Before the new novel for young adults, The Farm at the Center for the Universe, our colleague Jonathan Witt was the co-author of A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature. He talked about the earlier book with Ken Boa and they discussed the insight that nature possesses layers of mystery — Boa compares it to a matryoshka doll — that go on and on, never full disclosing themselves. This, in the light of naturalism or materialism, is not what you’d expect. But it’s also not what you would necessarily expect in the light of what Dr. Witt calls “bare” intelligent design:

If you see nature as the work of a genius rather than just happenstance or even just kind of a bare intelligent designer, you expect those layers because works of great creative genius have depths to them. Whether it’s Shakespeare or Mozart or a beautiful painting, you expect depths to it. You don’t expect it all on the surface.

It’s a profound point. That’s why great art is eternally young and we never tire of it. Like the work of a human genius, but infinitely more so, our world displays these depths, but not all at once. They are put there, evidently, for us to discover, as a gift. Watch: