The Tartan recently asked Dr. David Lee, who was among several Gordon professors to retire before the beginning of the current academic year, to discuss the physics program he had led. Dr. Lee declined to comment in detail for the article, instead offering the Tartan the chance to publish this piece he had written about the place of physics in the liberal arts
Einstein once wrote: “The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand in rapt awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly, this is religiousness.”
Though Christians might quibble with his conception of faith, Einstein, as usual, was onto something. A sense of mystery is elemental to the Christian position, driving our efforts to negotiate the world around us through our work, our study, and our worship.
The interplay between mystery and revelation, each of which seems to breed the other, is writ large throughout scripture, providing frequent reminders that even the wisest among us must hold the two in tension. With each new bit of understanding, the mystery deepens, beckoning us to continue our search for its source. In Solomon’s temple dedication, we hear these very echoes:
“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heavens and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built! Yet regard the prayer of Your servant and his supplication…that Your eyes may be open toward this temple night and day, toward the place of which you said, ‘My name shall be there,’ that You may hear the prayer which Your servant makes toward this place” (I Kings 8:27-29).
The temple was a massive feat of engineering, the work of thousands upon thousands of hands in forests and quarries from Lebanon to Israel, cutting and shaping timber, stone, and metal into a coherent, precise design that was intended at every point to speak to the nature of the Creator. Yet, after seven years of obedience and revelation, Solomon remained baffled at the notion that the God of the universe would live amid these earthly materials and inhabit the work of man.
One might assume that a limited and imperfect creature would not be qualified for the construction of God’s temple. But God clearly thought humans both worthy and capable of it. So what does it take to build a temple to house the glory of God? What does that say about the abilities God has imbued in each of us? What does it say about his faith in our capacity to discern the proper moral and physical structures of his world, or to create and invent in harmony with his intentions? The passages describing the temple’s construction are minutely detailed and represented the cutting edge of technology at the time. The construction of a physical temple to house God’s moral authority actually required a giant leap forward in the technological capabilities of the ancient Israelites.
What difference, then, is there between Einstein’s approach to the mysterious and Solomon’s? Perhaps precious little. The scientific knowledge we have gained and the technological advances we have made over the ages reflect our progressively deeper understanding of the universe and our place in it. Through this line of inquiry and its attendant breakthroughs, our notions of beauty expand and our sense of awe stirs anew. Undoubtedly Einstein would be able to tell us far more about the mechanics behind the mystery, but perhaps Solomon could reveal its more poetic nature. To fashion something worthy of the Creator, we need bright minds and brilliant materials. Like Solomon, we need cedar and builders from Lebanon; like Einstein, we need technical knowledge and calculating power. But in the end, we also need those who can see the meaning behind the beauty, who can not only find order amid the complexity but also begin to illuminate the very source of that order.
If our imperative to understand and explore the natural world feeds our technological inclination, which in turn is to be used for God’s glorification, then we are obligated to pursue fully our creativity and inventiveness in this regard. Who could possibly be worthy of building a temple to house the glory of the Lord? In one sense, none of us; but in another, maybe all of us.
The Physics Program at Gordon College
Physics might be best understood as a pursuit, but it makes a difference what one is chasing. At Gordon College, we built a physics program around this ideal of educating serious scholars and scientists who were able to infuse the discipline with a faith-based perspective. We were unique in our ability to produce these types of graduates, just as we were unique in our philosophical approach to both the discipline and the world at large. Yet, it is fair to ask why the Gordon College physics program was worthy of investment, especially in the face of so many other strong programs across the country. The answer lies in the vital contributions we made across three distinct areas: the Christian liberal arts themselves, the church, and the academy. To understand what made Gordon’s physics program special, our work in these three areas warrants a more thorough description, based upon the following assertions:
I. The Christian liberal arts viewpoint that so many Christian colleges espouse is incomplete without a sincere study of the natural world.
II. The church’s ability to discover God’s moral dimensions is limited by a lack of awareness of the physical world. God created all things, and in particular, he created both the moral and physical universes together: these realms are, by his good intentions, conjoined and each reflects this synergistic relationship.
III. The physics program at Gordon College and its constituent 3-2 Engineering program were explicitly designed as outreach efforts, and until their termination, our growing reputation had positioned us well to carry a faith-based perspective into the broader worlds of the academy and industry.
Toward a More Complete Picture
Physics is the study of the foundational and emergent structures, patterns, and phenomena in the universe. Unlike the other sciences, the phenomena studied in physics span a far greater range in size, energy, location, and time. As a result, the “laws” that govern physical phenomena are truly universal. Emergent ideas—such as scaling laws, which identify remarkable similarities in behavior across sub-atomic and extra-galactic dimensions, and chaos, which limits our ability to predict the precise behavior of collections of objects even in classical systems—point to a richness in the inner workings of our universe and a depth of cohesion that can only be glimpsed when we step back and ponder all that we have learned about this place. Foundational ideas— such as the existence of four basic forces that govern all interactions of matter and the constancy of the speed of electromagnetic radiation in a vacuum (the speed of light)—demonstrate to us that we have been given the ability to investigate and understand these rich inner workings. Furthermore, through our technologies, we can and do extend our explorations of these inner workings to scales far beyond our own biological limits. One must ask why and to what end we have been given this ability.
Certainly there is much that can be learned about God through the deep and careful study of his creation. This is one of the reasons for a lively and well-supported physics program: because we have been given two books from which to learn of God and his relationship to us—the Bible and the book of nature. Obviously the type of understanding we can get from special and general revelation differs, but nevertheless these two books are themselves inextricably linked, and the fullest understanding of God comes through an inclusive and expansive study of both.
Today’s sincere Christian rightly leans on the Bible as an authoritative source of information and understanding. He typically relies far less on his understanding of God’s universe, perhaps in large part because it remains too mysterious to him. If the mystery overwhelms, he risks becoming that snuffed-out candle of which Einstein spoke. At times, and maybe far too often, modern Christians have even attempted to pit scripture against science in a false competition; this is symptomatic of a dangerous way of thinking, since even the Bible itself makes clear that we have much to learn from the universe in which we have been placed and over which we have been given dominion. How can we glorify God as we exercise the authority he gave us over creation if, in fact, we do not understand creation? Ignoring our ability to think about, explore and experience this universe tilts the well-meaning Christian dangerously toward “bibliolatry.” This lack of balance and integration of both God’s word and his creation is perhaps the real reason we have such loud arguments and controversies over “science vs. faith” topics.
At Gordon, all students take three survey courses in Old and New Testament and Christian theology that, collectively, offer them critical exposure to special revelation. Students also take two basic science courses that provide them with a baseline understanding of the book of nature, but even here, we can do much more. For instance, a three-hour seminar on the development and technology of the axe and its influence on human history would be fascinating and filled with important concepts and conclusions. But students must engage with the physical world to unlock the deepest form of learning. Give a student an axe and have her swing it into the trunk of a tree. Let her feel, on her first swing, the hard thud and the vibrations running up her arm; let her see the wood chips fly from the point of impact; let her hear the birds scatter and the forest suddenly fall silent. She will come to understand far more about the axe, the forest and herself in that single moment of experimentation than in the many hours of classroom learning. She will begin to understand that humans are bound to God’s creation, and that our negotiation of the natural world is in fact a negotiation of our relationship to Him. And if she were to repeat this act thousands of times on several trees, she could eventually construct a shelter from the elements and wild creatures, bringing her into even closer communion with the world around her and the God who formed it. In this way, it is through her engagement with the physical world that she learns most deeply what God intended when he commanded us to have dominion and authority over this world. It was precisely this type of experience that we sought to provide our physics students and any other students we encountered in our classrooms and labs.
No secular physics program has this understanding, and in fact, the physics program at Gordon went far beyond the “integration of faith and learning” that is touted by Christian higher education. We held that the study of nature is the study of God’s intentions; the technologies humans develop as a result of our progressively deeper understanding both tie us more tightly to his creation and allow us to better serve and glorify Him as stewards of this place. Academic departments at other Christian colleges, and even at Gordon College, lack this understanding of physics as a pursuit. During my 14 years at Gordon, I often heard physics described as “too hard,” “too mathematical,” “so narrow in scope,” and “not creative” by colleagues and nonphysics students alike, but they were mistaken. Physics, like most any other discipline, has its difficulties and complexities; in the wrong hands, it can be made dry and esoteric. Yet, it differs from any other discipline in that it represents our deepest understanding of how God implements his plan for the universe.
The universe is complex enough in its workings, and yet, here on earth the complexity is exponentially more convoluted as God’s beauty and elegance have been tainted by sin. Humans filter all of their experiences with the physical universe through limited senses and interpret these experiences using limited mental capacities. The more we can explore this world, the better chance we stand of seeing past the influence and shading of our own limitations and errors to what is true and proper. To look at the stars, for instance, is also to look back in time; it is only a couple million light years at most (a comparatively short distance, astronomically speaking) before we have wound back the clocks to a point before mankind existed. Could our natural fascination with the stars somehow reflect a longing for that incomparably beautiful age when the whole of creation did not groan but instead reflected cleanly God’s intentions and glory?
Miracles do happen, and they are documented—but they are miraculous precisely because God’s normal mode of operation is to use foundational and emergent phenomena, patterns, and structures. These we can study and understand, and thereby create new tools and technologies to better serve Him and our fellow man. Such is the deep imperative for the study of physics; such is our hope for better understanding both the natural and the supernatural; and such is the reason why physics holds something for everyone.
The Moral and the Physical
But is there more to this? Why did God give us this ability to understand the inner workings of his creation, and then compel us to use our understanding to imagine, invent, and create? Beyond the longing for his perfect beauty and function, beyond our ability to glorify Him as his stewards of creation, there is an indissoluble link between the moral and the physical. This point can become muddled when we do not pair our study of scripture with a study of the physical world.
God intended for nature and life to function in a certain way, and we can discern those intentions. Ancient life actually revolved around uncovering and recording these sacred patterns (See Ronald Simkins, Creator and Creation: Nature in the Worldview of Ancient Israel and Marc Van De Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East). Notice in the flood story where God says to Noah: “As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night” (Genesis 8:22). Just as God imprinted patterns onto human nature, he also imprinted patterns onto the universe. These patterns are a language unto themselves from which we can learn and, over time, become wise. With care, our own creations—our technologies—can resonate with God’s imprinted patterns.
The ancients knew this to be the case; their view was that the natural universe functions according to discernible patterns and that nature always has an intended order. For the ancients, the future was predictable based on a recollection of how events had unfolded previously. So for example, if birds migrated by a certain day in the fall, then it meant that winter would be long and harsh because the last time such a migration pattern occurred, winter was in fact long and harsh. If a diviner dissected a goat and found that the lobes of its liver were arranged just so, then other natural phenomena such as weather or harvest could be expected to follow suit accordingly. Today we might view such thinking as quaint or even ignorant, but the ancients understood that God intended for nature and life to be a certain way, and that putting oneself in close enough harmony with God’s purposes allows for one to discern His intentions and His intended order. In fact, there was no separation between the sacred and the secular because there was no concept of a secular understanding – everything was intrinsically sacred. That understanding formed the basis for their system of “superstitious” beliefs, and while the specific predictions and causal relationships we find to be true today may not look anything like those from a more primitive time, we ignore that foundational tenet at our own peril.
It is for this reason that wisdom about the natural world undergirds our ability to discern God’s intended moral order. In 1 Kings 4, Solomon is called the wisest man on earth. As described, that wisdom is about the natural world—about cedar trees and hyssop, about animals, birds, creeping things, and fish—because creation echoes God’s intentions. For Solomon, wisdom about the natural world was a reflection of his superior understanding of this moral order. That in turn lent a moral authority to his rule. His royal gardens and bestiary were a recreation in miniature of God’s dominion over the universe. There was an understanding that such rule and keep would not be possible without the proper moral authority and discernment, in effect that God ordained his rule. For this reason, “men of all nations, from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom, came to hear the wisdom of Solomon” (I Kings 4:34).
When Solomon built God’s temple and the accompanying palace, it was the ultimate intersection of the moral and the physical. The architecture and furnishings reflected God’s intended order, and the temple itself served as the physical house for the source of moral authority in the universe. The palace built over the same period and in proximity to the temple makes clear the conjoining of this moral and physical authority. This connection highlighted the Israelites’ desire to more deeply understand God’s universe and their place in it, bringing them to a closer resonance with his intentions.
The story of the temple’s construction continues to have the same effect for us today, even as we use our talents and resources to build the things to which God has called us in our own time. And this has been true since the beginning: the physical form of any created object reflects its creator’s understanding of God’s intended moral nature. After all, God created and declared it good. How we interact with the physical world becomes a reflection of our own knowledge of this fusion between the moral and the physical. The more deeply we probe this coupling, the better our technologies will integrate with God’s moral universe. I believe this is unavoidable and in stark contrast to the popular thought that technology runs rampant with an amoral disposition. There always will be those who consider carefully the linkage between the moral and the physical when creating new technologies. Gordon College physics majors were precisely those people, because this understanding was foundational to the program we built together.
Physics as Profession
Philosophical and theological underpinnings are vital to both the Christian liberal arts and the church, but they would have been of precious little value in our program if our students simply weren’t any good at physics. Yet there is ample evidence to suggest that, across the academy and the workforce, our model worked: as they moved into and through their professions, students earned the highest regard from their peers.
Every year we had several students participate in the selective NSF-sponsored Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. This summer experience integrates undergraduates into graduate research programs at research groups around the country. In just the past few years, our students participated in REUs at over a dozen of the most highly selective research universities. We were told by the Dean of Admissions at one of our 3-2 Engineering program partners that our students were better prepared than students who began as engineering freshmen at their own institution. Further, we were told that our students were “by far the best prepared among all transfer students from all the colleges that send students here” (their words). While we always strove to improve the preparation of our students, their success at gaining entry into premiere PhD programs validated the program and vision we had. In the past few years, students were accepted into doctoral programs at the very top tier of research institutions.
Upon graduation, our alums in both physics and 3-2 engineering went on to represent Christ in many and diverse ways, including of course in highly scientific and technological fields of endeavor. Students have gone into industry to work in fields ranging from space travel to submarine design, optical fiber communications to metallic glasses, industrial robotics to advanced coatings – and they have joined companies with as many as 100,000 employees and as few as 10. Graduates tell me stories of work colleagues who ask about our former physics program because of the quality of preparation they see in our graduates as they work alongside them. The education and mentoring our students received, pinned philosophically and theologically as we have described, was not only important for its eternal implications to student and church, but also because we graduated outstanding physicists and engineers. We always understood the Gordon physics program as part of God’s ownership of all that is and the pursuit of physics as a discipline that enables us to understand our God better, with the concomitant ability and responsibility to develop technologies that align with God’s moral order. Simply put, it is the idea that a student’s life is an act of worship.
We built the physics program at Gordon College with the same principle in mind. It was an act of worship, and we believed that by starting from the right foundation and using the right materials, anything we built ought to be superior in every way to work from a program not set on the same foundation. Like Solomon, we hoped to draw others to this grand building project and to use it to inform not only our own understanding of the God of the universe, but theirs as well. On the one hand, we remain baffled that God might use the work of our hands in this way. Yet, on the other, it makes perfect sense, for God has a long history of using imperfect vessels to reflect his glory. Though the physics program is no more, the mystery persists, and we will continue to pursue it, wherever God leads.