Invoking Aristotle: Of Rings of Power, Stones, and Ships
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go back to 2022), which ultimately came down pretty sour, but I have never taken delight in the ubiquitous show-bashing one sees online. On the other hand, notwithstanding the appearance of certain rumours about the upcoming season, I have felt very little motivation to chase the updates 2022-style – at least until we have something solid to work with. No point in fretting over Tom Bombadil silliness.
No, today I am revisiting a much-mocked scene from the very first episode. The ‘why does a ship float’ scene. I have discussed this before, but I thought to look at it in more detail.
Elves – the scientifically-minded Noldor, no less – are seemingly unfamiliar with Archimedes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27_principle). Shocking – though I daresay a few of the online critics scoffing over this would actually mangle Archimedes themselves, should you put them on the spot.
Let’s move away from the scoffing. Archimedes says this:
Any object, totally or partially immersed in a fluid or liquid, is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object.
But what does ‘weight’ mean to these people? We would say ‘force due to gravity’. Which in turn invokes the concept of ‘gravity.’ Isaac Newton had much to say about that.
But neither Archimedes nor Tolkien’s Elves had Isaac Newton. We have no idea what the Elves thought about gravity, but we do have an idea of what the Greeks (and thence the West, prior to Newton) thought. The question of why objects fall or rise is dealt with in pre-modern terms by Aristotle.
Today, we know Aristotle’s physics is wrong… but it was the prevailing conception in the West for two millennia. Aristotle’s theory here might be summarised as: ‘Matter is a combination of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Each element tends towards its natural place.’ Earth has a pull towards Earth – that is, downwards, because the Centre of the Earth is its natural place. Air rises, because the atmosphere is its natural place. Fire burns upwards because it wants to be with the hypothetical Ring of Fire that surrounds the atmosphere – the natural place of Fire.
In short, under Aristotle’s system, objects are heavy because they contain a lot of Earth – and thus he (incorrectly) reasoned that heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones.
But let us return to Rings of Power. Finrod talks of a stone ‘only seeing the darkness,’ and so wanting to descend into the depths. Aristotle would say a stone seeks (very strongly) to be in its natural place, namely downwards towards the Centre of the Earth. Neither Finrod nor Aristotle are imagining that the stone is actually conscious – but they are both talking of a natural attraction. Finrod then talks of a ship seeing both light and darkness – that is, it has a pull upwards as well as downwards, a desire to be with the light as well as the darkness. One can see how this has an echo of Aristotle’s combination of elements, and what that implies about where those elements ‘want’ to go. See Book IV of Aristotle’s On the Heavens for the gory details.
So essentially Finrod gives us a sort of pre-Newtonian justification for heaviness and lightness, as filtered through a prism of poetic metaphor. It doesn’t necessarily contradict Archimedes either, merely giving a underlying ‘reason’ for why these forces exist at all. Newton himself did not presume to explain what gravity was – he merely contented himself with describing its effects.
Am I giving Rings of Power too much credit here? Probably. But consider this a counterweight to the online sniggering about that particular scene.
A Phuulish Fellow 
I’m OK with someone eons before Aristotle having an even weirder idea than he had. In that scene, the objectionable thing is that the writers apparently have forgotten what it’s like to go down to a creek with a child. When they’re turning over rocks or some other scientific inquiry, they sound much different. They’re all about observation and activity. If you’re trying to set up a character as an action hero, then making her sound all philosophical in the intro doesn’t work.
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I would actually argue that the scientifically-minded Noldor were more likely than not unaware of Archimedes’ principle. (Not that I see any contradiction to Aristotle’s physics to begin with.) If they had actually been interested in buoyancy and ships, well, that would have spared them so much grief later on. And the hardest thing for me to believe is that the Noldor could have just a lukewarm interest in something, e.g. enough to figure out how and why objects float but not taking it further.
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