Inquiry and the Universe

The readings from “Step 1: Inquiry and the Universe” made me think about one specific topic more than I have ever thought about anything else in my life. My family is religious, but we never went to church on a regular basis. I had heard the story of creation and Adam and Eve before, but never really thought about it. The same goes for the theories of evolution and the big bang. I had heard of them, knew what they were for the most part, but never thought about them any more than that.

I could relate every reading from the step to the Bonaventure reading that we read first. On the Steps of the Ascend into God and seeing God through His Vestiges in the World made me realize how complex our world is, but on the simplest level. What I mean by this is that when we think of the Earth, nature, and human beings, we don’t generally think about the complexity of them. When I think of complexity, I think of our technological world and the constant advances that we are making. But after reading this passage by Bonaventure, I realize that the world we know is complex without the advances that we have made in our modern world. I feel as though I look at the world differently now because of the way Bonaventure describes the detail of the seven properties of the created world. The seven properties are things that I never thought of on a regular basis, if I even did at all. Origin, greatness, multitude, beauty, fullness, activity, and order are the seven properties that he talks about, and I could see a least a few of these properties within the other readings of the step.

I personally enjoyed the reading by Reading the Forest Landscape by Aldo Leopold. I am an animal lover, so I liked how he talked about the animals who lived in the woods he purchased. This reading shows the beauty, multitude, fullness, and activity properties that Bonaventure talked about. Within his woods, he watched the way the animals lived and used his diseased trees. He saw the beauty in his woods and...