From Brigham Young University's Maxwell Institute, this is the Maxwell Institute podcast, Faith Illuminating Scholarship.

I'm your host, Rosalind Welch, and today I have for you the third in a series of interviews with the Maxwell Institute's new faculty fellows, this time with Dr. Stephen Peck, a professor of biology

at BYU, a naturalist, and a novelist. But before I introduce our conversation, I wanted to let

you know that the Maxwell Institute's wonder of scripture lectures have started up again after our summer

hiatus. Every Friday, we host campus

lectures by top scripture scholars from BYU and beyond, each one digging into a passage of

scripture and surfacing new insights and inspiration. Look for more information on our website,

m.I.bYU.edu, on how to attend in person or watch the recordings online.

We've built up an archive of lectures that are well worth your attention.

Turning now to my conversation with Dr. Steve Peck.

What's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?

What made it so beautiful?

Is its beauty a question of science or a matter of divinity?

Or is it both?

Dr. Peck is at the Maxwell Institute to work on a handful of projects

that circle the relationship between beauty, nature, science,

and faith. He argues that our universe possesses an excess of beauty over and above what is

strictly necessary for its operation. Not only beauty, in fact, but an excess of agency, consciousness, meaning, and joy, features that are evident across many species and can't be explained away by scientific determinism.

In fact, Steve goes so far as to say that we live in an aesthetic universe and that beauty is God's signature.

Our human bodies and the bodies of other organisms are fundamental to any experience of beauty

and agency. And science can help us understand how and why. But science needs art, poetry, and music to do justice

to the richness of the world and to help us make sense of the pain and loss that is everywhere

...