The
Road of Science and the Ways to God
Stanley L. Jaki
In this challenging work, Stanley L. Jaki illuminates the intimate connection
between scientific creativity and natural theology. He draws especially
upon the history and the philosophy of science to show that a rational
belief in the existence of a Creator, or at least an epistemology germane
to such a belief played a crucial role in the rise of science and in all
of its creative advances.
Originally presenting these ideas as the Gifford
Lectures for 1974-75 and 1975-76 at the University of Edinburgh, Jaki maintaians
that the birth of a viable scientific enterprise could take place only
when, in the High Middle Ages natural theology had become steeped in Christian
faith. Through proclaminng both the rationality and the contingency of
the universe, natural theology then helped form a cultural matrix in which
science could rise and prosper. Jaki also points out that whenever in later
times rational belief in a Creator as based on the classic proofs of
the existence of God, has been radically criticized, the result have usually
been at least potentially diasastrous for a creative cultivation of science.
With painstaking attention to original sources,
the author pursues his theme through the thought of Bacon, Descartes, Newton,
Hume, Kant, Hegel, Comte, Mach, Planck, and Einstein. Special chapters
show the connnection betwen a rejection of natural theology and an implicit
assertion of the incoherence of the universe in the Copenagen interpretation
of quantum mechanics, in logical positivism, and in the "pscyhologist"
branch of the new historiography of science. In addition the book
offers chapters in which thematic reflections on the history of cosmology
and evolutionary theories are built into considerations supporting rational
belief in the existence of God. Taken together, these investigations strongly
suggest that the road of science and the ways to God form a single intellectual
avenue.