Themes, specific topics or issues, demand an interdisciplinary approach if one is to have a picture of the situation as a whole. Fears used to be expressed that such an approach was shallow. The ABC people behind 'Background Briefing' on the Australian Broadcasting Corporations' Radio National always research the issue very thoroughly, whether, for example, it is 'Piracy off the coast of Somalia', so important because it interferes with maritime trade via the Suez Canal or 'Rare earth metals - growing interest in green technology' or an examination of Dr Ronald Wright's Short History of Progress. Themes may be tackled in a longitudinal way, providing historical perspectives through documented speeches or articles by men and women from all kinds of backgrounds, in all kinds of disciplines and with all kinds of positions. That is the case with Lapham's Quarterly. Each quarterly has a theme. The one to which I refer now is Lapham's Quarterly: Book of Nature, Volume 1, Number 3, Summer 2008. Besides the Introduction by Lewis Lapham, always worth reading, are so many 'Voices in Time' from so many different nations and periods. One might ask the question why Janus, the two-headed god in profile, is the image he has chosen for this brilliant quarterly magazine. In this issue, among many others across the centuries, are the voices of Charles Darwin, William Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley and Rachel Carson who wrote The Silent Spring. The website is www.laphamsquarterly.org Where might exploration of this theme of 'The Book of Nature' take someone who chose it? But consider the following possibility as a theme - this time coming from Greek mythology. Prometheus
The classical Greek story of Prometheus has been brought into the stories of significant people since the Enlightenment of the 18th century. The story itself is worth knowing. In some respects it can be read as a cautionary tale. In classical Greek plays, Aeschylus was a writer of tragedies. His play Prometheus Bound made clear what would happen if some one dared to usurp the power of the gods in any way. Prometheus stole fire from the gods as a service to humanity. In the 18th century those who had any education, before public education was established, knew classical Greek and Latin. When English settlers sailed the to New World, they took their knowledge and books with them. Later, for Americans to give Benjamin Franklin, at one time America’s Ambassador to France, the title of the American Prometheus was to make him extraordinary. In calling him an American Prometheus they took one part of the myth and ignored the rest. Percy Bysshe Shelley so approved of the actions of Prometheus on behalf of humanity that he wrote a poem ‘Prometheus Unbound’ to free his hero from the chains that bound him and from the punishment he had to endure. Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein was subtitled ‘A Modern Prometheus’. Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin called their impressive biography of ‘the father of the atom bomb’ American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Prometheus has had an even more powerful impact in modern Greece. In 1974 a South Australian poet and Chief Justice of the Supreme court was at Epidaurus where Aeschylus’s play was being performed. It was a time when the Colonels had taken power. The performance of this play was in defiance of the authorities. John Bray’s poem ‘Epidaurus 1974’ published by Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 1988 in Satura: Selected Poetry and Prose by John Bray would tell a story that appeals to all who oppose tyranny. That poem would take its reader into the modern political implications of being a Promethean. In his collection of poems, The Apple that Astonished Paris, published by the University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, London, 1988, the U.S. Poet Laureate of the time, Billy Collins, has a poem ‘The Frankenstein Poet’ which grows out of the construction of that artificial man by Frankenstein, the scientist. Today, the name of Prometheus is sometimes changed into the adjective, Promethean, to describe a feat of great daring. That adjective need not always make a connection with the way in which Prometheus was made to pay for his actions.
On ‘Ockham’s Razor’ Sunday April 18th 2010, on the ABC’s Radio National Robyn Williams introduced Douglas E Richards who spoke of the need to bring to students ‘concepts that send their imagination soaring’. He writes books for young people between the age of 8 and 13. These books are The Prometheus Series. ****************************
Marine science studies open up new themes for exploration. While some themes invite the investigation of the impact of mythology on the way we see and engage with the world around us, others may take us into aspects of the natural world, perhaps the marine world. Two contributors to Challenging the Divide did just that. Janine Baker sometimes took us to the shoreline. Dr Scoresby Shepherd brought us the 'Ionian Enchantment', connecting poetry and science, that was the approach to knowledge in ancient Greece. From there he took us into the wondrous places and lives which are there for the marine ecologist with his or her aqualung, and the scuba diving scientist who might also be a lover of and writer of poetry inspired by this world beneath the waves.
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