Christian Realism for the 21st Century
Advancing the philosophical legacy of Dr Wolfgang Smith.
Christian Realism for the 21st Century
Advancing the philosophical legacy of Dr Wolfgang Smith.
FoS's Endowment to St Mary's University
WOLFGANG SMITH CHAIR IN PHILOSOPHY
The study of philosophy in the classical tradition, grounded in foundational questions about reality, knowledge, and ethics.
THE JOHN TAYLOR COMMISSION
The Commission
Findings of Science has commissioned twelve essays from John Taylor who knew Wolfgang Smith personally and co-authored an article with him that went on to feature in his last book, Physics: A Science in Quest of an Ontology.
John Taylor Biography
John Taylor resides in Godalming Surrey. He holds a bachelor’s in philosophy from UCL and an MSc in Philosophy of Science from LSE.
Objective
The aim is to continue Wolfgang Smith's work in its many facets generally and especially as regards Christian apologetics.
Findings of Science
THE LANDING ZONE
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ARTICLES
GLOSSARY
Triune God 🔥
Actus Essendi 🔥
Triune God 🔥
The eternal Word of God — the organising Principle, the intelligible Form, and the sustaining Reason through whom all things are made and in whom all things cohere. The Logos is not merely a rational pattern or cosmic law; He is the Second Person of the Triune God, co‑eternal, co‑equal, and uncreated, the divine Source of order, meaning, and form.
Architecturally, the Logos is the keystone of the metaphysical edifice:
• the measure by which all created forms are intelligible
• the principle by which potentia is ordered toward actus
• the unity in which the Whole precedes and sustains its parts
• the light by which the human intellect receives truth
As Actus Essendi made manifest, the Logos is the living bridge between the Infinite Actus Purus and the finite order of creation. He is the One in whom the cosmos finds its coherence, its purpose, and its final cause.
This is the primordial act by which a thing is held in existence. It is not a property, not a process, and not an event in time. It is the metaphysical “energy” of being itself — the continuous, sustaining donation of existence from the Creator to every creature.
Logos 💠
Actus Essendi 🔥
Triune God 🔥
The Principle of Intelligibility and Form
The Logos is the eternal principle by which all things are knowable, ordered, and meaningful. It is the archetype of rationality, the inner grammar of reality, the measure by which beings are proportioned to truth. The Logos is not one being among others but the formal luminosity through which beings manifest their structure, coherence, and orientation toward understanding. It is the intelligible articulation of Being, present in every creature as its knowable form, and in the cosmos as the unity of its rational order.
In short: Logos is the universal Form of forms, the intelligible pattern that renders reality transparent to mind.
Actus Essendi 🔥
Actus Essendi 🔥
Actus Essendi 🔥
Key aspects:
• The deepest layer of reality
Before form, before matter, before motion or change, there is the sheer act of being. Everything else — essence, structure, potency, activity — depends on this foundational act.
• The source of all actuality
A creature’s essence (what it is) becomes real only because it receives the act of existing. Without Actus Essendi, an essence remains a mere possibility.
• Continuous, not one‑off
Creation is not a past event but an ongoing gift. Actus Essendi is the reason a thing exists now, not merely why it came to exist.
• Participated, not possessed
No creature contains existence in itself. Every finite being participates in the one infinite Actus Essendi of God, who alone is Ipsum Esse Subsistens — Existence Itself.
• The bridge between God and creation
Actus Essendi is the metaphysical “touchpoint” where the Creator’s Pure Act sustains the finite world. It is the deepest expression of the Logos’ continuous creative presence.
Corporeal 🪨
Corporeal 🪨
Actus Essendi 🔥
That which exists as concrete, tangible reality. Modern physics often treats “matter” as a ghostly abstraction of numbers and fields; here, the corporeal is restored as the actual, tangible realm — the middle rung of the ladder of existence — always already structured by form and act
Cosmos ✨
Corporeal 🪨
Cosmos ✨
From the root of cosmetic, meaning adornment. More than galaxies and dark matter, the cosmos is the ordered, coherent Whole: the hierarchy of being held together by the Creator. To view it as a mere “machine” is to confuse the clockwork with the Clockmaker’s ongoing act of sustaining it.
Being 🌟
Corporeal 🪨
Cosmos ✨
Not an object or “thing,” but the act of existing itself. To have being is to be held in existence by the Creator at every moment.
Potentia (Capacity‑to‑be) 🌱
Potentia (Capacity‑to‑be) 🌱
Potentia (Capacity‑to‑be) 🌱
The “quantum” state of reality. Not “nothing,” yet not fully “something.” It is the realm of possibilities awaiting realisation.
Actus (Act / Actuality) 🔆
Potentia (Capacity‑to‑be) 🌱
Potentia (Capacity‑to‑be) 🌱
The moment potentia becomes a defined, corporeal reality — the transition from “what could be” to “what is.”
Irreducible Wholeness 🕊️
Potentia (Capacity‑to‑be) 🌱
Irreducible Wholeness 🕊️
The truth that a system is not merely the sum of its parts. Given the whole precedes the parts, you cannot understand an electron by isolating it; you must understand its place within the participatory hierarchy.
Vertical Causation ⬆️
Participatio (Participation) 🔗
Irreducible Wholeness 🕊️
Unlike horizontal cause‑and‑effect (the billiard ball striking another), this is the top‑down influence of the Creator and higher levels of being upon the lower. It is how the universe is sustained from above.
Noetic Receptivity 👁️🗨️
Participatio (Participation) 🔗
Participatio (Participation) 🔗
The capacity of the human mind to receive reality as it is, rather than forcing it into the narrow confines of our mathematical models.
Participatio (Participation) 🔗
Participatio (Participation) 🔗
Participatio (Participation) 🔗
The fundamental law of existence. No created thing possesses existence in itself; every electron, star, and person exists only by participating in the Divine Actus Essendi (Act of Existing).
GLOSSARY Continued
🟣 Essence
🟡 Existence
🟡 Existence
The Principle of Whatness and Determinate Identity
Essence is that by which a being is what it is and not another. It is the intrinsic determination that sets the limits, capacities, and perfections proper to a nature. Essence is not existence itself but the possibility of existence, the stable intelligible content that grounds classification, predication, and participation.
Essence is received, finite, and participated:
- received in creatures as a bounded mode of being
- finite because it delimits what can be
- participated because it reflects the plenitude of Being without exhausting it,
In short: Essence is the determinate identity of a being—its intelligible “whatness”—prior to and distinct from the act of existing.
🟡 Existence
🟡 Existence
🟡 Existence
The Act of Being and the Principle of Actuality
Existence is the act by which an essence is made real. It is not a property added to a thing but the fundamental act that places it within the order of actuality. Existence is pure act in its source, and participated act in creatures, received according to the measure of their essence.
Existence is:
- the actuality of all perfections
- the ground of unity (for only what exists can be one)
- the source of dynamism, since act precedes potency
Where essence defines the limits of a being, existence grants the act by which those limits are realised.
In short: Existence is the act of being itself—the enabling actuality that makes any essence real.
Podcast
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Our Mission
Drs Stephen Meyer and Wolfgang Smith
Drs Stephen Meyer and Wolfgang Smith
The Findings of Science (FoS) aims to evangelise an orthodox Christian message through a Thomistic interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Drs Stephen Meyer and Wolfgang Smith
Drs Stephen Meyer and Wolfgang Smith
Drs Stephen Meyer and Wolfgang Smith
FoS wishes to duly acknowledge Dr Meyer for his characterisation of a serious inauspicious trend and Dr Smith for his insight as to how best to address and challenge it.
Mark Ashley BRUCE-SMITH
Drs Stephen Meyer and Wolfgang Smith
Mark Ashley BRUCE-SMITH
FoS is an initiative of a retired accountant and auditor. He is British culturally and educated. He failed his eleven plus but supports Grammar Schools. He did not attend university but eventually passed his accountancy exams. He became a Roman Catholic on Pentecost 1992