Nature's Order

As we begin to outsource our knowledge of the world to AI, we must remember why it is interesting to know the world in the first place. That must begin with the natural order. As Benedict XVI wrote: “Nature expresses a design of love and truth. It is prior to us, and it has been given to us by God as the setting for our life. Nature speaks to us of the Creator and his love for humanity. It is destined to be ‘recapitulated’ in Christ at the end of time. Thus it too is a ‘vocation.’ Nature is at our disposal not as ‘a heap of scattered refuse,’ but as a gift of the Creator who has given it an inbuilt order, enabling man to draw from it the principles needed in order ‘to till it and keep it’” (Caritas in veritate, 48). With this issue we examine this gift through many lenses: physics, mathematics, biology, astronomy, to name a few.