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 978-1-892548-48-1  •  vii + 261 pages  •  softcover