Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

Enlightenment

Faith and Reason, Part 5: Hume

david hume photo
Photo by stephengg

Frequent ESN contributor and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA Graduate & Faculty Ministries Staff Mark Hansard explores David Hume’s ideas in Part 5 of his series on faith and reason. As you may remember, Part 1 took a brief look at a Scriptural basis for using reason and logic, Part 2 discussed St. Augustine’s ideas about faith and reason, Part 3 engaged with the thought of Aquinas, and Part 4 addressed John Locke. Image: Sculpture of David Hume. [Read more…] about Faith and Reason, Part 5: Hume

Science Book Club: When Science & Christianity Meet Ch 4

Microscopy of hydra polyps
Cut off one head and two more shall take its place. These little critters took the 18th century by storm. (Photo by jamescastle )

Homonculi, animalcules, and hydra! O my! Sure, planets and moons and clockworks are interesting, important, and historically significant to the faith and science conversation. But start talking about morphallactic regeneration and now you’ve really got the attention of this biologist. This week, Thomas Broman introduces a significant dose of eighteenth century biology even if the chapter title “Matter, Force, and the Christian Worldview in the Enlightenment” doesn’t really suggest as much. In part that’s because Broman is also concerned with Newton and his contributions to physics. But a bigger reason is that we aren’t eighteenth century biologists and so we don’t appreciate just how significant concepts like ‘force’ were to the subject.
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The Myth of First-Year Enlightenment II

This spring’s Chronicle of Higher Education piece The Myth of First-Year Enlightenment has more to consider (Note: link to earlier post here). Of particular interest are the practical steps which Tim takes to address quintessential Americans in the classroom. Any students or faculty have reactions to the proposed shift in learning objectives and new classroom style?  [Read more…] about The Myth of First-Year Enlightenment II

The Myth of First-Year Enlightenment

As the fall term winds down, have any students enabled you to cling to The Myth of First-Year Enlightenment? Here’s what Tim Clydesdale, an associate professor of sociology at the College of New Jersey and author of The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School (University of Chicago Press, 2007), writes on the topic:

“Most of the mainstream American teens I spoke with neither liberated themselves intellectually nor broadened themselves socially during their first year out.” … “What teens actually focus on during the first year out is this: daily life management.” . . . “Only a handful of students on each campus find a liberal-arts education to be deeply meaningful and important and most of those end up becoming college professors themselves. . . . And so the liberal-arts paradigm perpetuates itself, while remaining out of sync with the vast majority of college students.” [Read more…] about The Myth of First-Year Enlightenment