Does Gandalf Know About Atoms?

This question is brought to you by me waking up at 1 am for no good reason.

So, do atoms exist in Middle Earth? I think that might be a tricky question for other fantasy worlds but the implication in Tolkein’s books is that the magical world we see is the past of our world or a world very like our world. From the first books of The Silmarillion to the end of The Lord of the Rings, the world gets less magical and more human. Indeed, the destruction of the One Ring itself hastens the process leading to major magical figures leaving Middle Earth at the end (sorry, spoliers!) It’s a neat aspect of the stories because it adds a note of melancholic loss to everything. There is also an intruding modernity that is in league with evil in the form of Saruman, a magical being who is nonetheless committed to accelerating the shift to a more industrial world.

What has that got to do with atoms or why am I picking on atoms rather than other bits of modern science? Metaphysically, as we’ve discussed before, there are contrasting views of reality that predate modern physics and “it’s all a bunch of atoms” was one of those views. Alternatively, we have Platonic ideas about higher orders of abstraction or more naive ideas about essences. These ideas that things are like how they are because they have an essence of the thing that they are, really suits magic and magical thinking (in the non-pejorative sense). Elves and humans are different in kind to the extent that the half-elven progeny of human+elf couples got to choose (with divine help) whether to be elves who are partly human (Elrond) or a human who is partly elf (Elros, first king of Numenor). Mortality was a gift of the gods rather than an emergent property of the biology of half-elves.

Saruman looks forward to a world of machines and semi-automated manufacturing. As a wizard, it is not his natural domain of expertise but his work is a contrast to the artisanal craft of dwarves, the elvish Noldor and even Sauron himself who is characterised as a craftsman of sorts. These approaches to making stuff are obviously not incompatible or imply different kinds of an underlying reality. However, in our own reality, industrial material science and modern chemistry depend on modern atomic theory, whereas the amazing crafts of pre-modern times did not require people to know about or have any sense of atoms.

In other words, Middle Earth shifts from a base reality that works via essences and the underlying nature of things to one that can accommodate our modern understanding of the world. So were the atoms always there but magically divine organising principles took precedent or did the world just become more atomic as magical influences departed? EIther choice works I guess.

Does Gandalf know about atoms? From the back lore across all the books, we know that Gandalf is a sort of demi-god but one in the form of a human. Saruman, who is of the same kind of thing as Gandalf, thinks of himself as human or at least of humanity. However, if the gods of Tolkein’s worlds are anything then surely they are being more purely of essences and organising principles? Or perhaps, Gandalf and Saruman are essentially possessing a bunch of atoms meat-robot style? Either way, both of them are very smart so either:

• They do know about atoms because they understand how the world is changing.
• They don’t know about atoms because they don’t need to know about atoms to use magic or just generally operate in the pre-modern societies of Middle Earth.
• Saruman knows about atoms because he is into that sort of stuff but Gandalf doesn’t know about atoms because why would he?

OK but Gandalf is into FIREWORKS and that’s where I start leaning to Gandalf having some sense of more modern chemistry. Gunpowder predates modern atomic theory and also Gandalf has a special expressly magical interest in fire, so Gandalf doesn’t HAVE to know about modern chemistry to make his clearly magical fireworks. However, he is also very smart and has divine powers, so he does have a reason to actually pay attention to how chemical reactions happen.

In short, I think it makes sense to imagine that Gandalf knows about atoms. Radagast doesn’t though.