Peter J. Leithart is President of the Theopolis Institute, Birmingham, Alabama, and an adjunct Senior Fellow at New St. Andrews College. He is author, most recently, of Gratitude: An Intellectual History (Baylor).

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Sentient plants

From Leithart

R. Fischer says, “The relativity of our reference point can be demonstrated by taking a moving picture of a plant at one frame a minute and then speeding it up to thirty frames a second. The plant will appear to behave like an animal, clearly perceiving stimuli and reacting to them. Why, . . . . Continue Reading »

Freud and the Steam Engine

From Leithart

Barbara Adam points out that the leading metaphors for nature in the seventeenth and eighteenth century were mechanical. Creation was a clock. By the nineteenth century, though, steam technology had taken over the European imagination, and metaphors of “letting off steam” and . . . . Continue Reading »

Scripture as Participation

From Web Exclusives

“Participatory” does a lot of work in Matthew Levering’s latest book, Participatory Biblical Exegesis , a contribution to the burgeoning contemporary interest in theological interpretation of Scripture. It refers, above all, to a conception of history that, Levering argues, should . . . . Continue Reading »

Replaceable parts

From Leithart

Behind much of today’s biotechnology is the (Newtonian?) notion that living organisms are machine-like. And living organisms can look like machines in some respects. But they aren’t. Barbara Adam points out that the cells of our bodies are incessantly self-renewing - our limbs . . . . Continue Reading »

Dance of life

From Leithart

Summarizing findings in physics and biology that should inform social science, Barbara Adam writes, “All organisms, from single cells to human beings and even ecosystems, display rhythmic behaviour. Rhythmicity is a universal phenomenon. Scientists conceptualise atoms as probability waves, . . . . Continue Reading »

Real time

From Leithart

KG Denbigh wrote in 1981 that physics treats time as a simple continuum: “It knows of no means of picking out a unique moment, the now or the present. The t-coordinate is an undifferentiated continuum, and, if this coordinate is ‘taken for real’ as has been the tendency among many . . . . Continue Reading »

Rushdoony

From Leithart

Molly Worthen has an interesting piece on Rushdoony and Reconstructionism in the June issue of Church History . She is hardly uncritical, but also notes that even while “journalists have made too much of reconstructionism’s grip on mainstream evangelicalism, they ahve also overlooked . . . . Continue Reading »

Living out sonship

From Leithart

Kruger again, speaking of the incarnation of the Son of God as a carpenter in Nazareth: “For at least a moment in history, human laughter, human sharing, human compassion, human love, human fellowship and comaraderie and togetherness were all more than human. For at least one moment in . . . . Continue Reading »