Episodes
Tuesday Oct 24, 2023
Science and Scientific Knowing with Dr. Scott Olsson
Tuesday Oct 24, 2023
Tuesday Oct 24, 2023
We're regularly told that the only kind of knowing of which we can be certain is "scientific" knowing. What does that mean? How does it apply to the world and our everyday lives.
Mathematician Dr. Scott Olsson has thought and taught a great deal about the questions surrounding science and what it can--and can't--tell us about the world around us. Here are some ideas he brings to his Wyoming Catholic College students.
Tuesday Mar 14, 2023
Philosophizing about Nature with Dr. Henry Zepeda
Tuesday Mar 14, 2023
Tuesday Mar 14, 2023
Whether it’s fermions and bosoms or air, earth, fire, and water or nothing but water, the question “What is the world?” has a long history and there have been many answers.
Wyoming Catholic College freshmen discover the many answers in Philosophy 102, going on this semester. Dr. Henry Zepeda has been teaching them the philosophy of nature and the material world and I asked him why student’s journey through philosophy begins here.
Tuesday Feb 07, 2023
Tuesday Feb 07, 2023
Last week was orations week at Wyoming Catholic College, a highlight of our life together as a college. In the fall, our seniors write a thesis. Then in the spring semester, each senior presents his or her thesis in a half-hour oration before fielding a half hour of questions.
Senior Abigail O’Brien’s thesis title was: “The Age of Gnosticism: Transgenderism, Transhumanism, and Human Identity in the Digital Age.” Miss O’Brien is our guest this week.
Click here to hear Miss O'Brien's oration.
Tuesday Sep 06, 2022
Eyes Wide Open: Field Science with Dr. Stanley Grove
Tuesday Sep 06, 2022
Tuesday Sep 06, 2022
On the Middle Fork of the Popo Agie River, a group of young men and women were wading with nets. Others sprawled out on the ground with Petrie dishes and sketchbooks. It's Field Science at Wyoming Catholic College.
What is field science? To quote our website: “this course is an introduction to natural science through field study that puts students in direct contact with the local natural environment. Through the direct experience and methodical observation of the heavens, geological formations, flora, and fauna, observational skills are sharpened and a sense of wonder at nature and natural history is cultivated. Students spend much time outdoors, drawing and recording data in sketchbooks.”
Dr. Stanley Grove has been out in the field with multiple freshmen field science groups and reflects on what the students have learned.
Tuesday Aug 16, 2022
An Introduction to Leon Kass’ ”L’Chaim and Its Limits” by Dr. Daniel Shields
Tuesday Aug 16, 2022
Tuesday Aug 16, 2022
In his essay, “L’Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?” Dr. Leon Kass asks, “If life is good and more is better, should we not regard death as a disease and try to cure it?”
While “curing” death may seem far-fetched, the so-called trans-human project seeks to do just that.
Kass, an Orthodox Jew, wrote the essay for those with no or with little religion. Wyoming Catholic College philosopher, Dr. Daniel Shields gave the participants in this year’s Wyoming School of Catholic Thought this introduction to Kass’ essay before we broke into seminar groups.
Tuesday Aug 03, 2021
Wyoming is Our Classroom: Field Science with Dr. Paul Giesting
Tuesday Aug 03, 2021
Tuesday Aug 03, 2021
As the new Wyoming Catholic college freshmen—all 68 of them—left for their 21-day backpacking expedition, we reminded them that in freshman theology they’ll be studying God’s second book, The Bible. In the wilderness, they should read their Bibles, but they’re to concentrate on God’s first book, the created world. Mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, flowers, soil, birds, and animals.
That being said, however, in addition to studying the Bible freshman year, they’ll also be studying mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, flowers, soil, birds, and animals in a more systematic way in their freshman course on field science.
This week's guest, Dr. Paul Giesting has just joined the Wyoming Catholic College faculty to teach, among other things, field science.
Tuesday Jan 05, 2021
Lifting Our Eyes to the Hills and Studying the Rocks with Prof. Lauren Heerschap
Tuesday Jan 05, 2021
Tuesday Jan 05, 2021
If you come to Lander, Wyoming, it’s hard not to notice the landscape: cliffs, rises, canyons, and the high peaks of the Wind River Mountain Range.
College for Wyoming Catholic College freshmen begins by studying God’s first book: The Creation. During their three-week freshman expedition they drink in the beauty, majesty, and power..
When they return from the expedition, in theology they study God’s second book: the Holy Scriptures. But in field science, it’s back to the first book as they carefully examine the flora and fauna of our region along with the rocks.
Our guest this week, Prof. Lauren Heerschap has worked for the Colorado Geological Survey, and has taught geology in Zermatt, Switzerland, Durango, Colorado. Her enthusiasm about our rocks is contagious.
Tuesday Dec 15, 2020
Time, Space, and Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity with Dr. Michael Bolin
Tuesday Dec 15, 2020
Tuesday Dec 15, 2020
“I sometimes ask myself,” said Albert Einstein, “how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about the problem of space and time. These are things which he has thought of as a child. But my intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up.”
About five weeks ago, Dr. Henry Zepeda was a guest on this podcast talking about Euclidian geometry: points, lines, planes, angles, and solids. Euclid described the world as we see it today, the way we typically consider the true way of seeing it.
In 1905, however, a young man named Albert Einstein proposed something different. Euclid, he said, hadn’t taken into consideration motion and time. Once you do that, he reasoned, geometry needs to be taken as a branch of physics.
Dr. Michael Bolin who teaches Einstein’s Special and General Theories of Relativity to Wyoming Catholic College seniors talks more about that.
Tuesday Sep 08, 2020
Lecture: "Beauty is Truth: How Poetry Enriches Science" by Dr. Tiffany Schubert
Tuesday Sep 08, 2020
Tuesday Sep 08, 2020
The tendency of science to reduce all of the world and life in it to predictable laws of physics is not new. And poets since William Wordsworth two hundred years ago have insisted that life ought not to be reduced.
Since the theme of this year’s Wyoming School was “Beauty is Truth: Science and the Catholic Imagination,” we looked to poets to help us inform our imaginations as we look at world around us, the heavens, and our own human nature.
The poetry we read and discussed is all available online for free.
- Henry Vaughn, “Water-fall”
- Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” “Pied Beauty,” “The Windhover”
- William Wordsworth, “The World is Too Much With Us,” “The Tables Turned”
- Robert Frost, “Never Again Would Bird’s Song Be the Same”
- Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare”
Tuesday Sep 01, 2020
Lecture: "Beauty is Truth: Beauty and Science" by Dr. Jeremy Holmes
Tuesday Sep 01, 2020
Tuesday Sep 01, 2020
“Saint Thomas, who was as simple as he was wise,” wrote Jacques Maritain, “defined the beautiful as that which, being seen, pleases: id quod visum placet. These four words say all that is necessary: a vision, that is to say, an intuitive knowledge, and a delight.”
At this summer’s Wyoming School of Catholic Thought, we began by looking at the Medieval cosmos. It is a beautiful vision that, alas, turns out not to be true. Then we looked at the modern vision—the vision of scientism—in which the universe is nothing but a randomly constituted result of elementary particles bumping into each other. It is a universe without goodness, beauty, or truth—save the truth (maybe) of mathematics and physics.
Yet the topic of our week together was, “Beauty is Truth: Science and the Catholic Imagination.”
After we reduced the Medieval cosmos to “fermions and bosons,” Dr. Jeremy Holmes began putting the world back together arguing that beauty is a necessary part of the scientific endeavor. His lecture was over an hour long, but will, I think, be well worth your time and concentration. Hearing it again brought great delight so, using Thomas' definition, it can be called a beautiful lecture.