Our intellectual environment is filled with contradictory claims about what the world is really like and how we should live in it. Our common sense and our most basic moral notions, we are told, stem from fundamental errors about the nature of reality that have been exposed by modern science.

To address these difficulties adequately, we need to learn from thinkers who have struggled with similar questions in the past. This Friday, William Carroll will describe how the 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas can help us think through these issues more carefully and identify the sources of confusion. Among other things, we will see how Darwin’s theory of evolution paves the way for a new appreciation of Thomas’ profound metaphysical insights.

Dr. William E. Carroll is Research Fellow at Blackfrairs, Oxford and a member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion of the University of Oxford. His teaching, research, and writing concern first of all the reception of Aristotelian science and philosophy in mediaeval Islam, Judaism, and Christianity and the development of the doctrine of creation, He also works extensively on the ways in which mediaeval discussions of the relationship among the natural sciences, philosophy, and theology can be used to enlighten contemporary discussions concerning philosophical and theological implications of evolutionary biology and cosmology. Dr. Carroll has an international reputation for his work on the relationship between the doctrine of creation and developments in contemporary science.