Materialism: The False God of Modern Science

By |2023-03-01T13:50:50-06:00March 1st, 2023|Categories: Existence of God, George Stanciu, Philosophy, Reason, Science, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

Trained to believe that every object as well as every act in the universe is matter, an aspect of matter, or produced by matter—that is, schooled to be a materialist—I scoffed at the two fellow students of mine in graduate school who regularly attended church. For me, at that time, the brain was the mind [...]

The Phone Lady vs. Smartphone Culture

By |2023-01-10T12:31:37-06:00January 10th, 2023|Categories: Civil Society, Community, John Horvat, Technology|

One enterprising lady has noticed the social void caused by texting and instant messaging and has started a company that teaches phone skills to young people. But can she help resolve the moral problems of an age of superficial and self-centered relationships? Smartphones supposedly made possible an age of unprecedented communication. Everyone, especially young people, [...]

Benedict XVI on Science, Philosophy, & Faith

By |2023-01-02T19:13:58-06:00January 2nd, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, David Deavel, Faith, Philosophy, Pope Benedict XVI, Science, Senior Contributors|

While Benedict XVI may not himself have made great contributions to the natural sciences, he made what is much more important: a contribution to understanding a world in which the truth is one, is God’s, and, from atoms to archangels, is capable of being seen as connected. A great deal has been written about the [...]

Tolkien on Magic, Machines, & Mordor

By |2023-01-02T19:15:49-06:00January 2nd, 2023|Categories: Beauty, Christian Humanism, Conservation, Culture, Dwight Longenecker, J.R.R. Tolkien, Modernity, Senior Contributors, Technology, Timeless Essays|

Do we use our increasingly sophisticated gadgetry and expanding knowledge in an elvish, creative, and artful way to foster beauty and truth? Or do we use technology to manipulate, make money, and gain more power in the world? One of the stress points of the modern age is the pace and power of technology. Will [...]

Thought Into Action

By |2022-12-18T20:27:31-06:00December 18th, 2022|Categories: Books, Science|

Science writing, especially about the quantum world, has come far as a sub-genre of intellectual historiography. Yet it never occurred to me that a narrative of twentieth-century experimentation, let alone one that engages—even grips—the lay reader, could attain the status of dispositive intellectual history. Such is the achievement of Dr. Suzie Sheehy, whose "The Matter [...]

Physics, Beauty, & the Divine Mind

By |2022-10-16T14:49:46-05:00October 16th, 2022|Categories: Beauty, Culture, Featured, George Stanciu, Religion, Science, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

Last week, my wife, a painter-friend of ours, who wishes to be anonymous, and I did the Friday night walk down Canyon Road, the site of numerous galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a small town that is the third-largest art market in the United States. Halfway down Canyon Road, we stopped in at a [...]

Smart Phones and Similes

By |2022-09-15T17:16:47-05:00September 15th, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Glenn Arbery, Senior Contributors, Technology, Wyoming Catholic College|

One of the most delightful things about John Keats's early sonnet, “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer,” is that Keats uses images from the age of global exploration and modern science to describe the feeling of first experiencing what the Homeric poems really are. The classics of the deep past become a vast, unexplored expanse, a [...]

Ernst Jünger’s “The Glass Bees” & Our Dystopian Present

By |2022-08-17T16:22:26-05:00August 17th, 2022|Categories: Civil Society, Fiction, Literature, Science, Technology|

In our protean age of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and virtual reality, Ernst Jünger’s uncanny vision of a dystopian world dominated by the machinations of high tech seems strikingly prescient. “The secret force behind technology appears to be the intention to make things insipid. The flower without fragrance is its emblem.” ~Nicolás Gómez Dávila When Ernst [...]

Can We Live Without Enchantment?

By |2022-08-17T15:32:57-05:00August 17th, 2022|Categories: Modernity, Mystery, Philosophy, Science, St. John's College, Timeless Essays, Truth, Wilfred McClay|

Is the presumptuous mapping of all material reality a boon to humankind, or will it prove a curse? Might an acknowledgment of mystery as a steady and enduring feature of our condition be key to our mental and moral health, and our sense of our own freedom? This essay was co-authored with Donald A. Yerxa.* [...]

The Double Slavery of the Internet… and Liberation

By |2022-08-11T19:40:19-05:00August 11th, 2022|Categories: David Deavel, Information Age, Senior Contributors, Social Media, Technology|

External shackles we will always have with us. Internal ones are the more worrisome, for they are the ones we forge ourselves. My all-too-modern soul requires a great deal of fasting from news, memes, and viral videos lest I develop eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear, and a mind that merely bobs [...]

The New Barbarians: Los Alamos & the End of Mankind

By |2023-07-16T00:52:42-05:00August 8th, 2022|Categories: George Stanciu, History, Science, St. John's College, Technology, Timeless Essays, War|

The Nation-State possesses an absolute moral authority that overrules the authority of any religion and every individual citizen.The new barbarians gave to the Nation-State a weapon that Genghis Khan never dreamed of, a “technically-sweet” marvel that could destroy humankind thrice over on a lazy Saturday afternoon. I am a Romanian gypsy from a long line [...]

On the Value of “Canned” Art

By |2022-07-05T16:17:22-05:00July 5th, 2022|Categories: Michael De Sapio, Music, Senior Contributors, Technology|

The development of mechanical reproduction and transmission at the dawn of the 20th century changed how we experience music. It remains true that technology has allowed us to extend, amplify, and disseminate the experience of art. This is, in itself, a good thing. The question is how we use this gift. In the past, when [...]

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