Spherical Cows and Mars Hill

Robert Kaita, Plasma Physics
Princeton

[Sept 13, 2009]–

There’s an old joke that goes like this. Milk production at a dairy farm was low, so the dairyman wrote to a local university, asking for help from academia. A multidisciplinary team of professors was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist, and two weeks of intensive on-site investigation took place. The scholars then returned to the university, notebooks crammed with data, where the task of writing the report was left to the team leader.

Shortly thereafter, the farmer received the write-up, and opened it to read the first line:
“Consider a spherical cow…” (1)

The story is funny to us in academic research, because it carries to the absurd extreme a principle that is quite valuable in our work. It is based on what we call heuristic models, and at face value, they may be as wholly inaccurate as “spherical cows.” The simplifications they introduce, nonetheless, can show us how to approach the problems we really want to solve. It’s ridiculous to think of the earth and the sun as point masses at first blush. This is the critical insight we have, however, from Isaac Newton’s theory of gravitation, and it eventually enabled us to put people on the moon.

Raising The Spiritual Issues

The heuristic approach is also useful when it comes to sharing our faith. Consider the recent debate over whether or not “Intelligent Design,” or ID, is science. Instead of focusing solely on ID if our colleagues bring up such an issue, why not broaden the discussion to the implications of theory of evolution? Without getting bogged down as to who is correct, we can raise a host of interesting and difficult spiritual issues behind the controversy that have made it so prominent.

For example, a young friend of ours died from terminal cancer not too long ago. Since he never had children, should we be glad that the defects that caused his disease are eliminated from our gene pool? Questions like this are what reveal the limits of science most effectively. If recognized, they can open the way to accepting the answers we find in Christ.

Such tactics are anathema to some Christians, who see them as smacking of compromise. To any who feel that way, I point to the example of the Apostle Paul. In Acts 17, he proclaims the following on Mars Hill.

Sensitive To Their Culture

“Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription, ‘To an Unknown God.’ Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.”  – Acts 17:22 and 23

Was Paul affirming pagan worship? Certainly not. Rather, he wanted the Athenians to hear his message by being sensitive to their culture. Let us follow Paul’s lead, then, on the “Mars Hills” where we have been uniquely placed to serve our Lord.

(1)Recounted by John Harte in his book, Consider a Spherical Cow: A Course in Environmental Problem Solving (Sausalito: University Science Books, 1988)

© 2009 Robert Kaita

The Lord Shuts — and Opens Doors

Edwin M. Yamauchi, Emeritus
Ancient History, Miami University (Ohio)

I graduated in 1960 with a degree in Hebrew and Hellenistics from Shelton College, a very small Christian school in northern New Jersey.

How small was it?  A split in the Bible Presbyterian denomination the year before I transferred to Shelton had reduced its student body to about 125 students.

God shut one door when professors I had wanted to study under had gone to Covenant College in Saint Louis. But I did get the opportunity to study Hebrew and Greek on a former millionaire’s estate with seven lakes in Ringwood, New Jersey.

Most providentially through Melvin Dahl, my instructor in Hebrew  (who had studied under the eminent Jewish Old Testament scholar Cyrus H. Gordon), the Lord opened the door for me to pursue doctoral studies at Brandeis University.

When I Did Not Receive Tenure

When I completed my Ph.D. in Mediterranean Studies in 1964, the Lord opened several doors of employment for me, including a position in the History Department at Rutgers-the State University of New Jersey.  When I did not receive tenure at Rutgers, the Lord opened the door for me to move to Miami University as an associate professor.  Within four years I had become a full professor.

Over the past 40 years I have had the privilege of teaching many graduate students and directing the dissertations of 16 doctoral students, all but two of whom were evangelicals.  I have also had students of students come to study with me.

My demands for these students were much higher than for students in other fields.  Those in European history had to have two languages, those in Ancient History had to have four languages — two modern and two ancient.  As a result, my students were those who were both older and more highly motivated.  They were well regarded by the department, and a few of them won teaching awards from the College of Arts and Sciences.

It became rather conspicuous that I was attracting more graduate students than other colleagues in the department, particularly those teaching in non-U.S. history fields.  And that became somewhat of a problem.

I served on the Graduate Studies Committee with about six other colleagues, reviewing applicants for admission.  One year Scott Carroll, one of my students teaching at Gordon College, encouraged one of his bright students, Jennifer Hevelone, to apply.  She had outstanding grades, superlative GRE scores, and enthusiastic letters of recommendation.

Opening Better Doors

But then in the voting of our committee a distinguished U.S. historian gave her a zero rating out of 10, which absolutely doomed her admission.  Dumbstruck, I asked, “Jack, why are you doing this?”  He calmly replied that we were getting too many candidates in Ancient History, when we needed to balance the fields.  There was some justification for his reasoning, which did, however, strike the committee as rather drastic.  I did not take this decision personally, and Jack and I have remained friends.

It turns out that the Lord in His providence shut the door to Jennifer, only to open better doors for her to enter.  After receiving the M.A. from the University of Chicago, Jennifer got to write her Ph.D. under Peter Brown at Princeton, the foremost authority on church history in Late Antiquity.  She is now the chair of the history department at her alma mater, Gordon College.

This MMM may be copied or forwarded for personal ministry purposes by including:
© 2008  Edwin M. Yamauchi    Used by permission of Faculty Commons

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