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Beauty for Truth's SakeOn the Re-enchantment of Education
Price: £12.99
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Much of the confusion and meaninglessness of the twenty-first century stems from the fragmentation of knowledge. Our postmodern times cry out for a return to wholeness. Enter Stratford Caldecott, who calls for renewal in education in "Beauty for Truth's Sake". By reclaiming the classic liberal arts and viewing disciplines such as science and mathematics through a poetic lens, the author explains that unity is present within diversity. Ultimately, God is behind all truth. This book will benefit parents, homeschoolers, lifelong learners, and readers interested in the history of ideas. It is appropriate for Christian college and university students and will play an especially important role in curriculum development.
Customer Reviews
More than vocational training for a value-free world - Fr Longenecker, posted on his blog
Beauty for Truth's Sake argues that beauty, truth and love must be at the heart of all education for education to reach it's highest goal. Rather than simply being a vocational training for a value-free world, education teaches the student not only to think, but to perceive beauty and truth within the context of faith. Stratford draws deeply on the pope's masterpiece, The Spirit of the Liturgy and indicates that the perception of beauty and truth, which leads to an awareness of transcendence in all things, is focussed in the regular celebration of the liturgy when the liturgy is celebrated with reverence, beauty and the presence of God (rather than being focussed on human needs, societal relevance, 'creativity' and entertainment). Drawing on the medieval understandings of a liberal arts education he shows how science and mathematics can also be charged by an awareness of the underlying beauty, structure and meaning of the whole cosmos. This is not an immediately accessible book, but if you put on your thinking cap it will yield rich rewards. I plan to use it as a resource for our next faculty staff retreat at St Joseph's Catholic School, hoping that it will help us in our constant quest to teach all our subjects as paths that lead to the beauty, truth and love at the heart of God himself.
A remarkable example of thinking outside the box - Aidan Nichols OP, author of Redeeming Beauty
This book struck me with the force of a revelation. Stratford Caldecott's thesis - that modern mathematics can recreate a sense of the beauty of cosmic order which would reorient the educational programme and, furthermore, prepare a way for liturgical worship - is to me a very remarkable example of 'thinking outside the box'. Full of memorable and highly specific formulations, Beauty for Truth's Sake also testifies to the marvelously holistic quality of the author's vision.
Illuminating - Catherine Pickstock, University of Cambridge
This book offers three kinds of light: lucidity, illumination, and scintillation - the lucidity of participating in the divine simplicity, which substitutes profundity for mere complexity, illumination through the divine light of the Logos that shines as one in both creation and revelation, the scintillation of realising that this truth can only be approached in love. Caldecott shows that all of our natural and social reality reflectively sparkles with a new anticipation, revealing to us how it might be transformed to better show forth the divine likeness.
Restoring mystery to education - Scott Hahn, author, theologian and Catholic apologist
Strafford Caldecott provides a remarkable manifesto that restores mystery to its proper place in education. With mystery comes wonder, awe, reverence, beauty, and a sense of discovery that leads us to a deeper wisdom. Without these, science and mathematics are sterile, dull, and doomed, and the humanities are impossible. Caldecott has pronounced a blessing for our children and our children's children.
Extract from a lengthy review - David W Fagerberg, for The Chesterton Review
According to Socrates, the object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful, and the primary title of Caldecott's book professes that beauty exists for truth's sake. Beauty is the radiance of truth, its splendor (splendere means to shine), its glory. A light glows from lit coals; beauty glows from truth. But, alas, the modern period has made a concerted attack on our confidence in the human capacity to know (41) and education today suffers from the fragmentation of the disciplines, the separation of faith and reason, the reduction of quality to quantity, and the loss of a sense of ultimate purpose (28). This book wants to suggest a way by which to make a repair. Only, it is not exclusively concerned with institutions of lower and higher education. Although especially applicable to the educational system, Caldecott proposes that all of us are in need of this education, because to be alive is to be a learner (12). Much of the learning we do takes place at home, in the family, in school and after we leave it, and we need to learn a new skill: how to keep learning (12).
Beauty for Truth's Sake - Brian Welter, The Catholic Herald
While Beauty for Truth’s Sake contains many big ideas, such as the numbers wisdom of the Trinity, or the mystical and theological aspects of mathematics, the book is not overwhelming for the average reader because Caldecott writes in a straightforward way. This book helps to cover an area of theology and philosophy that is in great need of expanded ideas, and that is an alternative view to the atheist movement.
Course Book - Honours Programme - James Siemens, St Davids College, Cardiff
I wanted to let you know that your book is going down very well indeed as the core of the Honours Programme here. As I probably told you (the author), I am using it in conjunction with the Cambridge Pre-U qualification in Global Perspectives and Independent research, as well as a required GCSE in Latin. It all weaves together very naturally, which means that the course will be making an annual order now.