Science advances on the informal and interstitial. Ideas often bubble up in the form of hallway conversations and niggling questions that come to you when your brain is half-occupied by something else. Genuine insights often compete for attention with the mundane daily imaginings and idle wondering. When the ideas seem to pan out, scientists make them formal through an experiment, a new model, or a new analysis — an entry into the formal scientific process of creating reliable knowledge from empirical observations and rigorous inference. It starts with a conversation.
This is the first, potentially most important, step in expanding scientific understanding. Big advances are rare. Most progress is incremental and halting. Most scientists spend their whole careers doggedly kicking at the bricks for small expansions at the boundary of knowledge. And most of those motivations begin as fragments of insight somewhere.
Those initial conversations occur in the context of a community, one’s colleagues, students, family members – and other interested people. The lone genius is mostly a Hollywood and comic book trope.
Seems to me that the Reformed Journal is something that serves a similar purpose. It’s a laboratory for the expansion of Reformed Christianity. It’s a virtual online water cooler where smart people boost conversations about the relevance of faith in a rapidly changing and challenging culture. Its maybe more important in a cumulative sense than we may appreciate. I certainly think so.
I knew nothing of the Reformed Journal before my friend Debra asked me to contribute a guest blog post. But the invitation prompted me to begin reading it and eventually contributing to the on-going conversation. And I began to recognize and appreciate the other voices, those of the regular contributors certainly, but also (and emphatically) among those who take the time to comment (thank you!). Reading the RJ pieces and their commentary is seasoning my own thinking and prompting me to ideas that return frequently in my now regular contributions.
If you are reading this, you are undoubtedly a part of the conversation community and I hope that you find it meaningful. So here’s the ask. The RJ is nearly entirely a volunteer effort, a labor of love for those who value the conversation. But there are real costs associated with maintaining the website and the sundry structural parts that need to be in place for the RJ notifications to show up where you can find them. Please consider giving to help support it.
And Thank You!
The purple button above or clicking here, will take you to a page with details on this year’s special “But Wait, There’s More” offer–three new books from Reformed Journal Books in 2025!
You can use the same page to give a gift of any amount or find info on giving by check via mail.
Doug Brouwer
early 2025
Dave Larsen
late winter 2025
Christy Berghoef
spring 2025
Thank you for your generous support!
Photo: fish scientist in a laboratory
Attribution: Bruno ashimwe winks
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
Tim,
Many thanks to you and all those RJ writers who have encouraged us to give this week. You are all gifted in different ways and we appreciate your (free) contributions! Our check will be in the mail very soon.
On a personal note, I appreciate your unique appeal to the scientific method, which may have more integrity than philosophical and theological “methods.” It is very difficult for an institution like a church, a seminary, or a synod
to promote the search for truth over the defense of truth. Science, on the other hand, actually invites and demands criticism. In the world of science, older traditions are not necessarily better ones. Midrash, a sheep in wolf’s clothing.
Amen to “searching for truth instead of promoting truth.” We need more of that, in many ways and many places.
Case in point, RZ. Thanks for your comments.
So thankful for your heart and voice, Tim!
Yes, to the value of conversation. Around this water cooler. Donation sent.