Tag: science

The Greater Context of a Quintessential Lewis Quote

Nearly everyone conversant with the writings of C. S. Lewis has heard this famous quote: I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. It’s such a striking comment that it has found a permanent place on Lewis’s commemorative stone in Westminster’s Poets Corner. That wonderful insight is the very last sentence of Lewis’s essay called “Is Theology Poetry?” found in the collection… Read more »

Lewis & the Omnicompetent State (Part 1)

C. S. Lewis often protested that he had no interest in or taste for politics. What he really meant by that was the type of politics he imbibed growing up in a Belfast suburb, listening to his father discuss with friends the nature of the local and national politics of his Irish/English homeland. Was it the pettiness that turned him against political discussion or the boredom he suffered from those overheard conversations? Whatever the cause, he normally abhorred purely political… Read more »

Lewis: Nature Is Our Sister, Not Our Source

C. S. Lewis, in a number of his works, both books and essays, comments on the nature of Nature. Some people, he says, think that Nature is all there is, and that we simply spring out of this mechanistic, impersonal “thing.” Yet, as he reminds his readers continually, how can one even trust that conclusion if one’s own reasoning ability comes from this mechanistic, impersonal source? In an essay called “On Living in an Atomic Age,” he writes, If Nature… Read more »

Lewis: Logic the Cornerstone

Some people think that scientific knowledge is somehow better than other types of knowledge. While it’s true that the scientific method is important, we need to have the proper perspective. I think C. S. Lewis provides that in an address he gave during WWII that showed up later in a collection of his essays as “De Futilitate”: The physical sciences, then, depend on the validity of logic just as much as metaphysics or mathematics. If popular thought feels “science” to… Read more »