The Good of Being: God, life and the basis of ethics

Stephen Lovatt was born in 1958 in Stoke-on-Trent, England. The jolt of his mother’s death when he was fourteen, made him resolve to become a member of the Methodist Church. He came into the possession of a strange little book called ＂The Testament of Light＂ in about 1974. This introduced him for the first time to Plato, Whichcote, Glanville, Mill, Blake, Chesterton, Julian of Norwich, Marcus Aurelius, Nietzsche and The Cloud of Unknowing. It was about this time that he first encountered with Catholicism, in the writings of Teihard de Chardin. He was accepted to read physics at Trinity College in 1976. While at Cambridge, he discovered the works of Cardinal Newman and as a result was received into the Catholic Church in 1979. After graduating, he worked for about ten years in the electronics industry. During this period he became familiar with the works of Karl Popper and developed an interest in epistemology and the basis of Quantum Mechanics. In 1990, he returned to academic studies researching in relativistic quantum mechanics and multiple scattering theory at Bristol University. At this time he was introduced to the works of Ayn Rand, the American founder of the Objectivist school of philosophy and developed an interest in teleology and ethics. After obtaining his doctorate in Physics, he returned to the electronics industry, before conducting a stint of post-doctoral research in the fields of Density Functional Theory of the Physics of Liquids. At about this time he discovered the works of Plato. In 2002 he began two years of teacher training, after which he was appointed lecturer in electronics and mathematics at the Army School of Electrical and Aeronautical Engineering. He published his first non-fiction book ＂New Skins for Old wine: Plato’s Wisdom for Today’s world＂ in 2009.