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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
God and Cosmology,
This review is from: God and the Cosmologists (Paperback)
In God and the Cosmologists (Washington: Regnery Gateway, c. 1989), Stanley L. Jaki continues his quest to tie together contemporary physics and traditional theology, insisting that "All great philosophical systems have been cos¬mologies" (p. ix). In his judgment, modern science facilitates the articulation of classical metaphysics. "True metaphysics implies series of assertions about a Reality beyond the universe, as the cause of the reality of the universe itself" (p. 84).
To do this, the reigning ideology of the past few centuries, loosely waving the Enlightenment flag, must be suitably buried. This means, especially, the final internment of Immanuel Kant, who exacted from his followers "the highest price that any rationalist philosopher can demand. The price was the universe" (p. 11). Kant did so in order to construct a universe in his own mind. Amazingly, he was "so self-centered as to write repeatedly, 'I am God,' in his last great work, the Opus postumum" (p. 12). Repudiating Kant, Jaki obviously aligns himself with philosophical realism, a stance he contends science dictates. Furthermore--coming to the thesis of the book--the universe, inescapably and objectively real, also points "beyond its specific phases to an origin which has to be a factor metaphysically beyond the universe" (p. 52). Given the specificity and contingency of the universe, cosmological analyses and hypotheses and assertions are necessary. There are those, of course, who fault any effort to make sense of the universe. One logical positivist, H. Reichenbach, insisted: "'We have no absolutely conclusive evidence that there is a physical world, and we have no absolutely conclusive evidence either that we exist'" (p. 224). Such allegedly "scientific" notions are easily popularized, so that M. Esslin, describing our era, can say: "'Suddenly man sees himself faced with a universe that is both frightening and illogical--in a word, absurd. All assurances of hope, all explanations of ultimate meaning have suddenly been unmasked as nonsensical illusions, empty chatter, whistling in the dark'" (p. 215). Standing against such cosmic anguish, Jaki insists that we take common, ordinary events and experiences as realities which, rightly understood, point toward eternal realities. Thus, with the poet Robert Browning, we can declare: "This world's no blot for us, / Nor blank; it means in¬tensely, and means good: / To find its meaning is my meat and drink" (p. 201). The essays collected in this volume help us do precisely that.
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