The Measure of All Things? Rethinking Constants and Replicability in the Life Sciences – Prof. Santiago Schnell

The Thomistic Institute

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

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Prof. Santiago Schnell’s lecture examines the challenges of measurement, scientific constants, and replicability in the life sciences, highlighting how philosophical and mathematical models are crucial for advancing biological research.

This lecture was given on July 19th, 2025, at Dominican House of Studies.

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About the Speakers:

Santiago Schnell, is a Venezuelan-born mathematical biologist and academic leader known for his pioneering work in quantitative biology and enzyme kinetics, including the development of the Schnell-Mendoza equation. After earning his biology degree from Universidad Simón Bolívar and his doctorate at the University of Oxford, he held faculty positions at Indiana University and the University of Michigan, where he chaired the Department of Molecular & Integrative Physiology. Since 2021, Schnell has served as the William K. Warren Foundation Dean of the College of Science at the University of Notre Dame, where he is also a professor of Biological Sciences and Applied & Computational Mathematics & Statistics. His research focuses on mathematical modeling of complex biomedical systems, and he is a fellow of the AAAS, Royal Society of Biology, and Royal Society of Chemistry.

Keywords: Error Analysis, Enzyme Kinetics, Experimental Design, Mathematical Modeling, Measurement Uncertainty, Michaelis Constant, Philosophy Of Science, Replicability, Reproducibility Crisis, Standard Equation

Transcript

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0:29.1	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.
0:32.0	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church,
0:36.6	and the wider public square.
0:38.3	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute
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0:47.8	to mystic institute.org. So what I'm doing is that I'm taking a what is a relatively highly technical scientific talk
0:56.8	about a fundamental problem that we have in measurements.
1:01.5	And I just add some of my Amateur philosophy in it.
1:06.0	And so I have a minor in philosophy and my dad was a philosopher.
1:09.1	So I think the Mathieu works well.
1:13.1	So you try to understand what are the fundamental challenges
1:17.2	that we're facing in the life sciences,
1:20.0	particularly with measurements.
1:22.4	But what I want to do first is just set up the stage.
1:27.0	You know, I'm fundamentally, so science is about the
1:30.9	history of models. So science, despite of what people, they have their size of life matters,
1:39.1	science is real. Science is not real. Science what it is, is the development of models that are fundamentally changing,
1:46.7	and some of them are long-standing models,
	...

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