Stanford University
7:00 PM
Room 420-041
A lecture by Prof. Edward Feser (Pasadena City College)
Free and open to the public. The Catholic Community at Stanford hosts the Thomistic Institute.
The idea of a law of nature is central to scientific explanation. Laws themselves are often said to be explicable in terms of more fundamental laws. But what about the most fundamental laws? Why is the world governed by those particular laws rather than by other laws or no laws at all? And what exactly is a law of nature in the first place? Are these questions that science itself can answer, or is there a role for philosophy in answering them?
Speaker Bio
Edward Feser is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. He has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California at Santa Barbara, an M.A. in religion from the Claremont Graduate School, and a B.A. in philosophy and religious studies from the California State University at Fullerton.
Called by National Review “one of the best contemporary writers on philosophy,” Feser is the author of On Nozick, Philosophy of Mind, Locke, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, Aquinas, Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction, Neo-Scholastic Essays, and Five Proofs of the Existence of God, the co-author of By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment, and the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Hayek and Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics. He is also the author of many academic articles. His primary academic research interests are in metaphysics, natural theology, the philosophy of mind, and moral and political philosophy.
Feser also writes on politics and culture, from a conservative point of view; and on religion, from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective. In this connection, his work has appeared in such publications as The American, The American Conservative, Catholic World Report, City Journal, The Claremont Review of Books, Crisis, First Things, Liberty, National Review, New Oxford Review, Public Discourse, Reason, and TCS Daily.
He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and six children.