Category Archives: Summer 2015

Does Science Explain Anything?

In the old natural philosophy, the purpose of inquiry into nature was to better know what creation is. It taught nomenclature (the names of things), taxonomy (how the thing fits in with other things), morphology (how things are internally structured), and scientific method (how to investigate natural things). It was focused on the wonder and […]

There Is No Nature Without Mother

What I Learned From My Mother Julia Kasdorf I learned from my mother how to love the living, to have plenty of vases on hand in case you have to rush to the hospital with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars       […]

Book Review: Ideas Have Consequences

  Though written in the late 1940s, Ideas Have Consequences, by Richard M. Weaver, remains more relevant and prescient than ever. The work, grounded in political philosophy, theology, virtue, and history, presents a piercing assessment of modern culture. Yet these fields are incorporated for the sole purpose of revealing the truth about our modern culture and […]

Science in the Classical School

  Science education sometimes creates a quandary for classical educators. Its origins in the West are from Greek philosophy (for example, Aristotle developed genera and species and other classifications for plants and animals), but with the possible exception of astronomy, science is not explicitly included in the seven liberal arts and therefore has been considered […]

Knowing What Nature Is

Manifestum est enim quod homo per intellectum cognoscere potest naturas omnium corporum, said St. Thomas Aquinas: “For it is manifest that man is able to know physical things through the intellect.” The truth that the human mind is able to know the natures of all bodily things may indeed be manifest, as St. Thomas Aquinas […]

Au Means…Gold?

I often address parents at schools that are trying to add Latin to their curriculum. At one meeting in particular, I was under the impression that there were several scientists and doctors in the room. As I extolled the benefits of Latin, I wondered how they were going to take my assertions that Latin would […]

Letter from the Editor: Summer 2015

My wife and I were staying at a little inn in the mountains recently. We woke up one morning and she opened the window blinds. “Oh!” she said. “A tractor!” There was a parking lot for some cabins next to us and there was a tractor parked there. For some reason at first unclear to […]

Special-Needs Q&A (Summer 2015)

Q. How will my special-needs child benefit from literature? A. Some special-needs children enjoy messages conveyed through simple picture books. In Frederick, by Leo Lionni, a little mouse cannot assist his family in the usual manner of hard, physical labor. He is not strong like the others. Instead, in days of distress, Frederick shares his small […]

CLSA on St. Mary’s Academy

If you were looking for the oldest parochial school in Tennessee, you would find it in Jackson, where St. Mary’s School has been operating for over 100 years. Having done it that long, the school can claim to know a thing or two about how to educate children in an atmosphere of faith. The school […]