An Introduction to Thomistic Philosophy of Nature - Prof. Ryan Miller

Prof. Ryan Miller offers an introductory overview of the foundational terminology of Thomistic philosophy of nature — potency and act, the four causes, per se versus per accidens, the categories of substance, accident, and relation, and nature versus instrument — illustrating each distinction with modern scientific analogies and everyday examples like the conductor, combustion, phonemes, ionization, model species.

This lecture was given on July 16th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.

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About the Speaker:

Professor Ryan Miller is Core Fellow at the University of St Thomas in Houston and formerly Swiss National Science Foundation Doc.CH Fellow at the University of Geneva, working on Aristotelian approaches to the metaphysics of emergence in physical and computational systems.

Keywords: Aquinas, Aristotle, Four Causes, Instrument, Nature, Per Accidens, Per Se, Potency and Act, Relation, Substance