Science should be studied first with a sense of wonder for the intelligence and meaning we see in the world. Then with our own intelligence, we are able to cooperate with this order in the world, understand its complex change and become stewards of its well-being. This wonder is grounded in the presupposition that all reality is God’s creation. While the act of creation is not an alternative to natural explanations, the doctrine of creation does state what the world is and not how it came to be. The classical Catholic science curriculum, therefore, understands nature from the perspective of the ultimate unity of its mystery revealed by faith, and its intelligibility known through reason.

For example, life in nature is understood not as mechanical quality and the result of a mechanistic process. Rather, the nature of life precedes the living creature, guides it, and is an end in itself. Science instruction is to reveal the natural order of the created world through observation, classification, and identifying natural patterns of development and change. The development of a comprehensive view of the created world is the setting for identifying the individual disciplines of science, the life sciences of plants, animals, and biology, and the natural sciences of physics, chemistry, earth science, and astronomy.