Pages tagged "Quakers and science"

A Scientist’s View on Space and Spirituality

• Authored by:
• Flora Quinby

The earliest moment I remember struggling with the overlap of outer space and religion was when I was watching a Space Shuttle launch. I noticed that the shuttle didn’t go through a part of the atmosphere that was called “Heaven.” In that moment, I had a very difficult internal argument – I couldn’t decide which to believe in, space travel or God. Years later, I’m now a college student studying Aerospace Engineering, and I’m still struggling with that decision.

On Expansion (May 2018)

Breaking New Ground

• Authored by:
• Shannon Fagen

On Secrets (July 2020)

Careful Study

• Authored by:
• Mary Klein

On Seeds (November 2023)

Creation, Our Teacher

• Authored by:
• Nancy Wood

On Puzzles (May 2019)

Journeys through Faith and Time

• Authored by:
• Asia Bennett,
• Lee Bennett

The following text is an assemblage of excerpts from a public presentation that Lee and Asia Bennett made to the Horizon House community on June 4, 2017. For the complete text of their presentation, see: westernfriend.org/media/faith-life-story.

On Expansion (May 2018)

Mountain Time

• Authored by:
• Frank Granshaw

Edifice of rock and ice born of molten silicates       thrust from below the earth’s rocky skin, built of clouds of rock ash and rivers of liquid stone, patiently etched by streams of ice fed by winter storms.

On Science (November 2022)

Pieces and Patterns

• Authored by:
• Trudy Myrrh Reagan

The man I married, physicist Daryl Reagan, was a skeptic. It gave him an endearing humility. He loved explaining physics to me. When he used his brakes, which produced heat by friction, he explained entropy. He told how eventually all energy would be dull heat energy, a heat death of the universe.

On Perception (March 2023)

Scientific and Moral Reasoning

• Authored by:
• Raph Levien

I am a Quaker and a scientist. To be more precise, I am a Quaker and a computer scientist. Some would dispute whether my field is a true science, but what I do is pretty scientific, with gathering of empirical data and testing of hypotheses.

On Science (November 2022)

The Depth of Our Belonging (review)

• Authored by:
• Margaret T. Kelso

Many people educated in the rational laws of Newtonian physics have difficulty accepting mysticism or even the concept of God. Although Mary Conrow Coelho was raised in an environment of Quaker mysticism, she found no place for that outlook in the materialistic (pre-quantum) science degree she pursued in college. Nevertheless, she continued her exploration of religion in general and mysticism in particular until she discovered the newer quantum physics, which offered her a way to reconcile the two realities of her life – the external/materialistic and the internal/mystic.

On Words (November 2021)

The Long View

• Authored by:
• Rick Ells

In the mid-1730s, John Bartram, a Quaker living near Philadelphia, wrote the following in his journal: “One day I was very busy in holding my plough (for thee seest I am but a ploughman), and being weary, I ran under the shade of a tree to repose myself. I cast my eyes on a daisy; I plucked it mechanically, and viewed it with more curiosity than common country farmers are wont to do, and observed therein very many distinct parts, some perpendicular, some horizontal. What a shame, said my mind, or something that inspired my mind, that thee shouldst have employed so many years in tilling the earth, and destroying so many flowers and plants, without being acquainted with their structures and their uses!”

On Mixture (November 2018)