'fire'. It is the basic term in the history of ideas, when describing the basic components of the world as it for very long was experienced as something that 'lived' between the basic touch experiences of degrees of warmth and humidity (see my article on 'Science' at my site, as also as some of many examples, for example http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch10.htm and http://philosophy.wadsworth.com/mitchell_wisdom/sample_ch.html).

A more 'atoms'-oriented understanding and perspective on  substances has later developed during the last hundreds of years, leading to the development and use of the term 'chemical elements' to describe basic substances out of a perspective of the number of protons in the 'core' of their 'atoms'.

'Elements' and 'atoms' constitute the two basic perspectives of substances, the first more reflecting the dynamic aspects of matter, the second more reflecting possible static aspects of matter.

In waldorf schools, that through the grades tries to mediate an understanding of the development of humanity, one in the lower grades mediates an understanding of the 'elements', the basic dynamic aspects of matter, corresponding to an earlier perspective on man and nature.

In the upper grades this in chemistry is developed gradually into an ever more differentiated understanding of the nature of substances from first a chemical perspective, out of basic chemical processes, leading finally to an understanding of the character of the different groups of chemical elements as they are reflected in 'The periodic system' of chemical elements.

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Regards,

Sune Nordwall
Stockholm, Sweden

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