From Quadrivium to... Trivium

New from www.woodenbooks.comBeauty for Truth's Sake was about the four liberal arts known collectively as the Quadrivium. I wanted it to be as practically helpful as possible to people working to reintegrate wisdom and a sense of beauty and the sacred back into education. On this blog and on the main site where the book is listed I continue to place material to supplement what is in the book. One of the resources I recommended is a series of little...

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Look and Learn

Classical Montage by Angus McBrideFor a boy like me, growing up in England in the 1960s as part of the middle class, Look and Learn is a phrase to conjure with. It evokes whole worlds of imagination and knowledge. Look and Learn was a weekly educational magazine that was carefully built up over the years into a bound set of encyclopedias, each issue full of wonderfully informative and interesting stories and pictures. (This picture is used by kind...

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In space no one can hear you sing...

The old idea of the "music of the spheres" seems to be coming back into fashion. Astronomers at the University of Sheffield have managed to record for the first time the "eerie musical harmonies" produced by the magnetic field in the outer atmosphere of the sun. They found that huge magnetic loops coiling away from the outer layer of the sun's atmosphere, known as coronal loops, vibrate like strings on a musical instrument.Other astronomers...

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To affirm the material

In my book I write about 'poetic knowledge' and the importance of imagination as a vehicle of truth. One of the key figures in the English Romantic movement - worth more than a brief mention - is William Blake, who died in 1827. He was influenced by, among other things, Jacob Boehme’s and Emmanuel Swedenborg’s astonishing visions of inner worlds and the “new Church” of the Spirit; but also by his friend Thomas Taylor’s powerful translations of the...

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The Pope on the Pavement

When Pope Benedict XVI visited the United Kingdom in September, one of the most striking images was of him sitting side by side with the Archbishop of Canterbury, trading polite speeches, on the Cosmati Pavement of Westminster Abbey. That pavement is worthy of some attention, especially if, like me, you are interested in the symbolic meaning of geometrial forms and their role in the great cathedrals of Christendom. (The following notes are abridged...

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A dance of light

Following on from my previous post (The Sea, the Sea), it is worth noting that G.K. Chesterton had a very different and less sympathetic impression of Impressionism. To quote Fr Aidan Nichols' brilliant study, G.K. Chesterton, Theologian:At the Slade Chesterton also acquired an extremely hostile attitude to the painterly mode called Impressionism, a hostility that not only later defined much of his attitude to art at large but was formative for the...

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The Sea, the Sea

Golden Wave, by Piers BrowneWhat is it about the seaside? Is there anyone who does not feel liberated and uplifted by standing on the shore and looking out to sea? Feet planted on the rocks, gazing at the living waters, breathing the charged air, seeing the horizon-line where the sea meets the sky... just add a bonfire, or stars overhead, and all the archetypal elements are represented - as though we were present at the creation of the world. Piers...

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Are women more beautiful than men?

In ancient thought, it was often assumed that the male of our species is more beautiful than the female. Certainly this was the assumption in Greece, and Plato’s dialogues reflect a virtual cult of male beauty. However, I think I have theological proof to confirm my longstanding suspicion that woman are more beautiful than men. See what you make of it.According to John Paul II’s theology of the body, discussed in the latest issue of Second Spring,...

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Lost Tools of Learning

I thought readers might like to know about an article by Brad Birzer (author of a good book on Christopher Dawson) over on the "Imaginative Conservative" blog concerning the importance of the Liberal Arts revival for the future of Western civilization: What Might Help Hold Us Together. Also recommended is The End of Literature by Ben Lockerd.Barbara J. Elliott writes on the same blog. In her The Power of Beauty, she says:Art has the twin functions of reflecting a culture and shaping it. The problem that contemporary artists face is a difficult...

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Images of heaven

We live in an age of images, in which photography and photoshop, CGI and advertising, surround and enfold us in an inescapable cascade of pictures and fragments of pictures, sometimes to the extent of seeming to create a whole artificial world. The elderly are often dependent on the TV that serves as a companion and tranquillizer, the young live their lives through the computer screen on their phone or laptop. The word "icon" now signifies for most...

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In praise of tradition

The word tradition derives from trans- "over" and dare "to give".  In every traditional society or civilization, a process takes place that can be called a “handing over” of the stories, the knowledge, the accumulated wisdom of one generation to the next. It is a handing over which makes each new generation into a source of wisdom for the one that will follow. What is handed over is a “gift”. It is not simply a bundle of property whose title...

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The Golden Circle

In chapter 4 of my book I talk about a rectangle inscribed within a circle. Naturally there are an indefinite number of such figures. Take the diagram on the right, kindly produced by Michael Schneider. Look at the outermost circle, and the largest rectangle that lies inside it, touching its circumference at A, B and C. You could move points A and B nearer to the left-hand end of the horizontal diameter of the large circle, or else push them further...

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Analogy

The use of analogy is fundamental for human thought and language, and in particular for theology. Derived from the Greek analogia "proportion" (ana- "upon, according to" + logos "meaning" or "word"), it refers to the way we compare one thing with another on the basis of some likeness or similarity. It is more complicated than a simile, which happens when I straightforwardly compare one thing to another ("God is like a light"). It is also more complicated...

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Exploring patterns

If you enjoy geometrical patterns or colouring or even if you are contructing a tiling system for your kitchen or bathroom, you might want to look at this site from Altair Design. Teachers and parents might like to look too, to see some activities to get kids painlessly interested in geometry. Explore the site - it has a huge variety of patterns that you can colour online, a competition you can enter, and a gallery of the best examples done by other...

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Symmetry

Symmetry is one element of beauty, and in the book I describe how a physicist attempted to locate all particles on a grid consisting of the most symmetrical object conceivable – and failed. Does this failure disprove the coinherence of beauty and truth? Hardly. For in fact a slight departure from symmetry can be even more beautiful. This is true at many levels. In the early moments of the big bang, if matter and antimatter had been exactly balanced...

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The Two Cultures

The phrase was made famous by C.P. Snow’s Rede Lecture of 1959, in Cambridge, England, which was viciously attacked by the critic F.R. Leavis in 1962 and later, more moderately, by Lionel Trilling in America, generating a major controversy in academic circles concerning the relationship of arts and sciences. (See C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures, with an Introduction by Stefan Collini, Cambridge University Press, 1998.) The controversy recalled a famous...

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The Alhambra

In their early period of rapid expansion the Arabs took over the Middle East, acquiring and preserving much of the ancient learning. They also developed it, picking up in many ways the intellectual torch of the Greeks. There was a brief shining moment some centuries later when Europe was able peacefully to absorb the knowledge of the then vastly superior Islamic civilization, through translations made in Toledo and the efforts of adventurers like...

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Essence of Beauty

Traditionally, truth, goodness and beauty are properties of all being, of everything that exists, in one degree or another. Truth is being as known - the correspondence and coherence of the idea and the reality. Goodness is being as willed - acting in accordance with the fullness of that which is. What, then, is beauty? Beauty is being as enjoyed, as rejoiced in – that which, when seen, pleases. This is why Etienne Gilson can say that man is a creature...

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The I of the Beholder

May is such a lovely month in Oxford, with the blossom coming out everywhere. But many people remain convinced that it is purely subjective - that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". The architect Christopher Alexander developed an empirical test that points in another direction. He calls it the "Mirror of the Self". Subjects who disagree when asked which of two objects are most “beautiful” will suddenly show a remarkable degree of agreement...

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Help in teaching math

I have come across a number of books and websites that math teachers may find helpful - or, come to that, teachers of other subjects who want to build bridges for their students to the mathematical aspects of their own topics. There are the classics, such as Constance Reid's From Zero to Infinity: What Makes Numbers Interesting, and H.E. Huntley's The Divine Proportion: A Study in Mathematical Beauty. Several others are mentioned in my bibliography, including Michael S. Schneider's and Clifford A. Pickover's. These books are full of exercises,...

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Everything connects

In practical terms, what can a university do to encourage the sense that "everything connects", that the individual disciplines concern aspects of a "whole", that the meaning of those disciplines depends on that which transcends them? In many cases it is not possible to redesign the curriculum. Nevertheless, it must be possible to do things within existing structures that will move things gradually in the right direction. We spoke, for example,...

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Transmodernism

Are we being modern, postmodern or premodern when we seek to recover and integrate the "lost wisdom" of the ancient world within the contemporary university? In discussing the point among the faculty of the University of St Thomas in Houston after the Earth Day lecture recently, we came up with the term "transmodern". It contains echoes of the "transcendent", and the prefix trans- suggests we are looking "across" the modern world, as well as beyond...

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A veiled presence

While in Houston I took the opportunity to visit the Rothko Chapel right across the road from the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum, near the University of St Thomas and the Menil Gallery. Both chapels use modern materials to create an appropriate space to serve the art within. The Byzantine frescoes from the Church of Cyprus show Christ Pantokrator and the Blessed Virgin, with angels.They are displayed in a glass chapel at the heart of the structure...

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Creation and the University

I am currently in Houston to give the Earth Day Lecture at the University of St Thomas. I want to thank the staff, faculty and students, Sister Damien Savino FSE, the John Paul II Forum, and the Basilian fathers, for being so kind and gracious to me. Our discussions around the lecture focused largely on the question of how to implement the educational approach that my book tries to introduce and explore, and I hope to report more on these discussions...

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Cosmology of the Sacraments

Sandro Magister's excellent website has reproduced one of the Pope's Easter homilies where he talks of the symbolism of the four sacramental elements (which correspond I suppose to the ancient "natural" elements of water, earth, fire and air). The Pope goes on to develop the link between oil and the priesthood. The whole thing is fascinating. Here is an extract:There are four elements in creation on which the world of sacraments is built: water,...

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Beauty on the Cross

For Christians, the place to look for answers to all the important questions is the Cross of Christ.  In that Cross, read in the light of faith and tradition, we can find the keys to unlock the doors of the world.  And what we see there is not a distant world of Platonic archetypes, but the Archetype of archetypes wedded to the world, and allowing itself to be crushed by the world in order to transform it. The figure on the Cross, covered...

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Astronomy and Music

Two very enjoyable TV series are currently unrolling on the BBC, one on Astronomy and one on Music (two of the seven Liberal Arts, the first being traditionally regarded as the application of Geometry and the second of Arithmetic). They can be watched online, at least in the UK, and the associated websites provide excellent resources for educators. If you can't access them through the BBC, they are available as segments on YouTube. The Wonders of...

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How the World Is Made?

One of the topics in my book is so-called "sacred geometry". I didn't do it justice, of course. It need a lot more, and better, illustrations, but that wasn't an option at the time. So instead, as readers will know, I recommend the work of educator Michael Schneider. He seems to strike the right balance of enthusiasm and sanity, and his book is full of nice pictures and geometical constructions. Unfortunately, sacred geometry and number along with...

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Homeschooling

This blog has become a bit of a jumble - partly because the topic of education is so broad it touches on everything.  I have added a list of relevant links and postings on the left under 'Schooling etc.' There you will find some material on Homeschooling, Unschooling and Primary Schools. I am in touch with a number of small groups of homeschoolers around the U.S. who are trying to develop novel and interesting approaches. Charlotte Osterman's...

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Song of the Angels

“'The angels sing praise to the Creator, and in doing so, they, with Holy Wisdom, bind and heal the created order.' ...It is this song of the angels that we should listen out for, now that the coming of Christ has reunited humanity with the celestial liturgy that Adam heard before the fall."In this way the Telegraph columnist, Christopher Howse, concludes his very fine piece about the Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent book this year, Lucy Winkett's Our Sound is Our Wound. The book is not all about the Angels (please read the full description),...

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Primary education

The question of reforming Catholic education at every level should not be reduced to an ideological battle between Left and Right. It is not a matter of adding some more or different religious instruction or imposing a more rigorous moral code within the school. The defects of Catholic education run deeper than that. We need more effective religious instruction, of course, but we also need holistic educational reform across the board. In our quest...

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Simplexity

The world as a whole is complex, but it is also a unity. It is “simplex”, founded on simple principles. Poets, painters, scientists and mathematicians are all searching for simplexity in their own way. Aesthetic pleasure is very largely the delight we feel in seeing order, meaning and relationship – the beauty that Coleridge called unity in variety. But it has to be an order unforced, seemingly spontaneous, rather than brutally imposed upon the material....

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Music of Creation in Tolkien

“There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will." (Hamlet V.II.)Both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien saw the creation of the world as taking place in some way through music. Readers of the Narniad will recall Aslan singing Narnia into being in The Magician’s Nephew. As for Tolkien, he composed a whole “Elvish Book of Genesis” in the form of the Ainulindale, the opening section of the posthumously published Silmarillion, describing...

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Sacred Music

In Beauty for Truth's Sake I introduce the subject of music but for those who wish to go more deeply into it I recommend Jeremy Begbie's Resounding Truth (2007). You may also like to read an article in First Things by David P. Goldman, called "Sacred Music, Sacred Time". Goldman argues that there are objective criteria for achieving a musical form that raises our minds and hearts towards God: Whether it is Bach or Mozart that we hear in church, we...

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Catholic Church Architecture

I have just been reviewing the most gorgeous book for the next issue of Second Spring journal (an issue on "theology of the body" that will be out in the spring). It is by Denis McNamara of the Liturgical Institute, and is called Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy. Though it looks like a coffee-table book, it is a feast for the mind and heart as well as the eyes, and completely complementary not only to David Clayton's work,...

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The Mystery of One

Yesterday was the first day of a new decade. The image of two overlapping circles and ten triangles is a geometrical way of representing the interplay between numbers - Ten emerging from One via Two. Thus One is the first number in the Decad. Or is it? In p. 56 of the book I mention that, according to the Pythagorean tradition, One is not a number but the "number beyond number". Saint Maximus the Confessor inherits and explains this tradition, according...

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