Two dangers confront the modern Christian regarding the apparent conflict between the role of miracles and the rigors of modern science. First, a naïveté that forces such shallow methods upon the scientific disciplines that the result is the evaporation of both reason and miracles. Second, the inherently irreligious spirit that empties the world of wonder out of homage to an outdated rationalism. Scientist and theologian Stanley Jaki makes a case for recognizing the needs of modern science and of establishing a proper understanding of the miraculous in history.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Deep Discovery,
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This review is from: Miracles and Physics (Paperback)
Although I have neither the intelligence nor the schooling in philosophy and physics to grasp all of Jaki's arguments in favor of miracles, I did manage to pick up a few very important and fascinating ideas.Jaki points out that what we call "common sense" is often just following the "climate of thought" of a particular era. But to really apply common sense, one must step out of the climate of thought and think independently, something we too seldom do. People use Einstein's Theory of Relativity to justify moral relativism. Jaki explains how this is entirely backwards, demonstrating that relativity "...is the most absolutist physical theory ever proposed." Such misunderstandings cut both ways. Jaki discusses how philosophers and scientists misinterpret scientific ideas in attempts to defend miracles. The ideas of science and philosophy are interconnected, but fully understanding those ideas and their true interconnections is a daunting task.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good sense, little physics.,
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This review is from: Miracles and Physics (Paperback)
This short book is a good introduction to the philosophical question of whether evidence for miracles can be allowed. (Another book I recommend is C. S. Lewis' Miracles: A Preliminary Study.) The difference between the two is this one is shorter and more polemical -- Jaki likes to cut his foes down in contempt. (One wonders he's not French!) The sentences also sometimes give the impression of having been written in a language structured differently than English.Miracles and Physics is not a work of science, though Jaki is a scientist. The author sees beyond the bluster of some scientists, and hangers-on, and shows that science has not and cannot undermine miracles. Jaki's argument is eloquent, pithy, and brief -- the book is only a hundred pages. But in the process, Jaki describes the nature of science and reason in such a way as to illuminate both natural and supernatural phenomena. In the end, his is a voice of reason and good sense. He finds a Golden Mean between intellectual nihilism and naivite -- the mutual cooperation between faith and reason that I compare in my book, Jesus and the Religions of Man, to the use of two chopsticks to pick up a morsel of food (analogous to truth), and that Pope John Paul II compared to the two wings of a bird. Jaki's emphasis on Lourdes is a bit hard for me to swallow, not just because I'm not Catholic (¨Protestant¨ would put it too strongly), but because the difference between miracles and magic. (Which I also discuss in Jesus and the Religions of Man.) One of the weaknesses of Miracles and Physics is that Jaki does not clearly define what he means by ¨miracle,¨ or discuss (as Lewis also does) the ¨fitness¨ of specific reports of miracles. Jaki thinks for himself, and does not lack self-confidence -- most of his recommendations seem to be of his own books! But I was delighted and a little shocked to find Jaki recommending ¨The Ethics of Elfland¨ in G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy as ¨the most incisive pages written on the laws of nature.¨ That's high praise indeed, for a book I've long loved. Indeed, the rhetorical similarity between the two men is marked -- so much so that I compared him (not always favorably, but who would be?) with Chesterton the other time I reviewed one of his books. Lots of sense, condensed in a small space -- what will physicists accomplish next?
3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
demon deacon fan,
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This review is from: Miracles and Physics (Paperback)
For my taste, the book was helpful but somewhat technical and more of an instructional or clinical approach to the topic of Miracles. Worth the time it took to read a short book less than 100 pages.
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