Foundation Of Faith:A Review Of Stanley Jaki's Continuing Contribution
To The History And Philosophy Of Science
Preface
This paper is something of a hybrid between a book review, fan mail, and critical inquiry.
Since this author agrees with Jaki, it has been difficult to criticize him. Furthermore, this
author is not qualified to criticize much of his historical analysis. It has also seemed best to
confine criticism to the stated purposes of Jaki's material. Nevertheless, a comprehensive
survey of his thought is presented to give the reader a helpful overview. Occasionally, this
author has included supplementary material to help the reader understand what Jaki has
assumed we should already know. For example, extra material is given on such topics as
contingency, epistemology, German idealism, and quantum mechanics. Similarly, the only
real criticisms have been over possibly pertinent omissions, ambiguities, or emphases. For
example, Jaki does not utilize some of the positive material which comes out of Thomas
Kuhn's analysis of paradigms. One serious ambiguity [in my estimation] arises in Jaki's
discussion of Einstein's view of Kant. Stylistically, the text of this paper follows the
development of his books and little footnoting is used. The reader may want to have Jaki's
books in hand. Consistent footnoting would have greatly increased the length of this paper
for no real purpose. Only a few of the most valuable secondary works have been cited.
Hopefully, the reader will appreciate the contents in spite of these technical flaws. The
content of this paper is some of the most valuable information one could ever read!
Introduction
We live in a modern world because of science. It touches every area of our lives, and yet our
response to it is necessarily mixed. Each of its new contributions brings new problems. The
assured results of today often become the discredited fictions of tomorrow. Worse still, its
power is abused and stretched beyond its scope. Men have come to respect science, to
worship it, to ignore it, and even to revile it. Yet we must reckon with it. What is the nature
of science? What is its proper domain? What is its proper relationship to humanity?
At various points of time in the past, different competing schools of thought have dominated
our understanding of science. Today the controversy yields little consensus about the nature
of science. In this light it has become imperative to examine the history of science more
closely. History necessarily limits what is and can be called scientific. Furthermore, it can
expose our presuppositions and correct mistaken prejudices.
Against this background we must examine the claims of one historian and philosopher of
science—Stanley L. Jaki. Jaki is a Hungarian-born Benedictine priest with doctorates in both
systematic theology and nuclear physics. He has studied in Rome and, after coming the
United States in 1950, at St. Vincent College, Fordham, and Princeton. He is Distinguished
Professor at Setan Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey, where, since 1965, he has
been teaching the history and philosophy of physics and astronomy. Jaki's meticulous studies
in the history and philosophy of science are concerned to elucidate a proper view of science:
its origins, its proper grounding, its limitations, and its role in society. His extensive
documentation encompasses all the major men of science and the views of their
contemporaries toward them. A number of his studies break new ground in their scope or
recover valuable insights long neglected. He often explodes current misconceptions about
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science by illustrating what history actually reveals. His interpretation of the history of
science is coherent and challenging. Central to his writing is the thesis that an epistemology
of moderate realism is common to both the creative advances in science and the Christian
outlook. In fact, he argues that the Christian matrix is responsible for the only viable birth of
science known to man. No other outlook can provide as clearly and comprehensively an
appraisal of the history of science or assess the implications for its future.
The modern outlook greets such ideas with scorn. It appears to be another attempt to cram
science into a presupposed and antiquated superstition. But the person who examines Jaki's
works will soon encounter claims which must be faced quite seriously. Well-read persons
know that science can no longer claim impartial objectivity or formal, self-sufficient
grounding. They have heard many assert that science is predicated upon faith assumptions.
They suspect that rationality must be preserved to account for both science and its creator—
man. But they will be rudely awakened when they find that a Christian perspective is
consistent with both these widely held assertions and the lessons of history.
The primary focus of this paper will be upon Jaki's epistemological middle road of a
metaphysically grounded, moderate realism of the existence of individual, external, and
sensible things. The critical worth of this form of realism must be measured against the
historical knowledge claims of science to determine its worth for our allegiance. Has Jaki
done this well enough to substantiate his claims? Likewise, we ask if this claim can just be
grounded in the Christian matrix? Jaki's most explicit effort at establishing these points were
given in his Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in the springs of 1975 and 1976.
The documented and only slightly revised text of these twenty lectures was published in 1978
by the University of Chicago Press under the title of The Road of Science and the Ways to
God. Although this book will be central to our discussion, Jaki's effort must be seen in the
overall context of his many monograms. It is even natural to see a deliberate progression or
strategy in the chronology of these studies. Thus it will be necessary to give some account of
this progression—not to take away the responsibility to read them but to acquaint the reader
with a comprehensive picture from which to approach them. An Overview of Stanley L.
Jaki's Contributions to the History and Philosophy of Science
Before commenting upon the details of Jaki's works, the reader should know something of
Jaki's approach. In each of his monograms. Dr. Jaki attempts to make a contribution to the
study of the history and philosophy of science. Therefore, he concentrates upon developing
the thesis of each particular monogram and assumes the reader can find related arguments
about less central issues elsewhere. Thus, it is left up to the novice reader to gain a
knowledge of some basic historical data and philosophical problems elsewhere. However,
once this is done, Jaki's material can be read with little difficulty. Likewise, the more
advanced reader will appreciate that Jaki has not ignored critical issues but accept that they
cannot all be fully developed within the express purposes of Jaki's books. Criticisms will
have to be aimed directly at Jaki's explicit claims. Stylistically, there is good internal
development with summaries, transition elements, and topic sentences. It is common for Jaki
to follow a chronological schema and to focus upon key representative figures in succession.
Methodologically, Jaki gives comprehensive overviews and documentation from the primary
materials and utilizes modern critics as well as witnesses contemporary to past men of
science. Thus his exhaustive research, awareness of context, and ability to synthesize
provide the reader with works of superior quality. Speaking from a systematic perspective,
Jaki's first two works confronted a false view of science and a false view of humanity and the
human mind. Four more works followed on the history of certain aspects of scientific
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thought. Then three of his lectures were released which dealt with science and culture,
science and natural theology, and the Christian origins of science. A work is apparently just
now being released on a Christian view of the cosmos and a forthcoming biography is
planned on the great French historian of science, Pierre Duhem. Besides these eleven books,
he has written other articles and released translations of works by Giordano Bruno and J. H.
Lambert.
In 1966, the University of Chicago Press published Jaki's first major book on science. The
Relevance of Physics. Since this book gives a general background with which to view his
later works, it will be worthwhile to examine it in some detail. In the Preface Jaki notes that
the contemporary cultural divorce between the humanities and the sciences must be
corrected. He sees one step as that of correcting the false state of mind which views physics
as "a set of unchangeable conclusions and definite truths." The supposed "infallibility" of the
physical sciences must not be set in antithesis to the supposed "incurable errors" of
humanistic lore. The strategy of this book is accordingly not to argue so much about the
matter as it is to let the history of science itself illustrate that physics is a highly revisable
enterprise whose practitioners often promote half-truths. His purpose is not to de-value
physics but to promote a balanced picture of physics which acknowledges its limitations and
helps its proponents gain wisdom for its proper role.
Part One of the four major divisions of The Relevance of Physics examines the role of three
guiding analogies about the nature of nature which have both helped and hindered the
scientific enterprise: (1) the world as an organism, (2) the world as a mechanism, (3) the
world as a pattern of numbers. Men of different ages have invariably made these models of
reality into ontological statements which often have blinded them to real truths about reality.
Such faith positions have persisted unreasonably and idolatrously in the minds of men right
down to our own day. Jaki has demonstrated irrefutably that this is the case. The organismic
model, which dominated for nearly fifteen hundred years, was notorious for dealing with
inanimate reality. The mechanistic models, which dominated classical physics, generated a
naive realism which finally backfired on the microscopic and macroscopic levels and in the
problems raised about the nature of light, gravity, and precise measurement [worse still, this
same model was extended to other major disciplines with some repercussions that have still
not been overcome]. Likewise, the preoccupation with mathematics has been rudely upset by
Godel's Theorem which bars moving from a formally consistent a priori mathematical system
to knowledge claims about physical reality and by the inability to formulate an all-embracing
mathematical synthesis of quantum mechanics and the General Theory of Relativity. In view
of the implications of Godel's Theorem, it is obvious that mathematics cannot be the key to
unlock all of reality.
Part Two examines three central themes of physical research: (1) the nature of matter, (2) the
nature of the cosmos, (3) and the problems of greater precision. Rigid conclusions have met
and will continue to meet their refutations time and time again. At present, an infinite regress
confronts us at the microscopic level while a cosmic singularity looms at the macroscopic
level. Statements of indeterminacy do not set forth the ontology of an irrational world but say
more about the limits of our precision and perception. Jaki again documents how the great
men of science relied on certain beliefs which actually went beyond their knowledge or was
contrary to their common senses.
Part Three examines the relationship of physics to biology, metaphysics, ethics, and theology.
Jaki again points out the problems which result from the false view of physical science which
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accords it a monopoly of truth.. The most important chapters for our consideration here are
the two which deal with metaphysics and theology. The positivistic view of physics, dealing
solely with discrete facts, is a myth which cannot justify the important role of mathematics or
the scientific assumptions about the intelligibility, simplicity, uniformity, and symmetry of
physical reality. These assertions central to physics must come from metaphysics. On page
345, he quotes Einstein's remarks that the axiomatic basis of theoretical physics cannot be
extracted from experience but must be freely invented; that there is no inductive method
which could lead to the fundamental concepts of physics; that the epistemological
prohibitions of positivism are stifling to science; and that faith in an external world
independent of the perceiving subject yet intelligible to that subject is the basis of all natural
science. Metaphysics cannot be avoided by the scientist. The physicist must realize that his
role as an observer forms an integral part of many of his experiments and further that his
results must be applied to the wholeness of human experience. He must even accept the basic
trustworthiness of his memory and the witness of his fellow scientists. Univocal concepts
and quantitative analysis is ultimately grounded in and must relate back to larger
metaphysical and more complex realities. Physics is ultimately a bounded field of
knowledge for only a portion of reality. Metaphysics is necessary to deal with the realities
which are behind things and the meaning which cannot be grasped by the methods of physics.
Jaki introduces a wide range of important statements in his chapter on physics and theology.
He first illustrates why science had its birth in Christian culture and did not arise from other
great cultures.1 He notes that Judaeo-Christian monotheism gives rise to belief in the orderly
nature of a created world accessible to the human mind. Order in nature is not an illusion of
that mind. Likewise, humans and God are not immersed into or cut off from nature. Nature
is contingent, non-threatening, and open to investigation. God's dealings with nature are not
arbitrary and astrology is set aside as well. Faith in the possibility of science as trustworthy
knowledge about certain ranges of reality becomes a live factor. Thus it is no accident that
the Middle Ages laid the groundwork for the birth of science—a fact which contemporary
man finds repugnant to face.
Another main thrust of this chapter regards a delineation of the proper relationship between
physics and theology. Although Jaki's account is quite helpful, his emphasis upon separating
theology and pristine physics leaves a picture open to ambiguity. When he speaks of the
"autonomous scientific world picture" (p. 417) and the "atheism of science" (pp. 456-57), he
does give enough comment contextually to let the reader know he means something very
healthy. Theology and science have distinct roles and distinct boundaries in the types of
knowledge claims which they can justifiably make. However, such terminology reinforces
the myth of neutrality and objectivity which cloaks the scientific atmosphere more than it
reinforces Jaki's correct observations about the changing, limited, problematic, and subjective
aspects of the scientific process. These terms do not naturally arise from Jaki's approach but
have greater affinity with wrong views about science. Science is necessarily involved in
metaphysics and must respect certain boundaries. Jaki could have profitably included
remarks along these lines, added others on the nature of scientific method, theory making,
and theory testing, while eliminating some of his weaker-nuanced language. On the other
hand, he does ably address the theological abuses extracted from science. Popularizes and
theologians often make unwarranted intrusions; theology often has become the tail wagged
1
On page 419 he notes that it would be fruitful to document the still-births of science in all the other great
cultures. Jaki fulfilled this wish with the publication of Science and Creation in 1974, pages 37 and 192-218.
His discussion of classical Greek and of Muslim cultures are especially important. Likewise, his excellent
analysis of the Christian origins of science can be found on pages 163-91 and 219-47.
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by the dog of science. The Newtonian God of the gaps, the Clockmaker of the Deists' world
machine, identification of the classical laws of physics with the ways of God, and theological
speculations on entropy and the expansion of the universe are a few areas of abuse. Science
is a changing field of knowledge not specifically qualified to speak about reality from God's
perspective. Indeed as Jaki says on page 456, the world picture of physics, which is
constructed with the explicit intent of removing from it all realities and values, esthetic,
ethical, personal, or spiritual, cannot by definition have any room for a personal God, or for
human personality for that matter.
Likewise, on page 452 Jaki notes that the "concept of miracle will prove repulsive to the
physicist only if his philosophy of physics confines the rational to the measurable." Rationality must be grounded in a Creator. Mutual respect rather than mutual trespassing should
become the cornerstone of a balanced relationship between physics and theology.
In Part Four Jaki asks whether physics will be our master or our servant. He notes that
consistent failures of scientism—that is, the effort to make a certain view of scientific
procedure the key for all other areas of reality. Condorcet, Comte, and Marx are but three of
the most prominent examples of men who have propagated systems of scientism detrimental
to science, other disciplines, and humanity. Such procedures can neither do justice to science
or man.
Jaki believes the solution to the problem of the cleavage between the humanities and the
sciences rests on false views of science which can be corrected through critical
historiographical analyses. Humanists often develop false views of science founded on
indifference, hostility, or inordinate admiration. Physicists similarly promote false views of
science which cannot be sustained by historical analysis—views such as positivism^
operationalism, and conventionalism. Jaki believes the physicist is the one who is most
responsible for promoting a correct view of the sciences. He can do this by critically
studying the history of his own discipline. Then he will be able to pass on a true picture of
science's strengths and weaknesses to the non-specialist. Science has been characterized by
its triumphs. But we must also realize its provisional, limited, uncertain, and often illogical
character as well. Thus the tension between the humanities and the sciences is only a
symptom of the need to explode our myths about science through critical historiographies of
science. Then we can approach science non-dogmatically as a limited and useful tool to be
used responsibly for the benefit of humankind. Jaki thus accomplishes the purposes of this
study and lays the foundation for his future historiographical studies.
Jaki's second study addressed a false view of the human mind which has been growing more
rapidly since the advent of the computer. In 1969, Jaki released his work entitled Brain,
Mind, and Computers. Jaki refutes claims that the computer is really very much like the mind
and that the physical elements of the brain can be quantitatively analyzed to reveal the inner
workings of thought. Although he briefly examines the philosophical and historical roots of
such a physicalist viewpoint, his approach is best summarized on page six of his Preface to
the paperback edition of 1978:
Contrary to the sanguine thinkers mindful only of quantities, the written
record clearly supports the following four points: 1. The chief creators of
modern computers invariably refused to see in them thinking machines. 2.
Brain research not only failed to reduce thought to gray matter, it even failed
to reduce memory, this most elementary form of thought, to mere physiology.
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3. Efforts to quantize, or "physicalise," psychology were successful only
insofar as much of the psyche was ignored in them. 4. Reductionist or
"scientific" philosophers of the mind only reduced themselves to that level of
reasoning where some outstandingly creative and basic procedures of the
mind, including the scientific mind, could be conveniently ignored.
These four chief points correspond to the four chapters of this book. Each of these points is
established with documentation and demonstrates that the mind has not yet been reduced to
biochemical processes and that no machine is able to be considered "intelligent." He does not
attempt to develop a study of human understanding or an extensive look at the psychology
and philosophy of mind: however, he does tell us in the Preface that his later Gifford Lectures
do give some new insight on these matters. On page sixty-one we also find his first reference
to a "middle course" in epistemology:
findings of modern physics clearly suggest that the language of sense data and
the language of mind cannot be considered as isomorphic. On the evidence of
modern physics, it should be obvious that one can say things in one language
that cannot be said in another. Thus concepts like state functions and
probabilities have no sensory equivalents, while on the other hand, there are
individual events in nature of which scientific theory can give no direct
account. Thus modern physics has provided a powerful rebuttal of two onesided positions concerning the respective roles of senses and reason in the
cognitive process. Empiricism and positivism are as inadequate in dealing
with this central problem of philosophy as are rationalism and idealism. The
need to steer a middle course between these extremes, remains, therefore, as
imperative as ever.
Jaki sees the correct alternative philosophical stance as a Thomistic one. Although he does
not use the term "moderate realism" in this work, it is the common one used of Aquinas'
epistemology and the one which he will use later. Thus Jaki uses his attack on the physicalist
view of knowledge as isomorphism, which is a correspondence or representational view of
knowledge, to make a general statement about his own epistemology. On page 208 he also
notes that human thought cannot be formalized:
Unlike a machine or a system of notations in which each part, each step is
strictly defined, human thinking, if it is to have any natural characteristic, is
very pliable, diffuse, all too often vague and ambiguous.
Human thought and meaning in language rests in part in its ambiguity and freedom for
creative choice. Human consciousness is a reality unlike a machine or biochemical process
which can be explained in terms of its formal or physical processes. Interestingly enough it is
this consciousness which gives us so much insight about the physical order. This suggests
there should be an order which can account for this rationality and our grasp on the universe.
On page 230 Jaki asserts that our belief in the rational order of the universe must ultimately
be grounded in a Creator whose dealings with and provision for that universe are not arbitrary
and capricious. Thus there is an intimate connection between scientific creativity, an
awareness of nature's order, and nature's Creator. But perhaps someone will propose a better
alternative. Granted the power of scientific creativity, what else will we choose to account
for it? Jaki has asserted that the history of science itself should give us some insight.
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Three of Jaki's historiographies are similar in nature: The Paradox of Olbers' Paradox (1969),
The Milky Way: An Elusive Road for Science ('72), and Planets and Planetarians: A History
of Theories of the Origin of Planetary Systems (*77) These three books are comprehensive
histories of the theories about three visible and unique phenomena: the darkness of the night
sky, the Milky Way, and the planets.2 No special equipment is needed to speculate on what
these three singular or extraordinary phenomena might tell us about the nature of our cosmos.
In fact any cosmology or view about the structure of the universe should be expected to have
some explanation for all three of these singularities. Ironically their significance has been
ignored or forced into various preconceived models time and time again even after becoming
the object of prolonged scrutiny. On the other hand, the solution of these problems and the
associated advance of science have also had some common epistemological traits.
Within the scope of this paper there is little purpose for giving a detailed summary of these
works since the historical and thematic insights they provide are systematically developed in
Jaki's Gifford Lectures. Nevertheless, it will be helpful for the reader to grasp their general
thrust. The necessity of explaining the darkness of the night sky became especially acute
with the success of Newton's view of the universe as an infinite world of stars spread out in
three-dimensional Euclidean space. Logically every line of sight from the earth should have
terminated upon the surface of some distant star. The sky should be one brilliant light in such
a universe. Francis Bacon had already speculated on a finite world and denied the absorption
of starlight in interstellar space. But even more surprisingly, when in 1720, Halley read a
paper before the Royal Society and Newton in which he described just such a conclusion, the
prevailing faith in an infinite universe was not upset! A comprehensive inquiry by Olbers in
1826 suggested that the light was absorbed by interstellar dust. He did not bother to consider
that this heat absorption should have led to the heat death of such an infinite universe. In
1848 John F. W. Herschel pointed out this problem of the absorption theory. In 1898 J.
Plassmann realized the optical paradox meant a finite universe but was patently ignored.
Only the General Theory of Relativity brought acceptance of Olbers' Paradox as signifying a
finite (and expanding) universe.
The story of the theories of the Milky Way was never written until Jaki's work in 1972. His
work is both revealing and startling. Scientists, even in modern times, have persistently
failed to confront the implications of the singularity of the Milky Way or have manhandled it
to suit their own world view. Historians have been remiss as well. Although we are familiar
with the absurdities sometimes crated by the Aristotelians, it is disconcerting to witness
similar myth making on the part of dogmatic Newtonians. The first man to see the myriads
of stars in the Milky Way through a telescope was Galileo in 1610. Copernicus had ignored
the Milky Way in his preoccupation with planets. Admittedly the stars played little
importance in Galileo's concerns had he stopped short of considering their true significance.
Thus he merely noted that he had solved the age old mystery of the Milky Way—it was in
fact "nothing but a congeries of innumerable stars grouped together in clusters." Kepler was
preoccupied with the sun and the planets. Newton, with his infinite and homogeneously
distributed universe of stars, strangely ignored the nonhomogeneous phenomena of the Milky
Way. Not only did he also have to ignore the optical paradoxes but he had to contend with
Bentley over the gravitational paradoxes of his infinite universe. Yet his myopia persisted.
The first breakthrough came with William Herschel's observational support of the flat shape
of our galaxy in 1784. Lambert, Wright, and Kant had already speculated on a disk shape for
2
His treatment of planets was unavailable to this author and will not be discussed.
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the Milky Way. Interestingly, it was not until 1967 that it was discovered that historians had
overlooked that Wright's speculations were contradictory even though the documents were
available! Kant owed his idea to an abbreviated and garbled account of Wright's theory. To
round out this debacle, Herschel received little acceptance for his ideas about the possibility
of a universe filled with galaxies like our own. Others preferred to think of these systems as
part of our own galaxy. The myth of the one island theory was defended resolutely into our
own century, especially by Snapley. Even Hubble, whose data ultimately disproved this
theory, refused to speculate about the obvious importance of his findings for cosmology. The
significance of singularities or distinctive phenomena must be faced by cosmologists. The
reader will also appreciate Jaki's analysis of the role of the mind and realism in this history.
He also documents the valuable role of the Middle Ages which is so commonly denied by
historians attached to the current fashion.
In 1974, Jaki published Science and Creation; From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating
Universe. In this monumental work, Jaki traces the history of the speculations and theories
about the origin of the cosmos which were set forth in the great cultures of world history:
Hindu, Chinese, Aztec, Mayan, Incan, Aztec, Mesopotamian-Babylonian, Hellenistic,
Muslim, and Judeo-Christian. What is the significance of such a study beyond mere
erudition? Jaki responds on page viii,
In a world history that had witnessed at least half a dozen great cultures,
science had as many stillbirths. Only once, in the period of 1250-1650, did
man's scientific quest muster enough zest to grow into an enterprise with builtin vitality.
Thus Jaki's book is the first comprehensive attempt to come to grips with the stillbirths of
science and its one live birth. What made the difference? Was it climate, peace, prosperity,
superior intellect, chance, or a conveniently unknown combination of the above? Here is
Jaki's thesis from page viii:
Great cultures, where the scientific enterprise came to a standstill, invariably
failed to formulate the notion of physical law, or the law of nature. Theirs was
a theology with no belief in a personal, rational, absolutely transcendent Lawgiver, or Creator. Their cosmology reflected a pantheistic and animistic view
of nature caught in the treadmill of perennial, inexorable returns. The
scientific quest found soil only when this faith in a personal, rational Creator
had truly permeated a whole culture, beginning with the centuries of the High
Middle Ages. It was that faith which provided, in sufficient measure,
confidence in the rationality of the universe, trust in progress, and appreciation
of the quantitative method, all indispensable ingredients of the scientific quest.
Although this is not a new thesis, this work is its first extensive documentation. If this thesis
should be correct what would it mean? Must we continue within the same framework for
science to advance? Is the whole Christian framework necessary or is only some portion of it
enough? Jaki asserts that mankind's science and his future both rest within the same original
faith. Present cosmology postulates a different faith. Did something go wrong along the
way? Perhaps history has some answers to these questions.
Among the least scientific cultures, Jaki has noted that a cyclical view of nature prevented
any sustained effort to understand nature. In Hindu India the regulation of every thing in the
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universe was believed to be regulated by the breathing of Brahma. No rational explanation or
law could hope to describe the sustained patterns of this pantheistic and cyclico-animistic
rhythm. Blind, capricious cycles gave no meaning to life or reality. Humanity's lot was to
accept the contradictions of a life controlled by an ominous and debilitating treadmill. The
Chinese world view was cyclical as well. Their outlook was one of acceptance of the idyllic,
organismic order of reality which lulled aspirations for change into peaceful ambiguities.
There was no desire for scientific advance or an accepted way to express its character. The
Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans also believed in inexorable cycles which controlled their fate. In
some cases they willfully obeyed the dictates of nature's expected disasters ahead of time by
abandoning their cities or running from battle and brought on their own tragedies. The
Egyptians also had an animistic, cyclic outlook. Jaki notes numerous aspects of their
civilization which reflect this belief in blind circularity. Their prolonged periods of peace
and warm climate were of no advantage because of this basic blindness to any rational order
in nature. Babylonian cosmology was based on the cyclical struggle between chaos and
order. This dualistic, heavily organismic viewpoint left nature inaccessible to reason.
The most noteworthy ancient culture to instruct us about the stillbirths of science is the
Hellenistic one. Its advances were quite noteworthy. Yet Jaki believes that its truly
innovative period was in the time from Pericles to Alexander the Great. Its later
achievements were merely the greater articulation and application of these first
accomplishments. In fact, science was definitely on the decline by the first century A.D..
Only a few exceptional individuals kept it alive. There was something fundamentally wrong
with Greek knowledge claims about nature. Jaki capably demonstrates that their error was
tied to a cyclic world view which dominated the Pre-Socratics and continued to the end of the
Roman Empire. Anaximander believed in the infinity of space and time and in an infinite
succession of worlds. The Pythagoreans believed the cycles produced a numerically identical
return of all beings. Plato set forth the idea of the perfect year which was determined by the
complete cycle or rotation of the heavens back to their starting point. This later became
known as the Great Year and some think Plato set its length at thirty-thousand years. Within
this greater cycle, Plato believed there were other circles in the heavens which causally
determined the periodicity of everything here on earth. A dualism provided by the opposition
of chaotic state and God or reason caused a pattern of reversing cycles when looked at from
our perspective. This undercut many of Plato's efforts toward a rational view of the world.
Jaki writes:
Plato saw everything, including human and social phenomena, as being under
the ultimate influence of the cosmic law of cycles, the most fundamental of
which had the length equivalent to the Great Year given by the perfect
number. For him the manner in which the earth, including the periodicities of
human society, was not physical in the obvious sense of the word. Underlying
the physical, so Plato believed in a truly Pythagorean vein, was the realm of
numbers and of geometrical proportions, on which rested what is commonly
called physical causality. This is why the Platonic scheme of the planets and
fixed stars is a system of concentric, transparent shells that have no influence
on one another. The disconnectedness of the heavenly spheres was retained in
substance by Eudoxus (fl. 370 B.C.) who first supplied Plato's scheme with
considerable geometrical sophistication to make it a more acceptable model of
the actual motion of the planets (p. 110).
Jaki continues on the same page to summarize how Aristotle utilized this approach:
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Aristotle, whose main philosophical aim consisted in bringing the ideal world
of Plato and the actual physical reality into a closely united system, did his
best to endow the Eudoxian scheme of planetary motions with some physical
characteristics. In the process Aristotle increased the number of shells to fiftyfive and emphasized the physical connectedness between all of them. This he
obviously did to comply in full with his notion of physical causality, the
ultimate source of which was the Prime Mover...Aristotle was eager to outline
both the physical details and the philosophical justification of the transmission
and transfiguration of immutable eternal cycles into variable terrestrial and
atmospheric cycles. [and]...biological periods were governed by cosmic
periods [as well].
Although Aristotle did not speak of the Great Year, he was preoccupied with supplying the
details of all the cycles.
Likewise his organismic view emphasized final causes as the bedrock of knowledge. Thus he
applied the category of purpose to all his remarks on both living and inanimate nature.
Therefore Aristotle's science was clouded by an organismic model and by an eternal and
determined cyclic process. Human action and knowledge could count for little in such a
world. Also stifling was Aristotle's declaration that the sciences of his day were experiencing
the high point of the cycle and could be advanced no further. Hence, science was utilized
solely for contemplation of the already determined coming-to-be. This state of mind
continued in the later thought of the Stoics, astrologers, philosophers, and men of science.
Science was akin to a geometrical fiction intended "to save the phenomena" in order to
predict their behavior. It was not meant to be applied to reality in order to explain or change
it. Hellenistic engineering was almost totally limited to use in warfare and magic. There was
a marked complacency with regard to existing material conditions. Once again the treadmill
of perennial returns turned aside man's potential for scientific advancement.
In chapters seven and eight Jaki contrasts the Judeo-Christian heritage to these other cultures.
It acknowledges a personal Creator God who orders nature and exercises His Lordship over
that nature and over His people. God is primordial, not chaos. A created order and a
dominion mandate (Gen 1:27-30) are consistent with faith in the rationality of a universe
which has lawfulness, constancy, and meaningfulness. Likewise, history is goal directed as
demonstrated in Jesus Christ. Time and space are creatures. No ruthless external forces
determine reality or bury man in eternal returns. Rather than succumb to idolatry, fear, or
indifference, man has basic insights into the fundamental characteristics of the world which
enable him to carry out the dominion mandate in a world grounded in God's purpose. Early
Church Fathers such as Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Clement, Origen, Basil, and Augustine upheld
creation out of nothing. Time had a beginning and end. Creation was good and ordered.
Some of them actively argued against the blind capriciousness of eternal recurrence.
Interestingly, John Philoponus utilized this perspective in his attack upon Aristotelian science
in the sixth century A.D.. He was only one of a very few who capably applied the Christian
matrix to the science of his day. But with it he was able to suggest principles of momentum
and inertia which anticipated Galileo's achievements. Thus he foreshadows what would
come to fruition within this metaphysical-matrix provided by Christianity a few centuries
later.
Greek contributions to science were retained more by Muslims than by Christians during the
medieval period. The Arabs diligently promoted learning and produced numerous advances
10
in medicine and mathematics. They also made new observations and performed some
experiments. Yet the state of their science ultimately became one of decline. Jaki traces how
the balance between reason and faith was lost through infatuation with astrology, a cyclical
view of reality, and a God whose ways were beyond reasoned comprehension. Determinism
and blind subservience dominated their thought. Only Maimon-ides of the twelfth century
preserved a belief in creation out of nothing and permanent laws of nature—and he was a Jew
in a Muslim land.
Jaki believes that medieval investigations advanced science largely to the measure that they
allowed the purifying role of the Biblical doctrine of creation to break the bonds of astrology.
Abelard of Bath (fl. 1125) symbolizes the beginnings of medieval science. He tempered his
admiration of Greek and Arabic learning with his faith in the Creator. Many of his
contemporaries however did not escape the influences of the onrush of translations of Arabic
astrological treatises and its attendant fatalism. Grosseteste was one who explicitly rejected
such an alternative by anchoring the methodology of science in the notion of God as Creator,
thereby upholding the proper view of human rationality and ultimate nature. Another
important vindication of the Creator's attributes resulted from the debates of Aquinas and
others with the Aristotelian Averroists in Paris. In 1277 the bishop of Paris condemned 219
propositions upholding organismic views, astrology and determinism, the view that the
superlunary materials were eternal and incorruptible, the denial of the possibility of other
worlds, the denial of the possibility of rectilinear motion for celestial bodies, the alleged
eternity of the world, and the idea of the perennial recurrence of everything in thirty-six
thousand year cycles. The Christian matrix viewed the world as contingent to the Creator
who supervised and ordered every detail of nature. Faith in rational inquiry could be
vindicated. In the fourteenth century these valuable insights were maintained by men such as
Buridan and Oresme.
In the ensuing Renaissance period, Jaki documents the performance of this outlook. Outlooks
related to the Platonic Great Year yielded the antiscientific obscurantism of Ficino, Diacceto,
Paracelsus, Bruno, and others. The best men of science were buttressed by the Christian faith
in the Creator. Their names include Nicolas of Cusa, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Tycho,
Benedetti, and Kepler. Thomas More was the first to set forth on the popular level the
optimism of the new spirit of scientific endeavor. Utopia was one of the most widely read
books of Europe for several centuries to come. He identified the new spirit of inquiry with
belief in the Creator.
In chapter twelve Jaki declares Galileo to be the best candidate for the first full-blooded
representative of modern scientific mentality. Galileo combined experimentation with faith
in God's rationally comprehensible world. He characterized nature as lawful and its truth as
geometrical simplicity derived from God and available to the human mind even when not
immediately evident to the senses. Descartes stressed the order and contingency of nature in
conjunction with belief in God. Bacon attributed the failure of Greek science to its
substitution of nature for God. Mersenne refuted the myth of the Great Year. Boyle endorsed
creation ex nihilo. Descartes, Boyle, Guericke, Hooke, Huygens, Bentley, and others opted
for a finite universe. However, Newton extended his Euclidean space to infinity although he
presumed the beginning and end of the universe. Soon his view of infinite space was
orthodoxy. Newton ignored the optical and gravitational paradoxes implied by an infinite
universe model. Yet the finite view of Aristotle's world was a priori in bad light by mere
association with a disproven world view. Some theologians, especially Calvinists, also
thought God's sovereignty would be lessened in anything but an infinite universe. However,
11
it was only logical that someone should extend infinity to time as well. Leibniz was the first
to speak of a perpetual universe. Kant was the first to speak of a cyclical material universe,
although with little influence. After Hume the door to chancism and non-metaphysical
science seemed to suggest matter in motion. Condorcet and others viewed the universe as a
perpetual world machine. The world machine replaced God with timeless matter in motion.
Meanwhile physicists searched questions about the structure of the universe more than its
origins. Perhaps the answer to this question was being readied by others. Nineteenth century
German philosophy gave rise to an organismic world view. The logic of this trend was
realized when Nietzsche recovered the idea of eternal returns. Despite its antithesis to
science, it was to be revitalized in the twentieth century as an expedient for coping with the
shock of a return to a finite cosmos.
Relativity's finite and expanding universe was a bitter pill for many scientists. It suggests a
cosmic beginning which some men, including Whitaker and Pope Pius XII, have taken to
mean the divine act of creation. Scientists seeking a way out first suggested the Steady-State
theory. Matter was supposed to be in the process of being uniformly created in a universe
appearing the same from any perspective at any time. There is no data to support these
suggestions and some which now refute the very theory of Steady-State. Besides this
problem, the theory required abandoning some of the aspects of general relativity and the
principle of the conservation of matter. Present consensus favors the oscillating universe
theory. Although not even some questionable distance extrapolations can explain how the
present expanding universe will collapse again, nor how it could expand again from a cosmic
black hole, nor if another similar universe could occur again, this scientifically coated
modern version of the Great Year is the cosmological model of the hour. The alternative to
this pantheistic concept of the universe going through eternal cycles is the one which first
gave birth to science. Which is more rational? In view of Jaki's earlier analyses of the limited
powers of science the lesson of history is that the Christian matrix is the key to a grasp of
reality.
To claim that the Big Bang is the moment of creation ex nihilo by God is something which
should be made with extreme caution if not avoided altogether. For as Jaki pointed out in
1987, "No attention should be given to headlines according to which the latest sightings of
very distant galaxies [or recent, 1992 COBE confirmations of the Big Bang] give a glimpse
of the moment of creation about 18 billion years ago. Science certainly can show that the
universe is at least 18 billion years old. But the moment of creation, which is a transition
from nonbeing into being, is as little a matter for observation as the transition itself. The
latter can only be seen by metaphysical eyes of which no human being can permanently rid
himself" ("The Universe in the Bible and in Modern Science," The Only Chaos, University
Press of America, 1990, p. 258).
Although Jaki's The Origin of Science and the Science of its Origins comes after the Gifford
Lectures, it should be discussed in conjunction with Science and Creation. It was delivered
as the Freemantle Lectureship at Oxford University in 1977. In this material Jaki evaluates
the various theories crediting economic, psychological, sociological, or political factors as the
crucial element in the rise of science as a self-sustaining enterprise as having produced
inadequacies and inconsistencies caused by oversight or antagonism toward the theoretical
relevance or historical significance of the evidence. He approaches his material
chronologically and concludes with an appeal for a proper perspective.
12
In his first lecture Jaki focuses on the historiography of Francis Bacon and the Baconians
regarding scientific origins. The men of the sixteen and seventeen hundreds recognized the
uniqueness of the innovations of their age.3 Francis Bacon stood as the new science's herald
of optimism. In fact his enthusiasm and empiricism caused him to misread history. He was
too harsh with the idea-orientated Greeks, gave unfounded credit to the Egyptians, and passed
over the contribution of the high Middle Ages in its opposition to Averroism and its espousal
of an epistemology essential for science. He recognized Greek pantheism as inhibiting, but he
missed the Christian contribution to the inventiveness of his era. His empiricism took a
pragmatic direction which credited the advance of science to the practical advances generated
by the peculiarity of the times. Ironically, his three most favorite practical advances—
printing, magnets, and gunpowder—came from China where science floundered. Fellow
empirically minded men such as Sprat and Glanvill appealed to the genius of the times as
they attempted to eulogize modern learning by discrediting ancient learning. They said the
crisis in Aristotelian thought gave rise to curiosity and hence the new science. Curiously they
did not ask why the Egyptians, Babylonians, Arabs, and Chinese were not more curious about
those very practical needs which burdened people everywhere at all times.
The Enlightenment saw the French emerge as the intellectuals of the day. The
Encyclopedists praised Bacon's empiricism and in 1758 Montisque set a pattern of empiricist
historiography which prevailed nearly two hundred years. Sensation-ism and a belief in
progress reduced the history of science to a history of its successes. As time passed by, more
geniuses were born, their insights were accumulated, reality was quantified, and knowledge
grew. Unfortunately, the data of history could only disprove such a scenario. Empiricism
was equally unhealthy for science. The philosophes of the Enlightenment must have sensed
their inconsistencies. Voltaire resorted to an appeal to climactic conditions in one instance.
Bailly even postulated a lost civilization in Mongolia to account for the debris of science in
the ancient civilizations. Rather than see a breakdown in progressive advancement or the
truth of stillbirths, he made up an imaginary source to account for the debris.
Jaki's third lecture analyzes the results of certain views about science and its origin during the
nineteenth century. He discusses the views of Comte, Hegel, Engels, Mach, Spencer, and
Whewell. Unfortunately, all these men adopted certain false assumptions about science and
their resulting systems of thought treated history in an arbitrary manner. Comte viewed
science as the epitome of man's rise to perfection and applied it to his quest for a social
Utopia. In the process Comte froze science in its tracks and cut it away from its past. Hegel
approached the history of science in an introspective fashion unconcerned about its recent
origin. Engels' dialectical materialism caused him to say science arose out of practical needs.
He did not bother to check the historical record which did not support his claim. Mach's
sensationism had eyes only for the perfect science of his day. He supposed science must
have emerged from tool-making which increases our power of observation. Since he could
not observe history directly, he said of it, "I hate the rubbish of history." It could teach him
nothing. Spencer undercut his better observations by imposing a biological growth model on
scientific advancement. He treated the mind as a muscle which would advance all cultures in
parallel developmental fashion. Whewell supposed science to be inductive generalization.
He did no original study yet codified the empiricist viewpoint which gave Europeans all the
credit for science, and he ignored medieval contribution. Thus these men exhibit a
manhandling of history and not a wrestling with the real lessons which can be found in
history.
3
In this way they showed better judgment than some moderns who credit the Greeks with the birth of science.
13
One would expect twentieth century historiography to be more mature. Yet Jaki's fourth
lecture reveals how various molds still are forced on the history of science. Most revealing is
the story of how Pierre Duhem's valuable contributions to the history of science have been
deliberately bypassed. At the turn of the century, Duhem's massive research and writings
demonstrated the medieval origin of science. His conclusion was not welcomed then and still
chafes today.
Jaki also documents that although Duhem may have been a conventionalist from a historicist
perspective, he was a Christian realist [as opposed to a naive realist] from an epistemological
perspective (p. 72).4 Duhem thus had a perspective from which it was natural to see
continuity in history and to ask questions about the origins of science. Likewise, his being
slighted as a believer by his fellow scientists must have contributed to his apologetic zeal.
Perhaps the most influential historian of science of the early part of this century was George
Sarton. Unfortunately, the gross deficiencies of his work were emulated by others. He saw
the dawn of science everywhere and looked at medieval man as disciples of the Arabs! His
only genuine historical publication dealt with the Greeks. He could not face Duhem's
erudition and remained silent about his conclusions. Thus he colored his view of history with
socialist and anticlerical glasses and obscured the need to examine origins in serious manner.
Alexander Koyre is primogenitor of the current perspective on the history of science.
Revolution is the chief paradigm of the history of science. Jaki objects to it because it cannot
do justice to the continuity of science and its overall rational framework. Concentration on
its irrational elements [sociological and psychological] strips away the meaning of its
advancement. Sadly, Koyre refused to assent to Duhem's contributions and placed the origin
of science with the Greeks from which position he was forced into a steady retreat. Thus the
view of the quantitative method as the center of scientific achievement remains. Science is
molded into one strange fashion after another because of a failure to consider origins
seriously.
Jaki's final lectures poses the necessary alternatives of thinking of science as a linear
continuity or as a series of revolutions. Jaki shows some of the elements of the emergence of
the latter option over the last two centuries. However, he sees its natural culmination in
Kuhn's question as to whether it is even useful to think of the unity of the universe verse as a
consistent unity at all since science seems to be able to flourish even in a sequence of disconnected paradigms. Such historicism is of course incompatible with the belief that the
universe is fully ordered. Thus the idea of revolutions applied to the cosmos brings back the
specter of the treadmill of eternal returns. Jaki again notes the limited aspect of science in that
both physics and metaphysics are needed to handle the full range of reality. The Christian
matrix gives explanation not only of the origin of science but also a statement supporting its
ability for on-goingness. Nor is it to be set aside by the claim that it is the source of the
misuse of science as some such as L. White suggest concerning ecology. Misuse can be tied
to sin and the Christian matrix provides direction for the future.
Thus we conclude our survey of Jaki's overall contributions except for the additional material
in his Gifford Lectures which will be examined especially for their epistemological point of
view in the next section. Jaki has demonstrated that science is a limited and often fallible
4
It is curious that Jaki did not see fit to do a critical analysis of conventionalism in his Gifford Lectures.
Perhaps his forthcoming biography on Duhem will rectify this.
14
enterprise, that the human mind is unique and not reducible, and that the Christian
perspective has had a vital role in the creative advances in science. Likewise, he has made
original contributions in gathering together materials in a comprehensive and incisive way.
He has also attempted to generate a serious regard for the science of origins among his fellow
historians and to generate a serious regard for the history of science among its practitioners
and supporters. Plus he has challenged everyone concerned to be careful that they do not
project erroneous views of science into other disciplines. He is concerned that culture be one
and not divided, Furthermore, he has placed the Christian matrix at the heart of his solution.
This author is in agreement with the thrust of Jaki's statements. Central to Jaki's works is a
high regard for rationality. Science cannot survive unless order and continuity characterize
nature and humanity's grasp of it. This immediately raises metaphysical questions about the
nature of that order. Jaki suggests that only the Christian matrix can make a claim for the
explanation of the source of that order. Thus faith in the Christian God generates faith in the
rationality of the universe and in turn the scientific enterprise. This is exactly what happened
historically. Science has demonstrated the power of the human mind. Yet the goal of history
as revealed by God's love for us in Christ gives us an even greater picture of rationality. For
anyone concerned about science and the future, the history of science gives an important
lesson.
An Examination of Stanley L. Jaki's Epistemological Middle Road
Introduction to the Problem of Epistemology
The need for some epistemological grounding for human understanding is acute. Modern
philosophy reflects this acuteness in its vacillation between varying forms of empiricism and
idealism. Basic to this tension are the subject and object of dimensions of knowledge. The
difficulty of resolution resides in specifying the nature of the symmetry which exists between
the constitutive power of the mind and the world it encounters.5 However, if no
epistemological grounding can be established, then human knowledge is totally relative to its
historical context and as such incommensurable with respect to different contexts. Basically,
human knowledge would be completely context bound.
The obvious place to seek a solution is scientific knowledge. This area of human
understanding has enjoyed acclaim as the most certain domain of human understanding and
its accomplishments are indeed great. However, our knowledge of physical reality no longer
enjoys categorical certainty. Science has become suspect in view of its misuses and its history
of errors. Other factors have refined our grasp of its nature as well. The overthrow of
classical Newtonian physics decisively illustrated what should have been realized all along:
no amount of inductive generalization can prove a theory. Science can no longer be
considered a purely objective undertaking. In all its endeavors it is already theory-laden.
The indeterminacy principle highlights that boundary conditions to our scientific knowledge
are inherently present. Furthermore, Godel's Theorem demonstrates that formally selfconsistent systems, such as mathematics and logic, cannot be self-grounding. That is, they
cannot be extended to the physical realm merely on the strength of their own consistency.
Yet these observations do not undercut the possibility of scientific inquiry. What they stress
is that scientific knowledge' does encounter limitations and that it requires greater
philosophical precision, caution, and grounding than once thought. Since science Is an act of
5
Our concern here is not the mind-body problem but rather the nature of the knowing process.
15
understanding, it must be interpreted with epistemological tools and not just psychological
ones. Such an epistemology must respect the above observations and yet be able to account
for science as it has been carried out historically. Furthermore, this epistemology must be
grounded in some fashion.
Jaki's Epistemological Thesis
We have already appreciated Jaki's analysis of history, but now we must consider explicitly
his epistemology as it relates to that history. His finest statement of that stance is set forth in
his Gifford Lectures. In slightly revised form, they were published with footnotes by the
University of Chicago in 1978. The book form of these twenty lectures is titled The Road of
Science and the Ways to God. In is opening lecture Jaki notes that Lord Gifford provided for
a lectureship in natural theology which would be within the reach of the whole population
and which would match the exacting standards exemplified in astronomy and chemistry. On
page three he tells us,
Most important Lord Gifford pleaded for a renewed interest in the
metaphysical quest for the reality of God as the only support of that universal
intelligibility which can satisfy man's inquiring mind and provide a solid basis
for his actions.
Jaki contends that the history of science has a direct bearing on natural theology. He sets
forth his thesis as such:
The aim of these lectures is to demonstrate what is intimated in their title,
namely the existence of a single intellectual avenue forming both the road of
science and the ways to God. Science found its only viable birth within a
cultural matrix permeated by a firm conviction about the mind's ability to find
in the realm of things and persons a pointer to their Creator. All great creative
advances of science have been made in terms of an epistemology germane to
that conviction, and whenever that epistemology has resisted with vigorous
consistency, the pursuit of science invariably appears to have been deprived of
its solid foundation (p. vii).
To trace this parallel between an epistemology derived from a sound natural theology and an
epistemology which is essential for science, Jaki mounts a vast array of evidence. His emphasis will be more upon his specialty, the road of science, than upon the way of natural
theology. Our analysis will follow his logically arranged development which proceeds first
with ten lectures on relevant historical material antecedent to the twentieth century and then
with ten lectures on key issues and approaches in modern scientific methodology and
historiography. In these lectures Jaki maintains that moderate realism is the common
epistemology of natural theology and creative science. Furthermore, the only way to ground
moderate realism is metaphysically in the Christian God. Doubtless many will be offended at
the return of transcendental considerations in a field oriented toward immanentism. But an
analysis of the origin of science and its two great phases, the Newtonian and Einsteinian,
seems to leave moderate realism in a formidable position with respect to competing
16
epistemologies. Perhaps one could reflect profitably upon Etienne Gilson's aphorism with
respect to moderate realism:6
The first step on the path of realism is to recognize that one has always been a
realist; the second is to recognize that, however much one tries to think
differently, one will never succeed; the third is to note that those who claim
they think differently think as realists as soon as they forget to act the part. If
they ask themselves why, their conversion is almost complete.
At the heart of this contention one will find the preservation of rationality. Science which is
creative in view of the singularity of nature rests upon only one epistemology. Thus the road
of science in turn points back to an ultimate source of this rationality and becomes one of the
ways to God.
The Question of Origins
In the first three chapters Jaki traces some of the same material covered in Science and
Creation and some later found in The Origin of Science and the Science of its Oriqen. Historians of science must ask the meaning of "the 'debris' of science scattered across half a
dozen blind alleys which the great ancient cultures had become for science."7 The one common and vital factor to all these cultures was their pantheism in the form of a belief in eternal
recurrence. Despite evidence of a real desire to understand nature, these cultures experienced
defeat in the face of such an impossible task as that of knowing a world governed by
capricious eternal cycles. Thus the sole birth of science is in a real sense an escape or
liberation from this defeating theological and philosophical orientation. Yet historians persist
in overlooking the central role of Christian theism for the inception and growth of enduring
science. The beginning of their error is neglect of the stillbirths of science; their second
mistake is a conditioned dislike of theology. For them nothing in nature suggests a Creator.
So they miss the importance of natural theology to the first scientists.
Of all the stillbirths of science none is more instructive than the failure of the Greeks—a near
miss and not the birthplace of science as is often supposed. Socrates sought to restore a place
for man against the mechanistic physics of the lonians and Anaxagoras. However, his
emphasis upon purposefulness led to the subordination of physics to a priori metaphysics and
theology. The value of a methodological disregard of ultimate purpose was missed. For
example, in response to Socratic diatribe on the perfect or immortal life which Socrates had
upheld against the materialists, Plato felt obliged to postulate a dichotomy between the
perfect world of ideas and the shadowy realm of matter. This found its expression in his
concern "to save the phenomena." No true science was possible. A grasp of the world of
ideas was not a grasp of nature. Yet it was supposed that such reasoning was self-assured.
Aristotle was interested in knowledge derived a posteriori from experience, but this too was
dominated by his inherited a priori outlook. Thus Plato's separation of ideas from matter
found similar expression in Aristotle's dichotomization between the celestial and terrestrial
realms. The motion of the heavens bespoke of divine purpose. These in turn became the
impersonal laws of eternal recurrence dominating man and his physical world. It was this
chain of development that assured the failure of Greek science. Epicurus tried to escape
necessitarianism and to salvage his ethics by postulating the chancistic swerving of the
6
Le realisme methodique (Paris: Tequi, n.d., p. 87) quoted in Erik Mascall's trans., The Openness of Being;
Natural Theology Today (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1971, p. 93).
7
The Road of Science and the Ways to God, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, p. 11.
17
atoms. However, this only portrayed an irrational world. Likewise his empiricism resulted in
naive realism and hostility to mathematics. His reaction to Aristotelian purposiveness could
not help science. With the rise of Stoicism, which became dominant during the Roman
period, Greek science was doomed. The Stoic quest for purpose settled on acceptance of
providence in the form of a fate meted out by a world in process. A monistic and vitalistic
cosmos was in tension and in the process of resolving that tension through endless cycles.
Intelligibility was identified with this impersonal world by means of pantheism and naive
realism. The mind thus looked at the world from a qualitative perspective of watching its process unfold for utilitarian purposes. It could not stand apart and ask questions of any
quantitative nature, for no being could have a special vantage in an impersonal world of
inexorable cycles. Thus Stoicism's failure in theology was tied to its failure in science.
Medieval thought ultimately encountered the test posed by the claims of faith in the demands
of reason (as set forth by Aristotle). Byzantium retreated into a supernaturalism steeped in
Neoplatonism. Muslim theologians maintained a negative attitude toward the natural ability
of reason and imbibed pantheistic natural theology. But Aquinas characterizes the broadly
shared conviction which represents the Christian response. As reflected in his five proofs of
the existence of God, his epistemological stance is one of confidence about humanity's
cognitive unity with a world characterized by rational order. Secondly, the universe is
contingent and points beyond itself as Jaki notes,8
within the stance embodied in the proofs of Aquinas is...the idea of the
universe, as the totality of contingent but rationally coherent and ordered
beings...The contingency of the universe obviates an a priori discourse about
it, while its rationality makes it accessible to the mind though only in an a
posteriori manner. Hence the need for empirical investigations. The
contingency of the universe as a whole serves in turn as a pointer to an
ultimate in intelligibility which though outside the universe in a metaphysical
sense, is within the inferential power of men's intellect.
The idea of contingency stressed the brute fact of nature as it is. A contingent state of affairs
is one which might or might not obtain, but its existence does not explain why it obtains.
Likewise, only one state of affairs obtains in nature, that is, not everything imaginable occurs
even though we can imagine what it would be like for many states of affairs to obtain for
which in fact we have no evidence. Therefore, it is reasonable to ask why only one particular
contingent state of affairs obtains and to expect an answer which would begin to provide an
unconditional explanation. Combined with a reason for believing in the rational ordering of
the universe, there is a basis for fruitful investigation. Science itself testifies to the worth of
these insights. However, these insights were not generated by cultures which believed in an
uncreated, non-contingent world. Such a world is its own reason for being and there is no
expectation of its yielding its secrets or for its providing clues for a way to investigate it. By
contrast, the belief in the rationality and contingency of the universe which are combined, in
Christian natural theology helped form a cultural matrix in which science could rise and
prosper. This achievement in turn points back to the ultimate in intelligibility which Jaki has
pointed out can reasonably be inferred. This is highlighted by the way science was advanced
by those who respected this stance.
Culmination in the Epistemological Middle Way of Newton
8
Ibid., p. 38.
18
In chapters four through six, Jaki makes clear the contrast between empiricism, rationalism,
and the epistemological position he is advocating by tracing the seventeenth century's
developments respectively from the perspectives of Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, and Isaac
Newton. Jaki first traces the fate of natural theology and science n the hands of the
empiricists Bacon, Hobbes, and Mersenne. For Bacon, metaphysics was to be excused from
natural theology—an impossibility to be sure! Likewise, physics was to be concerned only
with efficient and material causality. The unobservable domain of formal and final causality
could have no ontological status. Bacon ended up in many contradictions. His endorsement
of Democritus' atomism is really a metaphysical inference about unseen reality. Nor could he
justify his work in classification for this presupposed leaning on ideas which could not be
empirically derived. Nor could he account for the invisible force of magnetism or the power
of mathematics. His empirical inductions missed the constitutive power of the mind so
essential for science. At least he realized that the world of sense is important for any
advancement in knowledge. Hobbes' empiricism was combined with atheistic materialism.
The result was even worse then Bacon's. He believed we could only have knowledge of facts
and of consequences. Of course his justification for such a universal idea could have no
empirical justification. Given his system, there could be no natural theology, for the world
would be non-contingent and all sensory motions strictly necessary. But once again, it is a
bold leap of faith and not empirical data which told him there was a cosmos. In the extension
of his ideas to science there was no room for experimentation. Science was the observable
world which required no creative thinking to grasp. Science would have been frozen dead in
its tracks with such an approach. Mersenne also embraced empiricism only to be forced to
give up natural theology and to reduce science to technology. The approach of empiricism
was deadly for both natural theology and science.
The rationalist approach also went wrong when applied to science. Descartes' geometrical
reductionism began with his infatuation with geometry. He sought certainty and clarity and
believed that all problems were akin to those of mathematics. Accordingly, he deduced his
own existence as a thinking being. From this he deduced clearly and distinctly an absolute
being. From this he assumed he had demonstrated the ontology of God! Jaki believes this
marked the beginning of the demise of both natural theology and science in the hands of
Descartes. The classical a posteriori proofs of God, such as the cosmological argument,
received a back seat to this new ontological argument. Descartes was soon giving ontological
status to all clear and distinct geometrical ideas because they were innately implanted by
God. Sense data were less than clear and had to be trusted only in as much as God prevented
deception. Experimentation could only advance Cartesian physics if it could be admitted on
a priori grounds. Likewise, God's removal to the world of ideas left us with a world which
could point back to him in only a very diluted sense. Soon Descartes' thought was pushed to
its logic by others. Spinoza was one who rightly found no basis for Descartes' fundamental
distinction of mind. God, and extension. From a monist position he derived a pantheistic
world. Among those who infused materialism into bankrupt Cartesian-ism, de la Mettrie
reached the logical end of man as a machine. Thus another epistemology expressed its true
nature in the demise of science and natural theology.
Jaki titles his next chapter "Instinctive Middle." Newton's epistemology contained a synthesis
of the best elements of both a concern for the mind and for the senses. Grasping his outlook
requires a wholistic approach which Jaki has managed quite well. Contrary to what many
have thought, Newton was not a Baconian. He did not even refer to Bacon in his writings.
Newton was a man whose thought was permeated with the perspective of natural theology.
19
His expressed belief in natural theology rested on the teleological argument then in vogue
and on the idea of an infinite universe as the sensorium of God. His position endorsed the
rationality and contingency of both humanity and the universe. Likewise, Newton pursued
truth relentlessly. Although his method was first to simplify nature to make it amenable to
mathematization, he always went back to physical reality to test and revise his conclusions so
as to come closer to the underlying true causes which he presumed to be there. Thus he was
not a positivist. He could introduce a fudge factor or a God of the gaps in a way which
showed that reality and not mathematics was his standard. Or he could believe in entities
such as the inverse-square law of gravity whose cause was unknown or the existence of
atoms which could not be observed.9 Reality was not limited to the quantifiable. Thus
Newton's creativity was related to his willingness to take steps of faith in both theology and
science. His acceptance of natural theology yielded an epistemology of moderate realism
fruitful for scientific inquiry. In science he was willing to make conjectures because of his
belief in a contingent and ordered world within the reach of the mind.10 Thus trust in an all
powerful, principled and active God bore fruit in a mature and enduring science.11
Unfortunately, not even Newton could articulate clearly enough the essentiality of this
foundation. Nor could contemporaries such as Clarke, Leibniz, and Locke grasp the
relevance of Newton's philosophy and natural theology. The subsequent period of science
would be dominated by varying forms of rather inconsistent empiricism which would permit
science to go on.
Two Centuries of Hostility To Natural Theology
In the remaining four chapters on the period preceding the twentieth century, Jaki examines
the sensationism of David Hume, the subjective idealism of Immanuel Kant, the idealism of
Georg Hegel, and the positivism of Auguste Comte and Ernst Mach. Each of these men
sought to put science upon a higher plane, and each cut it away from natural theology and the
epistemology of its original Christian matrix. In every case their epistemologies not only
damaged natural theology, but it also crippled science. Modern man seemed intent on more
blind alleys.
Hume began his thought from an empiricist stance and a dislike of metaphysics and the
supernatural. He wrote on the history of England and its science, but he had only a shallow
grasp of science. His formal epistemology was a radical empiricist stance known as
sensationism. Knowledge consists in the vivid impressions received in the immediate data of
experience. Our ideas or thought about these images and their association by our minds are
less vivid and less certain. Causality is reduced to a series of unconnected events of which
we have no explanatory power. One is left in the radical skepticism of solipsism and science
is not possible. It is also not surprising to find that Hume declared for a sort of pantheism and
conjured up the endless cycles of the Great Year. Hume's knowledge was merely the result
of his basic instincts. His foundation could give him no knowledge of objective laws, facts,
or even connect sense data to his mind.
9
See I. Bernard Cohen, The Newtonian Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1980, e.g., pp. 130-32.
10
Jaki, Road of Science, p. 88. Cf. pp. 346 n. 28 and 347 n. 40.
11
The Christian God is not just a God of power but a reliable God of principle—a God of
promise (e.g., Gen 12:lff; 26:2-5; 35:9-12; Ex 6:2-8; 19:3-8; Deut 25:1-15; 2 Sam 7: Isa 9:67;2 Cor 1:20; Rom 4:9-11; 2 Pet 3:4-13.
20
Jaki's chapter on Kant is incisive in its exposure of Kant's deadliness for science. Although
Kant was enamored of Newtonian science, his grasp of it was meager. For example, his
theory of the evolution of planetary systems by the condensation of particles already had
been denied by Newton. Likewise, his modern sounding cosmogony rested on sheer fantasy.
Nor is it surprising to see him advocate a cosmic evolution analogous to the Great Year and
to embrace pantheism before his death. His reading of Hume caused him to abandon his a
priori natural theology. In his Critique of Pure Reason he refuted proofs for God. His idea of
religion was to make it natural, grounded within the limits of reason alone. His concept of
reason is set forth in his Critique of Pure Reason . He believed that our knowledge is derived
from perception of the real world of infinite time and space. This synthetic material is
processed in the mind by a priori categories or pure concepts of understanding. Thus all
rational knowledge is derived from our immediate experience of the world. However, this
interpreted knowledge really leaves man with a subjective idealism and cut off from the
world as it is presumed to exist in and of itself. There was no guarantee that the twelve
Aristotelian categories of the mind placed in four triads of thesis-antithesis-synthesis
sequence necessarily could give us a true picture of the world. So Kant grounded our unity
of consciousness to the external world through imagination! One can see already that science
would not flourish in such an epistemology. Consider the implications of Kant's attempt to
excise metaphysics and speculations from cosmology by the way of the antinomies. He concluded that it was futile to even consider such questions as to whether the world was finite or
infinite, atomistic or not, free or determined, contingent or not. His Opus postumum revealed
even more of his muddled program for science.
The German school of absolute idealism received its expression in the hands of Fichte,
Schelling, and Hegel. Idealism is always characterized by its insistence that the mind and its
ideas are the most fundamental component of reality from which to begin philosophy and
indeed science. This German school of thought produced panentheism, that is, they
absolutized an Ideal which stands for all of nature and yet above nature as a guiding force.
They each grounded their philosophy at the point which they found the most basic in the
movement from the self to the existing order. As Kant had filled this gap with the
imagination, so Fichte suggested will, Schelling utilized esthetic experience, and Hegel proposed thought. In these latter three cases, the source of cohesion was then absolutized in an
illegitimate move from the personal level to the infinite. Such reasoning is strange to us as it
should be to anyone living in a scientific age.
Fichte sought for philosophy something akin to the intuitively certain nature of mathematics.
He found humanity's sense of free choice to be basic. In this he was influenced by Kant's
moral imperative, the universal sense of oughtness which men and women find as the basis
for right action. In action man becomes aware of his self. This acting self as the most basic
idea of reflection gave him a new key for explaining the relationship of the mind to the
external world. He extended this concept to the infinite and spoke of our universe as the
outworking of the absolute will. Jaki notes that from this epistemology, Fichte slighted
science and dismissed natural theology as complete madness. Schelling found his absolute in
feeling as the only awareness of humanity's eternal drive to move from the finite to the
infinite. The keystone could not be in intellect for it could not account for this drive. His
application of these ideas to physics was known as "Naturphilosophie." Science was reduced
to speculation, as exemplified in Goethe. Hegel posited thought as the source of cohesion in
this framework. Jaki terms his approach to physics as "brazenly a priori site" and "crudely
speculative." Nature was made to conform to reason. Nature and history were in process of
unfolding in the Geist or Spirit. The process rested in the resolution of tension between being
21
and non-being. The blurring of these categories made physics impossible. Thus, Hegel
sought to replace Newton's "mechanistic physics" with a "true one." Our coverage of this
chapter is intended to emphasize that only chaos could result if such an a prioristic
epistemology were applied to science. Likewise, it should be obvious that these writers were
hostile to natural theology and not surprising that their thought continues with men who later
espoused the idea of the Great Year.
The last chapter in this section deals with the rise of positivism. Comte based his
epistemology in a commitment to facts and facts alone—positivism. He suggested the
progress of men, corporately and individually, revealed the "law of three states." Jaki
summarizes its (never substantiated) thrust in this way:12
According to that law all process of thought start with the theological stage,
and, after going through the metaphysical stage, they advance to the stage
where they retain only their positive force.
History advanced along a determined, mechanistic evolutionary path. Science had no distinct
origin. Comte completely debunked metaphysics. Science, and biology in particular, had
reached the level of perfection. Now it was time to have a positive reorganization of society.
Comte's real concern with science was to use it as a model for social change. He ossified
science itself and resisted each new discovery. John-Stuart Mill utilized Comte's earlier ideas
to arrive at his concept of induction as the basis of science. He rejected all metaphysics or
speculation about what was not immediately available for our inspection. Thus his radical
empiricism caused him to reject the validity of extending a scientific law beyond the explored
region of the universe. He denied the creative aspects of the mind in earlier science by
reducing its advances to the simple, matter-of-fact self-organization of facts. In his
reflections on natural theology, he declared that the conviction of universal laws had
produced monotheism. Of course the historical record is the reverse. Ernst Mach reduced
the history of science to the anticipations of the final, true physics of his day. His positivistic
epistemological stance was sensationism. Science was merely the problem of getting at the
facts. He overlooked that it is the mind which makes the breakthrough and in many cases
even when the facts have all been in for some time!
.
Such was apparently the case with Einstein's creative work:
In the origins of Einstein's theory of relativity new experiments (including
Michelson and Merely) did not play the determinative part most accounts have
for...he used only experimental facts that had been known for fifty years"
[italics mine]13
His sensationism also made him reluctant to consider cosmology--knowledge about the
structure of the universe. He denied the existence of atoms. Similarly, he hated Christianity
and refused to acknowledge Duhem's analysis of the medieval period. For the origin of
science, Mach credited man's urge to have a comprehensive view of nature and to feel
12
13
Jaki, Road of Science, p. 145.
Ian Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion. Prentic-Hall, Inc., 1966, p. 145.
22
oneness and sameness with it. Thus he spent the last ten years of his life as a Buddhist and in
trying to discredit Einstein's relativity.
Thus Jaki concludes his analysis of the era prior to our century. The divorce of science from a
moderate realism maintained by natural theology has left a trail of blind alleys. Jaki has
carefully and incisively dealt with the issues pertinent to this purpose. His analysis of the
departure from moderate realism and natural theology has been on target. His positive
undergirding of that position has been as much by way of historical analysis as by way of
formal argumentation. Nor has he overplayed the protagonists of the story. He does not try to
establish the five proofs, although he could have mentioned their original use as ways of
demonstrating rationality. He does not fail to mention Aquinas' weak relationship to scientific
experimentation. He also shows the foibles of Newton. What he has done is to show the
consistent value of a particular epistemological stance for the advance of science, how it
arises naturally in the Christian matrix, and how hostility to natural theology has led to
different epistemologies which have always been harmful to science.
The Epistemological Middle Road Of Planck and Einstein
In chapter eleven, Jaki unfolds for us an exciting and lucid account of the significance of the
life and thought of Max Planck for the epistemological middle road. Planck entered the study
of physics despite his many other talents and the advice not to do so since physics was nearly
a [allegedly] completed field of study. Jaki describes the drive behind Planck's zeal for
physics in this fashion:
A deep-seated interest in Weltanschauung, that is, in a world view steeped in scientific,
metaphysical, religious, and moral interests, was the leaven that produced Max Planck, one of
the two outstandingly creative physicists of this century, the century of physicists... Its core
was his belief in the objective existence of a rational, wholly harmonious cosmos in which
everything was united through a single, ultimate law.
Planck centered his theoretical research around the first and second laws of thermodynamics,
the conservation and dissipation of energy and also their sharp distinctiveness. Mechanical
models were at an impasse in classical physics. Thermodynamics was the area least
amenable to mechanical models. Thus this was the area of promise which Planck felt would
be the logical place from which to begin in his quest to show the interconnectedness of all the
forces of nature. Research in entropy [energy dissipation] revealed some normal energy
distribution results. From these the door opened in black-body radiation research for Planck
to derive two constants. One of them became know as Planck's constant and was symbolized
as h. It signified that energy was released in ratios of fixed quantities or discrete quanta.
This constant was a necessary part of the succeeding breakthroughs in microscopic physics
and essential to Einstein's relativity. Planck's guiding belief and motivation was his longing
for the physical absolute as something existing objectively and knowable as such. At the age
of eighty-eight he described this:14
What has led me to science and made me since youth enthusiastic for it is the
not at all obvious fact that laws of our thoughts coincide with the regularity of
the flow of impressions which we receive form the external world, [and] that it
is therefore possible for man to reach conclusions through pure speculation
14
Jaki, Road to Science, p. 166. "Ibid., p. 167.
23
about those regularities. Here it is of essential significance that the external
world represents something independent of us, something absolute which we
confront, and the search for the laws for this absolute appeared to me the most
beautiful task in life.
Clearly, Planck believed he had found not only the quantum of action, but of ever greater
importance, he believed he had found supreme evidence of an objectively existing
fundamental absolute of nature. His first public lecture on the Weltanschauung centered on
what conception of the world was most profitable to physical science. He believed a proper
view for science was that of presupposing a world consistent throughout and objectively
existing. He sought to uncover laws to explain the objectively real and causally determined
physical world—whether accessible to the senses or to the mind. He strongly repudiated
Machian positivism which attributed scientific advancement to economy of thought via
sensationism. The history of science, declared Planck, showed that creative motivations
stemmed from a firm belief in the reality of the world as conceived by the mind of the
scientist. Planck's shortcoming was his inclination toward the pantheism of Spinoza.
However, he did not realize the inconsistency in such a position. Thus he maintained a
moderate realism in spite of it. Perhaps his Christian heritage, poor philosophizing, and
acknowledgement of dependence on God were responsible for his middle path. A full logic
on his part should have recognized the metaphysical underpinnings of his position and a
contingent world which together point toward a Creator.
Albert Einstein changed the course of physics with his theory of special relativity in 1905, his
general theory of relativity in 1915, and the many conclusions which he drew from them,
such as the finite universe postulated in 1917. Ultimately his professed epistemological views
shifted from neo-Kantian Machianism to a stance like Planck's. Over the years he realized
more and more the true nature of his own creative deeds as he scrutinized them and entered
into philosophical discussions. Jaki closely monitors Einstein's growing separation from
Mach and transition to a metaphysical realism during the early nineteen twenties. Likewise,
he notes Einstein's difference with Kant over the a priori. Although Einstein could accept
"arbitrary" concepts in the sense that they were not the direct fruit of observations and
experiments, he could not accept a claim for their absolute, a priori validity. However, he
never did see past Kant's wholly fallacious dictum on the world as a whole. Likewise, his
endorsement of realistic metaphysics and epistemology did not bring him further than the
God of Spinoza. Nevertheless, he demanded the same faith as Planck, declaring that: "The
belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural
science."15 He based his growing awareness on observations about how scientists such as
himself really go about their work. Positivism could make no contribution to epistemology in
Einstein's estimation.
There are also three passages in which Jaki implies his own epistemological conclusions. On
page 194, he chides Einstein for failing "to perceive that according to the very same science,
which created scientific cosmology, Kant's dictum on the world as a whole was wholly
fallacious."16 By Kant's dictum on the world as a whole, Jaki means "Kant's hallowed claim
that our notion of the totality of things, or the universe, was not valid knowledge."
Apparently, the manner in which Einstein has fallen into this is by a tendency to see his
system through the eyes of a subjective idealist who is not certain he has real knowledge
15
Ibid., p. 186.
Ibid., p. 191. Cf. pp. 121-22, where Kant uses the antinomies of reason to announce talk about the universe
(as a whole) as sheer speculation.
16
24
about the external world. This would imply Einstein's feeling of distrust for the metaphysical
grounding of his realism. Thus Jaki rightly speaks of Einstein's "instinctive groping for a
median position in epistemology." He describes Einstein's uncertainty on page 186:17
What Einstein meant to say was that sense perceptions are an ongoing process,
the possibility of new information about the physical world remains ever
present, an obvious source of incompleteness in physical theory. This
meaning was not, however, strengthened by his remarks that we can grasp
physical reality only by speculative means and that our notions of physical
reality can never be final. The remarks, which implied a subtle relapse into
Kantianism and an oversight of the fact that physical theory was not a notion
about physical reality but merely implied it, still revealed his instinctive
groping for a median position in epistemology.
Apparently Jaki believes that physical theory by itself can only imply physical reality. It
yields no final reality by itself. Autonomous man cannot know the external world with
certainty. But instead of doubting our knowledge by way of subjective idealism, we should
accept that there are boundaries to our knowledge while having confidence in our degree of
knowledge of reality by way of moderate realism since it is grounded in a trustworthy
Creator.18 Thus Jaki can conclude from a finite and singular universe that it points back from
its contingency to a Creator God. Thus it was only natural for Einstein as a pantheist to leave
the concept of a finite universe in space and in time as an open question, whereas Jaki can go
ahead and assert an affirmative answer grounded in rationality—and one which qualifies as
valid knowledge. Thus pantheism did not generate enough confidence for Einstein to
continue his moderate realism to the point of accepting final knowledge of nature such as a
finite universe in space and time. Jaki's acceptance of revelation as rational, however,
enables him to draw such a conclusion in this instance. Presumably, on other matters he
would accept theories as implying certain valid things about reality without refusing better
theories or thinking the old theories did not have some rational value despite their
incompleteness. Nevertheless, although I have tried to give the best interpretation possible, it
seems Jaki has left some ambiguities by his contrast between a notion of physical reality and
an implication of physical reality. Presumably by notion he means something akin to final
knowledge and intends us to view final knowledge as only available in revelation. Whatever
he means, it is clear that he must make some direct and positive statement of his
epistemological stance in which historiography is not the central theme.
Jaki has also passed up an opportunity to speak more about creativity and the nature of the
scientific enterprise. How is it that science has gotten on so apparently well with out theists
and indeed without those who profess realism? The physics of Newton had been quite
useful. Certainly Newtonian science was rational. Jaki could have pointed out that once
advancement occurs that it can be sustained even without genius. On the other hand, Jaki has
mentioned already that men live as realists even if they deny it. He could have also drawn
favorably upon Kuhn's discussion of normal science to highlight that science is indeed a selfsustaining enterprise until it enters a state of crisis. Thus he could highlight the uniqueness
and significance of moderate realism even more by increasing our appreciation of the nature
of scientific advancement. Likewise, he could have tied the large paradigm of modern
17
18
Ibid., p. 186.
Ibid., p. 191.
25
science to its revolutions and smaller paradigms by way of rationality. But then he will miss
this opportunity later in an even more appropriate context.
The Copenhagen School
Unfortunately, only a few of the leading scientists were willing to part with positivism and a
problem soon developed in particle physics. Research at the subatomic level raises serious
difficulties in the quest for precision. However, even more problems are raised by the refusal
of positivists to permit ontological status to that which cannot be measured. When quantum
mechanics was developed from the matrix theory work of Heisenberg and the Schrodinger
application of de Broglie waves, it was discovered that the momentum and the position of
subatomic particles cannot be simultaneously measured with precision. This conclusion,
know as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, was interpreted by Bohr to mean that the act of
observation creates the mechanical state which is observed. Furthermore, one cannot assume
that a particle actually has a precise momentum and position before it is interrupted by the
measuring process. This obviously suggests that the "particle" cannot even be assumed to
exist until the time of measurement and even then all one can obtain is a variation between
two different species: a momentum wave or a particle point would be at either extreme of the
result. Bohr expressed the requirement for the two mutually exclusive experiments needed to
obtain full information about the mechanical state as the principle of complementarity. Thus
he mistook epistemology for ontology—a most serious ambiguity. This was positivism with a
pragmatic twist. The measuring process was absolutized in the name of scientific objectivity.
But human limitations were thus absolutized as well. Bohr spoke of a certain "irrationality"
in that causality broke down at the subatomic level. However, Bohr was anxious to deny that
this "free choice on the part of nature" suggested an external cause such as God. Interestingly,
a positivist has no basis for speaking of nature as a whole, since he has no way of observing
it in that fashion. Equally metaphysical is the idea of complementarity which describes a nonentity as well since two mutually exclusive experiments cannot be performed at one point in
space and time. Jaki correctly noted that a consistent application of his loss of causality
would liquidate both physics and natural philosophy. Nevertheless, scientists began to
operate as though they had two epistemologies, one for the micro-world and one for the
world they lived in. Dirac, however, complicated matters when he discovered that some
subatomic particle motion could be observed in a coherent and causally oriented manner. He
concluded that nature makes choices. Against such animism, Heisenberg replied that no, it
was the observer who creates reality, or orders it. At this juncture many scientists lost
interest in philosophizing. Such nonsense could have been avoided if positivism had been
overthrown. As Jaki points out, measurement does not give us the full range of our
knowledge of reality. He has already demonstrated that even physics operates on assumed
knowledge. Likewise, although common sense is not an adequate tool for the rigors of
science, it is the necessary foundation from which knowledge begins and to which it must
relate. It is not rational to endorse two different epistemologies. We only have experience of
one kind of epistemology, one based upon causal interconnectedness. If we endorse an
irrational or anti-causal epistemology as the basis of reality, we must apply it to our basic
level of experience as well. Such an application is the logical conclusion of the Copenhagen
school of thought. Its consistent application would destroy both natural theology and
science.
The Modern Infatuation With Reductionism
26
Having completed his chronological analysis, Jaki begins a more systematic treatment of the
ways to God. He first takes stock of the dominant intellectual climate of opinion:19
In the intellectual climate of our times respectability is reserved to such
avenues of reason as are meticulously free not only of the theological connotations but of even the least touch of metaphysics. What is novel in that
climate is not its anti-theological and anti-metaphysical character. The novelty
lies in the resolve to restrict rational discourse to the pattern set by the method
of physics. This is the essence of present-day reductionism. Its protagonists
are physicalists known by such names as operationalists, behaviourists, and
logical positivists.
He limits his discussion in chapter fourteen to logical positivism since it has been the
fountainhead for much of modern reductionism. Its origin goes back to Moritz Schlick and
the Vienna Circle, a group of like-minded individuals. Jaki gives a good description of their
starting point for a scientific epistemology:20
only that was knowable which was strictly and unambiguously communicable.
On that basis external forms and logical relations always had the right to be
called knowledge (Erkenntis), while its experience content (Eriebnis) had to
be viewed as strictly ineffable. Clearly then, metaphysics, which is concerned
not with the form of knowledge but with its content as touching on reality,
loses its validity because that content can only be grasped through an assertion
which is inseparable from that experienced element. Schlick should at least
have realized that his banning of metaphysics could not be logically secured
on the basis of the opposition he had set up between Eriebnis and Erkenntis.
The opposition, if logical, could only deal with the notion of Eriebnis in which
reality is experienced. If, however, the notion was not severed its context, the
opposition as conceived by Schlick defeated its own logic, to say nothing of
the fact that logic as such could not even touch on the experienced reality of
communicating logic itself! Not seeing this, Schlick could claim without
misgiving that the rationality of knowledge was best realized when forms,
relations, and sequences were expressed in a mathematical mould. This was as
much a Procrustean bed for knowledge as it was for the history of science,
especially for its very recent phase.
From these faulty beginnings, a very ambitious campaign was undertaken to develop a
method of logic which would yield certain knowledge for all fields of study. Form and
content were radically distinct as reality was reduced to formal and mathematical logic.
Nothing was meaningful which could not be verified with this procedure. Of course some
time passed before it was obvious that this veriflability theory of meaning could not be
verified on its own requirements. Language which is meaningful after all must be looked
upon through metaphysical glasses if one is to assume it means something about reality. This
was rather embarrassing for a system which asserts the meaninglessness of all metaphysics.
Only a very few scientists ever applied this new logic to their research. Bridgman urged that
19
Jaki, Road to Science, p. 214.
Ibid., p. 217. The reader can only grasp the complexities of this movement by reading a good overview of its
central program. He,she is advised to read Frederick Suppe, The Structure of Scientific Theories, 2nd ed.,
Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1977, pp. 3-56.
20
27
genuine physics merely expressed tangible operations. But logical positivism is a wasteland
for both natural theology and science.21
Jaki's Criticisms of Paradigms and Historicism
In chapter fifteen Jaki poses the option of viewing the history of science as a series of
paradigms or as a paradigm. He finds the former option untenable and historicist. Koyre was
the one through whom the historicist approach to the history of science became fashionable.
Koyre, for example, views the big changes in science as revolutions to be explained
Platonically in terms of sudden enlightenment discontinuous with the preceding intellectual
framework ushered in by psychological and sociological stimuli rather than by changes of
world view or in metaphysical assumptions. Jaki notes that it is a weak approach to explain
the intellectual development of man without referring to it in terms of his conceptual context.
Thus intellect is immersed in history, man is historicized. The truths of science are
relativized to a given context and merely subjectively grounded as true for a group of given
individuals rather than as objective in terms of physical reality. A careful reading of Thomas
Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions shows that his approach comes under this
same criticism. According to Kuhn, knowledge is ultimately sociologically derived. Goaldirectedness in science is lost and with it any possibility of natural theology. Kuhn is left with
paradigms incommensurable to each other because he has substituted psychology and
sociology for epistemology and metaphysics. Jaki notes that this does an injustice to the fair
measure of identity present in science throughout its cultivation. There are always partial
identities from one paradigm to another. Furthermore, these are grounded in the overall
rationality of an ordered nature which can be reached by science through a metaphysical
belief in its accessibility to the mind which humanity found within the Christian matrix.
Thus historians have missed the one big paradigm in which these transformations occur
because they have failed to examine seriously the one viable birth of science. The real
question is why science was ever born to begin with. Jaki's analysis is thus a valuable insight
into the nature of science. Perhaps his only weakness in this analysis is not^ to explain more
about Kuhn's concept of normal science. f Kuhn's idea of normal science gives valuable
insight into the irrational effects of dogmas held by scientists. But Jaki has accomplished his
purpose and vindicated rationality against both the historicist and the rationalist-empiricist
tradition. For this latter tradition locates the first stage of the nature of scientific advances in
the realm of the irrational as well by the theory of the hypothetico-deductive method.
Reach of the Mind
In chapter sixteen Jaki notes that one only has to look at the working of the minds responsible
for the great scientific discoveries to see the errors of reductionism and historicism. The great
acts of discovery have all been made with the mind. In this process, the deeds of the
scientists and often their words reveal a stance of moderate realism which Jaki believes has
two basic ingredients.22
21
In his defense of atheism in opposition to theism, logical positivist Kai Nielsen, in a recent debate with
evangelical J. P. Moreland, insisted that the concept of a transcendent God, as in Christianity, is both incoherent
and illegitimate --certainly nothing you can either have an understanding of or place faith in. See Does God
Exist? The Great Debate, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990, pp. 251-52.
22
Jaki, Road to Science, p. 247.
28
One is the existence of a world intrinsically ordered in all its parts and consistent in all its
interactions. The other is the existence of a human mind capable of understanding such a
world in an ever more comprehensive manner.
As the scientist has tested this assurance his mind has found ever-deeper rationality in the
universe. Just as he knows there is error, so he has found there is truth. Discovery is thus an
act of understanding even if its process cannot be defined by a set of logical rules. Likewise
the existence of this genuine personal knowledge of the external world demonstrates the
validity of its metaphysical assumptions. This in turn suggests an alliance between science
and natural theology. Jaki suggests that one can gain a rough picture of the process of
discovery and its relationship to moderate realism. Men observe regularities amidst the complexity of nature. Then they see departures and wonder at their relationship to the
regularities. With insight they integrate and phenomena and make new generalizations which
are not merely inductive. Thus the mind is guided by valid perceptions and works with
idealizations and creative postulations which advance science. This is the creative road
between idealism and empiricism. A basic metaphysical ingredient to this creative process is
the sense of wonderment.
Jaki has made brief observations in defense of mind-body dualism. He notes that an idealist
only finds his footprints when he looks at nature. The empiricist usually opts for a weak
conceptualist view of the mind in which rationality is equated with the epiphenomena of the
mind impressed there by the perception process. There is no bridge through the knowing self
to connect the conceptions of the mind to the external world. As such science can know
nothing of reality itself. This was for example the problem of classical physics and a position
advocated by men such as Karl Popper. One only has to look at technology to see that some
bridge does exist between the mind and external reality.
Cosmic Singularity
In chapter seventeen Jaki believes it is time to confront his readers with the cosmological
argument for God from the perspective of modern cosmology. All science is cosmology,
knowledge about the structure of the cosmos. Likewise it is grounded in rationality and it has
been advanced through its insight about various singularities in the universe such as the
motion of planets, the Milky Way, the gravitational paradox, Gibers' paradox, and entropy. 23
At present scientists are confronted with the reality of a cosmic singularity as implied by an
expanding finite universe and black holes. In other words, our universe, by the best
standards of physics, must have had a beginning In space and time. Let us quote from the
foremost among very recent books on cosmology:24
One can think of a singularity as a place where our present laws of physics
break down. Alternatively, one can think of it as representing part of the edge
of space-time, but a part which is at a finite distance instead of at infinity. On
this view, singularities are not so bad, but one still has the problem of
boundary conditions. In other words, one does not know what will come out
of a singularity. There are two situations in which we expect there to be
sufficient concentrations of matter to cause a closed surface...The second
23
Note the new singularity mentioned in "Mysterious Gap," Time, October 12, 1981, p. 95, of a very large low
mass density area in space nearly 300,000,000 light years wide.
24
S. W. Hawking and G. F. R. Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Cambridge University Press,
1973, p. 3.
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situation is that of the whole universe itself. Recent observations of the
microwave background indicate that the universe contains enough matter to
cause a time-reversed closed trapped surface. This implies the existence of a
singularity in the past, at the beginning of the present epoch of expansion of
the universe. This singularity is in principle visible to us. It might be
interpreted as the beginning of the universe.
Hawking and Ellis conclude their fine work in theoretical physics with this comment:25
The results we have obtained support the idea that the universe began a finite
time ago. However the actual point of creation, the singularity, is out side the
scope of presently known laws of physics.
With the demise of the Steady-State theory, the above is the best answer that physics can now
provide about this central issue of our origin. But the brute fact of this singularity also
demands further rational choice about its significance. It should not be construed merely as a
logical, mathematical statement, but one about our real world and one which affects how we
view the real world. The metaphysicist believes his, her answer lies in an unconditioned
source. The antimetaphysicist can only postulate more singularities in an infinite regression.
Which is more rational? Since this author believes Jaki is correct in his analysis of the
epistemological middle road, he find that modern cosmology is metaphysically oriented and
points back rationally to a Creator through its singular and contingent nature.
Purpose in Nature
In chapter eighteen, Jaki argues that a basic trait of nature revealed by science is purpose.
Jaki recognizes this is not a self-evident claim by virtue of the opposite conclusion of
evolutionists since Darwin. However, in view of the singular nature of the cosmos, it is
implied that some selection process accounts for why it is this world we live in and not one of
the infinitely many other worlds which are conceivable. Either the cosmos is contingent and
designed or it is autonomous and determined by chance. In view of our knowledge, which
position is more rational?
Jaki first examines Darwin's answer. Darwin realized the question of purpose and selection
was fundamental. His advocacy of natural selection as a mechanical, non-goal directed
process was intended to explain the evolution of nature. He disdained religion and had a
craving to free science from metaphysics. However, he could provide no real empirical evidence to support natural selection and to satisfy his Baconian epistemology. Likewise, he was
unable to show the unreality of purpose. His un-comfortableness with this dilemma is shown
by his persistent seeking after proof to vindicate natural selection as the explanation. By this
time his philosophy was already in over its head. To see natural selection in such a universal
light was first of all a metaphysical assertion. To think a human mind could give an accurate
account of a world in process is his second contradiction. There could be no reason to assume
a knowing self was in touch with such a world, that such a world would not soon change. It
was also inconsistent that a purposeful entity such as a human, a science, or a designed
argument against design by Darwin could have occurred in a world of chaos. Other
difficulties would soon emerge. Nevertheless, his appeal found a receptive audience. Today
natural selection is in even more trouble philosophically and scientifically. Our increased
25
Ibid., p. 364.
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knowledge reveals a world of greater complexity and interconnectedness. The smallest
imbalance would disturb the whole arrangement and ruin the final result. Direction or design
seems to be present. Jaki also speaks of the boundary conditions which exist in nature. They
are given structures which are not derivable from laws, exhibit interconnectedness
inseparable from a larger structure, and are explainable only in terms of a more general set of
boundary conditions. Likewise, the overall boundary condition of the universe is not selfexplanatory and requires metaphysical explanation. Research for microevolution and
macroevolution has failed to demonstrate the mechanism of change or even many consistent
patterns of change. Thus it is reasonable to find a metaphysical answer. Jaki asserts the
common view that the five ways of Aquinas are essentially but one way anyway, the way of
contingency. Boundary conditions thus are reflections of the Creator's choices. Their
rational coherence reflects design. Likewise, God is in back of all change and time does not
reverse. Ironically, evolutionists need a time which is very purposeful even though
Darwinian theory banishes purpose from time. But then even time does not cause change.
Science itself needed a womb, not more time in blind alleys. Science cannot afford to remain
hostile to metaphysics. Nor is purpose a detriment to science as is often supposed. The fruit
of embracing Jaki's approach is that of saving the rationality of science. Likewise, it suggests
a proper relationship with the Christian matrix and its cosmological way as a pointer toward
God.
Science and Ethics
In approaching the ways to God, Jaki has devoted chapters to the contemporary frame of
mind about science, the rational paradigm for science, the rational foundation of nature and
humanity's grasp of it, the Creator implicitly behind our singular and contingent universe, and
the cosmological argument as a pointer to God. Thus it is appropriate for Jaki to look at the
relevance of science for ethics. Science, as a way of knowing, has implications for other
areas of human knowledge. But for there to be balance there has to be an organizing center.
Thus science needs the metaphysical foundation of a moderate realism based on a belief in
the Creator. This provides a proper basis for reflection on and unified knowledge of all the
dimensions of reality. A properly grounded epistemology is central for all these above
dimensions which touch on science and natural theology. Furthermore, Jaki has
demonstrated the worth of the epistemological middle way. Now it is appropriate to look at
the character of science with a view toward its contribution to ethics or practical knowledge
and again to view the results in the light of natural theology.
Jaki acknowledges that the human experience of pain and guilt as a part of the order of things
was always taken to imply an ethical nature in human nature. But after Kant, ethics became
privatized. This subjective turn was given its key sanction when humanity was immersed in
nature by evolution. This was the classic reduction of humanity to animality in a world
where survival of the fittest obtained. The direct outgrowth of this undermining of ethics can
be seen in those who embraced this scientism, such as Darwin, Freud, Marx, Haeckel,
Treitschke, and Teilhard de Chardin. Ethics was replaced by all manner of creatures: the loss
of conscience, the removal of guilt, and justification of class struggle, the warrant for Aryan
Nazism, the glorification of war, apathy toward suffering, and permissiveness to name at
least a few. Who can believe science should be interpreted to mean we should opt for
anarchism? Other spinoffs to this loss of ethical code have been utilitarianism, ethical relativism, the claimed amorality of many scientists, and eugenics. Jaki gives striking
illustrations and refutations of these positions. There is a great deal at stake even for science
in the arena of ethics. Science was delivered a living enterprise from the womb of a world
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view which sought both good behavior and good science grounded in truth. Likewise,
Christian ethics [when practiced] has helped improve physical, mental, and social freedom
and enhanced scientific inquiry. Ethical foundations are needed for conscientious research
and a respect for the facts in reports. Such character cannot be expected from ethical
relativism. It must come from commitment to an invariable ethic. Although we cannot have
ready-made formulas for every circumstance, the science of ethics is for real. Nor does
Einstein's relativity support relativism as is often supposed. Einstein's relativity represents an
unwavering commitment to a consistent understanding of a rationally coherent universe. It is
not an accident that Paul moves from a cosmological argument to an ethical one in the first
two chapters of Romans. Reality is a coherent and ordered whole and maintained by certain
boundaries. The human person is a contingent being and fits into the rational whole. Thus
his or her actions must fit into an existing order. If he or she disrupts that order he can
experience guilt because he has responsibility. Jaki concludes that scientists cannot act upon
a myth of neutrality. Their science enters into reality and science will keep its freedom only
so long as it remains responsible. Unethical science or science done in reductionism will kill
science. It can turn it into mere technology or it can remove its creativity. The bond of
science and ethics is thus a pointer to a larger order and to the ways of God.
Teaching by Examples
Jaki's last lecture summarizes his perspective in these lectures and deals with the future. For
him the cosmological proofs of God are a cautiously used tool and a pointer to the deeper
realities of the cosmos. He knows they cannot convince every mind. Historians and others
have used history to suit their own purposes and to disparage natural theology. Yet he
expresses confidence in the relationship of natural theology to reality: "a theology that is
genuinely natural must be responsive to anything learned about nature, of which man is the
most eminent part." Contemporary agnosticism can be overcome utilizing a serious and
wholistic approach in metaphysics and historiography.”26 Metaphysics implies a commitment
to a right perspective on questions concerning the ultimate in reason, cause, purpose, and
responsibility. It also suggests the essentiality of origins or coming into being. Thus the
origin of science in its Christian matrix should help the agnostics to examine more
objectively the science embodied in history. For Jaki this real science Is the science of a contingent universe. His other lectures score this point and show the failings of any other
approach. Jaki's hope is that his lectures can be a bridge over which others will be able to
cross as they lay aside their presuppositions and examine the lesson of history. If they can
recognize that science is the ally of the Christian, we will exert a powerful influence on them.
Nevertheless, it is not an easy task. Antitheists are also claiming science supports their
contentions. Our comfort is that history reveals that enduring science is a powerful witness
to its genuine Christian matrix and epistemological stance. Natural theology alone can
generate the trust, privilege, and responsibility which constitute the backbone of the scientific
enterprise. It provides the rational paradigm for modern science. However, we Christians
must know that history and that philosophy which are pointers to God. Even more we must
flesh out what those pointers suggest and inspire others as we keep in mind the fundamental
role of natural theology as the tie that binds the road of science and its epistemological stance
of moderate realism to the ways to God. Thus Jaki concludes his Gifford Lectures.
Conclusion
26
Jaki, Road of Science, p. 318.
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The epistemological middle road developed by Jaki is an attempt to assure that the
knowledge of the knowing subject is indeed valid knowledge of the external world. As a
Christian he already has the perspective of moderate realism which is grounded
metaphysically in the Creator of a rationally structured world and mind. But since science is
a most widely respected form of human understanding and since it is commonly assumed to
be in opposition to the Christian stance, Jaki looks at its history to see if his religious
conviction is indeed a fruitful stance. Not only does history support that it is a fruitful stance,
it also shows that no other stance can be maintained consistently and yield fruitful
knowledge. As such the balance between idealism and empiricism is found in this stance.
However, this epistemology must bear philosophical scrutiny as well as the test of historical
fruitfulness. Since these Gifford Lectures focused more on the history of science and its
relationship to natural theology, Jaki does not give us a comprehensive statement on
epistemology. Nevertheless, he does reveal a good deal of what such a treatment would
include. One key area is that of recognizing that rationality and knowledge claims involve
metaphysical assertions [even for those who dismiss metaphysics]. Likewise, valid
knowledge is wider than just sense data. A second major aspect is that moderate realism can
only be grounded metaphysically. Jaki finds the Creator as the most rational explanation and
grounding in view of the order of nature and its coherence with the human mind. One could
also mention the witness of historically based special revelation. This is indeed a valid stance
and coherent with the cosmological argument as a way which points to an unconditional
answer for rationality. Frankly, it would have been better to avoid the connotations bound up
with the word "proof" but Jaki intends it only as a symbol for natural revelation. These last
assertions bring us to the heart of these lectures. The advancement of science points toward a
Creator. Likewise, science can be related responsibly to the rest of reality only in
conjunction with a respect for natural theology. The proper road for science and the way of
natural theology follow a common path. Jaki has given sufficient warrant for his initial
thesis. Although one could also string together some of his epistemological claims about the
nature of method or theory, this conclusion will not attempt such a synthesis. The value of
his comments can be seen in context, but his larger synthesis can only be done by him. We
must rather work on our own synthesis and utilize the light that Dr. Stanley L. Jaki has
provided.
James D. Strauss
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