There are many peculiar aspects of Aquinas’s metaphysics that have been explored since the revival of interest in his philosophical thought at the beginning of the twentieth century: his real distinction between essence and existence, his notion of participation and the solution to the problem of the one and the many, his arguments for the existence of God. However, Thomas’s notion of ens commune as the subject of metaphysics remains a relatively neglected field of investigation by contemporary commentators. Thus, my (...) intention in this article is to offer an analysis of the major instances in which Thomas employed the specific term ’ens commune’, and to offer some insight into the nature of what Thomas took to be the starting point of metaphysics. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in the design argument, which states that the seemingly purposeful features of the natural world point to the existence of a supernatural designer. The purpose of this article is to give a brief survey of the fine-tuning of the fundamental constants in physics and cosmology, and complexity in biology, and their potential implications for the design argument. Contingency in the history of the earth and the evolution of life on earth is (...) also discussed, and some of the problems associated with inferring design from scientific investigations of nature are evaluated. It is concluded that an unambiguous detection of design in nature is not possible, but that this does not eliminate the demand for an ultimate explanation of the existence of the universe and the life it harbours. (shrink)