The Purpose of It All
Stanley L. Jaki
   What is the purpose of it all?
     Is an abiding sense of purpose assured by scientific and technological
progress? Is biological evolution a carrier of purpose? What is the ultimate purpose of economic prosperity?
     These and similar questions turn up in the most unexpected contexts.
One such was a blue-ribbon conference hosted in Moscow by the Soviet
Academy of Sciences in June 1989. There a U. S. Senator effusively praising a free-market economy was stunned by a Soviet scholar's blunt question: "What is the purpose of life?"
     An answer to that question is offered in this book, the expanded version of eight lectures the author delivered in Oxford in November 1989. True to his reputation as an internationally acclaimed philosopher and historian of science, Professor Jaki, winner of the Templeton Prize for 1987, casts in a new mould the argument from design. In doing so he submits its traditional and modern forms, among them the anthropic principle and process philosophies, to insightful and unsparing criticism.
     He shows that both historically and conceptually the idea of purposeful
progress is rooted in the biblical recognition of free will as a carrier of eternal responsibilities and prospects.