Welcome to our class blog on Elemental Philosophy, a fall 2020 Honors freshman seminar at St. Joseph’s College in Patchogue, New York. The course was inspired by David Macauley’s text, Elemental Philosophy and serves as a tribute to his thoughtful and provocative tour through human reflection and image-ing of the natural world around us. I encourage to visit Macauley’s blog. David has a new blog on the aesthetics in every day life that I highly recommend.
As our semester develops, I hope the students will get actively involved in constructing and developing our site. If you are visiting our site by happenstance, please feel free to comment–as long as you are genuinely interested in our topic and are not trying to sell something! This is a new experiment in interactive knowledge building and I welcome collaborative suggestions.
You will find that I have been working on this site since May 2012 but with a hiatus of a number of years!
I hope to have some guests visit us to speak about their work. Artist Dawn Lee, chair of our own Art Department, creates magnificent art with nature as a central theme. Hopefully she will share with us her work on the elements in nature.
Finally, I realize during the trying times of spring 2020 into summer as the world battles a pandemic, we are all aware of the power of nature, including the human mind and spirit.
W. C. Turgeon
4/28/2020
Artist Andy Goldworthy’s art captures the illusive relationship of nature to human