Advent is a season of waiting. We remember the specific anticipation of Mary & Joseph for their son and the more abstract anticipation for justice and restoration, represented by Simeon and Anna. While Jesus would inaugurate a new era of redemption, we share in the longing of Simeon and Anna as we recognize that justice is still not equally distributed and creation is not fully restored. While expressing that longing in different terms, Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz and Roger Highfield discuss outstanding needs for justice … [Read more...] about Science Corner: The Dance of Life and Advent Pt 3
Book Review/Discussion
Science Corner: The Dance of Life and Advent Pt 2
As we discussed last week, The Dance of Life by Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz and Roger Highfield is a story of developmental biology research. It is also a story of motherhood, including the specific joys and anxieties of prenatal motherhood. Meanwhile, my church has chosen Luke 1-2 for its Advent texts, and Luke's Gospel pays more attention to the prenatal experience of Mary and her cousin Elizabeth than the other accounts. I don't want to over-theologize Zernicka-Goetz and Highfield's book and I don't think it is any sort … [Read more...] about Science Corner: The Dance of Life and Advent Pt 2
Science Corner: The Dance of Life and Advent Pt 1
I haven't discussed many books this year, but I'm currently reading The Dance of Life by Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz and Roger Highfield and I was struck by the relevance to advent. Zernicka-Goetz is a developmental biologist, which means she studies the processes by which a fertilized zygote transforms from a single cell to an entire organism like a mouse or a human. The book, cowritten with journalist Roger Highfield, is both a memoir of Zernicka-Goetz' career and an introduction to her research and its context in the … [Read more...] about Science Corner: The Dance of Life and Advent Pt 1
Science Book Review: Unthinkable – An Extraordinary Journey through the World’s Strangest Brains
Helen Thomson closes Unthinkable by describing it as "romantic science," an approach that emphasizes human connection alongside data and clinical reports. The humans in question are not the practitioners of science but the subjects of its investigations. Thomson profiles nine people from all over the world whose subjective experiences of that world push the limits of our ability to communicate about them. She feels compelled to employ rich, high bandwidth personal accounts because an abstraction like "lycanthropy" needs … [Read more...] about Science Book Review: Unthinkable – An Extraordinary Journey through the World’s Strangest Brains
Science Book Review: Friend of Science, Friend of Faith
In Friend of Science, Friend of Faith, geologist Gregg Davidson explains how he maintains a simultaneous commitment to the Christian church and the academic science community. If those overlapping fellowships seem unremarkable to you, you may not find anything particularly new here although you may appreciate the opportunity to get to know Davidson and his take on the matters at hand. Although wide-ranging, the book is not a survey of the entire landscape of Christian approaches to science. Rather, Davidson gives his … [Read more...] about Science Book Review: Friend of Science, Friend of Faith