Aquinas’ Legacy in the Contemporary Dialogue Between Science and Faith

Abstract

We present an introduction to Aquinas’ eminent personality and his original view of human cognition and epistemology including theology among the sciences. A sketch of the more relevant results of some recent sciences in order to establish the required Theory of foundations common to all of them is presented. Remarkably the Aristotelian Thomistic logic and metaphysics, even if rewritten in the symbolic language of our contemporary sciences, appear to be strongly adequate to assume the very role of such a Theory of foundations. Some foreseeing texts of the Catholic Magisterium on science are also examined. What is offered in the present paper has been developed along the last thirty years of collaboration with Prof. Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti in the Centro di Documentazione Interdisciplinare di Scienza e Fede (disf.org).