Featuring some recent talks on science and its relationship to the faith.

Faith and Science | Featured Tracks

This lecture was given at Queen’s University on March 22, 2021.

For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:
Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P., received his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University in 2010, working in theoretical particle physics and subsequently entered the Order of Preachers. He has written and spoken on the relationship of faith and science in a variety of venues, including being a main contributor to the Thomistic Evolution project. He was ordained to the priesthood in 2017 and is currently studying Philosophy at the Catholic University of America.

This Is My Body: Does Modern Science Disprove Transubstantiation? | Fr. Thomas Davenport O.P.

This lecture was delivered to the Boston University chapter on April 13, 2021. 

For information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. 

About the speaker:
Sarah Byers is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. She received a masters and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, and her interests include St. Augustine, Hellenistic philosophy, and the history of ancient and medieval ethics and metaphysics. She is responsible for many publications, including Perception, Sensibility, and Moral Motivation in Augustine: A Stoic-Platonic Synthesis, a book that argues that Augustine assimilated the Stoic theory of perception into his philosophy.

How Is Genesis Compatible With Science? Insights From Augustine | Prof. Sarah Byers

This lecture was delivered for the Vanderbilt University chapter on 4/20/2021.

For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:

Karin Öberg is Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University. Her specialty is astrochemistry and her research aims to uncover how chemical processes affect the outcome of planet formation, especially the chemical habitability of nascent planets. Dr. Öberg obtained her B.Sc. in chemistry at Caltech in 2005, and her Ph.D. in astronomy, with a thesis focused on laboratory astrochemistry, from Leiden University in 2009. She did postdoctoral work at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as a NASA Hubble fellow, focusing on millimeter observations of planet-forming disks around young stars. In 2013 she joined the Harvard astronomy faculty as an assistant professor. She was promoted and named the Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor in Astronomy in 2016, and promoted to full professor with tenure in 2017. Dr. Öberg’s research in astrochemistry has been recognized with a Sloan fellowship, a Packard fellowship, the Newton Lacy Pierce Award from the American Astronomical Society, and a Simons fellowship. Her recent TED talk explaining some of her research can be found here:

https://www.ted.com/talks/karin_oberg_the_galactic_recipe_for_a_living_planet

Science And the Theology Of Extraterrestrial Life | Prof. Karin Öberg

This lecture was delivered at Rutgers University on September 9, 2021.

For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:
Joshua Hochschild is the Monsignor Robert R. Kline Professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University, where he also served six years as the inaugural Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. His primary research is in medieval logic, metaphysics, and ethics, with broad interest in liberal education and the continuing relevance of the Catholic intellectual tradition. He is the author of The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (2010), translator of Claude Panaccio’s Mental Language: From Plato to William of Ockham (2017), and co-author of A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction (2017). His writing has appeared in First Things, Commonweal, Modern Age and the Wall Street Journal. For 2020-21 he’s been elected to serve as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

Aristotle’s Four Causes and the Possibility of Science | Prof. Joshua Hochschild

This talk was given online on September 21, 2021 to The Thomistic Institute at the University of California Berkeley.

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About the speaker: 
Michael J. Dodds, O.P., is Professor of Philosophy and Systematic Theology at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California. After undergraduate studies at Seattle University, he entered the Order of Preachers in 1970 and was ordained in 1977. He then taught for three years at St. Mary’s College, Moraga, California, before doing his doctoral studies at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, from which he graduated summa cum laude in 1986. He has served as Academic Dean of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Convener of the Theology Area at the Graduate Theological Union, and Regent of Studies and Vicar Provincial of the Western Dominican Province. He is the author of The Unchanging God of Love: Thomas Aquinas and Contemporary Theology on Divine Immutability (2008), and Unlocking Divine Action: Contemporary Science and Thomas Aquinas (2012), both from The Catholic University of America Press.

Are Science and Faith Compatible? | Fr. Michael Dodds, O.P.

This talk was given on October 27, 2021 at Trinity Western University via Zoom.

For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org

About the speaker:
Michael J. Dodds, O.P., is professor of philosophy and theology at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California. He is author of The Unchanging God of Love: Thomas Aquinas and Contemporary Theology on Divine Immutability (CUA Press), and coauthor of The Seeker's Guide to Seven Life-Changing Virtues and Happily Ever After Begins Here and Now: Living the Beatitudes Today.

Unlocking Divine Action: Causality from Thomas Aquinas to Quantum Mechanics | Fr. Michael Dodds, OP

This talk was given on November 11, 2021 at Trinity College Dublin.

Click here for Prof. Carroll's slides: https://tinyurl.com/2p94tjtx

For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org

About the speaker:
Dr. William E. Carroll is Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Philosophy at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (Wuhan, China) and Senior Research Fellow at the Collegium of Anton Neuwirth (Bratislava, Slovakia). His specialty is the relationship among the natural sciences, philosophy, and theology, with an emphasis on Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of the doctrine of creation. He is the author of works and articles including Creation and Science: Has Science Eliminated God?; Galileo: Science and Faith; and (with Steven Baldner) Aquinas on Creation. Beginning in 2013, he has spent several weeks each year giving lectures and seminars at various Chinese universities in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Wuhan.

Creation and the Origin of the Universe | Prof. William Carroll

This lecture was given on February 11, 2022 at the University of Kansas.

For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:
Robert C. (“Rob”) Koons is a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has taught for 33 years. M. A. Oxford, Ph.D. UCLA. He is the author or co-author of four books, including: Realism Regained (Oxford University Press, 2000), and The Atlas of Reality: A Comprehensive Guide to Metaphysics, with Timothy H. Pickavance (Wiley-Blackwell, 2017). He is the co-editor (with George Bealer) of The Waning of Materialism (Oxford University Press, 2010), and co-editor (with Nicholas Teh and William Simpson) of Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science (Routledge, 2018). He has been working recently on an Aristotelian interpretation of quantum theory, on defending and articulating Thomism in contemporary terms, and on arguments for classical theism.

Aristotle and the Quantum Revolution | Prof. Rob Koons

View Prof. Bogardus' slides here: https://tinyurl.com/yer9hxmu

This lecture was given on February 22, 2022 at the University of Arizona.

For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:
Tomás Bogardus is associate professor of philosophy at Pepperdine University. He was born in Long Beach, California, and earned his BS in biology at UC San Diego, his MA in philosophy at Biola University, and his PhD in philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He works mainly in metaphysics and epistemology and is most interested in the mind-body problem and the rationality of religious belief.

Are We Just Accidents? Evolution in the Light of Faith | Prof. Tomás Bogardus

This lecture was given on March 3, 2022 at Iowa State University.

For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:
Joshua Hochschild is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Mount St. Mary’s University, where he also served six years as the inaugural Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. His primary research is in medieval logic, metaphysics, and ethics, with broad interest in liberal education and the continuing relevance of the Catholic intellectual tradition. He is the author of The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (2010), translator of Claude Panaccio’s Mental Language: From Plato to William of Ockham (2017), and co-author of A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction (2017). His writing has appeared in First Things, Commonweal, Modern Age and the Wall Street Journal. For 2020-21 he served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

Why You Can't Reverse-Engineer Human Beings: The Metaphysics of the Soul | Prof. Joshua Hochschild

You can view Fr. Hofer's handout here: https://tinyurl.com/2p9c8h72

This lecture was given on February 3, 2022 at Queens University.

For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:
Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P., is Associate Professor and Director of the Doctoral Program at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. His research appears in Augustinianum, The Journal of the History of Ideas, Nova et Vetera, Pro Ecclesia, Studia Patristica, The Thomist, Vigiliae Christianae, and other journals and volume collections. He is the author of Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus (Oxford University Press); the editor of Divinization: Becoming Icons of Christ through the Liturgy (Hillenbrand Books); co-author of A Living Sacrifice: Guidance for Men Discerning Religious Life (Vianney Publications), and co-editor of Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers (Sapientia Press) and Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology (Sapientia Press). He is presently co-editing The Oxford Handbook of Deification and The Cambridge Companion to Augustine's Sermons, and he is finishing his book funded by a Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Teacher-Scholar grant, The Word in Our Flesh: The Power of Patristic Preaching.

Biology, Geology, and . . . Theology? Theology as Science | Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P.

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Faith and Science | Featured Tracks

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