First Day of Fifth Grade Science

The moment I've been dreading has finally come. The children have been asked "What is Science?" The list of what Science is and is not amassed a frightening array of designations.

 Science  
Experiments
Natural Things
Concrete
Visible

Not Science
Supernatural
Feelings
Abstract
Invisible
Sadness

The discussion was certainly innocent enough. Mr. Muns (a fine specimen of Reformed theology) brought up examples of charlatans and fortune-tellers as those who prey on the weak of mind. No one wants to be taken in by false sources of unverifiable authority. As the Great Stevie Wonder said "When you believe in things you don't understand---it's Superstition." And yet...

Could it be that even at the level of fifth-grade Science we want to preserve our epistemological terms carefully? Is it really the wisest method to teach impressionable minds that scientia is a kind of certainty only proper to studying the phenomena of the natural world? The nature and domain of Science has quite a checkered past.

Take the second article of the very first question of Aquinas' Summa. "Whether Sacred Doctrine is a Science?" A brief reading quickly reveals that for a Medieval Aristotelian, science is most properly about that which is not concrete. "No science deals with individual facts" but rather immutable principles. That seems to throw a wrench into our modern instincts. St. Thomas considers the discipline of theology to be not only scientia, but the grandest of all the sciences. And yet I heard in class today (no joke) that the famous "How many Angels can fit on the head of a pin" question is the archetypal "unscientific" question. Apparently Scholasticism, with its questions of Nature, Being, Substance, and Essence are no longer chic. Have we forgotten that the Classical and Medieval world laid claim to the title of Science as well as us? Are we unknowingly teaching our children to accept a weak relationship between Faith and Reason? Natural philosophy (only one small compartment of Science) and Metaphysics?

Article 2. Whether sacred doctrine is a science?

Objection 1. It seems that sacred doctrine is not a science. For every science proceeds from self-evident principles. But sacred doctrine proceeds from articles of faith which are not self-evident, since their truth is not admitted by all: "For all men have not faith" (2 Thessalonians 3:2). Therefore sacred doctrine is not a science.
Objection 2. Further, no science deals with individual facts. But this sacred science treats of individual facts, such as the deeds of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and such like. Therefore sacred doctrine is not a science.

On the contrary, Augustine says (De Trin. xiv, 1) "to this science alone belongs that whereby saving faith is begotten, nourished, protected and strengthened." But this can be said of no science except sacred doctrine. Therefore sacred doctrine is a science.

I answer that, Sacred doctrine is a science. We must bear in mind that there are two kinds of sciences. There are some which proceed from a principle known by the natural light of intelligence, such as arithmetic and geometry and the like. There are some which proceed from principles known by the light of a higher science: thus the science of perspective proceeds from principles established by geometry, and music from principles established by arithmetic. So it is that sacred doctrine is a science because it proceeds from principles established by the light of a higher science, namely, the science of God and the blessed. Hence, just as the musician accepts on authority the principles taught him by the mathematician, so sacred science is established on principles revealed by God.

Reply to Objection 1. The principles of any science are either in themselves self-evident, or reducible to the conclusions of a higher science; and such, as we have said, are the principles of sacred doctrine.

Reply to Objection 2. Individual facts are treated of in sacred doctrine, not because it is concerned with them principally, but they are introduced rather both as examples to be followed in our lives (as in moral sciences) and in order to establish the authority of those men through whom the divine revelation, on which this sacred scripture or doctrine is based, has come down to us.