Betting on Bees

Friday morning on the New England High School Summer Program, students filed into Our Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel for Mass while the campus was still cool and hushed. Afterward, everyone gathered in Gould Commons for breakfast, buzzing like Fabre’s bees with chatter, toast, and tea, before heading out across the sunlit lawns to the morning seminar on Pascal’s Wager. 

What do you lose by believing in God and living a virtuous life? The cards are on the table: If God exists, faith wins everything. If He doesn’t, the life of virtue is still its own reward — meaning, in either case, one loses nothing and stands to gain everything. The gamble of God, as Blaise Pascal framed it, is the wisest of bets.

In their morning class, students wrestled with the logic of the wager, considering the terms Pascal lays out and whether his argument holds under scrutiny. Prefect Paloma Gallivan (NE’27) had high hopes for this discussion. “On an intellectual level, this reading and class on my Summer Program was the moment that convinced me to make a wager and come to TAC. I hope it will inspire some of this year’s summer programmers to do the same.” 

Lunch followed, giving students a chance to refuel and flip through the pages of their Jean-Henri Fabre reading. Then, books in hand, they took on the afternoon session, a scientific and philosophical dive into Fabre’s musings on bees. The discussion marveled at the bees’ instinctive craftsmanship, their intricate labor, and the astonishing geometry of the hive’s perfect hexagons. Fabre’s reflections prompted a larger conversation: What can the instincts of creatures teach us about the order written into nature?

That’s only half the story. Stay tuned and visit the Summer Program Blog tomorrow morning for more on this lively summer day — Open Mic Night tryouts and splashing fun await during the afternoon’s recreation!