Year four of the four-year Thomas Aquinas College curriculum. All courses are year-long.

Note Concerning “Equivalent Credit Hours”: Equivalent Credit Hours are based on an analysis of the Thomas Aquinas College curriculum in terms of equivalent semes­ter hours of conventional college subjects. It should be noted, however, that these are approximate. The integrated nature of the curriculum would make a precise calculation somewhat artificial, so the estimates can be regarded as fairly conservative.

Note Concerning “Equivalent Credit Hours”: Equivalent Credit Hours are based on an analysis of the Thomas Aquinas College curriculum in terms of equivalent semes­ter hours of conventional college subjects. It should be noted, however, that these are approximate. The integrated nature of the curriculum would make a precise calculation somewhat artificial, so the estimates can be regarded as fairly conservative.

 

 

Theology 4 (Trinity, Incarnation, and Sacraments)

 

The first part of this course is devoted to the doctrine of the Trinity as articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas. Topics involved in­clude the following: names of God, processions in God, relations in God, and persons in God. The second part of the course focuses on the Sacraments and the Passion of Christ. Topics involved include the following: how sacraments are signs; how sacraments are causes of grace; the necessity of the Incarnation; how Christ has, and had, grace; and how the passion wrought salvation by way of merit, satisfaction, redemption, and final causality.

Readings

  • Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae, I, qq. 13, 14, 18, 19 (preliminary to the Trinity)
  • Summa Theologiae, I, qq. 27-39, 41, 43 (the Trinity)
  • Summa Theologiae, I-II, qq. 112 and 114 (preliminary to the Sacraments)
  • Summa Theologiae, III, qq. 7, 8, 19, 22, 46, 48 (preliminary to the Sacraments)
  • Summa Theologiae, III, qq. 60-65 (the Sacraments)

Credit Hours: 6.0

 

 

Philosophy 4 (Natural Philosophy and Metaphysics)

 

This course is an exploration of difficult questions regarding natural motion and then a transition into metaphysics. During the first semester, students work through the later chapters of Aristotle’s Physics and consider questions regarding place, time, continuity and divisibility of motion, and the first mover. The second semester, using Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Thomas Aquinas’s On Being and Essence, takes up the following: wisdom, causality, substance, senses of being, and natural theology.

Readings

  • Aristotle: Physics (books 4-8) and Metaphysics
  • St. Thomas Aquinas: On Being and Essence

Credit Hours: 3.0

 

 

Natural Science 4 (Optics, Electromagnetism, and Evolution)

 

There are three principal topics in the first semester of this tutorial: a study of the wave theory of light, an investigation of the first two laws of Thermodynamics, and an investigation of Electromagnetism. Various laboratory experiments are performed throughout the semester in support of these studies. The second semester deals with the Darwinian theory of evolution and the development that occurred with the neo-Darwinian synthesis of genetic and evolutionary theories. Modern authors pos­ing difficulties for the neo-Darwinian synthesis will also be read. This sequence will also involve philosophical and cosmo­logical considerations and will conclude with a number of readings from St. Thomas Aquinas.

Readings

  • Newton: Optics and Principia (selections)
  • Huygens: Treatise on Light (selections)
  • Faraday: Experimental Researches in Electricity (selections)
  • Maxwell: various papers and essays
  • Darwin: Origin of Species
  • Mendel: Experiments in Plant Hybridization
  • Schrödinger: What is Life?
  • Watson & F. Crick: Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids
  • Monod: Chance and Necessity
  • Jonas: Philosophical Aspects of Darwinism
  • Harold: The Way of the Cell
  • St. Thomas Aquinas: selections

Credit Hours: 8.0

Equivalent Credit Hours

  • 1.0 (Mechanics)
  • 1.0 (Optics)
  • 2.0 (Electomagnetism)
  • 4.0 (Evolution and Genetics)

 

 

Mathematics 4 (Number Theory, Non-Euclidian Geometry, and Relativity)

 

Two aspects of modern mathematics are presented for consideration. The first is the theory of numbers. The extension of the concept of number, begun in the work of Descartes, is carried through to Dedekind’s account of the system of real numbers, with a brief look also at imaginary and complex numbers. The second topic is non-Euclidean geometry. After looking at some difficulties raised by early commentators on Euclid, we take up the hyperbolic geometry of Lobachevski. The semes­ter concludes with a study of the special and general theory of relativity, using the popular work on the subject written by Einstein. Connections between the general theory and non-Euclidean geometries are explored.

Readings

  • Dedekind: Essays on the Theory of Numbers
  • Lobachevski: Geometrical Researches on the Theory of Parallels
  • Einstein: Relativity: The Special and the General Theory
  • Readings from various mathematicians

Credit Hours: 6.0

Equivalent Credit Hours:     

  • 2.0 (Geometry)
  • 2.0 (Number Theory)
  • 2.0 (Physics)

 

 

Seminar 4 (Late Modern Philosophy, Literature, and Theology)

 

In this course students read a variety of works, chiefly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Themes of the course include the emergence of history in human thought; the novel as literary genre; modern theories of economics; democracy and revolution; atheism and nihilism; the relationship of philosophy and natural science; modern encounters with faith; principles of modern psychology; Catholic social thought.

Readings       

  • Smith: The Wealth of Nations
  • Kant: Groundlaying for the Metaphysics of Ethics
  • Austen: Emma
  • Goethe: Faust
  • Hegel: The Philosophy of His­tory and The Phenomenology of Spirit
  • Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling and Philosophical Fragments
  • Tocqueville: Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution
  • Marx & Engels: Paris Manuscripts, German Ideology, Capital, The Communist Manifesto
  • Newman: Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
  • Twain: Huckleberry Finn
  • Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
  • Flaubert: Three Tales
  • Nietzsche: The Use and Disadvantage of History for Life and The Genealogy of Morality
  • Tolstoy: War and Peace
  • Ibsen: A Doll House
  • Conrad: The Heart of Darkness
  • Freud: General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
  • Jung: Analytical Psychology
  • Eliot: The Waste-Land and The Journey of the Magi
  • Joyce: Dubliners
  • Cather: My Antonia
  • Faulkner: The Bear
  • O’Connor: A Good Man is Hard to Find and The Enduring Chill
  • Heidegger: Introduction to Metaphysics
  • Leo XIII: Aeterni Patris and Rerum Novarum
  • Pius X: Pascendi Dominici Gregis
  • Pius XI: Quadragesimo Anno
  • Pius XII: Humani Generis
  • St. John Paul II: Veritatis Splendor
  • St. Thomas Aquinas: The Division and Methods of the Sciences
  • Plato: Phaedrus

Credit Hours: 8.0

Equivalent Credit Hours:

  • 3.0 (Literature)
  • 3.0 (Philosophy)
  • 1.0 (Economics)
  • 0.5 (Psychology)
  • 0.5 (Theology)