Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

Alfred North Whtiehead stated that mathematics and music compete with each other for the honor of being the most novel achievement of the human imagination. Actually, there is no rivalry or competition, for the two enterprises interpenetrate once the investigation is pursued far enough. Though on opposite ends of the science-humanities spectrum, each discipline points toward the other and elicits the same sort of reverential puzzlement. This essay considers the seminal interconnection between music and mathematics and concludes that this unexpected conjunction of opposites bespeaks a higher, unseen reality. Music cum mathematics is an optics that allows us to discover, celebrate, and participate in God's ongoing Creation.

The University of Paris could lay claim to being the center of scholarship and theology in thirteenth-century Europe. Around this center, a community of craftsmen gathered to fulfill many needs of the University population. One of these needs was for a portable pocket Bible. This essay explores a preeminent craft associated with the University of Paris, that of the manuscript workshop. Exemplar leaves are examined with respect to the production steps of the Parisian pocket Bible. Conclusions reached concern the planned book layout and artist involvement in its production, including a reconstruction of such technical challenges as ruling the leaves, gathering systems, and epistle length.

This essay focuses on the typological dilemma in architecture in its theological aspect in an attempt to restore the vital, transcendental, universal method at the core of theological hermeneutics---the Biblical typological interpretation. Following this theological matrix, it is easier to comprehend the actual transformation of Alberti's Six Basic Principles of Architecture into Le Corbusier's Five Points of New Architecture. We thus trace the collective historical experience in architectural theory and practice, history and criticism. The metaphorical assumption of the theological dogma of the unity of Scripture expressed in terms of the type-antitype methodology helps one understand these processes in their religious, historical, cultural, and artistic totality.

This essay explores how the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser incorporates a zodiac, calendar, and history into his allegory, each based on the twelve signs, and each Christ-centered, In Spenser's historical allegory, Guyon, the Knight of Temperance, symbolically travels through the zodiac, sign by sign, in a quintessentially Christian odyssey. Guyon's Imitation of Christ in the center of Book II of The Faerie Queene marks the structural transition between classical and Christian temperance, reflected in a physical transition from the lunar to the solar signs of the zodiac. By modelling the world of Book II on the zodiac, Spenser epitomizes the Renaissance theory of poetics: To create a poem modelled on the universe was to worship its Creator.

Western culture has two origin stories, the poetic first chapter of Genesis and the scientific evolutionary record. The stories have similar structural features, leading to the question: Does the series of events portrayed in the Creation Story resemble the series of events postulated by the evolutionary sciences? To answer this question, the Creation Story is treated as poetry defined as a confluence of visualization and allusion, and compared to the evolutionary record. Although a resemblance cannot be proven, this approach suggests that images and allusions portrayed in the Creation Story resemble phenomenal features of the evolutionary record.

Critics of Scientific Creationism (SC) contend that it is fundamentalist religion rather than science. While SC is, indeed, religion, giving it this vague label is neither useful nor descriptive. By treating SC as a body of rhetoric, one may address the question, "What kind of religion is SC?" SC creates a distinct image of God as a Divine Engineer and uses this image, rather than science, to criticize evolution. Further, SC employs many devices commonly found in early apocalyptic literature. SC, then, reveals a new symbolic universe based on its image of God. The most important contribution of SC lies in its presenting an apocalyptic religion.

The dis-integration of the arts and sciences is evidence of a cultural and psychological split in the contemporary frame of mind. The roots of this separation may be traced to the dualist epistemology of the modem period in philosophy. The emergence of an integrative epistemology through interdisciplinary dialogue may assist in healing this dualism, illustrated in the convergence of kinetic thinking in theology, natural science, and other disciplines. This essay emphasizes the creaturely nature of the search for meaning and the need for humility and integrity toward open structures of the universe. This relational model serves as a heuristic framework which discloses interdisciplinary invariances in the knowing event. The practical implications of this paradigm for theological inquiry are explored in the context of its personal, ecclesial, and ecumenical dimensions.

The scientific and theological enterprises share many fundamental assumptions and have methodological similarities, though the two disciplines often have different focuses of investigation. Science seeks to unravel the detailed workings of nature by focusing on the quantitative aspects discemable in the universe. Theology strives to understand the essence, activity, and purposes of God in the universe. These two enterprises are partial views of the multi-faceted reality we call the world that occasionalfy overlap. Therefore, the data of science arui theology should be thought of as complementary streams of knowledge both of which are important to understaruiing life and the world.

Recent scientific and philosophical investigations have re-opened the question of the adequacy of a non-teleological view of nature. This essay examines the puzzling status of humanity itself within nature, the vexed question of whether the Darwinian principle of evolution through chance mutation, combined with natural selection, can account for what we know of biological life, and the extraordinary implausibility of any nonteleological explanation of the origins of life. The central issue is what can be accomplished by chance mutation and natural selection. The greatest mystery of all is the origin of life itself. The probabilities of life appearing by chance are so infinitesimal that some conclude that life could not have originated on earth. The biological world as we know it still appears to require prodigies of miracle.