Reflecting on what Advent might mean for my work, I ended up looking at the connection between teaching and research. About half of this Advent wraps up my first semester of teaching (in a job I recently began), and the other half will give a little more time to pursue research tasks until Christmas is fully Read more
In Cambridge just over a week ago an audience of postgrads and other researchers gathered to think about the relationship between “Revelation and Reality”. This was the title of the 6th annual Forming a Christian Mind conference, co-organised this year by the Jubilee Centre, Christian Heritage, KLICE, UCCF and Cambridge’s own Christian Graduate Society. While the talks were helpful at Read more
Where does science come from? Historically, the predecessor of what we now call the sciences was natural philosophy, which was, evidently enough, a branch of philosophy. But when we study science at school and university, it’s rare to hear much mention of any continuing dependence on philosophy. We seem to Read more
For the last 18 months I’ve been a research fellow on a project about financial stability that’s run by a small consultancy firm. Since I was trained as a biologist and have done nearly all my academic work so far in ecology, and in universities, this has been both a steep Read more
Knowledge is a special kind of belief, and the science of statistics provides one approach to gaining knowledge. So does faith have any direct connection to statistics? [1] A couple of months ago Andi Wang wrote about his interest in statistics as a Christian, and now I want to share something of mine. Read more
The FiSWES project began in 2015 by taking a critical look at the ecosystem services framework for nature conservation, and the ideas developed by that small Christian working group are now bearing fruit in a new context. I began a fellowship last year with a group called the Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus Read more
‘Science’ means ‘knowledge’ according to its Latin root, and that is what the pursuit of science is popularly supposed to deliver. But a little reflection shows that scientific knowledge is of a certain kind – which is powerful but with some peculiar limitations. The diagram above attempts to illustrate from a Christian perspective what scientists are doing. It could be the Read more
“Of making many books there is no end…” Ecclesiastes 12:12 There is a point of view from which it looks implausible that research in any field could continue indefinitely, century after century, endlessly discovering new things about reality. Part of the classic fin de siècle phenomenon was the suggestion that there might not be much Read more
Picking up my series on Christian philosophy in diagrams, I want to share an idea that really excites me at the moment – inspired by Andree Troost’s “What is Reformational Philosophy?”, which I’ve just finished reading. Perhaps not everyone finds diagrams as wonderful as I do, but they have a great ability to present complex ideas all Read more
As part of our series on the idea of a Christian university – and in these tense times of academic “industrial action” – I want to share a review of “What are Universities For?” by Stefan Collini (Penguin, 2012). The appearance of a Penguin paperback about the purpose of universities indicates considerable Read more