Therefore went on the Pope, quoting Thomas Aquinas "the Creation is neither a movement nor a mutation. It is instead the foundational and continuing relationship that links the creature to the Creator, for he is the cause of every being and all becoming". Quoting one of Galileo’s figures of speech, Pope Benedict XVI said that nature is like "a book" whose author is God and "whose history, evolution, content and meaning" "are read over time "according to the different approaches of the sciences". "This image also helps us understand that the world, far from being originated from chaos, looks like an ordered book". "We might be unable to read the harmony of the whole and the relationships between the individual parts and their relationships to the whole. However a broad range of intelligible events remains". "The process is rational" and "reveals an order" made of "undeniable correspondences and finalities". "Experimental and philosophical study" is called to investigate "such orders". Hence the gratitude of the Church for "natural science", not least because it is through it said the Holy Father today that "we have largely increased our understanding of the uniqueness of humanity’s place in the cosmos".
