Owen Barfield was one of the Inklings—the group of friends and writers surrounding C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. In this workshop, we look at the main themes of Barfield’s 1957 book Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry. Barfield’s argument in this book has important consequences for science education, particularly with respect to the nature of human perception, the nature of human participation with creation, the idolatry that results when people think in terms of objectified phenomena disconnected from any participation with human perception or an immanent Creator, and trends in scientific discovery that suggest that such views about objectification are false.
John Mays
After receiving his BS in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University, John D. Mays spent 14 years in industry in engineering and engineering management in the areas of electrical, controls and telecommunications systems. Vocationally drawn toward the field of education, John acquired an MEd in Secondary Education from the University of Houston in 1989, and subsequently completed 36 hours of graduate study in Physics at Texas A&M. Shortly after joining the faculty at Regents School of Austin in 1999, John began work on an MLA at St. Edward's University, which he completed in 2003. John served as the Math-Science Department Chair at Regents School from 2001 until 2009 when he became Director of the Laser Optics Lab at Regents. He founded Novare Science & Math in 2009, and is the author of numerous student science texts and teacher resources. In 2019, Novare Science became part of Classical Academic Press, where John is now Director of Science Curriculum overseeing continued development of the Novare Science curriculum.