St. Thomas Aquinas and Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange on Wonder and the Division of the Sciences

Abstract

The author makes a comparison between St. Thomas Aquinas’s and Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s conceptions of philosophical wonder and the division of the sciences. He claims that, for Aquinas and Garrigou-Lagrange, (1) science is an intellectual habit whereby we can come to know the order of reality (necessary truths) and the One who orders it (God), (2) science should be so taught as to elicit wonder rather than cold facts and formulas, since it is wonder which urges us on to seek the primary causes of things, (3) the purpose of science is, ultimately, to contemplate the necessary truths about physical and metaphysical reality, (4) science is the means to attaining one of the highest forms of human happiness.

Keywords

• Thomas Aquinas
• Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange
• wonder
• science
• philosophy
• intellectual habit
• reality
• God
• causes
• contemplation
• happiness