“Where We See the Work of God” ft. Indiana Wesleyan University’s Warren F. Rogers I Saturdays at Seven – Season Three, Episode Twelve

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In the twelfth episode of the third season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Warren F. Rogers, the David Blanchard Chair in Physics at Indiana Wesleyan University. Rogers opens by exploring the relationship shared by his passions for music and physics. He details how those twin passions and the relationships they share—especially as they converge in the physics of sound—made him a better physicist and a better musician. Rogers then shares how those passions were cultivated during his years at Harvey Mudd College where, thanks to its participation in the consortium known as the Claremont Colleges, Rogers was able to major in physics and minor in music at Scripps College. While in graduate school at the University of Rochester, Rogers became a Christian, encountering a faith that sustains his life and a belief system that allows him to ask philosophical and theological questions about his vocation as a nuclear experimental physicist and his avocation as a musician. For most of his career, Rogers served on the faculties of two undergraduate serving Christian colleges and universities in Westmont College and Indiana Wesleyan University. Through partnerships he established with colleagues at Michigan State University and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Rogers found ways to work alongside undergraduate students, seeking to cultivate their interests, while also giving them opportunities to conduct research with students and faculty from around the world. Rogers then closes by discussing the need for scientists and the Church to forge new paths for collaboration as they cultivate an even deeper appreciation for the created order.

Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.

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Our guest is Warren F. Rogers, the David Blanchard Professor of Physics at Indiana Wesleyan University. Thank you for joining us.

Warren F. Rogers: Well, absolutely. Thank you Todd, for, for inviting me.

Todd Ream: I want to open by asking what in your estimation physics and music have in common? Rumor has it that much of your life is defined by a love of physics and a love for music. In your estimation, however, I hear they’re not disparate interests, but share something in common. What do they have in common for you?

Warren F. Rogers: Well, that’s a really good question. I am, it is true. My life is centered on science and music. Those are the two great passions I have. And when I was in undergraduate, I actually had to decide between a physics major and a piano major, it turned out I took a piano minor. But you know, the seeds of music and the love of music were planted in me at an early age.

And I, when I developed the course in the physics of music, it occurred to me that music is among the arts, probably the best one to serve as a topic for a physics course, because it’s a physical phenomenon, music exists in time. It consists of physical interactions, of instruments producing sound and waves, all of which are the stuff of science.

And I would also say that they share, physics and music share something in common in that both are a bit of a science and a bit of an art. There’s no doubt that physics is an art. We stumble along in the dark and we discover things by curiosity and by searching out. And it’s very much the same way in music, I think when somebody composes a piece of music there is artistic and imaginative and creative thought processes that go into both.

On the other hand, science is also a rigorous mathematical topic and, and music has quite the mathematical structure. When it’s looked at from a physical standpoint, music is filled with wonderful examples to teach about the nature of physical reality and the way in which physical sound is produced, and not only the sound itself, but the tone quality we can understand from understanding instruments better. So both are very, very mathematical.

And I happen to have a mind that is a puzzle solver. I love mathematics. I love you know, physics, physics feeds something very, very deep in me, and I can say more about that in time. But music does as well. And I think both involve the heart and the mind in a way that, at least for me, has a lot of overlap. And so when I teach the topic, I am fully teaching physics, but I’m also sharing my love of music and helping develop that love and that understanding of my students as well.

I might also say that my favorite music is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. And his music for me epitomizes the strong link between physics and music in that counterpoint, he is the master of counterpoint. And counterpoint is perhaps the place in music where the mathematical structure is most evident. Bach will weave melodies and then turn them upside down and turn them backwards and then overlay them in a way that just produces the most beautiful music, but also for that, for the brain-oriented musician. It’s plenty of wonderful material to consume. And the artistic nature of the mathematical portion is just as beautiful and compelling as the musical portion in my view.

Music and physics also share harmonics. Music is built on harmonics. When we play instruments, each instrument produces a note and many, many harmonics. And when you combine different tones together, those harmonics and the mathematical relationship with them result in whether we perceive the interval as dissonant or harmonic. And it’s also true that atoms and nuclei have harmonic states, and when we excite them, we watch them excite and de-excite and the mathematical relationship of them, has everything to do with the light that’s given off or absorbed, or the gamma rays in the case of a nucleus.

So there are many features of each that I also think are somewhat in common, the mathematics, the harmonic structure, the combinations, the mathematical nature of combinations. So, you know, it may not be completely convincing, but the two do share enough of an overlap for me that my passions for both can coexist. 

Todd Ream: Thank you. In what ways, if any, has the study of physics made you a better musician and the study of music made you a better physicist?

Warren F. Rogers: Well okay. That’s a great question. For one thing, both require improvisation. Physics requires improvisation in the sense that you’re called upon to be as creative and broad thinking as you can to solve problems that no one else has solved. You do it in the context of colleagues, but you still exercise your own intellectual capacity to try and grapple with problems that have never been solved before. And therefore, it requires some improvisation. You try out things that you haven’t tried before. You explore in areas that you don’t necessarily know are going to reap anything, and suddenly you might discover something that’s pivotal in putting together your understanding.

Music requires improvisation, and I don’t mean the improvisation that we find in jazz, which is a wonderful and beautiful expression in modern music, but I’m talking about improvisation in the sense of shaping and molding the piece to be musically compelling. There’s a term in music called rubato, and rubato means slow down and get a little bit more relaxed. And you don’t have to keep such a rigid tempo, bend it a bit, and be expressive.

And so in order to play music, it requires much, much more than simply playing the notes, but shaping and shaping the sound and shaping the rhythm in a way that involves improvisation. So I think that those two are in common, between the both.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. Of the intellectual virtues then, which ones, if any do the study of and practice of physics and the study and practice of music perhaps have in common? 

Warren F. Rogers: The intellectual virtues I’m aware of are curiosity, attentiveness, and intellectual humility. And I’d say all three involve, both involve all three. But you know what, that also applies to so many fields of inquiry the academy. Curiosity, attentiveness and intellectual humility are really important virtues to, to embrace and, and exhibit practice.

Curiosity and physics goes right along with the improvisation. We have to be curious enough to, to search in places we haven’t searched before and maybe create mental pictures of what’s going on and models that help us grapple with the unknown nature. In music, curiosity is also a big part, especially in the composition of music, I would say, and also in the playing.

Attentiveness is absolutely crucial. You can’t do good science without being attentive and mindful of what you’re doing and focus really, really well. And same with music. In order to play well, play, especially if it’s performance, you play with a like extremely sharp attention, focus on your work.

And both involve intellectual humility. Science has not done well unless scientists can embrace an appropriate humility. We don’t know all the answers. No one person has a handle or a corner on understanding ahead of other people. Intellectual humility is part of the engine that drives good science. Scientists work much better together when they are humble with one another.

As soon as arrogance or overconfidence starts creeping in the science has not done that well. And, and the, the ability of the group to do good science is hampered by that. So intellectual humility, I find promotes really good science and when there is no intellectual humility, when a scientist is arrogant or dismisses the work of others, science suffers for that.

So I would say all three of the intellectual virtues are important, both for music and for physics. But I would also say they’re good intellectual virtues for any academic field of inquiry. 

Todd Ream: And how about moral virtues? Do they teach any of those virtues in particular in ways?

Warren F. Rogers: Sure. Prudence is really important for science. It’s important to find solutions to things by exploring many different options and weighing many different factors. Science always involves so many more variables than we can account for. And when we limit our understanding by the limiting of the approach that we take, we won’t find the kind of rich results as we will when we account other possibilities. And prudence is all about doing things in an efficient and methodical and logical way that does not necessarily have a structure.

I don’t quite know how I’m saying that, but prudence is also important in music. I don’t know as much about prudence, but I would say temperance is definitely something that is important for both science. If science is done with a hot head or an anxiousness or the desire to come to results too quickly, you’ll find yourself in a cul-de-sac and wondering how to get out.

Sometimes science can lead you into places where you scratch your head and say, what is going on? But then once you realize that you have to slow down a bit, be temperate, calm your own passions, you know, calm your own self-interests, and work in such a way that you can sort of put your own biases and passions aside and work slowly and methodically.

And the same is true in music. Performance requires an incredible amount of patience, careful work. And then courage is also involved in both, but I would say prudence and temperance are probably the two that I would say both share.

Todd Ream: Thank you. Before we move on then, I want to ask you about your physics of music course. Rumor has it, you may even be working on a textbook right now for this course and, and others who teach this course at other universities.

Would you offer us an overview of it and what you hope students, whether they be physicists or musicians, what do you hope they get from that course?

Warren F. Rogers: Wow. Okay, well, let me just give you a sampling of the kind of topics that we address in that course. We start off by the foundation of music, which is vibrations basically. Oscillations of bodies produce waves of sound that we hear, and virtually, every instrument produces a physical vibration that eventually forms the waves that enter our ear. So we talk about vibrations, we talk about resonance, we talk about musical instruments and how resonance provides a foundational mechanism for their function.

And how they make the sounds that they do. We talk about the propagation of sound. We talk about musical instruments and the physical nature of their bodies and how they operate. We talk about temperament. We talk about how the note structure of the scale is produced and how we tune the scale based on the musicians, the instruments that are being used.

If it’s a vocal ensemble the actual intervals they will sing will be slightly different than the intervals in a musical performance, especially involving an instrument like a piano, which is fixed in its tone. So musical temperament is a fascinating topic, and it also helps in the understanding of music harmony and dissonance.

We talk at length about the human ear and the voice, which are absolute miracles of creation. I can’t go into the detail there, but we do in the course. It the, both the voice and the ear are astoundingly sophisticated and nuanced in their function and the way that they produce the signals that we enjoy as they’re processed in our brains. Musical acoustics, the environment. We talk about digital music.

We learn to love and play music in a different way, I think, after we have explored the physical nature behind that music. My students often come away from the course saying, you know, Dr. Rogers, I really listen to music differently now. I hear those things that you’ve taught us about. And if I ask them, does that enrich or does it detract from your love and experience of enjoying music? And they say, oh, it absolutely contributes.

I had a student once ask me when you go to a concert, why do you bring the music along? Why do you like to read along, as the performer is producing, is performing the piece? And I said, well, it’s an extra dimension to the music that actually augments it. It builds it. The experience of music is augmented by understanding the nuances of what your ear is processing. And if you listen to it without thought, it’s not as rich and as deep and as meaningful. So this is one of the outcomes I like for my students.

My first Hi-Fi experience, in fact, when I first heard a demonstration of a system that had good fidelity, I was probably a teenager. I walked into a, I think it was a Circuit City, I can’t remember, but it was an old store that’s since closed. And they had a sound room and a really fine pair of speakers and audio equipment. And it was down low. It was not loud, but there was a trumpet as part of a band, and I could have sworn that there was a black curtain behind the speakers where there was a real musician playing.

Todd Ream: Wow.

Warren F. Rogers: That experience transformed me because I realized, oh my goodness, recording really is limited and high fidelity is worth pursuing because it enriches and enhances the understanding of music or the appropriation of music.

I would say there’s a parallel here in that what students learn in the physics of music adds that extra dimension that can augment and enrich their experience of music in a similar way. Sometimes on the other side of the physics of music, they’ll say, I listen to music totally differently now. I listen to the acoustics in the hall. I listen to the musicians. I listen to the intervals they’re producing. I listen to the dissonances and I can identify why those dissonances are there, and rather than detracting from the experience, I truly believe with all my heart that it enhances and enriches the experience of listening to music. 

Todd Ream: Thank you very much. I want to ask you now about how nuclear experimental physics became your passion and your vocation. Not leaving music behind, but how that came to be the focus of your life’s work.

You earned an undergraduate degree in physics and a minor in piano from Harvey Mud, which is one of the Claremont Colleges out in California, and then a master’s in PhD in physics from the University of Rochester. So going to that question then, at what point did you know that nuclear experimental physics would play a central role in how you were called to exercise your vocation?

Warren F. Rogers: Yeah, good question. When I was an undergraduate, okay, so first of all, my love for physics started in high school. And I was sitting around with a bunch of friends. I think I was a sophomore at the time. I hadn’t yet had a physics course. We were just sitting around in the library and we had this discussion about, where do you want to end up in life? What are you going to do eventually? And everybody around the table answered. And then finally it came to me and I said, I think I’d like to do physics. And at the moment I thought, why did I say that? I think there’s a love for physics. I don’t even know what it really is.

And so I said that because I felt that there was this move toward a hard science, you know, the most mathematically rigorous science I could think of. And right after we disbanded, I walked over to the shelf where the physics books were, and I opened up this volume. I can picture what it looks like. It had a brown, it was a hardback, had a brown cover. No, no, cover on it. Just the hardback. And it was a physics text, and I opened it up. And as soon as I started flipping through the pages, I saw equations and I saw diagrams, and I saw plots. And I thought, this is what I want to do.

The equations, especially somehow encapsulating thought in such a concise way in the language of mathematics was really intriguing to me because I thought, okay, there is a very concise way to capture a physical principle that could be expressed in such a beautiful and simple way, in a mathematical way. And that really intrigued me that the world was mathematical and that we could go about understanding it by applying our own mathematical thinking, which we have as a gift.

We do not share with the animal world. We do not share with the rest of the world, the ability to do science, to query nature is something that human beings we’re gifted with and sometimes we are unaware that it is a true gift. I believe it’s part of how we are made in the image of God, the way that we can go out and query nature and learn and grow in our understanding of ourselves, the world, and God. This is all facilitated very nicely through the pursuit of science.

So I knew I wanted to do physics and so I went, when I went to Harvey Mud, I was a physics major. Nobody was going to persuade me any differently. And at the time, actually, Harvey Mud only had four majors, physics, chemistry, engineering, and mathematics. No, not engineering. I’m sorry well anyway, it had very, very few majors. It has more now. It added biology shortly after I graduated.

But I was also in the context of the five Claremont colleges. And so music was not something at Harvey Mud that was explored or taught, but Scripps College, right across the streets, right across the street from Harvey Mud, I spent a lot of my time at Scripps, especially in the practice rooms and hanging out with musicians, and that was my other alter ego.

And I have to say, my piano teacher at one point, she really said to me, what, why aren’t you considering a career in music? Because she thought I had promise. She said are you going to do physics or do you think you might, you know, think about a career in music? And I took that as a great compliment, but I said to her, I think I decided that I love music too much to make it a career.

Basically, making it a career might dampen or lessen my love and my passion for music because I would turn it into something that I had to do. Whereas, physics, I’m perfectly happy doing physics that way. Pursuing a career in physics is so much in line with the very passion I have for it. Whereas, the passion I have for music is to produce, perform and enjoy and not necessarily to turn into a career. So I said to her, I have the choice of either turning physics into a career and music into an avocation, or music into a career and physics as an avocation.

But it’s hard to keep up with physics as an avocation by reading the popular texts on it. You don’t really get a handle for physics until you actually do it. So I decided to go into physics because that’s where my first primary passion was, but I also vowed to keep my hands on the keyboard, and continue enjoying and studying music as well. And eventually to develop this course in the physics of music.

When I got to graduate school, I thought I was going to do astronomy because that’s the undergraduate research I did under Sandy Sandmann at Harvey Mudd College. And so when I first got to the University of Rochester, the astronomy group tried to recruit me. They wanted to bring me over and talk to me about the research they were doing. But at that time, I was thinking, you know, I’m not really sure I want to continue with astronomy. I was interested in quantum optics, which is one of the reasons I went to the University of Rochester.

I went there, had my first year of classes, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Again, it’s the intellectual challenge and the puzzle solving that really intrigued me about physics. And after my first year, typically it was common for graduate students to go find summer work. And so I heard about an opening at the nuclear physics lab across the river. And so I went down there to talk to them and, and learn about the lab and find out about the summer position. It was really primarily about that, that I went to talk to them.

And an old physicist named Harry Fulbright sat down to me and he started drawing on the chalkboard, and it was the first time that I heard about the intricate nature of the way nuclei, the, the heart of the atom, how it functions. I learned that it’s a very dynamic place that it consists of particles that are interacting with one another, that it has excited states, much like the atom does.

And I was hooked not only by the topic of this very, very tiny kernel of the atom and how we can study it, but also I got a tour of the lab and I got to see the equipment and the accelerator and I loved it. And so I ended up doing my PhD there at the lab. The lab was called the Nuclear Structure Research Lab. It had a tandem MP Van de Graaff accelerator which was a wonderful, wonderful machine. One of the better machines that you found on university campuses at the time. And I thoroughly loved it.

And went to do my postdoc at University of Washington and then eventually took up my first faculty position at the SUNY school SUNY Geneseo in New York. And I spent six years there before I went to Westmont College for 22 years before I came here to Indiana Wesleyan back in 2016.

Todd Ream: Thank you. In the United States, we’ve recently witnessed a renewed interest in nuclear energy. What advice would you offer students seeking to discern whether they might be called to nuclear physics and in particular also whether they should pursue careers in experimental or theoretical physics? 

Warren F. Rogers: First and foremost, I think it’s really important for a mentor for students to understand the students’ passions and abilities. I think one of my greatest excitements about teaching physics is to witness the process of students that to have their eyes opened and to watch as their confidence builds and they learn science.

I would give them first of all learn the student’s passion. Learn the student’s abilities. And you know what, there’s always projects you can get students involved with. Sometimes students are intimidated to approach faculty about whether or not they’d like to do research because they feel that the faculty member, there’s too much distance between the student and the faculty member. And at small institutions like Indiana Wesleyan, we want to cultivate a very close relationship and a growth in that relationship. And the heart of it is that it’s a mentoring relationship.

And so my advice to faculty would be to, for one thing recognize that any student can be given a task to do as part of a research program. And sometimes it’s that very, very experience that causes them to blossom. I’ve seen students whom I had very little expectation or hope for based on my first meeting with them. But after I involve them in research, and they get a chance to explore their passion, sometimes a little light goes on and they end up being extremely good at something and they pursue that.

It might be programming. It might be working with electronics. It might be designing equipment and building equipment. It might be, and then analyzing data or writing sophisticated programs to make the analysis more streamlined. So students find all kinds of ways that they can plug into research.

And I think for the faculty members, it’s really important to be creative in assigning especially with students that are brand new to doing research, to really view them as a blank slate and identify how to get them employed in a way that might kickstart them. And I find you know, as soon as they come to you with an interest, it’s already an indication that they have a passion for it. And they just need to be they’re a diamond in the rough and we have to help polish them and polish their future pursuits and the ideas and, and thoughts they have about that. 

Todd Ream: This passion that you have for serving as a nuclear physicist at an undergraduate institution is part of what led you in 2018 to receive the American Physical Society’s award for research in an undergraduate institution and an award that’s given annually to one faculty member serving across the country. That satisfaction for serving as an undergraduate institution is evident.

What also forms the satisfaction? You’ve, you’ve served two of the three institutions where you’ve served as a faculty member, have been Christian universities. What satisfaction have those environments also afforded you?

Warren F. Rogers: Sure, sure. Yeah, that’s a really good question. Personally for me science is about meaning, and we are exploring meaning in this universe. And meaning is a topic that does not exist in a vacuum. Meaning is given. We give meaning to things. And when we explore the nature of the universe and we find meaning there, we really are exploring the work of the Giver of meaning the very Source of the universe. God injected this world with meaning, and He gave us an appreciation to understand and pursue that meaning and to form meaning ourselves.

So in some sense, there’s a philosophical dimension to what I’m doing that does focus on the more complete view of the world, and its underpinnings by a Creator. There is a source behind the beauty that we see in this world. And in pursuing an understanding of the nature of the world, a person of faith also explores the nature of God in doing so. God has invited us to do that in Psalm 19 and Psalm 8 and other places. Pursuing an understanding of the world at large, we see God’s creative hand at work.

So even in the minutia of the nucleus, that still is a place where we see the work of God. It’s not just the stars. When the psalmist implored us to look up at the heavens and see the beauty of the heavens and see they’re the glory of God, they didn’t yet have accelerators, and so they couldn’t know about the microscopic nature of matter and how incredibly rich, if not more rich it is on the small scale. So my passion for science derives from that.

My passion for serving at a Christian institution is because I receive great satisfaction out of helping students discover the link between their own personal faith and their desire to pursue a career in science. Oftentimes, they’ll come in insisting or understanding or at least being taught that the two are, are disparate, that science and faith approach different the world in different ways and, and they really do. Science’s apprise does approach understanding the world in a different way than faith and spiritual revelation does.

But nonetheless at a Christian university, the importance of integrating our life of faith in God, our understanding of God with the work that we’re doing is really crucial because that’s where the best and most meaningful meaning comes from our work. When I realized that I am exploring the handiwork of a God that is so much bigger than I can possibly understand, but I see the imprint of God’s activity here in the universe. The fingerprint, so to speak, of God and pursuing that is such a wonderful thing.

And for students too. I think it’s almost cathartic sometimes when a student realizes that the faith that they’ve embraced and carried all their lives is still going to be completely intact and rich and grow as a result of pursuing science. This is something that’s not generally known in culture. I think there’s too much of a, sort of a myth about a battle, about a battle between the two, how the two are battling for our mind and heart, and that if you pursue one, it’s at the expense of the other. That would be a more extreme case of that, but I think students receive a, a, a deep sense of satisfaction when they realize I can be a faithful Christian and pursue this work and do it with all of all that I am.

In fact when I was I actually came to faith in graduate school. And what I find really interesting about that, I was well on my way to my PhD, and I met up with a wonderful colleague, a fellow graduate student a Christian who invited me to a graduate student Bible study. And I had had some knowledge of Christianity before that. My parents put me through catechism when I was five or six, so I got some of the basics of the Gospel, but I never pursued it as my own interest.

But in graduate school through the influence of this friend and the Bible study, I came to faith. In fact, it was the story of Zacchaeus, climbing up in the tree so he could see Jesus as He passed by. And as Jesus passed by, Jesus called him. He was not expecting that.

And when we were, when we were going through that very story in the graduate student Bible study, something happened inside me and I realized, okay, I’m Zacchaeus. I’m sort of standing off to the side. I’m curious about this Christ, but I want to see Him pass by and I want to see Him. But, you know, He actually engages me at that point. And he was engaging me at that point, you are Zacchaeus. He said, you are up in that tree and you’re looking at me. Come down. I’m going to come and sup with you. I want to develop a relationship with you.

And so I think that was the moment at which I realized, okay, it’s okay to be a physicist and it’s okay to embrace a vibrant faith. The two can grow together, and in fact, they should and need to grow together. It’s a false premise to say that they are at odds with one another. And I try and encourage my students, your faith will enrich as you study science and your understanding of science will enrich as you consider the underpinnings of God’s creative activity and your faith in God.

So I enjoy teaching at a Christian university because that extra dimension I view as crucial, I think, to forming thoughtful Christian scientists who can go out and make a difference in this world. Science has done the same here as it’s done anywhere, and I want to make sure that students understand that they’re not coming to get a reduced version of science if they come to a Christian university. We do science just like everyone else does.

And in fact, in my case, I do science collaborating with people at Michigan State and Los Alamos lab, very secular institutions but that’s okay, because science is done really well at secular institutions as long as, you know, there’s a sense of humility in the scientists that are doing it. I would feel remiss if I simply taught students the joy and excitement of physics, but did not tie the bow, so to speak, and provide them the wider context of the very field of physics, which is embraced by creative activity, by a God that loves us and who stands completely separate and outside the universe. 

Todd Ream: Thank you. As you just echoed, one of the things that you’ve also done over the course of your career, in addition to teaching and leading laboratories at SUNY Geneseo, Westmont College and Indiana Wesleyan University, is establishing and participating in NSF-partnered research partnerships with Michigan State currently, as well as, the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

For scholars who are seeking to form comparable collaborations, especially Christian scholars at undergraduate serving institutions, what advice would you offer them? What sort of best practices might you encourage them to consider?

Warren F. Rogers: That’s a great question and it’s actually something that I have been privileged to participate in, helping mentor young faculty. Sometimes one of my colleagues in nuclear physics will call and say, I got this graduate student who has a heart for teaching. Would you mind talking with her or him to see whether or not teaching is a passion they should pursue? Because you are at a small institution and you might be able to lend some good thought about that.

Okay, so first of all, I tell young faculty if they’ve got ties with other scientists coming out of graduate school or coming out of their postdoc, especially if they’re going to a small institution and one that embraces a Christian underpinning, a Christian foundation. Keep those collaborative ties. Don’t let those ties with your colleagues waste away and you feel that you have to start up an independent, new research program at the institution you’re at.

It’s perfectly fine to continue the research you’re doing with your colleagues. And I would say that’s a bit of a lifeline because it’s almost impossible with the weight and burden of producing new class assignments, putting together lectures, putting together assignments and exams. And at the same time, starting from scratch, a research program. So I really say I really encourage them, don’t give up on the research you’re already doing. Keep those ties and find ways to continue collaborating with them.

And find ways to go to conferences, talk with people, attend as many conferences as you can because the beautiful thing about being physically at a conference is that you’re talking to people that you would never have anticipated or imagined you might. Going to a conference is always a blank slate. I’m going to talk with people about things. I don’t know what those conversations are going to look like, but sometimes they open up new areas of research.

You’ll come up to somebody, you’ll say, wow, the stuff you’re doing is really great. I love what you’re doing. And in fact, it reminds me about … And suddenly, you’ve got a collaboration going on. You work with other physicists or other scientists. So for young faculty, dispel the notion that you have to start from scratch and produce something that’s unique and original to your institution. Keep those ties and they will eventually evolve into something that you can call your own at your institution, but to try and start from scratch as something that I definitely dissuade people from trying to do, even though they might think that that’s the way they need to do it.

I would also say it’s a very social enterprise, and so get students and other colleagues involved as much as you can. Science is very social. This is something that I don’t think people outside of the sciences really appreciate. I think the image of a scientist in a lab coat alone in the laboratory is still too common when people think about what it would mean to be a scientist.

Try being in a room with 15 other people, you know, write on the whiteboard and here’s how we do it. No, no, no, it’s designed it this way. You work as a team, and then you put things together, you divvy up tasks you divvy up computation tasks. You give people the tasks for which they have the most talent and passion. So there are people who are really good at programming, they’ll take care of that.

And so science is a collaborative venture. It’s never done, it’s not done today solo. It’s always done in context with other people. So with that in mind, I tell young faculty as they join a university where they might have a very heavy teaching load, to make sure and keep those ties work efficiently.

Don’t try and invent something new until you’ve really got your feet established and you’ve got the routine down because it’s a lot of work, those first few years of teaching. It’s more work preparing for classes than anybody would ever imagine. It’s a lot of work.

And so also I advise them to make sure and take time to rest. Don’t become too crazy. If it’s not given to you, seek for load release if you can during that first year so you can get your feet on the ground. Any good institution and especially a good department, is going to understand the value and utility of that for young faculty, and often will design that first-year to have a course reduction. It’s very common to do that.

And I would say again, the conference ties, you know, apply for funding within your institution and try and get to conferences as best you can and bring undergraduates to conferences with you as well. So that would be my basic advice.

Don’t try and do too much because starting up is a lot of work. Keep the work you’re already doing. Keep the ties you already have and keep the passion going. And don’t try and make any major changes until you’re ready to, after several years and you’ve established yourself. Then you can be more creative and outward looking and try maybe exploring some different areas within research. 

Todd Ream: As our time begins to become short, I want to make sure that we talk about the Christian academic vocation as you understand it. And so how do you define the characteristics or qualities of the Christian academic vocation as it animates you and the work that you do?

Warren F. Rogers: For one thing especially at a Christian university, the academic vocation is cast in a broader perspective than you would find at a secular institution. There’s always that understanding of what’s behind what you’re studying, especially in the sciences, and an appreciation for the connection between the Creator and the visible world that we study. So there’s a broader perspective. But as I said earlier, the pursuit of academic knowledge is done the same here as it’s done anywhere except that it’s done in a broader context.

I would say the academic vocation is primarily a conversation among people who have a passion for the topic. You know, conferences are all about conversation. Conversation, the interchange of information, the growing and developing with, together with your colleagues is such an important part of the academic vocation. We are not holed up in some ivory tower, sitting there, tapping on our laptop, doing calculations and publishing. We’re working with people and we’re conversing with those people.

And conversation is the cornerstone of scientific progress because conversation is the dissemination of ideas and information that enriches everybody who engages in that conversation. Iron sharpens iron. That is such an important part in the academic vocation. We respect one another. We value one another’s input, but we talk, we converse.

Not only do we converse with those in our field, we converse with people outside the field. I have always really enjoyed teaching at institutions that embrace a liberal arts model where students are intentionally exposed to a broad arrangement of topics that help fill them out and round them out as Christians, so that when they graduate, they think broadly. They think in many different ways about important questions they will confront as they become members of society.

And voting on issues the well-rounded, broadly educated individual has such a, a better perspective to apply to tough questions that are culturally meaningful. And so when we graduate students from liberal arts institutions, we are giving them the broader perspective that will help them parse out some of those trick, tricky questions that they will engage in as part of their membership in society.

So conversation is really, really important in the academic vocation. Journal writing and reading is such a lifeblood of the advancement of science, and conferences where presentations are made. And then there’s always the casual inviting somebody to come speak and those conversations while they’re at your university can develop new avenues of research possibility. So I would say that conversation is absolutely central to the academic vocation.

And the Christian academic vocation adds in the dimension of God’s creative activity to that conversation. And in doing so, I really do believe that it enhances and enriches the topic. And I wish everybody could, I wish everybody could experience that.

You know, secular scientists, I run into people all the time who are deeply, deeply impressed with the way nature is put together and deeply moved by the kinds of things we find about the nature of the world, either on the large scale or the small. Any venue in the universe has the imprint of its Creator and the science that goes about trying to understand it is engaging in a, in a noble pursuit, in my view.

I would say that conversation is absolutely pivotal and central and, and, and foundational to not only the way science is done, but the way science advances and the way science is shared with the world. And I’ve always been impressed. I was a graduate student back when Andrei Sakharov in under house arrest in Russia. I don’t remember whether it was in house arrest or what, but at that time we as students who were learning to become professional physicists came to understand that that was, that was a strike against science in general because there was a lot of science that was being done, in the US and Russia and China that was being done at the same time that there were the political tensions between the country.

Scientists understood, we don’t let that, we don’t let that hamper, hamper the advancement of knowledge. And so there’s a lot of Chinese journals that we stock in our libraries, Russian journals, and there’s collaborations with Russians. They sort of go on in parallel with the kind of tensions that we witness on the large scale worldwide.

And I’ve always valued science for that. Science is truly nonpartisan in the sense that we all want to understand science. We all want to understand nature at the deepest level we can. And we do that by cooperating with one another and sharing our passions together. And rarely do we get into discussions that settle upon science as much as cultural issues. And that’s where we start getting into conversations that become more, more thorny and pointed.

Todd Ream: Thank you very much. For our last question then now, I want to ask you about the ways you believe scientists can be of greater service to the Church in the years to come and the ways that the Church can be of greater service to scientists in the years to come.

Warren F. Rogers: That’s an excellent question and one that I’ve actually given a fair amount of thought to. There is a relationship between Christian universities, of course, and the denomination to which they’re attached. And, and at Indiana Wesleyan, we embrace a Wesleyan theology and a view of Christianity through the eyes Wesleyanism.

And in science and in the academy, we find ways in which we believe the Church needs to grow because of the advancement of knowledge and the changing of cultural morays. Now, I’ve often thought of the academy as the thinking branch for the Church. The academy in Christian institutions is kinda like the thinking branch for the Church. It allows the Church to explore and think about the changing times and changing trends. The changing morality in society, and whether or not that changing morality reflects on needed changes within the Christian worldview.

There are ways in which the academy ideally should do the heavy thinking for the Church in looking to the future, looking to the trends in society, looking to science and understanding how best to let that be instructional to the Church in a way that builds the faith rather than creates walls.

So we’re in an area or in an age right now, and we’ve been in an age this age for decades where there’s a fair amount of skepticism. And a skepticism about science and about what it can say and about the truth that it tells. Culturally there are, people are all over the map about their appropriation of whether science actually is a real thing or whether scientists just pretend to do what they do. But it’s really just an expression of their own personal biases and their view of the world.

Nothing could be further from the truth for real, honest scientists. We are not doing our science in any way other than to understand as best we can, the nature of the world. But the academy has a lot to say about the relationship of faith and society and the interconnection between those.

What I can say is I think they’re partners in this world. The academy, especially the academy in Christian universities, is really tasked with executing its work in the context of a worldview that is governed by the Gospel at its heart and the creative activity of God. And so the Church without the academy, I think will unfortunately, probably, atrophy in time and become culturally less relevant because as culture moves on, the relevance of the Church to culture is going to be an important part of drawing people into the Church. And to draw people into the Church, you have to recognize the changing times, the changing understanding of the world.

Back when Copernicus first proposed putting the sun at the center of the solar system rather than the earth he met all kinds of pushback from the religious authorities and the scientific authorities because we are slow to appropriate new ways of thinking, even in science. And so it took a long time before Kepler, and Galileo, and eventually Newton came along and corroborated that worldview, and in fact said, this is the way the world operates.

And the Church was called upon to change its view and perhaps to change its interpretation of some of those Old Testament passages that it used to legitimize the idea of the earth at the center of the universe. There are many other ways that the Church has adapted over time and good ways, good ways that keep it relevant to society.

And so I think being faithful to the Gospel, but also being open to what the academy can tell the Church about the changing times and about the changing ways of knowledge, and find ways to incorporate it into the faithfulness to the Gospel in a way that makes the Church continue to be relevant to, to society.

And right now I think there’s a great need for that, especially some of the denominational churches that are seeing declines in their numbers. I believe that the academy has a lot to offer, especially the academy in the Christian world, in the Christian universities. And I think those ties could be strengthened. But I’m not sure how that would look. But I do believe that they are very important conversation partners and both serve an incredibly important role in society.

Todd Ream: Thank you very much. Our guest has been Warren F. Rogers, the David Blanchard Professor of Physics at Indiana Wesleyan University. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and wisdom with us.

Warren F. Rogers: And thank you Todd for your excellent questions. I appreciate the conversation.

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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at seven Christian Scholars reviews conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.