Physicalism and Catholicism: Are you a machine?

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Physicalism is the worldview that reality is completely and exhaustively accounted for by particles and fields governed by the physical law. You are a biochemical machine, nothing more. Students will engage and analyze physicalism, as presented by some of its most articulate and persuasive advocates, and compare it to Catholic teaching and the biblical account. Science as a total worldview is relatively new, but science has a history. A common view is that science emerged in the scientific revolution as Europeans began to cast off the weight of old religious dogma and arguments from authority and started to look for truth on the basis of empirical evidence. Part of the course will be an encounter with the scientific revolution as it actually occurred.