The last few decades have witnessed the development of a host of ideas aimed at understanding and predicting nature's ever present complexity. These advancements have uncovered relevant universal laws regarding the intricacies of natural disorder and have reminded us that simplicity is often at the root of complexity. This course exhibits a comprehensive linkage between such universal concepts and the moral choices we face as human beings and draws from them, in consonance with Holy Scripture, the Christian invitation to reconciliation and love, hence establishing an unforeseen bridge between science and religion.

About the Instructor:

Dr. Puente received his Ph. D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been a professor at the Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources at the University of California, Davis since 1986. He is the author of over 40 refereed publications, including the books “Treasures inside the Bell. Hidden Order in Chance” and “The Hypotenuse. An Illustrated Scientific Parable for Turbulent Times” and the upcoming book “The Fig Tree and the Bell. God’s Love via Modern Science,” which serve as the basis for this class. Because of his contributions, he recently was named Fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design.

Course Lectures:

Printouts of the course notes are given below together with recordings in Real Player and Windows Media Player formats.

0. An introduction to the class
1. Introduction to fractals and complexity
2. The hypotenuse, the pathway of peace
3. Turbulence and Scripture
4. The essence of chaos
5. A lesson from a fig tree?
6. The eloquence of transformation
7. The bell's central plea
8. The splendor of peace

Links:

A summary of the message of this class is found in the document Or so we have been told. A recent lecture given in Rome and summarizing this class, "From the Science of Complexity to Christian Faith," may be found here by clicking its slides and accompanying words.

A Testimony:

This class is the outgrowth of my research at UC Davis. As a testimonial of how I came to believe, I include here (with permission) my recent correspondence with Nobel Prize winner in Literature José Saramago: