Science Department

The purpose of the Frassati Catholic High School Science Curriculum is twofold.  First, it seeks to provide each student with the essential knowledge and thinking skills foundational for future courses.  The course sequence that starts with Physics will begin this process in a particularly effective way for freshmen. Second, it seeks to impart a philosophy of science which is scientific rather than scientistic.  A scientific philosophy recognizes that science studies the material world while, at the same time, acknowledges that transcendent reality beyond what is perceived by the senses.  It regards reason and faith as complementary.  In contrast, a scientistic philosophy accepts only what is empirical and quantifiable as having value.  It denies any reality beyond what can be measured. 

The Ethics and Culture Department and the Religion Department both reinforce this purpose of the Science Department.  For example, freshmen taking the Ethics and Culture course The Human Person course put into practice what they learn about how the human person acquires knowledge.  They use philosophical terms to help describe physics concepts beyond mathematical expression.  As juniors, the students have acquired the maturity to address the issues in Bioethics.  Since Biology is taken in the same year, discussions can easily extend into this course.

The Frassati Catholic High School Science curriculum gives each student a rigorous foundation in scientific practice and concepts.  Students gain knowledge in the same manner as practicing scientists—through reading and listening, through discovering and analyzing, through critiquing and concluding.  Courses therefore include a significant laboratory component, through which student scientists collaborate in experiments to gain understanding through the scientific method.  Throughout this process of learning, students develop the ability to reason logically from evidence.  They will see that the study of science is limited to the created world of matter but that such study respects, acknowledges, and validates a higher order of reality beyond the methods of science.  This approach is a scientific approach rather than a scientistic one.