The Chumash shiur given by R' Schwimmer at the Tessler home each Friday night during the (extended) winter season is always filled with chidushim and gives me a new perspective on the parasha in particular and Chumash in general. Some shiurim, though, just "hit me where I live." R' Schwimmer gave us particularly deep insight into the machlokes brought by the ba'al hagada about whether there were 10, 40, or 50 plagues in Mitzrayim. Before that, though, we need some preliminaries.
Chazal (and, in fact, ancient philosophy/science in general, beginning with the Greeks) talk about the four elements: fire, air, water, and earth. You may be thinking, "Hah! Those silly old fashioned thinkers! Now, of course, we know there are over 100 elements!" The fact that chemists -- who are just the modern incarnation of alchemists -- call those "elements" is no more impressive to me than what rabbis of the Reform Jewish Religion call Torah. In fact, the word "element" in science simply means a substance comprised of only one kind of atom. What was "atom" -- again, a Greek concept -- supposed to mean? The smallest fundamental -- indivisible and indestructible -- building block of all matter.
Why did natural philosophers (the original scientists) think there should be fundamental building blocks in the first place? Ultimately it is because implanted in every human being is the innate knowledge that there is a Single and Unique Creator of all. But people -- led by Greece -- wanted to believe that they were the be-all and end-all, so they looked for ways to simplify nature and thereby aggrandize themselves. So they started looking for fundamental building blocks and they found the so-called elements; which we now know means "smallest unit that cannot be further broken down by chemical processes." This was a resounding success. Consider, for example, how many things can be made out of just the four elements hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen? Check it out:
| Category | Examples |
|---|---|
| Life Essentials | Amino acids (proteins), Nucleobases (DNA/RNA), Carbohydrates (sugars). |
| Atmospheric Gases | Carbon dioxide (CO₂), Oxygen gas (O₂), Nitrogen gas (N₂), Water vapor (H₂O). |
| Fuels & Energy | Methane (CH₄), Methanol (CH₃OH), Nitromethane. |
| Medicine & Drugs | Caffeine (C₈H₁₀N₄O₂), Morphine, Paracetamol. |
| Explosives | TNT (C₇H₅N₃O₆), Nitroglycerin. |
What happened? We physicists, aka real, pure scientists (oh yes, a ton of arrogance in that statement; it also happens to be true), discovered that what the alchemists (I mean, let's call a spade a spade) called "atoms" and "elements" were not atomic nor elemental at all. Afer all, we were back to way too many elements to be really, well, elemental. We discovered that atoms were comprised of protons, neutrons, and electrons, and also muons. What led us to seek something more fundamental than elements/atoms? There were just too many of them! For a long time, science was happy with claiming that everything was ultimately comprised of those four elemental particles: protons, neutrons, electrons, and muons. Physicists, ever restless, kept digging. After some time, dozens and more types of subatomic particles. That led to more research/digging. That led to quarks and gluons and... some have suggested that we will always find more divisible parts and just call everything "partons." (By the way, the name "glouns" is because they glue the quarks together; I kid you not.) "Quarks" comes from a literary reference: ‘Three quarks for Muster Mark’ in Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939), because there were, originally anyway, only three quarks. So you see that we physicists are also the scientists with the best sense of humor, and we are also the most literate. Some other scientists may disagree; they are wrong.
Ok... enough history. What does this have to do with the plagues and the four elements? Instead of looking for particles, it is more fruitful to look for forces/natures/potentials. Using that scheme, we find that there are, in fact, four fundamental forces (that's the most commonly used term, so I am sticking with it for simplicity): strong nuclear, electromagnetic, weak nuclear, and gravity. These four forces control the interactions of everything from the tiniest realms of subatomic ranges we have been able to explore to the grandest scales of galaxies in the observable universe. These forces are all at play, and their relative strengths at different scales are what lead to the manifold structures of our everyday life.
The balance is key. If gravity were slightly weaker or stronger, we wouldn't have stars, planets, and galaxies; everything would just fly apart or collapse into one big "chunk." Everyone knows that "like charges repel and unlike charges attract." That keeps electrons bound to nuclei. But it should also make the nuclei fly apart (since all the protons are the same charge), but the strong and weak nuclear forces keep that in balance, making atoms possible, which makes molecules possible. And if the balance between electromagnetic and nuclear forces were to change even the least amount (people have studied how precise the balance has to be), then everything would fall apart. Life itself and existence as we know it would be impossible and unthinkable without this extraordinary balance of the four fundamental forces. The Greeks also knew this idea and added the "aether" to the mix. Aether (or ether) acts as a fifth, superior element—often called quintessence—that binds, permeates, and balances the four classical elements.
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