Speculations on Thomism and Evolution

By Razie Mah

Over seven centuries ago, St. Thomas Aquinas explored Aristotle's works from a Christian world view. Evolution was not one of the issues on the agenda. Aquinas concluded that God made every form, except for the mule, which happens to be the product of two natural kinds, the horse and the ass.
Chaberek applies the logic of Thomism to the concepts of theistic evolution and finds the latter wanting. Austriaco rises to the defense of theistic - or even better, Thomistic - evolution.
Austriaco's rebuttal appears in an opinion piece published in March, 2018 (thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/03/20975). He considers each of Chaberek's five objections to theistic evolution. He does so both as a Dominican scholar and a research biologist, studying the evolution of snakes (among other things). The latter aspect weighs heavily in his argument.
This work speculates on how Austriaco's defense may be re-articulated using the category-based nested form. The speculation brings Peirce and Aquinas together in surprising ways. Both John Deely and Jacques Maritain struggled with similar syntheses.
How is biological evolution a sign of God?
The One Triune God is contiguous with His creation.
The living being is an intersection of adaptation and phenotype.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Razie Mah
• Release date: Apr 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781942824480

Razie Mah

See website for bio.

Book preview

Speculations on Thomism and Evolution

By Razie Mah

Published for Smashwords.com

2018

Notes on Text

This work speculates on an debate within philosophical circles, concerning how Thomism, which translates Aristotle into a Christian worldview, deals with evolution, the Neo-Darwinian synthesis explaining how living beings change through time. In particular, the question is framed around theistic evolution.

Does scholasticism (broadly speaking) offer a natural philosophical account of the scientific theory?

Michael Chaberek, O.P., says that Thomist principles rule out theistic evolution.

Nicanor Austriaco, O.P., disagrees, insisting that Thomism does not rule out theistic evolution.

Neither of these authors have any idea that their argument might be fodder for a very different approach that, oddly enough, was achieved in the twilight of scholasticism. The Baroque scholastic, John of St. Thomas, proposed the same definition of sign as Charles Sander's Peirce. A sign is a triadic relation.

The existence of triadic relations has consequences. Peirce figured out that there are three categories of existence: thirdness, secondness and firstness. The labels describe the minimum number of elements. They label the realms of normal context, actuality and possibility. These categories ground the category-based nested form.

So, my question is: Does the category-based nested form shed light on this argument.

And, if so, what does that imply?

Single quotes and italics are used to group words together.

Prerequisites include A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form, A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction, plus the chapter on presence and the first interlude