Acknowledgments
The material presented in this volume originates from several years of my reflecting, teaching, researching, and writing on the topic of evolution – shared between the Thomistic Institute in the Dominican priory of St. Joseph in Warsaw (Poland) and the Thomistic Institute at the Angelicum in Rome (Italy). I would like to thank my brothers assigned to the priory of St. Joseph in the years 2017–2020, the director of the Thomistic Institute in Warsaw, Fr. Mateusz Przanowski, O.P., and the regent of studies from the Polish Dominican Province in those years, Fr. Maciej Roszkowski, O.P., for their fraternal support. After my transition to the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome (Italy), my further research conducted under the auspices of Thomistic Institute at the Angelicum was generously supported by the benefactors of the Institute to whom I am deeply grateful. Many thanks to my students both in Rome and in Poland for their curiosity and challenging questions. I also thank the Dominican community at the priory of saints Dominic and Sixtus in Rome for shared experience of the Dominican life. I am forever grateful to my family and friends and all who support me and show appreciation of my work. Last but not least, I would like to thank my teacher and mentor, Michael Dodds, O.P. He taught me the principles of the Aristotelian–Thomistic system, which I have applied in this volume to the theory of biological evolution.
Part of my research on species, covered in Chapter 2, was sponsored by the Templeton Foundation (Grant ID 61360, Thomistic Evolution and the Defense of Faith and Reason: Engaging Catholic Families, Philosophers, and Theologians). I wish to express my gratitude for this support.
Parts of the material presented in this volume have previously appeared in print. They have been rethought, extended in various degrees, and organized into a coherent whole. I wish to thank the following publishers for their permission to reproduce my previously published works:
(1) Mariusz Tabaczek, “An Aristotelian Account of Evolution and the Contemporary Philosophy of Biology,” in The 1st Virtual International Conference on the Dialogue between Science and Theology. Dialogo Conf 2014: Cosmology, Life & Anthropology, ed. Cosmin Tudor Ciocan and Anton Lieskovský (Zilina: Publishing Institution of the University of Zilina, 2014), 57–69, www.academia.edu/9636884/An_Aristotelian_Account_of_Evolution_and_the_Contemporary_Philosophy_of_Biology. My thanks to Cosmin Tudor Ciocan and Anton Lieskovský.
(2) Mariusz Tabaczek, “Thomistic Response to the Theory of Evolution: Aquinas on Natural Selection and the Perfection of the Universe,” Theology and Science 13, no. 3 (2015): 325–44. My thanks to Taylor & Francis.
(3) Mariusz Tabaczek, “What Do God and Creatures Really Do in an Evolutionary Change? Divine Concurrence and Transformism from the Thomistic Perspective,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 93, no. 3 (2019): 445–82. My thanks to George Leaman at Philosophy Documentation Center.
(4) Mariusz Tabaczek, “The Metaphysics of Evolution: From Aquinas’s Interpretation of Augustine’s Concept of Rationes Seminales to the Contemporary Thomistic Account of Species Transformism,” Nova et Vetera 18, no. 3 (2020): 945–72. My thanks to Matthew Levering, Thomas Joseph White, O.P., and Emmaus Academic Press.
(5) Mariusz Tabaczek, “Does God Create Through Evolution? A Thomistic Perspective,” Theology and Science 20, no. 1 (January 2, 2022): 46–68. My thanks to Taylor & Francis.
(6) Mariusz Tabaczek, “Essentialist and Hylomorphic Notion of Species and Species Transformation,” in A Catholic View on Evolution: New Perspectives in Thomistic Philosophy and Theology, ed. by Nicanor Austriaco (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2023). My thanks to Nicanor Austriaco, O.P.
(7) Mariusz Tabaczek, “Contemporary Version of the Monogenetic Model of Anthropogenesis: Some Critical Remarks from the Thomistic Perspective,” Religions (2023), https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14040528. My thanks to editors of Religions.
I also want to express my gratitude to all the reviewers of these articles, members of the philosophy and theology teams on the aforementioned Templeton grant project on the Thomistic view of evolution, and a number of my colleagues in philosophy and theology for their valuable comments and critical evaluation of my ideas. Thanks to audiences at conferences and public lectures at which I presented various parts of the research gathered in this volume.
