It is not unusual in today’s postmodern world to hear people criticize the idea of “binaries”—the idea that things can be classed into two distinctive groups. The distinction between males and females, right or wrong, beautiful and ugly, true or false—all of these distinctions are now to be interrogated and seen as questionable. And, of […]
In Orthodoxy G. K. Chesterton articulates the Christian worldview in a way that will sound odd to the modern ear. Like later writers he influenced (such as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien), Chesterton was steeped in the mythology and literature of the West. His wide reading in the old Western literature gave […]
Few aspects of life inspire artists more than nature. Whether in painting, poetry, music, theater, or dance, creative artists across the centuries have depicted and reflected upon the physical phenomena of our world. Both the grandest subjects (mountains, planets) and those most intimate and fragile (gossamer dragonfly wings) are defining elements in the arts throughout […]
When I was in graduate school, the literature department hosted a lecture on ecology, which is the science of our relationship to our surroundings. The speaker was promoting a book in which he proposed the elimination of the term “nature” from academia. Our use of the word, he asserted, fosters an imagined division between inside […]
“Michelle.” I whispered hurriedly to awaken her in the dark. “We must leave home earlier than planned. Snow and ice are coming.” Up she scrambled, softly so as not to awaken her twin brother in the next room. Quickly donning the travel clothes we had laid out the night before, Michelle met me downstairs. With […]
Most adults can recall feeling a momentary panic in a math class at one time or another, but some children feel despair about math daily. They may struggle through math lessons for many reasons: attitude, handwriting difficulty, poor number sense, language-based learning disability, or difficulties with memory, fear, or discouragement. We can address these effectively […]
Natural disasters, natural resources, natural gas, dying of natural causes. Natural beauty, but also freaks of nature. Going back to nature and getting a natural high. Mother Nature, nature hikes, all-natural foods, natural family planning, natural childbirth. There’s the natural order, and second nature. There are natural numbers. There are all the examples I didn’t […]
On the Feast of St. John the Evangelist in 1571, a baby boy named Johannes Kepler came into the world. Born prematurely, he was weak and sickly as a child. By the time he was born he had two brothers and a sister. When Johannes was five years old, his father left the family. When […]
Using a structure built from several different types of argumentation, the dilemma corners your opponent by presenting him or her with a difficult choice between two unacceptable alternatives. The most sophisticated and yet elegant argument form is the dilemma. If you know how to use the dilemma you have achieved the logical equivalent of a […]
How long can you stare at hieroglyphs you can’t decipher before you shrug your shoulders, smile, and move on? Without a cipher, or the ability to translate the pictograms into meaningful sounds or images, they would be just fancy lines and dots to you. I sometimes imagine that to the child with a language impairment, […]