Covalence for June 2022: Looking back and looking ahead

Susan BarretoSusan is an author with a long-time interest in religion and science. She currently edits Covalence, the Lutheran Alliance for Faith, Science and Technology’s online magazine. She has written articles in The Lutheran and the Zygon Center for Religion and Science newsletter. Susan is a board member for the Center for Advanced Study of Religion and Science, the supporting organization for the Zygon Center and the Zygon Journal. She also co-wrote Our Bodies Are Selves with Dr. Philip Hefner and Dr. Ann Pederson.

The work of religion and science is as much about looking back at previous discoveries as it is about looking ahead toward potential revelations to come.

I suppose this month’s edition illustrates that well with Jim Miller’s next installment in his “Of artichokes and onions” series. In it he writes: “The prevailing cultural metaphor for the Classical world was the organism. Those for Modern culture were the machine and dualism. I’m proposing that one of the characteristic metaphors for the emerging worldview is history.”

And what a history it is!

But we also have an eye to the horizon. While technology such as artificial intelligence and blockchain are rapidly reshaping our world, physics gives us an intriguing glimpse into our future (when it comes to finding new energy sources) as well as our past with the discovery of the Higgs boson that offers a view of our cosmic beginnings. In this month’s news section, we look at the work of Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist and author Dr. Frank Wilczek. Earlier this year he was named as the 2022 Templeton Prize winner and honored for his work in studying and explaining how the fundamental laws of nature have transformed our understanding of the universe.

We hope you enjoy this month’s issue!

Susan Barreto, Editor
Covalence
@luthcovalence
relandsci@gmail.com