Lesson 32 –
Actual Chance and Determinacy in the Natural Order

The universe is not a mathematical object, but a physical one that can be described with mathematics in detail and subtlety.

That said, it is still the case that our best explanations about nature are not perfect predictions. Nature is messy and contingent, and while we continue to learn more and more, our understanding of nature will always be, as Aristotle argued, not perfect and necessary but contingent and explain what happens “for the most part.”

Course Reading

Summa Contra Gentiles Bk. III, Ch. 72 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Summa Contra Gentiles Bk. III, Ch. 74 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Excerpt from ch. 72 of bk. III of the Summa contra gentiles:

Just as divine providence does not wholly exclude evil from things, so also it does not exclude contingency, or impose necessity on things.

It has already been shown that the operation of providence, whereby God works in things, does not exclude secondary causes, but, rather, is fulfilled by them, in so far as they act by God’s power. Now certain effects are called necessary or contingent in regard to proximate causes, but not in regard to remote causes... So, since there are many things among proximate causes that may be defective, not all effects subject to providence will be necessary, but a good many are contingent.

Course Listening

God is Not a Supercomputer: Chance, Providence, and Freedom | Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P.

Chance and Indeterminate Causes in the Cosmos | Prof. John Brungardt