Eddie -
I appreciate your bringing to our attention this interesting new work by Chaberek.
Since I don’t have time to read the book anytime in the near future, would you mind answering a question about it for me?
My reaction to the Thomistic view of evolution as described in this thread is that it is based on a medieval understanding of science that has leaked into the definition of a “form.” In other words, his understanding about what makes one biological form different from another would have been based on a certain medieval common sense. But we know today that much of that medieval sensibility about biology which undergirded his classification of forms has not survived the test of time.
There’s a very good case to be made for understanding all of biological life as an expression of a single form. I.e.,
Biology = Single Thomistic Form
Consider that every organism shares these characteristics:
- Blueprints encoded in DNA
- Common repertoire of amino acids
- Common mechanisms for manufacturing proteins
- Common mechanisms for regulating genetic expression
- Blueprints copied to descendant organisms by replication
- Changes introduced at a certain frequency through mutations
- Life in populations having genetic alleles that provide adaptation capability
- Respiration
This list could be magnitudes longer.
Dear St. Thomas could not possibly have imagined the double-slit experiment or Michelson-Morley. Would Thomas have regarded quantum entangled particles as a different form than beta decay? Such a question is a preposterous anachronism! We have a fundamentally different understanding of physics than Thom. We should not ask him to adjudicate our physics theories.
Likewise, we should not ask dear St. Thom to adjudicate our biology theories. He could not possibly have imagined that scientists would eventually discover the biochemical and genetic similarities across the entire domain of biology that we know about today.
Thom has a lot of important things to say about how we relate to one another, and how we relate to God. We do not listen to him enough about these subjects. Thom even has some important things to say about how the life of a scientist relates to a life of faith. I do think it inappropriate to ask him to adjudicate modern scientific findings, however.
So that’s my initial reaction. I would imagine that Chaberek and Feser have given some thought to what I just stated. I am curious about how they would respond, if indeed they have.
Thanks!
Chris