Atoms Neither Fast Nor Feast: Reflections on Scientific Inquiry and the Good Life

The following remarks are a slightly updated and revised version of a talk given at the Thomistic Institute at Clemson University on April 18, 2024. Derby, An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump (1768; Wikimedia Commons) Atoms Neither Fast Nor Feast: Reflections on Scientific Inquiry and the Good Life When we think about …

Boethius Institute

Recently, I was asked to join The Boethius Institute as an associate fellow. From their website: The Boethius Institute helps scholars and leaders to grow in their understanding and practice of the traditional liberal arts and sciences, forming a fellowship that unites those passionate about liberal education in a bond of friendship and common effort …

Review of new book of the First Way

Over at Thomistica, I have reviewed Daniel Shields’s book Nature and Nature’s God. It is highly recommended. An excerpt from the review: For too long has Aquinas’s motion proof languished in the gaol of a contemporary Thomistic metaphysics unwilling to fully countenance the debt which Aquinas’s metaphysics owes to Aristotelian natural philosophy and unable to …

St. Thomas Aquinas’s Sapiential Vision for the Philosophy of Nature

The following is the prepared copy of a paper I delivered on September 15, 2023, at “Aquinas After 750 Years: Still the Common Doctor?” a conference at the Dominican House of Studies. Despite the observation by Pope Leo XIII that “there is no conflict worthy of the name”[1] between scholastic philosophical principles and the modern …

Sacra Doctrina Project Conference

The Sacra Doctrina Project’s annual Conference has been announced for June 6–8 2024. It’s theme: “All Things That Were Made: On Creation, Creatures, and Their Creator.” For more information, visit the conference website. The main keynotes are Prof. William E. Carroll and Christopher J. Thompson, and I am happy to be contributing as a plenary …

Searching for the Beginning of Time

The following is an excerpt from a manuscript in drafts, Searching for the Cosmos. It is from a chapter concerned with whether history is an essential property of the cosmos as a whole. Comments, criticism, and questions are welcome! Does the cosmos have a beginning in time or is it temporally beginningless? Drawing on key …

Series on the Summa contra Gentiles

Below are the links to all of my posts this semester on St. Thomas’s Summa contra Gentiles, based upon course and lecture notes for an upper-division medieval philosophy seminar. The Sapiential Cosmology of St. Thomas Aquinas (introductory overview of ScG) The Polyvalent Hierarchy of Wisdoms (introductory chapters of ScG) God’s Power and Creative Act (ScG, …

The Theocentric Drama of History

We conclude our examination of Summa contra Gentiles with an overview of ScG, III.114–146 and the surrounding chapters; a consideration of why Aquinas talks about law, and what topics are omitted in our course; on the legal and religious nature of the human person;  in light of providence, on the possibility of a philosophy of …

God’s Providence, Governance, and the Stewardship of Creation

We now begin our study of God’s providence, which will occupy our attention for the remaining two posts of this series. In this post, we discuss ScG, III.64–113 as follows: an overview of ScG, III.64–77; some details from the above chapters; an overview of ScG, III.78–97; look at some aspects of the governance of creation …

The Heavenly Vision of Love Itself

We now reflect briefly upon ScG, III.37–63. We consider: the lay of the land, an outline of topics; the principal arguments in these chapters, a higher via negativa regarding human felicity; some concluding reflections on the result of this argumentation. consider the nature of the beatific vision; the relationship of nature and grace to man’s …