There are many unresolved questions about the relations of the natural sciences to Aristotelean-Thomist philosophy, and the accurate placing of science on the map of intellectual activities is one of the most important objectives of our time. The prestige of science is still so high that the relative neglect of it by Thomists is unfortunate, and a positive approach is of great value. The American Dominicans have therefore done wisely as well as boldly in setting up a permanent institution where scientists and philosophers can meet and collaborate, with a permanent staff most of whom have been trained in one of the natural sciences as well as in the Thomist tradition. This institution is called the Albertus Magnus Lyceum for Natural Science and is situated in a suburb of Chicago. Its leaders hope that, by bringing men engaged in specialized research into contact with a homogeneous intellectual tradition, they will be able to help scientists towards a synthesis that they feel to be necessary for the health of science itself as well as for modem culture generally. Clearly this venture could be of the greatest importance.

The present volume is a report of an ambitious five-week meeting held in 1952, at which a varied group of experts in philosophy, logic and the natural sciences considered the relations between modem science and the Aristotelean tradition. Physics, chemistry, biology and psychology were allotted a week each, and the final week was devoted to an attempt at synthesis.