Summary: This project will be the first project devoted to the study of key Neo-Scholastic authors and their approach to the natural sciences. Even if the Neo-Scholastic movement in the early twentieth century has been the object of some studies (Heynickx and Symons volume, 2018), its approach to the natural sciences has been seldom analysed.
In particular, the project will study how scholars within the renaissance of Thomism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries assessed the sciences of origins of the times, namely the theory of evolution of biological species and the nebular hypothesis for explaining the formation of the solar system and galaxies.
Thomism saw a revival after the great impulse of Pope Leo XIII’s mandate to study the work of Thomas Aquinas in every Catholic seminary around the globe. His aim in his late-nineteenth-century encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879), was to call all Catholic philosophers and theologians to restore Christian Philosophy in the spirit of the thought of Aquinas, as the subtitle of the encyclical read. Many authors, mostly in Europe, took up the challenge and many handbooks on “Aristotelian-Thomistic” philosophy or “Thomist” philosophy were published in the first half of the new century. These volumes were often thought of as “preambulae” to the study of theology in Catholic seminaries. This project will assess the ways in which some classical Catholic authors of this revival, for instance, Juan Arintero OP (1860-1928), Édouard Hugon, OP (1867-1929), Joseph Gredt, OSB (1863-1940), and Petrus Hoenen, SI (1880-1961), portrayed the natural sciences in their works. Following the papal mandate, these authors re-interpreted the place and role that the natural sciences had in the grand scheme of their neo-Thomistic systems, assuming a unique approach to the classical issue of faith and reason. Gredt’s two-volume handbook on Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, for instance, was the must go-to work for Catholic seminarians around the world well into the 1960s (Elders 2020, 14).
Given this immense influence that these works had in the education of Catholic clergy, and hence the Catholic community at large, this project will help to understand current trends in how Catholics approach the natural sciences today.
It is expected that this project will produce at least 3 co-authored paper manuscripts to be submitted for publication, one hybrid workshop on Thomism and science in the early twentieth century and at least 4 oral presentations at academic events by team members.
