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William Carroll

William Carroll

William E. Carroll is Distinguished Visiting Professor, School of Philosophy Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (Wuhan, China) and Visiting Professor of Philosophy Hongyi Honor College, Wuhan University.

Thomas Aquinas: Revolutionary and Saint

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Seven hundred years ago the Catholic Church canonized Thomas Aquinas. Today he is often considered a consummate authority for Catholic philosophy and theology. We should remember, however, how revolutionary his views were.
Florenz, Galileo Galilei

Eppur si muove: The Legend of Galileo

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From beginning to end, the Inquisition’s actions were disciplinary, not dogmatic, although they were based on the erroneous notion that it was heretical to claim that the Earth moves. But opinions of theologians are not the same as Christian doctrine. The error the Church made in dealing with Galileo was an error in judgment. The Inquisition was wrong to discipline Galileo, but discipline is not dogma.
Webb telescope images

Could God Have Created a Multiverse?

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In his new book, Jamie Boulding uses the metaphysics of participation to argue that multiverse proposals do not really call into question the notion of God central to Christian theology. Infinite multiplicity and diversity do not challenge the claim that all that is is created.
China

Darwin, Marx, Aquinas, and China

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What often intrigues my Chinese colleagues and students is that we do not need to accept the Christian faith that Thomas Aquinas embraced to see that, on his principles, there is no need to choose between viewing creation as the constant exercise of divine omnipotence and acknowledging the causes that the natural sciences disclose.
Aeneas

Virgil, Pope Francis, and the Wisdom of Memory

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In responding to the current crisis, the great pandemic, we can follow the example of Aeneas: we can reject despair in the face of horrible suffering and find strength in "the roots of our traditions."

The Evolution of Minds

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Significant advances in evolutionary biology and the neurosciences have led many who are already committed to a materialist philosophy to offer sweeping accounts of the origin and development of life, from bacteria to the human mind and consciousness.

Reason and the Existence of God

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Are traditional arguments for the existence of God at least suspect—if not false—in the light of what modern philosophy tells us about the limits of human understanding?

Poetic Naturalism and the Way Things Are

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Sean Carroll’s new book, The Big Picture, proposes an apparent middle ground between an exclusively materialist account of reality and one that includes non-physical components.

Bird Brains and Cross-Species Empathy

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Speaking about empathy between humans and animals requires a robust philosophy of nature. Such a philosophy can guide us in thinking more deeply about what it means to be human and how the human animal can better be connected to the broader animal world.

Science, Philosophy, and God

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An understanding of the transcendence of creation forms the essential foundation of natural science. But does that understanding require revelation?

Mind the Gap: Neuroscience, Transhumanism, and Human Nature

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Before we rush to embrace transhumanism, it is crucial to ask what it means to be human.

Souls Matter

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A materialist philosophy that denies the reality of immaterial features of the world is an impoverished view of nature, including human nature. In any complete analysis of what it means to be a living thing, souls matter. Without souls, there are no living things.

Thomas Aquinas in China

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Thomas Aquinas’s commitment to the importance of reason and its universal role in defining what it means to be human makes him an attractive thinker for contemporary Chinese scholars.

Religion in the Age of Evolution: Shaking the Pillars?

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The traditional pillars of religion that support a view of God as transcendent Creator remain unshaken by the discoveries of modern science.

Scholastic Metaphysics: Edward Feser’s Introduction

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Edward Feser’s latest book gives readers who are familiar with analytic philosophy an excellent overview of scholastic metaphysics in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas.

The Limits of Life: Biology and the Philosophy of Nature

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Biology continues to offer us new and exciting insights into the world. These insights need to be integrated into a philosophical perspective that is richer than the reductive materialism that is often linked with the empirical sciences. In this endeavor, biology needs the philosophy of nature.

Metaphysics and the Experience of God: The Meditations of David Bentley Hart

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The embrace of a materialist and mechanistic view of the world, taking its inspiration from the rise of modern science, results in a loss of the sense of transcendence. But God is not simply some finite object in a universe of other objects—he is reason, being, and order itself.

Illusions of Unity? Mind, Value, and Nature

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Is it wrong to study the natural sciences using a metaphysical framework that sees unity in reality?

Who Am I? The Building of Bionic Man

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The invention of Rex, a bionic man with artificially created organs, helps us see why it is impossible for any machine to be a human being.

Is Religion Outdated in the Twenty-First Century?

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Religion isn’t outdated simply because some people claim that we can only know what the natural sciences tell us. Philosophy and theology are the next steps in our search for truth about nature, human nature, and God.

Neither Darwin Nor God?

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Distinguished philosopher Thomas Nagel rejects both evolutionary materialism and theism as adequate accounts of the origin and nature of human life, proposing instead a naturalistic “nonpurposive teleology.” But naturalistic teleology, just like existence itself, calls for a cause that transcends the created order.

The Sperm of Sea Urchins and the Directedness of Natural Processes

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Nature exhibits finality and purpose in its various activities, and chance is not, indeed cannot be, an explanation for this activity.

Landscapes of Nothingness

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The fundamental question of why there is something rather than nothing is a metaphysical and theological question—and with respect to such a question the natural sciences necessarily have nothing to say.

The Scientific Revolution and Contemporary Ethics

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Modern science does not require us to abandon notions of nature and human nature upon which so much of traditional ethics depends.
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