by John Mays
Those following this blog will wish to note the recent changes on CAP's website. There is no longer a blog tab at the top of the home page. Instead, CAP's blogs—including the Novare Science blog—are now accessed from the Resources drop-down menu.
And for those not following the Novare Science blog: What are you waiting for? The Novare Science blog is where I continue to post reflections oriented around taking our work as science educators to new levels. Sign up!
And speaking of taking science education to new levels: I hope you saw the announcement about my new series at ClassicalU entitled Science and the Symphony of Creation. I think it is my best work yet. In the announcement I noted that the series is about all the stuff that should be going on in our science instruction other than the technical content of the science text, and there is a lot that should be going on. The more I think about it, the more I am persuaded that this "metacontent" is even more important than the science content. After all, the science content changes as scientific discovery proceeds. What does not change is the fact that creation does not invent or create itself—its being is contingent on the Ultimate Source of Being. Creation's meaning does not derive from itself, but from the One who loves so much that for sheer Love He exploded creation into existence and his own Incarnation in it as part of the bargain. It is this Cosmic Act of Participation with us and love for us that must define for us everything about the nature of our relationship with Him.
If science teachers stick merely to the laws of physics and chemistry in the texts, we create a false impression in our students minds of what science is, what its limits are, what the nature of the world is, what our place in the world is, and what the nature is of our relationship to God, the world, and our thinking about both.
One more thing: Also new at ClassicalU is the wonderful series of interview questions with David Bentley Hart, whom I have been reading and following intensively for several years. I commend these to you.
The year 2022 has been a violent one: The exhausting war in Ukraine, the ongoing terror of Covid-19, the calamity of financial upheaval in various markets, and the infinitely sad continuation of poverty and disease all over the world. In the midst of all this violence, there is only one source and place of Peace. May the Peace of Christ be with you in this Advent season.
