I only just saw this today - here's a nice (and more informed) discussion of my use of Aquinas on design. It seems I relied on the term "designedly" a bit too much, when it should be about why the cause of something causes that outcome and not another. I misread by reading Aristotle himself into the medieval period.
I shall now go smack my knuckles.
More like this
I have to admit to having taught students that essentialism - the belief that species have an essence and thus could not evolve - was prevalent prior to Darwin. This was something I got from reading the writings of Ernst Mayr.
Jon Rowe has an excellent essay on the concept of natural law, its influences on the founding of this country, and the problem with taking Aquinas too seriously in this regard. Well worth reading.
This type of brain drain happens when physicists get carried away by the ingenuity of their own brains. Lawrence Krauss is reminded of Thomas Aquinas' supposed theological argument about dancing angels (and their poop in the heavens).
I have always had a sneaking admiration for neo-Thomistic accounts of creation and evolution, because they tend to think of creation as the actualisation of the real world with no limitations on natural law within the created universe.