Scientific Realism: Are We Certain Protons Exist? | Father Thomas Davenport, O.P.

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2023

⏱️ 58 minutes

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Summary

This lecture was given on July 13th, 2023, at the "Thomistic Philosophy & Natural Science Symposium" at the Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website: thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events Speaker Bio: Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P. is a Dominican friar, physicist, and philosopher. He joined the faculty of philosophy at the Angelicum in Rome in 2020, where he co-leads the Project for Science and Religion. Before joining the Dominican order he studied physics at the California Institute of Technology before going on to earn his doctorate in physics from Stanford University studying theoretical particle physics. The focus of his scientific research is writing and testing simulations for high energy particle colliders like the LHC at CERN. After joining the Dominicans in 2010, he studied philosophy and theology in preparation for his ordination to the priesthood in 2017. In addition, he earned a Licentiate in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America, focusing on the philosophy of science and natural philosophy. For two years he was an Assistant Professor of Physics at Providence College in Providence, RI, where he taught physics and restarted a research program in particle physics. He has written and spoken in a number of forums on the relationship between faith and science including contributions to the Thomistic Evolution project and organizing conferences on science and philosophy for the Thomistic Institute in Washington, DC.

Transcript

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0:00.0	All right.
0:03.0	There's like six prefatory comments I want to make, but I'm just going to try to cut it off.
0:08.0	One thing I will say is despite the fact that you have yet another theoretical particle physicist
0:14.0	who did a lot of things with simulation tools for particle colliders.
0:20.0	This is not going to be the exact same talk. It's, in fact,
0:23.6	going to be a very different talk. Is this not? This will, in fact, be the last thing you
0:30.8	hear about quirks, just the picture on the slide. I'm, maybe not, but we'll see. I also,
0:37.4	just to say, I'm very confident about the first two
0:40.5	thirds of this talk and then it gets very speculative and and a lot of it has adjusted over the
0:44.8	last couple of days so we'll see where that goes I was the question I asked here are we
0:50.3	certain that protons exist I know what I know what I want the answer to be.
0:54.5	I want the answer to be yes.
0:56.3	I think the answer is yes,
0:58.0	and I think we have the tools to say that the answer is yes.
1:00.9	But my initial goal was just a sort of like gesture in that direction.
1:07.3	I've attempted to at least motivate that a bit more strongly towards the end of the talk.
1:13.8	But we'll see how well I've done the last couple of days.
1:18.3	But the first thing I want to talk about is before we get to the question of what are we certain about,
1:24.9	in a certain sense, in the domestic epistemological sense, the first question is before you can we certain about? In a certain sense, in the to mystic epistemological sense,
1:28.3	the first question is, before you can be certain about anything,
1:32.1	you have to understand what the statement you're talking about is
1:35.1	and whether that statement is true.
	...

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