Way back in the mid-1970s before the sexy term ‘chaos theory’ had ever driven books onto the best-seller lists, I took a course with a decidedly unsexy title: The Qualitative Analysis of Ordinary Differential Equations. In that course, we learned how to analyze potentially unstable systems such as a planet orbiting the sun so that … [Read more…]
I’m being somewhat unfair in titling this series of blog posts as if Pope Benedict were responsible for the lack of response by Christian thinkers to the opportunities and problems presented by modern empirical knowledge. It’s creative thinkers who’ve failed over the past five centuries or so, perhaps because of the general cultural decay narrated … [Read more…]
Where do I go from here? I probably should go more slowly than I did in my previous entry: Engaging the Thought of Pope Benedict XVI: The Ascent of the Human Mind. In that posting, I was unleashing my mind and imagination, trying to map the entire path from here to there in one image. … [Read more…]
If anyone would like to check out my Lenten meditations from 2007, they can be found, starting with Ash Wednesday, at February 21, 2007: Ash Wednesday. You can follow forward from that posting. I won’t be writing any Lenten meditations this year, because of my schedule and a certain level of exhaustion because of my … [Read more…]
Minutes after posting a critique of Pope Benedict in which I claimed he needs to develop a stronger appreciation for modern empirical knowledge (see Engaging the Thought of Pope Benedict XVI: The Need for Respectful Criticism), I received a newsletter from the Vatican News Service in which the Holy Father spoke in complimentary terms about … [Read more…]