de eo...

It is raining.

'It'?

Here we can see an unfortunate phenomenon: English has followed the non-romance languages in this neuter construction. Romance languages tend to have more personal pronouns here (il pleut, esté lloviendo...) where Germanic and Scandinavian [viz., barbarian] languages stick to the impersonal (es regnet, det er regn...).

(One counter example is Portugese, wherein the phrase [estiver chovendo] is, so far as I can tell on a cursory Google check, in the subjunctive: something like 'it may be raining'. I am willing from this scant piece of evidence to conclude that the Portugese are a tentative people).

So, what is raining? A cloud? The atmosphere? Today? Familiarity has eroded our capacity to find this a weird and dumb grammatical usage; if this sounds a stretch, try phrasing 'it is raining' less emphatically: 'It rains'. Doesn't that sound more ominous? Almost oracular?

Why not the altogether more charming 'they rain'? Can there be any doubt that here we find a residual monism in our language?

de consilio intelligenti...

St Augustine in the major media:

(The relevant part is at 5.15).

Well, yes and no. It's true that Augustine worries about Genesis' creation narrative being taken seriously by 'infidels' who can see by the lights of reason that certain interpretations of scripture jar against science (de genesi ad litteram 1.19); also true that he heard voices. These might well be the most oft quoted chunks of Augustine in the last forty years.

But to say that Augustine didn't view Scripture as science? Disingenuous anachronism at best. And then to try to co-opt Augustine for the Darwinian project? More disingenuity (although certain 20th century pedestrian readings of the seminales rationes doctrine of the same commentary on Genesis have done the same - Ken Miller can't really be faulted here, although Teilhard might be).

What's got to be remembered here is that Augustine isn't talking to Darwinists, he's talking to Platonists. The interpretation of Genesis that he goes on to give is on an entirely different level to either the intelligent design camp or the evolution camp: it deals with time and eternity, not species adaptation. After all, where a Darwinist would object to the seven days of creation literally understood as too short by billions of years, Augustine (and his critics) object to seven days literally understood as too long by about, oh, seven days. It might be as far away from evolution as one can get.

peri theories...

'Self-sufficiency, leisure, unwearied activity, and any other features ascribed to the blessed person, are evidently features of the student' (Nicomachean Ethics, 1177b).

Commence the summer of Platonism.