Faculty

Michael Hanby

Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy of Science
Michael Hanby portrait

RESEARCH AREAS

  • Metaphysics of Modern of Science
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Technology and Technological Society
  • Political Theory
  • Christian Metaphysics
  • The Doctrine of Creation
  • Augustine
  • Philosophy of Education

Michael Hanby

Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy of Science

Education

Ph.D., University of Virginia
M.Div., Duke University
B.S., University of Colorado

Bio

Dr. Hanby came to the Institute in 2007 from Baylor University where he was Assistant Professor of Theology in the Honors College and Associate Director of the Baylor Institute for Faith and Learning. Before that he was Arthur J. Ennis Fellow in the Humanities at Villanova University. Dr. Hanby is author of the 2013 monograph from Wiley-Blackwell, No God, No Science?: Theology, Cosmology, Biology, which reassesses the relationship between the doctrine of creation, Darwinian evolutionary biology, and science more generally. He is also author of Augustine and Modernity (Routledge 2003) which is simultaneously a re-reading of Augustine’s trinitarian theology and a protest against the contemporary argument for continuity between Augustine and Descartes. He has contributed chapters to a number of volumes and is also author of several articles appearing in Communio, First Things, New Polity, The Political Science Reviewer, Modern Theology, Pro Ecclesia, and Theology Today.  His 2020 article, “The Abolition of Man and Woman,” co-authored with Dr. Crawford and Dr. McCarthy, appeared in The Wall Street Journal. He was a principal author of The St. Jerome Education Plan, a nationally recognized curriculum for Catholic elementary and middle schools and is a founding board member of the St. Jerome Institute, a Washington DC liberal arts high school in the Catholic tradition.  Dr. Hanby has lectured widely at universities and other settings, including the United Nations, and has appeared in numerous podcasts and online interviews.

Courses

JPI 666

Creation: Nature and Life

This course will deal with the philosophical foundations needed for a correct understanding of the phenomenon of life. What is […]

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JPI 954

God, Modern Biology, and the Metaphysics of the Person

Modern evolutionary biology, it is often assumed, has rendered God irrelevant for our understanding of the natural and particularly biological […]

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JPI 957

Cosmological Community: Man’s Place in the Cosmos

The modern ‘displacement’ of humanity from its ‘home’ in the ‘center’ of the cosmos is an epochal event—even a celebrated […]

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JPI 961

Early Modern Thought

This course will seek to assess ‘the meaning of modernity’ by examining its founding ontological commitments; by considering how these […]

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JPI 964

Issues in Biology and Bioethics

A great deal of the confusion that results from contemporary biotechnological ‘advances’ and attends contemporary bioethical deliberation can be attributed […]

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JPI 981

Truth and Technology

The advent of modern science and technological society generated not only a new method for ascertaining the truth of nature, […]

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JPI 990

Augustine

This doctoral seminar will reflect on major themes in the thought of St. Augustine—his anthropology, his ecclesiology, his theology of […]

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JPI 674

Technology and Truth

Technology and Truth is a masters-level seminar examining the nature and history of the concept of truth from Plato to […]

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JPI 675

Technology and Totalitarianism

Concern over the totalitarian tendencies of technology is an overlooked theme in Catholic Social Teaching.  Paul VI worried in Octogesima adveniens that […]

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JPI 673

Metaphysics and Modern Science

Modern science enjoys unparalleled authority in modern society not only because of its astonishing and undeniable success, but because of […]

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Books


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