The Thomistic Institute

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The Big Bang to Humans: Purpose & Meaning in an Expanding and Evolving Universe | Prof. Karin Öberg Oct 21, 2022

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This talk was given on September 14, 2022 at Iowa State University. For more information please visit thomisticinstitute.org About the Speaker: Karin Öberg is Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University. Her specialty is astrochemistry and her research aims to uncover how chemical processes affect the outcome of planet formation, especially the chemical habitability of nascent planets. Dr. Öberg obtained her B.Sc. in chemistry at Caltech in 2005, and her Ph.D. in astronomy, with a thesis focused on laboratory astrochemistry, from Leiden University in 2009. She did postdoctoral work at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as a NASA Hubble fellow, focusing on millimeter observations of planet-forming disks around young stars. In 2013 she joined the Harvard astronomy faculty as an assistant professor. She was promoted and named the Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor in Astronomy in 2016, and promoted to full professor with tenure in 2017. Dr. Öberg’s research in astrochemistry has been recognized with a Sloan fellowship, a Packard fellowship, the Newton Lacy Pierce Award from the American Astronomical Society, and a Simons fellowship. Her recent TED talk explaining some of her research can be found here https://www.ted.com/talks/karin_oberg_the_galactic_recipe_for_a_living_planet

Off-Campus Conversations, Ep. 007 | Prof. Gina Noia on Bioethics & End of Life Decisions Oct 20, 2022

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Are quality of life judgments ethical? Join Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. of Aquinas 101, Godsplaining, and Pints with Aquinas for an off-campus conversation with bioethicist Prof. Gina Noia about her latest Thomistic Institute lecture, "Are Quality of Life Judgments Ethical?” Bioethics and End of Life Decisions w/ Fr. Gregory Pine (Off-Campus Conversations) You can listen to the original lecture here: https://soundcloud.com/thomisticinstitute/are-quality-of-life-judgements-ethical-prof-gina-noia-1 For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org About the Speaker: Gina Maria Noia is an Assistant Professor of Theology and Resident Bioethicist at Belmont Abbey College. She received her Ph.D. in Theology and Health Care Ethics from Saint Louis University. She has served as a clinical ethicist for OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, IL and St. Alexius Hospital in St. Louis, MO, and she is published in Christian Bioethics and the Journal of Moral Theology.

What is a Soul? | Prof. Marie George Oct 19, 2022

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This lecture was given at Cornell University on September 14, 2022. For more information on upcoming events, visit our website at thomisticinstitute.org About the speaker: Marie George has been a member of the St. John’s University Philosophy Department since 1988. Professor George is an Aristotelian-Thomist whose interests lie primarily in the areas of philosophy of nature and philosophy of science. She has received several awards from the John Templeton foundation for her work in science and religion, and in 2007 she received a grant from the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) for an interdisciplinary project entitled: “The Evolution of Sympathy and Morality.” Professor George has authored over 50 peer-reviewed articles and two books: Christianity and Extraterrestrials? A Catholic Perspective(2005) and Stewardship of Creation (2009). She is currently working on Aquinas’s “Fifth Way,” and also on a variety of questions concerning living things (self-motion, consciousness, evolution, etc.). Professor George is a member of ten philosophical societies, including the American Catholic Philosophical Association, the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, and the Society for Aristotelian Studies.

Are Quality of Life Judgments Ethical? | Prof. Gina Noia Oct 18, 2022

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This lecture was given for John Hopkins University on April 11, 2022. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website: www.thomisticinstitute.org About the speaker: Gina Maria Noia is an Assistant Professor of Theology and Resident Bioethicist at Belmont Abbey College. She received her Ph.D. in Theology and Health Care Ethics from Saint Louis University. She has served as a clinical ethicist for OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, IL and St. Alexius Hospital in St. Louis, MO, and she is published in Christian Bioethics and the Journal of Moral Theology

TI in DC 'Resting in the Real: St. Thomas Aquinas on Contemplation' Sr. Anna Wray Oct 17, 2022

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This talk was given on September 27, 2022 for the DC Young Professionals chapter of the Thomistic Institute. For more information please visit, thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Sr. Anna Wray is a native of Connecticut and a member of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia. Sister received her PhD in philosophy from The Catholic University of America, having written her dissertation on Aristotle’s account of the activity of contemplation. Sister is on faculty in CUA's School of Philosophy.

Is Free Will an Illusion? | Fr. Stephen Brock Oct 14, 2022

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This lecture was given on September 15, 2022 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Stephen L. Brock is a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei (ordained 1992). He is Ordinary Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, where he has taught since 1990. He received a BA from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto. In 1999 he was a visiting professor in the School of Philosophy of The Catholic University of America. In 2017 he is a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago, collaborating in the Templeton Foundation project “Virtue, Happiness, and Meaning in Life,” directed by Candace Vogler and Jennifer Frey; his collaboration has included teaching a course in the Philosophy Department at the University of Chicago, giving two public lectures, directing a reading group, and leading sessions in a summer seminar for graduate students. Since 2008 he has been an Ordinary Member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. He is the author of Action & Conduct: Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action (T&T Clark, 1998); articles on various aspects of Aquinas’s thought; and most recently, The Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas: A Sketch (Wipf & Stock, 2015).

Science and the Theology of Extraterrestrials | Prof. Karin Öberg Oct 13, 2022

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This lecture was given at Baylor University on September 13, 2022. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website: www.thomisticinstitute.org About the speaker: Karin Öberg is Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University. Her specialty is astrochemistry and her research aims to uncover how chemical processes affect the outcome of planet formation, especially the chemical habitability of nascent planets. Dr. Öberg obtained her B.Sc. in chemistry at Caltech in 2005, and her Ph.D. in astronomy, with a thesis focused on laboratory astrochemistry, from Leiden University in 2009. She did postdoctoral work at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as a NASA Hubble fellow, focusing on millimeter observations of planet-forming disks around young stars. In 2013 she joined the Harvard astronomy faculty as an assistant professor. She was promoted and named the Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor in Astronomy in 2016, and promoted to full professor with tenure in 2017. Dr. Öberg’s research in astrochemistry has been recognized with a Sloan fellowship, a Packard fellowship, the Newton Lacy Pierce Award from the American Astronomical Society, and a Simons fellowship. Her recent TED talk explaining some of her research can be found here: https://www.ted.com/talks/karin_oberg_the_galactic_recipe_for_a_living_planet

Thomistic Underpinnings of the Theology of the Body | Fr. Thomas Petri, O.P. Oct 12, 2022

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This talk was given on September 8, 2022 at The University of Texas at Austin For more information please visit thomisticinstitute.org About the Speaker: Father Thomas Petri, O.P. is the President of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies, where he also serves as an assistant professor of moral theology and pastoral studies. Ordained a priest in 2009, he holds a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from The Catholic University of America.

Four Kinds of Happiness & Four Kinds of Friendship | Prof. Christopher Kaczor Oct 11, 2022

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This lecture was given on May 11, 2022 at the University of Oregon. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Dr. Christopher Kaczor (rhymes with razor) is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University and a member of the James Madison Society of Princeton University. In 2015, he was appointed to the Pontifical Academy for Life of Vatican City, and he serves as a Consultor to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He graduated from the Honors Program of Boston College and earned a Ph.D. four years later from the University of Notre Dame. A Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Kaczor is a former Federal Chancellor Fellow at the University of Cologne and William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. He is an award winning author of twelve books including The Gospel of Happiness, The Seven Big Myths about Marriage, A Defense of Dignity, The Seven Big Myths about the Catholic Church, The Ethics of Abortion, O Rare Ralph McInerny: Stories and Reflections on a Legendary Notre Dame Professor, Thomas Aquinas on the Cardinal Virtues; Life Issues, Medical Choices; Thomas Aquinas on Faith, Hope, and Love; The Edge of Life, and Proportionalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Dr. Kaczor’s views have been in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, National Review, NPR, BBC, EWTN, ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, MSNBC, TEDx, and The Today Show.

Complexity, Simplicity and Emergence: Metaphysics & Downward Causation | Fr. Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. Oct 10, 2022

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This talk was given on July 16, 2022 at the Fourth Annual Thomistic Philosophy and Natural Science Symposium For more information please visit thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: MARIUSZ TABACZEK, O.P., is a Polish Dominican and theologian. He holds Ph.D. in philosophical theology from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA and Church Licentiate from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. After his studies at the GTU and a fellowship at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Studies he returned to Poland. For three years he worked as a researcher at the Thomistic Institute in Warsaw (Poland), a lecturer at the Pontifical Faculty of Theology in Warsaw and the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Krakow, and a director of Studium Dominicanum in Warsaw. He then moved to Rome where he became a professor of theology at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas. He is also a researcher at the Thomistic Institute at the same University. 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 included 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.

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