Overview
St. Gregory’s curriculum includes a four year series of classes in the natural sciences emphasizing natural history and including botany, zoology, earth sciences, biology, and physics.
The scientific discipline of Natural History is a biological discipline that seeks to approach the living organism on the level of the individual in its own sphere in order to arrive at the truth through observation, hypothesis, and experiment. Natural History involves a poetic, philosophic, and imaginative approach to the natural order, seeking to experience first-hand the realities studied and appreciating the beauty inherent in the balance and processes of the created order.
Freshmen Year
Natural History Freshman year, we stress direct contact with nature by making use of the possibilities afforded by our rural setting, large grounds, and opportunities for extended field trips. This serves to develop observational skills in addition to increasing knowledge and fostering a healthy respect and love for the created order. Students learn the names and properties of natural objects and are required to clearly describe their observations. This first, participatory knowledge of nature supplies the necessary foundation for a true understanding of the created order. A sense of wonder towards the inscrutable mysteries of nature provides the impetus towards a more mature comprehension of the ways of the world. The first goal, then, is the general experiential knowledge that everyone should possess. Only then do the students advance to the more theoretical and specialized studies in the upper grades.
Sophomore Year
Sophomore year science is an introduction to geology, oceanography, meteorology, and astronomy. The course explores various points of contact between faith and the sciences, with discussions that center on the Galilean controversy, and the question of uniformitarian and evolutionary assumptions.
Junior Year
Natural History for the Juniors focuses on the art of scientific observation of the story of life in the natural sphere and the strategies, tactics, and goal of the science. Special attention is given to the development of the eye to see things with more clarity through exercises in observation, artistic rendition, and guided field investigations. The students are challenged thereby to discover and attempt the process of natural history to strengthen their powers of perception and come to the truth about living things in the natural realm via experience, examination, and experiment. Studies are done in animal behavior (ethology) and instinct as well as a consideration of the two-fold role of man in nature as a steward of God’s creation: the poetic and practical. The objective of the course is to develop in the students an eye and imagination that will grow into a vision of the Divine image as it subsists in the things that He has made.
Senior Year
Seniors advance in their scientific pursuits through the study of classical conceptual physics. This course is named from the Greek root of the word “physics” meaning “nature.” It derives its approach to the science from the ancients, despite its resemblance to a modern physics course. In fact, this course might be more accurately described as a “history of science” or even a “philosophy of science” rather than “physics.” The purpose of the course is to give students an understanding of the development of ideas about the physical world and a perspective from which to judge the accomplishments of modern science.
The course begins where science began with the study of astronomy and the heavens. Having established a basic understanding of the motions of the sun, the moon, the stars, and the planets, students examine the ancient Greek understanding of the motions of the heavens. We look at the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and especially Ptolemy. The course then traces the development of the explanation of the motion of heavenly and earthly bodies through the works of Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, followed by Newton and his laws of motion and universal gravitation, and a brief introduction of Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity. The course concludes with the reading of Augros’ The New Story of Science, which gives an understanding and perspective on some of the progress and surprising discoveries of modern science.
