Named Person:	Thomas, Aquinas Saint
Material Type:	Thesis/dissertation, Manuscript
Document Type:	Book, Archival Material
OCLC Number:	3948819
Notes:	Typescript (copy).
Description:	628 pages; 28 cm.
Responsibility:	by Bernard I. Mullahy.
Laval Dissertation:	LD 61 - Mullahy, Bernard I. THOMISM AND MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS. 1946/07

From Edward Feser's "The Thomistic Tradition (part 1)" (vide also part 2):

This approach emphasizes the Aristotelian foundations of Aquinas’s philosophy, and in particular the idea that the construction of a sound metaphysics must be preceded by a sound understanding of natural science, as interpreted in light of an Aristotelian philosophy of nature. Accordingly, it is keen to show that modern physical science can and should be given such an interpretation. Charles De Koninck (1906-1965), James A. Weisheipl (1923-1984), William A. Wallace, and Benedict Ashley are among its representatives. It is sometimes called “Laval Thomism” after the University of Laval in Quebec [which produced this brilliant thesis: Thomism and Mathematical Physics], where De Koninck was a professor. The alternative label “River Forest Thomism” derives from a suburb of Chicago, the location of the Albertus Magnus Lyceum for Natural Science, whose members are associated with this approach. It is also sometimes called “Aristotelian Thomism” (to highlight its contrast with Gilson’s brand of existential Thomism) though since Neo-Scholastic Thomism also emphasizes Aquinas’s continuity with Aristotle, this label seems a bit too proprietary. (There are writers, like the contemporary Thomist Ralph McInerny, who exhibit both Neo-Scholastic and Laval/River Forest influences, and the approaches are not necessarily incompatible.)

See also:

• Aristotelean Thomism
• "Scientiæ et Philosophia Secundum S. Albertum Magnum" by Aniceto Fernández, the River Forest school's original intellectual inspiration
• The Modeling of Nature by William Wallace, O.P. (vide this review)
• The Way toward Wisdom (vide this excerpt and this review by John Deely) or "The River Forest School and the Philosophy of Nature Today" by Benedict Ashley, O.P.
• The Writings of Charles de Koninck (Volume 1) by Charles de Koninck
• Physics for Realists and Science before Science by physicist Dr. Anthony Rizzi of the Institute for Advanced Physics

This thesis is important because, e.g., Heisenberg recognized in his Physics and Philosophy that the probability wave concept in quantum mechanics "was a quantitative version of the concept of 'potentia' in Aristotelian philosophy" (p. 41) and that the "concept of the soul for instance in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas was more natural and less forced than the Cartesian concept of 'res cogitans,' even if we are convinced that the laws of physics and chemistry are strictly valid in living organisms." (p. 80).

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