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About
Fidelity & ExcellenceThomas Aquinas College is unique among American colleges and universities, offering a faithfully Catholic education comprised entirely of the Great Books and classroom discussions.
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A Liberating Education
Truth MattersTruth, and nothing less, sets men free; and because truth is both natural and supernatural, the College’s curriculum aims at both natural and divine wisdom.
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Under the Light of FaithThe intellectual tradition and moral teachings of the Catholic Church infuse the whole life of Thomas Aquinas College, illuminating the curriculum and the community alike.
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Is TAC Right for You?Do you enjoy grappling with complex questions? Are you willing to engage in discussions about difficult concepts, with the truth as your ultimate goal?
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What Can You Do with a Liberal Education?Nothing speaks more to the versatility of the College’s academic program than the good that our alumni are doing throughout the Church and the world.
Dr. Alexander Pruss Ponders God’s Existence with Mathematics
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Last Friday, Dr. Alexander Pruss visited Thomas Aquinas College, California, to deliver a lecture titled “God, Mathematics, and Beauty.”
A mathematician and professor of philosophy at Baylor University, Dr. Pruss holds a Ph.D. in both mathematics and philosophy. He is the author of six books, including Infinity, Causation, and Paradox and One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics. Dr. Pruss is also an accomplished rock climber and holds two Guinness World Records for the fastest speed in climbing a mile and for the greatest distance climbed in an hour.
Dr. Pruss’s lecture offered an argument for the probability of God’s existence through the beauty of mathematics. He challenged the audience to consider why human beings have the ability to understand and appreciate mathematical beauty, how and where objective mathematical truths exist, and whether beautiful mathematics is also useful in explaining the natural world. Offering theism as a theory which satisfies these questions, Dr. Pruss spoke of the universe as a book written by an intelligent God in the language of mathematics.
“For a long, long time, as Galileo says, we really didn’t have an idea of the language that the book of the world was written in,” he observed. “We didn’t realize that we should try to describe it in the language of mathematics to get the fundamental, at least physical reality of it. And then, suddenly, we did, and that made a scientific revolution in physics possible.”
In his argument, Dr. Pruss offered many examples from mathematicians such as Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton — all familiar to Thomas Aquinas College students through the mathematics and natural science curricula — and drew on arguments from the philosophy of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. “Elegant mathematics is useful because God chose to create the world embodying it,” he argued.
After the lecture, students and faculty attended a question-and-answer period with Dr. Pruss, where they conversed more deeply about the role of beauty in mathematics and its ability to reflect the physical world.
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