Ironically, even that literary icon of the scientific method, Sherlock (‘Simple Deduction’) Holmes, got that wrong. Investigating a murder, he paid attention to the fact that “the dog did not bark.” But from that fact, he had to infer, not deduce, that the murderer was the dog’s master.

Unacknowledged Symbolism

The new mythology of “Scientism” tries to convince us that the only real knowledge is deductive formulas, all wrapped up with a bow. However, that deliberately obscures an embarrassing fact: science in itself cannot intuit the things or relations that it analyzes. The professional biologist is capable of dissecting the cat, but it’s the natural human who first sees the cat to be dissected.

Real science depends on our natural knowledge, analogical or symbolic, for its starting points. So academic philosophers of science distinguish between “the order of discovery” and “the order of verification” or “justification.” The scientific method, narrowly speaking, verifies or falsifies hypotheses that it cannot itself provide. All the academics can say about the discovery process is that it’s “intuitive, creative, or chance.”

The classic example is the structure of the benzene molecule, C6H6. For 20 years, chemists struggled with the problem that benzene seemed to have either too few or too many hydrogens. Then one day in 1865, chemist Friedrich Kekule’ had a mystical vision of a snake eating its tail, and realized that benzene might be a ‘ring.’ That hypothesis was later proven by testing, but the hypothesis itself arose from the analogy.

Likewise, Einstein developed his General Theory of Relativity by imagining a man falling down a tall building and feeling weightless. His developed hypothesis required advanced mathematics to be verified, but his inspiration was an imaginative thought experiment.

Mark Twain famously said, “History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes.” That’s true, not simply about history, but all of our rhyming reality. Our orderly Cosmos is structured in repetitive patterns, analogical or ‘reasoned alongside.’ We’re equipped to understand Creation and the natures of things, because we’re part of it, because indeed we’re uniquely reasonable beneficiaries of its own objective reason. Since all our experience is spatial, images of things, all our analogies for Nature are visual, especially in the effort to express abstract ideas. We can ‘under-stand’ this, by looking up and marveling at the wonder of the Heavens.

Real Analogies in an Analogical Reality

Arguably, our first, most formative spatial analogy is ‘up and down’ or ‘higher and lower.’ Kids naturally ‘look up’ to adults, and any child’s first truly abstract or theoretical question is, “What do I want to be when I grow up?”  Whatever we may regret (or romanticize about losing) in growing up, adults are objectively higher than children in our capabilities and responsibilities.  

That elemental childhood experience prepares us for an intuitive understanding of ‘higher and lower’ things in nature itself. Plants are higher than dirt, because they can do what dirt cannot do, grow and reproduce themselves. Animals are higher than plants. Not only do they grow and reproduce, but given unified nervous systems, they sense at a distance and move instinctively to satisfy their needs. Humans are higher than animals because we do everything they do (grow, reproduce, sense, and move), but we really live fully alive in nature and our community, with reasoned speech and free wills. So we can understand animals, but they can’t understand us.

With the analogy of higher-and-lower, we call someone a ‘low-life’, if they choose, or ‘fall’, into corrupt sexual behavior (usually without reproducing). Likewise, we praise those who devote themselves sacrificially to any ‘higher pursuits.’ Sickness ‘gets us down,’ when bad digestion forces us to pay attention to a lower, animal function that we prefer to ignore.

Another, related analogy is heaviness, weight, or gravity (“heaviness” in Latin). As a rule, ‘heaviness’ relates to things that we can’t ignore, or ignore at our peril — like gravity. Someone has a ‘weighty’ argument if we can’t simply shrug it off; if we must pay attention to their perspective (seeing from a different location). Hippies once said that something was ‘heavy,’ if it provoked a dreamy reflection (contemplation being ‘reflecting’ back on ourselves).

Once we start looking for all the real analogies in life, we see them all over, like the ‘light and dark’ in our experience — an enormously important symbol in both the Gospel of John and Plato’s Republic. With our common speech and rational wills, we understand the order of Creation, nature itself, necessarily by means of analogies and symbols of the whole and its Creator. Despite inevitable frustrations and corruptions, we strive to build communities of worship, beautiful architecture, art, drama, productive enterprises, and bountiful families. But we succeed only if we obey nature’s own poetry. With this “law written on their hearts,” centuries before Abraham’s Covenant, our ancestors began playing flutes and painting their caves, with all the artistry of Picasso’s Dove. Shortly, we’ll see the importance of this law.

Real Science versus Ideological Scientism

Now, the ideology of materialistic scientism (versus real science) chants that the order in Nature is merely a projection of our own purposes and formulae. Deliberately ignoring any objective ‘nature in itself,’ atheists treat Nature as just so much raw material — including human nature. Propagandist Francis Bacon argued, “Knowledge is power,” so “We must torture Nature to make her give up her secrets.” Yet the pathologies of this past century — especially in human sexuality and family life — have proven a disaster, confirming an older wisdom: “With those who ignore her ways, Nature cannot negotiate, but only retaliate.” God always forgives, but Nature, never.   

God brought “every beast and fowl before Adam, to see what he would call them,” (Gen. 2:19). So Creation itself marries our minds to Nature’s order. We can find even trivial examples of where our minds are married to Nature. For example, only ten percent of people are left-handed, so it’s hard for them to find usable scissors. They have been called southpaws, gauche (French) or sinister (Latin). But their rarity gives them an edge in hockey or baseball. Romans found them “sinister because of the unexpected direction of their daggers.

Now, abstract philosophers (like Descartes or Kant) bump up against the fact that left and right cannot be reduced to an idea. You can’t just think it; you have to see it. They’re unavoidable realities, just there. If you want to know the direction of the magnetic field from an electrical current (to build a motor, say), you have to use the “Right-hand Rule.” Likewise, scientists are at a loss to explain why all the sub-atomic particles, neutrinos, are left-handed, and anti-neutrinos, right-handed. They’re just that way. Yet scientists just happened to discover neutrinos first, so maybe they should switch the “anti” label between the two particles, to get them ‘right.’

The reality of gravity is a classic example of the relationship between our natural understanding and science. It was a huge achievement of real science, when pioneer (Christian) scientist Isaac Newton described the behavior or “force” of gravity mathematically (F = G m1m2 /r2). But he never claimed to know what gravity is, only how it moves — an extremely useful achievement.

 The old poetry said that material things ‘feel pulled together,’ so they analogically ‘love’ one another. Newton’s math describes that well, even capturing the fading effect of ‘distance.’ But atheist Francis Bacon promoted Newton’s mathematical triumph to mock the old worldview of a Reasoned Creation, a universe of intelligible natures, analogically or symbolically related. He did this by branding mathematical gravity as stupid, merely a “blind force,” and matter like (analogically) colliding billiard balls, to be used as we please. Yet, for all Newton’s precise measurement, Bacon was no closer to understanding what gravity is.

Three centuries later, Einstein described gravity mathematically as “matter bending space-time.” He used the analogy of a bowling ball, dropped on a stretched rubber sheet, so that a passing golf ball ‘curves inward’ as it passes the ‘dip’ caused by the bowling ball. Yet, we must already understand how gravity looks, in order to understand his analogy. His analytical, mathematical description is a real achievement, but it describes what we must already know analogically or symbolically — already understand naturally. 

Seducing Ourselves with Bad Analogies

If we get mystical about our analogies, we easily deceive ourselves. Our most seductive analogy is the circle. This image is reasonable poetry in understanding the revolving seasons of the year, or The Lion King’s “circle of life.” However, ancient astronomers assumed that the circle is the perfect motion, so for two thousand years, they did geometrical hand-stands, trying to force “perfect” planets into “perfect” circular orbits. Finally, in 1609, Johannes Kepler gave up on the circle analogy, and proved planetary orbits are ellipses with two foci, one the Sun, and other, empty space.

So, while rejecting materialistic Scientism, we must never forget that real science does falsify false analogies or ancient mysticism, enabling progress in our understanding of Nature. At the same time, while the scientific method ‘looks down’ to verify it, Kepler’s hunch about ellipses, ‘looking up,’ was “intuitive, creative or chance.” And the ellipsis is in fact truer poetry about Nature itself. God’s Creation depends for its persistent existence on His endless love, so the heavenly orbits are not self-contained, perfect circles. The planets revolve around two foci, the Sun and empty space, as God’s Nature is suspended between Him and nothing — divine poetry.

Circles have always nurtured silly astrological myths, given the endless circling back of heavenly bodies. There was an End-of-the-World scare, some years ago, given the supposed close of the Mayan Great Year of 5,125 solar years. And Zodiac lovers idolize the astrological cycle of the sun, moon and inner planets, all ‘circling back,’ to make twelve Zodiac ages of 2,160 years each; so in the late sixties, hippies celebrated “the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.” Worst of all, nihilist Friedrich Nietzsche battled against Christian salvation history, by promoting the circle of “the Eternal Return,” a universe endlessly repeating a meaningless cycle of the same. 

“Circular history” has been falsified by real science discovering the beginning of the universe in the Big Bang — something Christians already knew, thanks to the true poetry of Genesis. For Christians, natural history begins at some definite time, then falls with “the dust cursed” under our feet, but is then redeemed by Christ’s sacrifice, and now moves onward to the Kingdom.

That journey is the ultimate meaning of life, so for each of us, the ultimate analogy is a crossroad. And as baseball coach Yogi Berra said, “When you get to a crossroad, take it.”

Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton, criticizing the symbolism of a meaningless circle, compared the Cross to the symbolism of the crossroad (Orthodoxy). Life is a thrilling adventure, Chesterton argued, a constant series of choices or crossroads, each an opportunity to “take up your cross and follow me.” Every choice, even a bad one, is some sort of sacrifice, loving well or loving badly. So every choice is a chance to cultivate virtue or vice. And this brings us to our ultimate analogies in understanding God’s universe: the good life and the character, healthy habits or virtues that nurture it. 

Goodness and Wisdom

The real evil of materialistic scientism was arguing that there’s no real good or evil ‘out there’ in Nature, but that courage, moderation, justice, generosity, and humility are merely personal or social preferences. Yet Nature itself is vitally ordered toward the Good, whether the good life of an oak, jelly fish, or badger, or the good life of a human being. Nature rarely gets all the way. Life is subject to chance conditions, says Aristotle, so Nature works well ‘for the most part,’ striving toward and finding its meaning in good lives that it can only ever approach — as oaks strive to be perfect, acorn-filled oak trees.

Reproducing or birthing is another, huge symbol. The minimal standard for a ‘good enough’ natural life is the ability to reproduce (Latin natura or Greek physos meaning “generation” or “reproduction”). So most of us are content if our children are just a little better than we are. This points us toward the enormous symbols of male-and-female, men and women, like the real analogy of God as Father.  

For human beings, working toward a good life is complicated by the fact that we have reasoned choice and free wills. We can accidentally or deliberately thwart a good life by choosing more seductive, transient goods (like pecan pies) over more solid, permanent goods (like healthy hearts). Even more, our choices are complicated by the fact that our ultimate Good lies not in Nature, but God Himself. For this, we may have to sacrifice our natural good (like comfort or even survival) for a supernatural good (like faithful witness).

Like oaks and badgers, we grow toward the good life over time, in a particular set of material circumstances. Yet, unlike oaks and badgers (fortunately), we’re only partly the products of our circumstances. As active, reasoning beings, we have more-or-less clear images of what makes life ‘fully alive’ (and as Christians, doubly so). Yet inevitably, we’re a work in progress, so our virtuous choices can repair the effects of our unhealthy origins. All our virtuous or vicious choices constantly build a good or evil character — making us either wise or foolish persons.

As the highest beings of material Creation — the ‘ambassadors’ between matter and spirit — our highest natural qualities — our virtues — are the necessary analogies for Nature as a whole. We rightly consider Nature to be ordered wisely, lovingly, and justly. This doesn’t mean (of course) that ‘everything is beautiful,’ but that such perceived or intuited qualities are necessary for rightly understanding anything and everything, especially when they fall short.

When we see a nasty dog, a cringing cur, we rightly call him cowardly, though we know he wasn’t responsible for that and attach no blame. When we see a roly-poly lap dog, we rightly see him lacking moderation, while blaming his master. We rightly call a storm ‘violent,’ though the storm doesn’t know it. A sunset is truly beautiful. Objective qualities like the True, Good, and Beautiful are indispensable for any meaningful understanding of our experience.

Atheists cynically attribute wisdom to rebelliousness, as if only revolutionaries are wise. In fact, only the good possess true wisdom. “We must first be these things, before we can know them,” says Aristotle. What we must first be is courageous, moderate, just, and — since the ‘dawn’ of the Gospel — humble and loving. Only then do we see Creation and its Nature as they truly are.

Yet, virtuous persons cannot grow wild. We must be trained in early youth, like a vine (another analogy). The original sense of re-ligio was to tie-back a vine onto a frame, like the law, helping it to grow untangled, open to the sun and fruitful. For this purpose, Nature does offer us the fertile analogy of fathers as the (almost) indispensable ‘vinedressers’ for ordering the souls of children, so that they become capable of reasonable choice and true freedom.

Still, Nature achieves its purposes ‘only for the most part,’ and with human beings, sometimes even less. Elite, militant atheists like Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, Stalin, and Hitler, were all contemptuous of their fathers (see Paul Vitz, Faith of the Fatherless). The “saint” of post-modern nihilism, Michel Foucault, was a childless pedophile. For two centuries, our dominant intellectuals have been objectively dysfunctional or perverse, “sowing tares among the wheat.”

Critical analysis must be the servant of our natural experience, because it is blind without it. Surely, the birth of philosophy in 5th century Greece (Plato and Aristotle) was a triumph of rational morality, freeing what would become the West from the tyranny of blind, irrational myths. The rise of mathematical physics in 17th century Europe was a magnificent moment, nurturing unimaginable technological progress. Yet the bastard superstitions of Scientism and atheism deafen our contemplation with their drumbeats: politics, economics, and pop culture.

Freeing Ourselves

We began this discussion, “Recognizing Reason” with a nod toward the AI threat to civilization. It should be clear now that machines, lacking analogy, symbolism, poetry or any contemplation of the big picture, can’t truly reason, but only analyze. Yet, however much we have faith in our Creator, our perception and understanding of His meaning-filled Creation, Nature, is still dulled by Scientism, the assumptions of a materialistic and pragmatic culture. We, too, look on Nature simply as raw material, rather than the poetic reason it truly is. We must intentionally ‘turn our hearts’ to contemplation, like Mary of Bethany, choosing “the one thing necessary,” rather than pragmatic Martha, “worried about many things.”

For us parents, raised in a materialistic culture, all our true analogies and symbols — higher-and-lower, light-and-dark, fruitfulness, courage, justice, and gift — may always seem like a foreign language, words we can speak, but must always translate. Yet, if we intentionally raise our kids with them, they will become ‘native speakers’ of the Reason in Nature. As children, they are already equipped to see Nature as divine poetry. Our materials need not be more exotic than Aesop’s Fables, Mother Goose and The House That Jack Built. But the trick is reading them, not simply as amusing rhymes, but as keys unlocking our experience of Nature.

Our personal obstacle as parents is simply making contemplation a practical priority. Here, we must take seriously that supreme symbol of human life, the heart, and in particular, our need “to turn our hearts,” as the Gospel constantly insists. We are embodied souls, inspirited bodies, and the heart, not the head, is the center of our lives as living beings. Modern medicine may insist the heart is merely a pump for blood, but anyone who’s suffered a real tragedy knows that their heart can break. Anyone who’s enjoyed a righteous triumph knows their heart can swell with pride. So “where your treasure is, there also is your heart” (Matt 6:21). 

If we turn our hearts to contemplation, we make an amazing discovery: Being is Good. When our Creator fashioned Nature, all the fruit-bearing plants and animals, multiplying after their kinds, “He saw that they were good.” After he created man and woman “in Our image and likeness,” it was all “very good.” Nature was wounded in the Fall of its highest being, Man, the “ground cursed” beneath our feet (thus the rise of parasites, insects and — analogically — human). And yet, as the old philosophers said, esse et esse bonum conversa sunt: “To be and to be good mean the same.” While remaining Marthas, “busy about many things,” we rob ourselves of the wonder of simply being. So, as an experiment, listen calmly to Ralph Vaughn Williams, The Lark Ascending, found on YouTube, asking the question whether Being is Good.

As the apostle says, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence or anything worthy of praise, keep thinking on these things” (Phil 4:8). We must turn our hearts to God’s Nature of Beauty, Truth and Goodness. We can reawaken our sense of Beauty with Sir Kenneth Clarke’s 13-part BBC series Civilization, a slow-moving but accessible history of Western art, on YouTube, DVD, and in print. Historical Truth, the profound divide between brutal paganism and Christian society, is seen in Tom Holland’s long but accessible Dominion, digestible as an audiobook. Natural Goodness is delightfully sketched in G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. But these are just suggestions. We can build on our interests as we find them, whether in architecture, music, or literature. (Fathers may need to nurture deliberately a taste for great novels, to awaken contemplation of the amazing diversity of human characters.)  

The important thing is to begin with our kids, and then sustain our intention. Our now empty libraries still have books and recordings on Flemish art, ancient Chivalry and medieval folk music. We can begin by recovering the lost art of “wandering the stacks,” and reawakening our own love of learning.