A Thomistic exploration of the unity of Truth in the science and religion dialogue: seeking oneness of the human experience

Abstract

This study sets out to reclaim the ontological epistemology of Saint Thomas Aquinas which serves as a unifier of knowledge in being, within the philosophical milieu of being’s forgottenness. Post-Humean and Kantian thought made appearance rather than being solely accessible to the thinking subject. The consequence has been the marginalisation of being as reflected in truth – influenced by scientistic and postmodern paradigms – which has contributed to both the paucity of meaningless metaphysics, and the conceptualisation of science and faith as necessarily opposing categories. To the end of establishing that science and faith have points of intersection, it is argued that the reclamation of Thomist natural philosophy leads to the defence of a clarified form of realism. Establishing the “real” implies that the metaphysical dimensions of the problem of existence can be explored. Within this realist model, the “pre-Modern” Thomistic theory of “scientia” is employed to bring physical and natural science and metaphysics into relationship as components of true knowledge of being. Consequently, the author puts forth that “scientia” is exemplified in, amongst others, the particular science of cosmology since the rudimentary point of engagement between physical and metaphysical science occurs in the act of creation, that is, when being comes into existence. Whilst metaphysics is often disregarded, it is consistently proposed that the causal nature of being demands – by its presence – a more robust account than physical and natural science can offer. The contribution made by this work rests in its ontologically-formed epistemic typology whereby “hard” science and faith are related in boundary areas of knowledge, that is, when metaphysical problems emerge from within physical and natural science. By reimaging “hard” science and reasonable faith within “scientia”, both approaches are conceived as adequating to truth when their content is reflective of being.