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The restoration of science education begins
with a return to sound philosophy--especially philosophy that does not
contradict traditional Christian philosophy. Classical (or
Aristotelian) science is "deterministic", which means that it is
concerned with the ends or purposes of nature. Modern science is
"mechanistic", seeking to understand the means of action in
the natural world, but never the ends for which things act--especially
the theological ends.
This is the fundamental issue that plagues modern science courses and
the reason why Christians cannot simply baptize a modern science
program and claim it as their own.
Modern lab-based science has a fatal flaw:
it is a study of extracted and isolated parts of the natural world, but
never the parts in the natural world. Thus, while modern
scientists may have knowledge of individual parts, their knowledge does
not always lead us to an understanding of the whole. This is
evident no more clearly than in agriculture and medicine today.
Despite increase crop production, hi-tech agriculture has devastated
farm land in less than a century. Despite the advances in medicine
and combating disease, little is done to prevent disease, and even less
to explain the right use of health.
Classical Physics values that knowledge which helps us to understand all as it is in
reality and in the complexity of "real life".
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Aristotle's Physics was the
authoritative natural science text from 300 BC until the time of the
"Scientific Revolution" in 1620...over 1900 years! While modern
science has led to many lab successes, its philosophical shortcomings
have led to great losses in human wisdom and piety. |
