CHEMICAL MYTHOLOGY

I graduated from Veszprém University of Chemical Engineering in 1961. Since then I have been teaching chemistry at the same University for forty-one years. I have taken my doctor’s degree of vibrational mean amplitude calculations for molecules. In my educational work I had to notice that pictorial representation helped the understanding considerably. This way I discovered the chemical sculpture making. The very fast change of chemical surroundings around us brings pressure to come to the awareness of the fact, that the three basic factors of chemical creations, primordial material, energy and the existence giving form, act in our body just like in our experiments and chemical technologies. As the range of action of the chemical forces are unlimited we are permanently part of the mutual chemical interaction of the universe. So we have to be aware of this in every moment of our activity. We can bring these to nations’ knowledge by showing the most important chemical facts in pictures in a good agreement with pictorial thinking of Human being. Myths have used the same method for thousands of years. Sorry to say neither machine-, nor chemical industrial technology based civilisations built out socially active myths that would be practized in fitting rites. In accordance with these technologies the teaching and education of the young is materialist in conception, which would need objective, vividly (pictorially) descriptive methods in interpretation. As a contradiction of these, the methods of interpretations are rather abstract, verbal and mathematical ones. The pictorial thinking is rather suppressed, although human thinking was proved by experimental data to be basicly pictorial. Eugene Fergusson, an American historian of technics writes in his work The Minds Eye: our technology involves a determinig part that is the product of pictorial thinking (traffic, telecommunication, transportation). We may add to this, that all the important basic thoughts and acts useful for the survive of Human being were done in the time of pictorial- and mythological human thinking. We may think among others of the elaboration of languages, the writing, the methods of the production of food, improve of sorts in plants and animals, the working methods of materials, the metallurgies, the organization and government of human communities, -nations and -empires. The myth is a pictorial formulation of the creation and function of the universe. The moral order based on myths could maintain the human life on the road of the intellect, self-knowledge and satisfaction for thousands of years. Although the establishment is materialistic we follow the way of abstraction and mathematics. Perhaps this is because of the belief, that the language of functioning of nature is the mathematics. John Neumann the inventor of computer said it to no effect: the language of functioning of human brain is not the mathematics. The mistake stands perhaps in the misunderstanding of myths. The scientists of chemical science and -tecnology take them in the literal sense, in spite of the fact, that myths show in poetic pictures how the universe were created and how it is functioning. Carl Gustav Jung said: intellectual dialogue is necessary between the believer of myths and science, because the science is necessary for our body while the myth is needed by our soul. The dialogue may develop those pictures that can prevent to close ourselves into one extreme or to the other. Let us consider the successes of the Far easter countries. Their myths have not been annihilated by the haters of the myths as ours were done and as an addition the pictorial character of their writing system makes their pictorial thinking even more effective.
 
 

0. THE ANCESTORS (The elements of chemical creative factors. Chemical Trinity)

1 THE FIRST GENERATION (Particles: electrons)

2 THE SECOND GENERATION (Atoms)

3 THE THIRD GENERATION (Molecules)

4 THE FOURTH GENERATION (The chemical science)