On the Evolution of Novelty in Biological History| Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, O.P.

The Thomistic Institute

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4.8 • 873 Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2019

⏱️ 72 minutes

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Summary

This was one of the lectures from our 2019 Summer Science Conference, "Novelty in Nature: Scientific and Philosophical Understanding of Flux and Chance in the Natural World." For more info about upcoming TI events, visit: www.thomisticinstitute.org/events

Conference Theme:

Modern science consistently presents us with new and surprising truths about the natural world, particularly about how new things come to be, whether stars and galaxies, plants and animals, or chemical and physical structures. In many ways this creativity and flux in nature might seem antithetical to the classical picture of nature that Aquinas inherited from Aristotle. The theme for the second annual Thomistic Institute symposium on modern science and Thomistic philosophy, “Novelty in Nature: Scientific and Philosophical Understanding of Flux and Change in the Natural World,” touches on this question. Expert scientists and philosophers will discuss whether Thomistic philosophy is compatible with our modern scientific view of nature and how the two might enrich one another. The symposium is primarily intended for graduate students in the sciences and the philosophy of science and will include introductory sessions on basic of Thomistic philosophy of nature in its own day and in the history of science.

2019 Featured Speakers:

Karin Oberg (Harvard University), Robert Koons, (University of Texas), Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, (Providence College), Marissa March (University of Pennsylvania), Fr. James Brent, OP, (Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception), Thomas McLaughlin (St. John Vianny Theological Seminary), Matthew Gaetano (Hillsdale College), Dr. Brian Carl (Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception).

Transcript

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0:00.0	So what I would like to do today is to talk about the evolution of novelty in biological history
0:07.3	and a wonderful introduction to physical history. And so now I'm like to talk about biological history.
0:13.3	Now why novelty? It turns out novelty is a problem in biology because of the following philosophical principle.
0:22.2	What are the great reasons why I come and enjoy coming to meetings like this
0:27.1	because it's deeply interdisciplinary?
0:29.7	And so I love thinking about problems in an interdisciplinary way.
0:34.6	This is one of the principles in this first, for skeptics of evolution within
0:40.3	the Catholic tradition, this is one of the reasons why they are skeptical because of the principle
0:46.3	of causality, which basically says the following, nothing which comes to be comes to be without
0:51.3	a proportionate cost. And from my undergraduates, you cannot give what you do not have.
0:58.0	And one of the things that's really striking in evolutionary biology
1:02.0	is that you apparently have a scenario where two parents
1:08.0	evolve an individual of a different biological kind.
1:11.6	And so you have old giving rise to new.
1:15.6	And so how would be old give rise to the new
1:18.6	when they don't have the new to begin with?
1:22.6	So this is the problem that, from a philosophical perspective, evolutionary biologists who wish
1:30.3	to integrate knowledge, to seek wisdom, how to deal with.
1:34.3	And this is one of the projects of an ongoing program that my brothers and I are working on.
1:42.3	It's called the Mystic Evolution. The Mystic Evolution at work.
1:45.0	We just received a grant from the Don Temperature Foundation to pursue several avenues
1:51.0	dealing with the interface between science and religion.
	...

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