How Aristotle may help us Conceptualize the Conflict between Ordinary Perception and Modern Science Annotated Bibliography This project serves to fulfill a requirement of PHS 611: Classical Logic and Epistemology, taught by Dr. Philippe Yates, Spring 2018 Continue reading The Two Tables from an Aristotelian Perspective
The angle a tangent line forms with the circumference of a circle is is least possible angle made with a straight line from that point of tangent (tangent line EA in the image). This is demonstrated in Book III, proposition 16 of Euclid’s Elements. The angle formed by the tangent is also known as a cornicular or … Continue reading Smaller than the Smallest Angle (formed by straight lines)
I think I know how to speak the truth, that it is easy to do so. The first chapter of Henry Clouds book Changes that Heal served as an excellent reminder that speaking the truth is not easy. Not because it is so hard to so those tough things, but because I often think of truth as … Continue reading Grace & Truth: Thoughts on Changes that Heal, Chapter 1
We study the world that we may understand Scripture, and Scripture teaches us to truly read the world. Is this a conflict of principle or a vicious circle? No, it is the ordinary course of human learning elevated to a glorious pitch. God is pleased to use the things of His creation as a tutor unto … Continue reading On Christian Doctrine: The Rule of Scripture and Knowledge of the Profane
Kierkegaard’s reaction seems to correspond not only to what is happening in the Danish church, but in the overall attitude symptomatic of Modern Philosophy and the Enlightenment. This period of history might be characterized as the era of the ‘fact’–the era where human reason stands over and at a distance from the objects it studies. … Continue reading Kierkegaard in the Age of Fact
Words are not first to little children, but sound. They are thrust, in media res, into a world of sounds. But those sounds they hear spoken by men and women are actually words, though the child does not experience them as such. Yet the cause and reason a child is hearing sound is that adults are … Continue reading Words vs. Sounds: Elements or Wholes?
We feel a pressure at first only unconsciously. There is something wrong with the world or with us. And so we push back. We plan our victory, the great comeuppance. We take refuge in an idea. Or we simply rebel. We begin to structure are lives and our hopes for the day when we shall definitively … Continue reading It’s not Going to Stop
freely adapted from a class in Moral Philosophy at New College Franklin
Euclid The study of Euclid’s Elements serves as an excellent example of the contemplative learning process. Proposition 5, an early proposition in the text, marks a turning point for most students, where they must not only identify a chain of equalities (something akin to a hypothetical syllogism), but do so in transposition. Whereas students needed only identify equality by imposing … Continue reading The Poetics of Faith and Learning, Part 1
Stories are so much more than spoonfuls of sugar which help the moral medicine go down. Because all of God’s activity has the structure of narrative, stories are the habitat in which ethical realities exist. As water is to fish, so is narrative to ethics. For this reason, stories play an integral role in our moral education, and … Continue reading Well Wrought Stories and Moral Judgment
Same & Other 