Headlines of the Week (Or Whatever)

History is fun!
 
Olaus Magnus’ 1539 Carta Marina: An interactive Renaissance map filled with strange and wonderful monsters.

"This Misterie of Fucking": A Sex Manual from 1680

The Nazi Anatomists: How the corpses of Hitler's victims are still haunting modern science—and American abortion politics.

By God’s Bones: Medieval Swear Words.

Physics & Philosophy

From my weekly comments for Honors Colloquium:

"I like to think the moon is there even if I am not looking at it." ~Albert Einstein

In Newtonian physics, our world is orderly. Everything that happens is pre-ordained and with enough information, intrinsically predictable. Our scientific ideas of the time well-matched our religious ideas at the time, with human beings at the center of the earth, which was at the center of the universe, over which we could, given enough time and effort, completely control. This strikes me as reminiscent of our desire to embrace a fundamental reality in nature, which may or may not be known as God.

In quantum mechanics, our world is uncertain. Everything exists in a cloud of possibilities. Precise definitions are unobtainable, and as Sir Isaac Newton came to show us, even things we thought we understood had an even deeper level. Light is one such example; what we once thought of as particles turned out to be both particles and waves. With a sigh, we have alternately accepted and fought the uncertain duality of the universe ever since.

Trinity

In the early 1800’s, Ralph Waldo Emerson visited the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France and found himself entranced by what he saw there. Where his fellow patrons observed nature, Emerson perceived Nature. Where we notice only a majuscule letter, Emerson glimpsed God. This visit inspired his seminal essay Nature, in which Emerson expresses his thoughts on the relationship between Nature, Mankind, and God. Within this essay, Emerson famously pronounced, “The whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind” (17). In this, you can see Emerson beginning to define Nature in relation to Man, as an expansion to the standard definition. The standard definition of Nature, as viewed by both the common man and the Oxford English Dictionary, was anything in the physical world, including the “landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations” (Murray). That distinction, Nature as opposed to Man, is the essence of Emerson’s thoughts on Nature.

Dice and Determinism

“God does not play dice with the universe.          –Albert Einstein

Honors Comp Final Exam Essay: Paths to Salvation

Paths to Salvation

Jonathan Edwards and Billy Sunday were not born of the same time, place, or circumstance, but both men were deeply concerned with the concept of salvation. They each seemed to feel as though they walked through a world of unsaved souls, with false assurances of spiritual safety leading men astray. They each seemed to believe that salvation was of great concern, yet advocated different paths to their selfsame goal.

Honors Comp Essay #2: Two Men, Two Sermons

Two Men, Two Sermons

"Who is it that is supposed to articulate the longings and aspirations of the people more than the preacher? Somehow the preacher must have a kind of fire shut up in his bones." ~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Billy Sunday and Martin Luther King, Jr. didn’t agree on many things, but on one topic, they were both clear; it was a dangerous time to be alive. Their world teemed with examples of sickness and moral confusion. In each man’s social strata crisis was at hand, and they both felt called to bring the solution to their people. Each man firmly believed that the salvation of both society and soul could be found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, yet these seemingly parallel paths led to incredibly divergent destinations.