Conference: 'Complexity, Simplicity & Emergence in Biochemistry,' Prof. Jessica Brown
The Thomistic Institute
The Thomistic Institute
4.8 • 873 Ratings
🗓️ 18 September 2022
⏱️ 53 minutes
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Summary
One of the hallmarks of modern science is the ability to explain the workings of nature by detailed study of its pieces and parts. Organisms are understood as combinations of organ systems, which are made up of tissues, which are made up of cells, which are made of up complex chemicals, then atoms, and more fundamental particles. As successful as this methodological reductionism has been, it is still an open question how complete it can be. Can everything about complex biological systems be reduced to chemistry, and every detail of chemistry explained from fundamental physics? Do the organization and complexity of higher-level systems require additional tools to complete our understanding of the natural world? Do the answers to these scientific questions work for or against an Aristotelian and Thomistic understanding of nature and natural kinds, and how might those classical ideas be of use in contemporary science? The Thomistic Philosophy and Natural Science Symposium gathers expert scientists and philosophers to discuss the potential compatibility and mutual enrichment of the study of Aquinas' philosophy of nature and various forms of modern scientific knowledge in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. The 2022 symposium includes a day of lectures geared towards an introduction to Thomistic philosophy and the history of science, with a focus on complexity, simplicity and emergence. The rest of the symposium will have scientific experts discussing the understanding of complexity and simplicity in their own fields with one another and with philosophers. About the speaker: Professor Jessica Brown is an Associate Professor of biochemistry at Notre Dame. She received her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University and was a postdoc fellow at Yale University. Her research focuses on structural, biochemical & cellular roles of RNA triple helices.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This talk is brought to you by the Thomistic Institute. |
| 0:03.0 | For more talks like this, visit us at tamisticinstitute.org. |
| 0:11.0 | All right, so good morning. Can everybody hear me okay? Because I'm a soft-spoken person. |
| 0:16.0 | In the background, okay, good. All right. So before I get started, I would like to preface this talk, |
| 0:21.6 | because I've had the great blessing of being able to meet many of you here, and I've come to realize that there is definitely a spectrum in which if you put philosophers and theologians at one end and scientists at the other, I am definitely at the far end of a scientist. |
| 0:34.6 | So with that being said, I really don't have the vocabulary and will probably misspeak |
| 0:39.3 | in using words. And I may not be able to answer many questions on the philosophical, theological |
| 0:45.3 | side of things. But nonetheless, I've done my best to try to integrate some of those components, |
| 0:49.3 | but they are coming from me as a practicing Catholic. And so there are going to probably be some flaws in that. |
| 0:55.5 | But anyways, I would like to start off with defining biochemistry. |
| 1:00.0 | As a professor of biochemistry, I get plenty of textbooks from publishers. |
| 1:03.0 | And one of the things I like to do is to flip open and to read the definitions that different textbooks have for biochemistry. |
| 1:09.0 | And so I have four different definitions up here. |
| 1:11.2 | The top two come from textbooks that are affectionately known as the so-called Bible |
| 1:16.7 | of biochemistry. So oftentimes these textbooks are used for the undergrad biochem courses. |
| 1:23.5 | So if we take the top one for instance, which is by vote and vote, they have a pretty |
| 1:29.3 | short and sweet definition of biochemistry is the study of the chemistry of life. |
| 1:34.3 | And so even reading through the other definitions, life is one of those words that often appears. |
| 1:40.3 | And so for me, of course, life can mean quite a few things, but one thing that comes to mind is the Bible verse, |
| 1:46.5 | I am the way, the truth, and the life. |
| 1:48.0 | No one comes to the father except for me. |
| 1:50.5 | And so I feel that life definitely has a profound definition to it. |
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