Prof. Robert Koons discusses the alignment of quantum revolution with Aristotle's theories. They delve into forms in Plato and Aristotle, distinguishing token and type substances, and exploring the transition in quantum theory from finite to infinite systems. They also touch on the nature of integral parts and the connection between quantum particles and substances.
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Quantum Mechanics Vindicates Aristotle
Robert Koons argues the quantum revolution vindicates Aristotelian potentiality (potentia).
He focuses on large-scale substances like humans and inorganic bodies as real parts of the world.
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What Makes Something A Substance
Substances have per se unity and diachronic persistence and ground change and causal powers.
They are the fundamental things everything else depends on in nature.
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Why 'Emergence' Creates Problems
Koons rejects standard 'emergence' as causing over-determination and causal redundancy.
He instead treats parts of substances as wholly dependent, often only potential or virtual.
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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
The Hand Out for this lecture can be accessed here:
tinyurl.com/ru5axoe
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).
The Thomistic Institute 