Who Was Fr. Jaki?
Who Was Fr. Jaki?
Having authored over fifty books on the history and philosophy of science and natural theology, Jaki’s legacy has yet to be fully realized because it is no small effort to read his work. He knew so much, researched so thoroughly, and was unafraid to make bold statements to defend his findings; it is easy for a newcomer to Jaki’s thought to fail to appreciate what it can teach. A dedicated student needs to study several books before the overall message aggregates and penetrates, but once that effort is made, it becomes clearer how united and pervasive his thought was–and actually how simple the whole of it is.
Jaki was a priest, a theologian, a physicist, a historian, and a philosopher, possessing a vastness of knowledge that gave him a breadth of insight that a scholar acting as any one of those titles alone cannot achieve. He didn’t study history, for instance, as just facts; he studied history while also considering theology, culture, technology, prose, and artwork so that he could find the origins for certain cultural psychologies that affected decisions. His approach to history has been called both evolutionary and revolutionary.[4] Here is a brief review of some of the relevant works.
In 1966, after earning doctoral degrees in theology and physics, Jaki published a six-hundred-page volume detailing the history of physics using original sources at the time available mostly in the Firestone Library of Princeton University.[5] He titled it The Relevance of Physics, and it was published by Chicago University Press. It was reprinted in 1970 and in 1992. The content of Relevance of Physics was completed in 1969 by Brain, Mind, and Computers, for which Jaki was given the Lecomte de Nouy prize in 1970. After that he wrote about subjects related to the history of astronomy in a series of articles, and in a few books, namely The Paradox of Olbers’ Paradox (1969), The Milky Way: An Elusive Road for Science (1972) and Planets and Planetarians: A History of Theories of the Origin of Planetary Systems (1978).
In 1969, he wrote a preface to the English translation of a work of Pierre Duhem, To Save the Phenomena: An Essay on the Idea of Physical Theory from Plato to Galileo. This is the first essay he devoted to Duhem, whom he quoted in The Relevance of Physics. After conducting more research of Pierre Duhem’s work and the origins of science, Jaki published Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe in 1974, in which he carefully considered the fortunes and misfortunes of science in all the main ancient cultures: India, China, pre-Columbian America, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece, as well as the birth of science in Christian Europe. In 1978, he published The Road of Science and the Ways to God: The Gifford Lectures 1975 and 1976, a history of science, and later, The Origin of Science and the Science of its Origins, the enlarged text of a series of Fremantle lectures given at Balliol College, Oxford the previous year. In 1984, he published Uneasy Genius: The Life and Work of Pierre Duhem after intensive research of his “kindred mind” who died eight years before Jaki was born.[6] Jaki literally traced Duhem’s footsteps during his lifetime in Bordeaux and credited Duhem with the historical research of original sources that provided the evidence that the birth of science is owed to the mindset of the Christian Middle Ages.
The historical research culminated in a book first published in 1988 which contains the lectures that formed the basis of discussions at the Third Annual Wethersfield Institute Conference in New York and a lecture given at Columbia University, both in 1987. To his admitted “sheer delight,” Jaki titled the book The Savior of Science.[7] Since then he gave numerous lectures on the subject to summarize it, and those have been published as well.[8] This brief timeline of publication is far from complete, but those are the books most related to the content of this book. Together they comprise an enormous collection of research and insight. The primary sources used are Science and Creation, The Savior of Science, and his autobiography, A Mind’s Matter: An Intellectual Autobiography, along with other works and essays from Jaki’s later years.
This is also not the first book to be written about Jaki and his teaching. In 1991, a priest and physicist, Father Paul Haffner, published a doctoral thesis to portray Jaki’s contributions to the understanding of the relationship between Christianity and modern science.[9] His book, Creation and Scientific Creativity: A Study in the Thought of S. L. Jaki, is the first systematic treatment of the first thirty years of Jaki’s studies, a topical and synthetic presentation of Jaki’s doctrine. It is valuable to anyone who wants a survey of Jaki’s research and perceptions prior to the 1990’s, particularly the theological aspects.[10] Haffner was fortunate in that he was able to consult with Jaki during his doctoral work, and he generously included a chapter on Jaki’s life and career. Haffner also compiled, with Jaki’s aid, the first full bibliography of Jaki’s publications. Then in 2009, to commemorate Jaki’s death, Haffner published an expanded and revised edition of his book, which included a complete sixty-page bibliography of Jaki’s entire publications, theses, lectures, essays, and books. Haffner also added a list of reviews of Jaki’s work organized by general reviews and particular reviews related to his major books.[11]
Since the 1991 publication of Haffner’s thesis, Jaki published at least twenty more works, continually refining his thought and furthering it into philosophy and social issues. In his 2002 autobiography, A Mind’s Matter, published in his late seventies, Jaki used the simile of crystal growth to describe his intellectual maturation, a sharpening of the mind as if the edges slowly became more rigid so that the transparency became lucid. Jaki exhaustively, almost superhumanly, referenced his early works with original sources, something he insisted on and travelled great distances and invested much time to acquire if necessary, although he accessed a great deal of original works in the libraries at Princeton. His earlier volumes are large and intense with characteristic Jakian meticulousness. They form the foundation of the more crystallized ideas in his later works.
Jaki’s later monographs, essays, and lectures by contrast, have a reflective tone to them and read more as syntheses that cultivate his conclusions. They read quite easily but assume the reader has some background or knowledge of the material. Jaki’s work could probably best be approached in the following manner. Reading the earlier volumes is akin to witnessing how a monument is built stone by stone, the only patient endeavor that can give an onlooker the fullest appreciation for the quality of the construction. Reading the later works is more like being given a guided tour of the monument by the builder himself.
Even though almost all historians of science now support the contributions of the Roman Catholic Church during and before the Middle Ages, even Catholic historians of science are reluctant to embrace Jaki’s theological argument that the Christian worldview was responsible for the birth of science. Undoubtedly Jaki’s work contributed to the easing of the myth of conflict between science and religion that was very popular from the time of the Enlightenment to the decades in which Jaki worked. Therefore, it is disappointing that he is insufficiently credited as a leading proponent of that cause and that his argument about the theological origins of science is not more widely known, a disappointment this book seeks to rectify.
The chapters are organized to define and defend the title as it goes, “Science Was Born of Christianity,” and are organized into an outline for easy reference. The chapter following this introduction is titled “Science,” and it explains how Jaki clarified the definition of science in contrast with religion, and why he insisted that there can never be a conflict between the two. Those definitions must be understood before the rest of the argument can be grasped, for it is the lens through which Jaki searches history.
The next chapter, “Was Born,” is the longest. It is a four-part review of Jaki’s historical findings of the “stillbirths” of science in other ancient cultures and the “birth” of science in the Middle Ages of the Christian West. This information is extensively provided in Science and Creation and is necessary background information. Since covering such a vast history is, of course, impossible i
n a brief overview, the scientific successes of each culture are described followed by the reasons for the stillbirths of science within each one, as Jaki saw it. The second section covers the Old Testament worldview and how that biblical view purified a truly scientific worldview, a little appreciated point that is actually rather obvious when understood. The third section of this chapter addresses the scientific attitudes of the early Church Fathers, the point being to show the continuity from the biblical cultures into the Middle Ages. The last section is a lengthy survey of medieval Christian scholars demonstrating the breakthrough in scientific thought that culminated because of the Christian Creed, a breakthrough that can be taken for the birth of modern science.
The next chapter, “Of Christianity,” goes into more detail about Jaki’s rationale that Christian belief was the cultural matrix, or “womb,” from which science was born. This is the theological aspect of Jaki’s argument, and it is the aspect most ignored and misunderstood. A careful reading of it should tie the previous two chapters together to give the full weight of Jaki’s accomplishment. In the next chapter, the opinions and misgivings of Jaki’s critics are addressed. Anyone arguing that science was born of Christianity must be aware that, if done carelessly, it may offend and be received as arrogant, exclusionary, or chauvinistic. There is an understandable risk that such an argument will sound condescending to other religions while self-congratulating Christianity.
The final chapter is my commentary on the significance of Jaki’s research and insight and some thoughts for furthering this work with an ecumenical frame of mind.
Chapter 1 – “Science”
Chapter 1 – “Science”
“And it is always with measurement that the buck stops with science.”[12] That line is basically Jaki’s definition of science. The more technical definition is this: Exact science is the quantitative study of the quantitative aspects of objects in motion. The words “exact” and “quantitative” and “object” should be noted, and the fact that the very word “definition” means to put boundaries around something. This chapter will explain why Jaki insisted on this definition and why this definition matters in its relation to religion.
It is an unusually short definition, but it takes a much longer explanation because the word “science” has meant so many things. Today it has especially become confused by the advance of the phenomenon known as “Scientism,” the belief that science can solve far more problems of humanity than it actually can. Thus, there is a prevalent mistake in modern culture to overstep the limits of science.
Jaki not only clarified the definition of science, he applied it in his work. Where some historians have tried to understand the history of science by trying to understand what science meant in different times and cultures, Jaki approached the question the other way. He first defined that human endeavor of investigation and understanding strictly, and then he searched through history to discover where it was born and where it was not and, most importantly, why it was born and why it was not. Jaki’s purpose was not just to tell the story of science; it was to view that history through a scientific and theological lens so that the present condition and future of science could be better understood. If you are not aware of this short definition upon reading Jaki’s works, it can be puzzling.
As a physicist, Jaki consistently referred to science as “exact science.” He used that term in his doctoral research conducted from 1956 to 1958 and still in his 2004 essay, Science and Religion: A Primer.[13] In the primer, which was inspired during a Chestertonian conference held in Minneapolis of 2004, he began the discussion with, “By science exact science is meant throughout this booklet.”[14] He ended the epilogue of the primer with:
Equations of numbers are practically everything in science, very little in philosophy, and nothing in theology. It is therefore a huge mistake to take trendy philosophies of science, let alone some theological flights of fancy, for science. Numbers alone make science.[15]
He covered this distinction more thoroughly in a 2003 compilation of essays, Numbers Decide, a 2004 book, Questions on Science and Religion, and again in his 2006 collection of essays, A Late Awakening and Other Essays. He discussed this distinction in The Savior of Science, but without realizing how pervasively Jaki used this insistence that science be exact, quantitative, and about objects in motion, the significance may go unnoticed. You need that background before attempting to understand Jaki’s argument that science was born of Christianity.
It is obvious today that science is about the quantitative aspects of objects in motion. On the grand scale, the ability to travel in space has been developed by science. On the minute scale, particle accelerators to detect the motion of subatomic particles have been developed by science. Modern laboratories are designed to trap, manipulate, or measure moving objects. The equipment aims radiation or electrons at objects, moves gas particles onto surfaces, captures photo-induced fluorescence within molecules, measures the mass of atoms or molecules produced upon decomposition, or charts flow rates through pipes or drums, to name a few examples. In technology the quantitative movement of objects has delivered “ever more stunning marvels,” from the harnessing of the flow of electrons in metal wires to the detection of waves triggered by their acceleration in antennas, or “jumps” between “holes” in semiconductor materials.[16] All of these marvels imply a continued reliance on Newton’s three laws of motion: 1) by the law of inertia, a body remains at rest or moving uniformly in a motion unless acted on by an external force; 2) the acceleration (a) of a body is proportional to the force (F) acting on it and inversely proportional to its mass (F=ma); and 3) to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.[17] That is to say, all these marvels of science imply a continued reliance on “the quantitative study of the quantitative aspects of objects in motion,” thus Jaki’s definition. It was based on what is generally understood to be modern science, although more concise than other definitions.
Jaki’s definition was also based on ancient physics. Numbers are the only specifically exact notions, among all other notions, that the human mind is capable of forming. Aristotle recognized that numbers stand apart some 2,300 years ago.[18] He recognized that there are quantities, and there are qualities. Quantities are numerical, qualities are not. Jaki drew this distinction of quantities versus qualities from a dictum in Aristotle’s Categories, and it hinged on three little words, “more or less.”[19] In Categories, Aristotle enumerated the ten categories that can describe every object, using the phrase “more or less” repeatedly.[20] He wrote, “There is nothing that forms the contrary of ‘two cubits long’ or of ‘three cubits long’, or of ‘ten’, or of any such term. A man may contend that ‘much’ is the contrary of ‘little’, or ‘great’ of ‘small’, but of definite quantitative terms no contrary exists.”[21]
Aristotle went on to explain that if something is white, it can be “more or less” white.[22] If something is beautiful, it can be “more or less” beautiful than another object.[23] Habits can be “more or less” permanent. In the grasping of honor, men may be “more or less” brave or practice justice and self-mastery “more or less.”[24] But “more or less” cannot be predicated on quantities; quantities are absolute. There is no more or less to the number “1,” for instance, or to any other number or numerical fraction of a number.[25] Quantities–and quantities alone–are exact. “Quantity does not, it appears, admit of variation of degree,” Jaki quoted from Aristotle.[26] About words belonging to all of the other nine categories, the actions, the qualities, the states of existence, including time, place, and affection, one can say “more or less.” One can be more or less running. One can be more or less kind. One can be more or less a child. One can be more or less in the morning. One can be more or less at home. One can be more or less in love. Yet for numbers, “more or less” can never be said. The number “one” cannot be more or less one.
A Thomistic scholar will recognize that this definition of “science” differs from the cl
assical definition in the medieval universities, and, indeed, it is not how St. Thomas Aquinas used the word in the beginning of the Summa Theologiæ, where he stated explicitly that sacred doctrine (theology) is a science, scientia, because Sacred Scripture “considers things precisely under the formality of being divinely revealed.”[27] The term scientia means “knowledge,” and modern science of course did not get its meaning until much after Aquinas. Theology, according to St. Thomas, is a science, the highest science with God as its object; it is founded on the Wisdom of God. To compare Jaki’s definition with St. Thomas’ classical definition is too lengthy a topic to explore in the present work, but it is sufficient to point out that Jaki’s use of the term “exact science” does not conflict with St. Thomas’ ordering of theology and other sciences.[28] Jaki addressed the comparison in more detail in the two last essays in his 2006 publication A Late Awakening, “A Non-Thomist Thomism” and “Thomas and the Universe.”[29]
Modern science has revealed aspects of the quantification of the natural world that were unknown in St. Thomas’ time. There was not a word for what today is understood as Newtonian science, but that does not mean that such a word should not be found. To update Thomism is not to oppose Thomism, but rather to appreciate the thought of Aquinas so much as to want to keep it updated as new insights are gained. In the modern world, there is a vast confusion about science, and that confusion stems from a departure from quantities. Such a departure from quantities as intrinsic to science allows for erroneous philosophies to be grafted onto science, and in turn to be grafted onto Thomistic thought to conjure up notions of Neothomism and a transcendental Thomism–something Jaki termed (pejoratively) Aquikantism.[30] That is a subject for another analysis, so back to Aristotle.
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