excoriating the more popular aspects ofnculture. In his analysis of BAD magazines,nfor instance, Mr. Fussell is rightlynharsh in his view toward such publicationsnas Connoisseur and ArchitecturalnDigest. But what about the pretensionsnand unreadability of various intellectualnjournals? If BAD has a home, it mostnsurely is found in a great deal of thennonsense that passes for literary andncultural criticism these days.nMr. Fussell is entitled to select hisnsubject and its scope, and to argue withnthat selection is to quibble. If you arenlooking for a robust jeremiad to read,nsay, on a plane into which you havenbeen crammed (a product, says Mr.nFussell, of “the rapid proletarianizahonnof air travel after the Second WoddnWar”), peruse BAD. You will thennrealize that your disgust at the conditionnof your country has been propedyncultivated.nGregory /. Sullivan is a law schoolnstudent at Seton Hall University.nThe Rediscovery ofnSciencenby M.D. AeschlimannThe Purpose of It Allnby Stanley L. JakinWashington: Regnery Gateway;n294 pp., $10.95nDespite Stanley L. Jaki’s distinguishednand protean career, hisnbooks are not often reviewed in ournmost prominent cultural journals. Thenbest response of the progressive scientisticnestablishment seems to be to ignorenhis work as much as possible, in thenhope that such neglect will doom it.nBooks by feminist witches. New Agengurus, “gay” liberators, and unrepentantnHarvard Marxists can all be reviewednin the pages of the WashingtonnPost Book World and the New YorknTimes Book Review, but not the writingsnof a learned philosopher and historiannof science.nJaki’s new book. The Purpose of ItnAll, is the text of the eight lectures hendelivered under the auspices of thenFarmington Institute for Christiann32/CHRONICLESnStudies while he was visiting fellow ofnCorpus Christi College, Oxford, inn1989-1990. For at least twenty-fivenyears, since the publication of ThenRelevance of Physics in 1966, Jaki’snbooks have been warmly welcomed bynphysicists, including the Swiss W.nHeitler and the Oxfordian PeternHodgson, but they are of great valuenalso to students of the humanities, tonliterary critics, writers, theologians, andnthe general literate public if it wishesnreally to understand the modern intellectualnsituation, its prospects andnproblems. The Purpose of It All is anrecapitulation, extension, and developmentnof Jaki’s thought, but especiallynof his profound and judicious essays onnthe clash between religion, ethics, andnscience in the Victorian and post-nVictorian periods (“A Hundred Yearsnof Two Cultures” and “Knowledge innan Age of Science,” reprinted innChance or Reality and Other Essays,n1986).nPart of Jaki’s task is to take the readernon a tour d’horizon of the variousnworld views that have been constructednover the last century. This might benread as a working out in detail ofnChesterton’s adage that the difficultynthat ensues when people cease to believenin Cod is not that they believe innnothing, but that they believe in anything.nThis is not to suggest that Jakinbelieves that the belief in God is provablenby the methods of science. For him,nas for all the great figures in our centralntradition of rational theism, science isnsimply incompetent to deal with nonphysicalnrealities on which, nevertheless,nits very existence and methods arendependent: truth, validity, noncontradiction,npurpose, obligation. As mostnwise and thoughtful persons in thenWest since Socrates have realized, “objectivity”ndoes not equal “objectness,”nand science is not the equivalent ofnreason but a subset of it.nIn the noncommunist West, as Jakinshows, scientistic ideas encouraged thenruthless immoralism of individualsn(social-Darwinist capitalism) and ofngroups (nationalist, imperialist, fascist,nand Nazi ideologies of competitivenstrife) and of modern painting andnliterature, dominated as they are to annunprecedented degree by what onenwriter calls “the bondage of purposelessnfreedom.” As Jaki knows, this wasnthe outcome of 19th-century Cerman,nnnFrench, and English atheism, agnosticism,nand aestheticism. Yet Jaki doesnnot simply deplore these developments.nInstead, he shows how theyngrew out of misunderstandings, falsifications,nand misuses of the scientificnmethod and of its results and possibilities.nDarwin is a key figure here — asnhe was for Jacques Barzun andnGertrude Himmelfarb — along withnhis legion of voluble and reductionistnfollowers, few of whom have had theninsight and courage that permittednThomas Henry Huxley in the lastnyears of his life to change his opinionsnso dramatically regarding the allegednomnicompetence of Darwinian naturalnselection. From Darwin himself tonJacques Monod and Richard Dawkins,nDarwinism has had, in Jaki’s words,n”man’s sense of purpose as the chiefnand immediate target.” Jaki’s nuancedndiscussion of Darwin and his legacynavoids the errors of so many scientificallynignorant critics. “On the onenhand,” he told a New York Timesninterviewer in 1987, “I completelynreject the use of the first chapter ofnGenesis as a scientific text about thenorigin of the universe, and to be taughtnas such in schools. At the same time, Inalso reject, and just as emphatically, thenteaching of a counter-creationism innschools in which matter is eternal andnthe human mind is but a chance productnof so-called evolutionary forces.”nJaki eloquentiy and combatively articulatesnthe tradition of classical andnJudeo-Christian learning, piety, andnhumanism that has provided the intellectualnand moral center of Westernncivilization — with all its hypocrisies,nsins, follies, and backslidings — sincenNew Testament times. Science is onenof the greatest achievements of thisntradition, one of the most glorious andnpurposeful products and uses of thenrational mind, but its very greatnessncan and has led to its idolization andnlethal misuse. As a-good Thomist, Jakinknows and communicates the insightnthat “second things suffer by being putnfirst,” that science is a good servant butna bad master. No lesson is more valuablenin our confused and chaotic time,nand no one teaches it more judiciouslynor in more illuminating and specificndetail than Stanley Jaki.nM.D. Aeschliman teaches English atnthe University of Virginia.n
January 1975July 26, 2022By The Archive
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