The study of nature must be integrated into a comprehensive vision of reality as God’s creation. Otherwise, the human person at the foundation of the curriculum becomes unintelligible, and the truth about him becomes a matter of private opinion.
The study of nature, therefore, begins with the presupposition that all of reality is God’s creation, though the implications of this are easily misunderstood.
The act of creation is not an alternative to natural processes, nor is the doctrine of creation an alternative to natural explanations. The act of creation is not something done to the world since, prior to creation, there is nothing to act upon. The doctrine of creation, therefore, does not explain how the world came to be but what the world is. And to treat nature as creation is not to confuse science with theology or to divert attention from nature to prove God’s existence, but to behold nature differently in a way that is at once more profound and more comprehensive, but no less rigorous, than modern scientific materialism.
Saint Albertus Magnus, a 13th-century Dominican friar, bishop, and philosopher who studied natural philosophy across diverse fields from astronomy to zoology using innovative empirical methods that presaged the scientific method, was named the Catholic patron saint of the natural sciences in 1931 by Pope Pius XI due to his prowess and advancement of early science through experiments, observation, and evidence-based approaches; his influential empirical inquiries and embrace of scientific techniques as a theologian and man of faith makes him an exemplary figure in the development of science.