jaki

Miracles & Physics
$6.00
This short book is a good introduction to the philosophical question of whether evidence for miracles can be allowed. (Another book I recommend is C. S. Lewis' Miracles: A Preliminary Study.) The difference between the two is this one is shorter and more polemical -- Jaki likes to cut his foes down in contempt. (One wonders he's not French!) The sentences also sometimes give the impression of having been written in a language structured differently than English.

Miracles and Physics is not a work of science, though Jaki is a scientist. The author sees beyond the bluster of some scientists, and hangers-on, and shows that science has not and cannot undermine miracles. Jaki's argument is eloquent, pithy, and brief -- the book is only a hundred pages. But in the process, Jaki describes the nature of science and reason in such a way as to illuminate both natural and supernatural phenomena. In the end, his is a voice of reason and good sense. He finds a Golden Mean between intellectual nihilism and naivite -- the mutual cooperation between faith and reason that I compare in my book, Jesus and the Religions of Man, to the use of two chopsticks to pick up a morsel of food (analogous to truth), and that Pope John Paul II compared to the two wings of a bird.

Jaki's emphasis on Lourdes is a bit hard for me to swallow, not just because I'm not Catholic (¡¯Protestant¡¯ would put it too strongly), but because the difference between miracles and magic. (Which I also discuss in Jesus and the Religions of Man.) One of the weaknesses of Miracles and Physics is that Jaki does not clearly define what he means by ¡¯miracle,¡¯ or discuss (as Lewis also does) the ¡¯fitness¡¯ of specific reports of miracles.

Jaki thinks for himself, and does not lack self-confidence -- most of his recommendations seem to be of his own books! But I was delighted and a little shocked to find Jaki recommending ¡¯The Ethics of Elfland¡¯ in G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy as ¡¯the most incisive pages written on the laws of nature.¡¯ That's high praise indeed, for a book I've long loved. Indeed, the rhetorical similarity between the two men is marked -- so much so that I compared him (not always favorably, but who would be?) with Chesterton the other time I reviewed one of his books.

Lots of sense, condensed in a small space -- what will physicists accomplish next?

Round And Around (Extended Version)
$0.99

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$36.00
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The Savior of Science
$18.00
As a Christian historian, I tend to agree with many of Jaki's points. He also owns a certain intellectual brilliance -- I found myself ear-marking many pages, to return and write down juicy quotes. The problem is, Jaki refuses to support his arguments with enough facts. The book often comes across as crotchety, dismissive, and even egotistical. Jaki is brilliant perhaps, but he doesn't give critical readers a chance to be persuaded. Instead, he rambles relentlessly, skipping from Justice Bork to Darwin to Arianism to sollipsism. Not always does he explain his point clearly, and seldom does he back it up with enough solid facts. Part of this follows from attempting two thousand years of history in 230 pages. But like G. K. Chesterton, Jaki also seems to feel an actual aversion to detail, though without Chesterton's humor, good-naturedness, or psychological acuity.

I found Jaki's point about the rise of science weak as an argument, though possibly true. Are wrong worldviews to blame for the stillbirth of science in ancient non-Christian civilizations? That is a provocative thesis, worth exploring. But a few paragraphs of dismissive and elusive discussion (6 for Egypt, 10 for India, 15 for China, 4 for Babylon, 8 for Greece, 5 for Islam) should not be enough to satisfy even fellow believers. Given that science did in fact happen to rise in the West, of course one can find post hoc reasons why this should be so; but to prove that it HAD to be so would take a far more in-depth and detailed argument.

I was even less satisfied when I noticed that, while he got some things right (about ancient theism, for instance), he made a few errors about one civization I know fairly well, China. I think Jaki overstates the influence of Confucianism and Taoism on public Maoism; of all the books Mao sold as a young man, only one came from traditional China; all the rest were Marxist and foreign. Jaki is just ignorant when he asks, quoting Bertrand Russell, "if . . . this youthful vigor in the Chinese mind was in fact very old, why was it 'often very difficult to interest even the most reforming Chinese in afforestation?' And if the answer was that . . . reforesting vast tracts of bare hillsides was 'not a subject for ethical enthusiasm,' how could Confucius . . . be presented as a model of modern, reform-minded Chinsese?'" In fact Confucius' greatest disciple, Mencius, wrote passionately about protecting the environment, including forests. (Taoists also described the stripping of the environment as a sin.) If modern Chinese have not followed their example (and they haven't, until recently), neither did many other early industrial societies. Jaki's attempt to reduce this question to theology is either simplistic (if I understand him) or vague (because I am not sure that I do.) Marx and others reduced civilizational causation to material forces, and that is wrong; but we should not respond with an equally simplistic argument reducing everything to spirituality.

Jaki's take on modern science is also titilating as an appetizer, but unsatisfying as a full meal. His discussion of Buridan, a name I did not know, is interesting, when he finally comes to it. But his grumpy discussions of Descartes, Darwin, Einstein, etc, seem longer on invective (and on airy and sometimes insightful assertions) than on convincing evidence.

All in all, I doubt anybody who did not already agree with Dr. Jaki would be persuaded by this book. It is probably worthwhile to read, if you hold Jaki's many insights in your hand without grasping. But if we're going to persuade the world of the life-giving value of the Gospel, I think we need to speak more generously, and in more detail. Stephen Barr's Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, and Peacey and Thaxton's The Soul of Science, fill in some of the missing detail, though admittedly with less flair. On the larger cultural argument, see also the works of Vishal Mangalwadi, and (also very brief) chapter 7 of my Jesus and the Religions of Man, entitled "How has Jesus changed the world?"