The Thomistic Institute How the Highest of the Inanimate Touches the Lowest of the Living: A Contemporary Thomistic Approach – Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P.
Oct 16, 2025
Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P., a philosophy professor at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, dives into the philosophical boundaries between inanimate and living beings. He discusses Aquinas's views on spontaneous generation and the nuances of spiritual versus material causation. Davenport also critiques modern Thomistic interpretations and advocates for interdisciplinary collaboration in refining natural philosophy. He uses fascinating examples like diamonds, water, and colloids to illustrate concepts of structured homogeneity and the complexity of life's emergence.
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Life As Substantial Form And Self-Motion
- For Aquinas, life is tied to the soul as a substantial form that actualizes an organized body.
- He distinguishes living bodies by heterogeneous organs that allow one part to move another, enabling self-motion.
Aquinas' Natural Account Of Spontaneous Generation
- Aquinas accepts spontaneous generation: simple animals can arise from putrefying matter under the sun's action.
- He frames this as a natural process where forms are educed from matter, not as direct miraculous assembly.
Don't Privilege The Smallest Scale Automatically
- Modern atomist intuitions risk treating inanimate substances as fundamentally heterogeneous at atomic scale, creating a huge perceived gap to life.
- Davenport warns this view makes abiogenesis seem impossibly large and may misplace where to attribute substantial unity.
