Brain, Mind and Computers

    In an age when computers are making ever greater inroads into our everyday lives, well may we ask: Do computers have intelligence? Are they living? Have free will? Exercise moral judgment? Stanley L. Jaki, historian and philosopher of science, deals with these and related questions in Brain, Mind and Computers, a thoroughly documented rebuttal of contemporary claims about the existence of, or possibility for, man-made minds. His method includes a meticulously documented survey of computer development, a review of the relevant results of brain research, an evaluation of the accomplishments of physicalist schools in psychology, symbolic logic, and linguistics, and a thorough critique of claims about artificial intelligence. Dr. Jaki has written widely in the area of the history of science and on the intimate connection between scientific creativity and natural theology. For this book he received the Lecomte du Nouy Prize for 1970.

    Comments on the first edition:
    “Dr. Jaki’s book is the most informed, penetrating, and lucidly written treatment of the subject that I have read anywhere.”
 —Robert A. Nisbet, Professor Emeritus, Columbia University
    “Certainly, it is rewarding and refreshing to read such penetrating criticism of a field in which gratuitous theorizing and dogmatism are able to flourish because our scientific understanding is so small.”
 —Sir John C. Eccles, Nobel Laureate, 1963
    “This is a book fascinating in style as well as in content. ...which every scientist should read.”
 —Eugene P. Wigner, Nobel Laureate, 1963
    “Dr. Jaki presents a sustained, well informed and persuasive argument for mind-body dualism. ... My own predilections are exacdy opposite to Dr. Jaki’s conclusion, but I welcome his challenge.”
 —Herbert Feigl, University of Minnesota

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 978-1-892539-26-7  •  vi + 363 pages  •  softcover  •  $35

The Origin of Science
and
the Science of its Origin

    Modern man owes an immense debt to science. He has received on the one hand the practical benefit of powerful tools and on the other the stimulus to his imagination through the unveiling of the remote past. Yet science is a recent phenomenon. Its three-hundred-year-old history has occupied but a few moments of recorded time. No wonder that its novelty has provoked not a few reflections. These reflections on the recent origin of science are the materials and rudiments of the science of its origin. For the first time they are surveyed and analysed in this book, the text of five lectures delivered at Balliol College, Oxford in 1977. The historical survey is given in the first four lectures which deal in succession with the material accrued during the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. The lesson provided by this historical material and the analysis of that lesson, given in the fifth lecture, are the support of this book’s major claim: only a Christian outlook can provide that view in depth of the origin of science which is needed for a proper appraisal of the past of science, and of its future impact.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 978-1-892539-27-4  •  viii + 161 pages  •  softcover  •  $19

Miracles and Physics

    Miracles do happen though they many not be witnessed by physicists. Classic scoffers at miracles have invariably hidden a doubtful reasoning in their specious references to Newtonian physics. The same is true of some theologian-physicists who take the indeterminacy principle of quantum mechanics for a loophole for miracles. The author, himself a theologian and a physicist, sees in the recognition of miracles a litmus test of sound philosophy and reasoned religion. With an international renown as a historian and philosopher of science, he offers this book as a shield against two dangers: One is the lure of the demythologizers of miracles with their protestations of respect for the demands of the scientific world view. The other is the popularity of those who, in order to keep miracles, offer a mistaken interpretation of modern physics and are left with no miracles at all.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 978-1-892539-21-2  •  viii + 99 pages  •  softcover  •  $14

Science and Creation:
From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe

    Science and Creation is the first systematic probing into perhaps the most puzzling, but least discussed fact of cultural history: the birth of science. Cultural history abounds in parallel achievements, but it happened only once, between 1250 and 1650 that rudimentary science turned into a self-sustaining enterprise. Such a singular process can hardly be without a lesson, the grasp of which might be of crucial importance for the future of mankind. To unfold this lesson the author, Stanley L. Jaki, an internationally known historian of science, first gives a detailed analysis of ancient Hindu, Chinese, Maya, Egyptian, Babylonian and Greek cultures, all of which, especially the Greek, could boast a valuable start in science. Yet, in all of them science suffered a stillbirth. They all failed to muster in a sufficient measure faith in progress, confidence in the rationality of the universe, appreciation of the quantitative method, and a depersonalized view of the process of motion, all qualities which are the main features of the scientific quest. Because the Koran overemphasized the will of the Creator, Muslim scholars fell prey to a mistrust in the validity of rational laws, and as a result science came to a standstill among the Arabs as well. Quite different was the case in the Christian, medieval West, where the biblical faith in the Creator permeated for the first time a whole culture and effectively produced the qualities described above. The ultimate result was the rise of classical physics.
    Today, in an age of space travel, atomic energy and computerized production, science looms as a threatening factor. The reason for this may very well be in an erosion of Western man’s commitment to the biblical view of the world as a once-and-for-all linear process with its absolute values. No wonder, that at the same time great popularity is accorded to a cyclic conception of the world, the idea of an oscillating universe. Such is the main theme of a highly original book, in which an astonishing wealth of information is marshaled to unfold, as the author states, “the ultimate consequences of some basic presuppositions”. The work is a classic effort of synthesis, full of drama that vibrates through the long history of science. New and completely reset edition.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 978-1-892539-20-5  •  xiv + 375 pages  •  softcover  •  $29

The Purpose of It All

    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 most unexpected contexts. One such context was a blueribbon conference hosted in Moscow by the Soviet Academy of Sciences in June 1989. There a US Senator effusively praising 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 historian and philosopher 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 penetrating 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.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 1-892548-48-8  •  vii + 261 pages  •  softcover  •  $18

The Paradox of Olbers’ Paradox

    Olbers’ paradox is the puzzle of the darkness of the night sky, which should be ablaze at every point if the universe were infinite and filled everywhere with stars. Ever since the German astronomer Wilhelm Olbers reformulated the puzzle in 1823, he and many after him tried to save the presumed infinity of the universe. They did so for pseudo-metaphysical reasons: an infinite universe could readily pass for the ultimate entity and serve thereby as a substitute God. In the process science suffered. This is the paradox of the paradox, or the paradox of the scientific mind in the presence of a more than scientific puzzle.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 1-892548-10-0  •  viii + 325 pages  •  softcover  •  $24

The Savior of Science

    The author, a renowned historian and philosopher of science, has been known for some time for his erudite opposition to long-standing cultural clichés concerning the history of science. In The Savior of Science Jaki boldly illumines one of the best kept secrets of science history - the role theology has historically played in fruitful scientific development. The volume begins with a portrayal of a most-neglected, yet all-important facet of cultural history—the invariable stillbirths of science in great ancient cultures, including Greece, Cina, India, and the early Muslim empire. This overview provides the background for the first major thesis of the book: belief in Christ, the only begotten Son of God —a belief absent in all those cultures—secured for science its only viable birth in a period beginning in the High Middle Ages. In the second part of the book Jaki continues his critique of science history with a number of meticulously argued theses about Christian monotheism. These include the view that Christian monotheism provides intellectual safeguards for the cosmological argument (an argument powerfully supported by modern scientific cosmology), that Christian monotheism vindicates the sense of purpose destroyed by matherialist theories of evolution, and that Christian monotheism secures firm ethical guidelines against fearful abuses of scientific know-how.

    Christ and Science, a booklet that deals briefly with the same argument can be found here.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 978-0-9790577-2-4  •  vii + 253 pages  •  softcover  •  $18

God and the Cosmologists

    When first published in 1989, this book was introduced on this cover with a reference to flippant claims made by scientific cosmologists: One famous cosmologist claims that our universe may be a laboratory product from another universe. According to another the universe just happened by sheer chance. Still another argues that God himself could not have produced a different universe. Not surprisingly, the same cosmologist boasts of his atheism and gladly suffers being written up as the master of the universe. This new edition is enlarged with a Postscript, in which the reader finds that even more extravagant claims have become the rule among scientific cosmologists during the past decade. The eternity of the universe is taken by some for a scientifically demonstrated truth as if eternity could obtain that seal of scientific truth which is to measure it. More and more cosmologists prefer the term multiverse to universe, while cosmology increasingly gives the impression that it is but the most encompassing form of continually patching up things, a cosmetology on cosmic scale. Most of those with religious convictions and expertise in cosmology express little concern if any. How did we get to this science-coated intellectual and spiritual malaise? In addressing himself to this and related questions, the author, an internationally known historian of cosmology and the winner of the Templeton Prize for 1987, also unfolds some crucially positive contributions of 20th century scientific cosmology to the cosmological proof of the existence of God.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 0-9641150-0-X  •  xii + 286 pages  •  softcover  •  $19

Genesis 1 Through the Ages

    Around 1900 or so, two leading Catholic exegetes, Lagrange and Hummelauer, admitted that none of the countless interpretations of Genesis 1 that had been offered during the previous eighteen hundred years could carry conviction. The source of that debacle was concordism, or the belief that Genesis 1 was cosmogenesis in a scientific sense, however indirectly. This dispiriting state of affairs is re-examined in this book on a scale hitherto unparalleled. Rabbis, Church Fathers, Scholastics, Reformers and Counter-Reformers are passed in review. Scientists are taken to task for wading into exegetical waters. The author submits to unsparing criticism various 20th-century exegetical efforts, Catholic and Protestant, aimed at finding a clue to Genesis 1 by taking it for a legend. The concluding chapter also contains an interpretation of Genesis 1 which is literal without being literalist and eliminates thereby the specter of concordism.

    The Creator's Sabbath Rest, a booklet that deals briefly with the same argument can be found here.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 1-892548-00-3  •  x + 301 pages  •  softcover  •  $19

The Keys of the Kingdom:
A Tool's Witness to Truth

    The hallowed phrase, "the keys of the kingdom," is perhaps the most striking among the powerful phrases of the Bible. Yet the phrase has become rather overlooked among Catholics just as they have grown boastful of their biblical re-orientation. Life—individual, corporate, and global—has become dependent on keys as never before. Modern man does not, however, reflect on the technical marvels of individuality that dangle on his keyring. Nor does he suspect that his keys came into wide use in the centuries immediately preceding Christ. Christ's words to Peter, "I give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven," have therefore a special cultural setting. Since Peter lives in his successors, Christ's words have a significance transcending the succession of cultures. This is the gist of the first two chapters, dealing respectively with the history of key-making and with the biblical theology of keys. The third chapter is an analysis of all major patristic and medieval texts on the keys of the kingdom. It is followed by a discussion of the interpretation of Christ's words about Peter's keys by Reformers and Counter-Reformers. The fifth or concluding chapter is a probing into the only meaning that ought to be given to the "open church"—this chief shibboleth of post-Vatican II times—if the significance of one's very own keys is not to be jeopardized.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 1-892548-14-3  •  vii + 228 pages  •  softcover  •  $14

And on This Rock:
The Witness of One Land and Two Covenants

    The words, "You are 'Rock,' and on this rock I will build my church," which Christ spoke to Peter, made history. Father Jaki puts those words into their geographical context and biblical perspective. In so doing, he offers the reader a novel insight into Peter's primacy. He moves from a detailed account of the place, Caesarea Philippi, to an analysis of the word "rock" as used in the Old Testament, and from there to an examination of Jesus' choice of that very word in rewarding Peter's confession of faith in Him as the Son of the living God. In the new chapter added to this third edition, Father Jaki explores a hitherto unnoticed facet of biographies of Jesus: In accounts of Jesus' life written in the spirit of "higher criticism," Caesarea Philippi occupies no significant piace, if any at all. Father Jaki also shows that the superhuman solidity, which Christ promised to the papacy, entails the popes' unfailing assertion of His divinity.

(About the first edition)
"It deserves a place of honor in every parish library."
—The Priest
"Not for several years have we seen such a forthright apologetic lesson."
—Today's Parish

(About the French translation)
"Exégèse original..."
—Bulletin critique du Livre Français

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 0-931888-68-9  •  viii + 169 pages  •  softcover  •  $10

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The Road of Science and the Ways to God

    Science is very much a late-comer in human history, nowadays taken to be several million years old. Of that immense past, the history of science takes up perhaps twice twenty centuries. In fact, science as we use it today is no more than a few hundred years old. During that time science has grown at an accelerated rate, which took an explosive character during the twentieth century. Human life has become wholly science-conditioned, and yet it shows needs that remain vivid for all their antiquity. Religion is more alive than ever. Its relation to science keeps prompting a great many studies. A novel probing into that relation is offered in the pages of this book, the text of Gifford Lectures delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1974 and 1975. According to the thesis developed in these lectures the epistemology of the classic proofs of the existence of God subtly resurfaced in methodologies that are associated with great creative advances in science. It is also proposed that whenever a scientific method has been submitted which is implicitly or thematically contrary to that epistemology, science has become a real or at least a potential loser. The thesis is supported by a remarkable mastery of the history of physics, astronomy, philosophy, and theology.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 09774826-7-7  •  ix + 478 pages  •  softcover  •  $24

Lord Gifford and his Lectures: A Centenary Retrospect

    The first edition of this book was published in 1986, when the Gifford Lectures were one hundred years old. Established by a generous provision in Adam Lord Gifford's will, signed on August 21st 1885, those lectureships, entrusted to the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and St. Andrews, soon became a prominent forum for natural theology. The author, himself a Gifford lecturer, explores the background and contents of Lord Gifford's will as an introduction to his main theme: the functioning of Gifford Lectures as a quasi-institutional framework for natural theology across the broad spectrum of modern philosophical trends. This new edition includes a list and discussion of the Lectures delivered up to 1995.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 0-7073-0750-3  •  viii+168 pages  •  hardcover  •  $12

Angels, Apes and Men

    In modern times, which have become increasingly the times of science, three views about man have come sharply in focus. One view has for its matrix rationalism whose inner logic prompts its devotees to present man a an almost disembodied being, an angel of sort. This view originated with Descartes and culminated with Kant and other German idealists. The view that man is a superior sort of animal found in Rousseau its major prophet and in Darwin its principal scientific advocate. A powerful corrective to these two extreme views arose through the scientific achievements of Einstein and in spite of Einstein's emphatic claim that bodily death was the end of man.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 0-9774826-3-4  •  ix + 132 pages  •  softcover  •  $14

Chesterton, a Seer of Science

    Cherished for his Father Brown detective stories, admired for his sword-play of words in his weekly column in the Illustrated London News, with thirty or so books of his still in print more than sixty years after his death in 1936, Chesterton is still to be recognized the philosophical genius he was. Owing to his genius as a philosopher, Chesterton was also a seer of science. This may surprise even most Chesterton aficionados and may throw into a rage not a few professional authorities on science. But Chesterton's many statements on science prove that he had a penetrating and prophetic vision of what science was truly about and what it was not and could not be. The evidence is laid out by an internationally known historian and philosopher of science, who groups under four headings Chesterton's pertinent dicta. He was an incisive interpreter of science, a resolute antagonist of scientism, a penetrating critic of evolutionism, and, last but not least, an inspired champion of the universe. Compared with most modern scientific cosmologists, Chesterton is a true giant of cosmology, a subject which sorely tests the ability of the scientist as a philosopher.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 1-892548-21-6  •  xvi + 164 pages  •  softcover  •  $16