Hi all,

I'm a professional scientist (PhD in theoretical physics, now Prof in computational neuroscience) living in the UK, but born in Germany. I grew up as the usual apathetic atheist, got into rather intense Soto Zen for a couple of years while living in Australia, and ultimately became a Roman Catholic there over a decade ago. I was pulled in "mystically" from Zen mostly by reading Meister Eckhart, and was further converted intellectually by reading St Thomas Aquinas, Herbert McCabe and the like. So you could say that the Dominicans brought me into the Catholic fold.

In practice, I was baptised by the FSSP in Melbourne. I have maintained love and respect for the "usus antiquor" anf Gregorian chant in particular, though in fact I have spend much of my Catholic life in regular "novus ordo" parishes, including serving on a parish council in one. I am a conservative Catholic, and would call myself "traditional", were it nor for my lack of focus on liturgy (which is usually associated with the label).

Philosophically, I find the Aristotelian approach as extended by the Scholastics quite compelling, and unsurprisingly ideally matched to the concerns of a conservative Catholic. I have been much less successful at cashing out any of this philosophy in terms of my professional scientific work.

Anyway, that's me. I'm looking forward to interesting discussion with you all.

Cheers,
Ingo