Customer Reviews

The Relevance of Physics

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Broad in scope and meticulous in research, this is one of the best of its kind. There are other books about physics and ethics, physics and biology, physics and religion, and the history of physics but this is special in having all these topics (and more) as part of a single global narrative.

It is well-written, especially given the difficulty of the subject matter. I originally started reading it to research a paper and ended up sucked in by the narrative.

If you do not have a college background in physical science, history, classics, or philosophy, you may find this a bit overwhelming. You can however read it in sections (just the section on physics and biology for example) which is nice since reading the entire book is something of a project.

It is particularly good if you are a student of philosophy and are interested in how the disciplines of physics and metaphysics get along together (or don't). It's a pleasure to read a book by a physicist that does not neglect philosphical and historical context. Too often one reads books by scientists that are really philosophy without the benefit of a philosphical background.

I hope the publisher makes it available again soon; otherwise I recommend you try your nearest major public or university library.

Anyone familiar with Fr. Jaki's work would probably say the two "essential" works by him are -Science and Creation- and -The Road of Science and the Ways to God-. These are certainly his most "popular" (i.e., "controversial") books, since they highlight in great historical detail and philosophical depth the theistic, and especially Christian, roots of modern experimental science. Yet I would say that if one had to read only a single book by Jaki (veritably a form of Dantean torture), I would recommend this volume. Virtually all the main lines of Jaki's later work are present in capsule form in this book. This should not be too surprising, however, considering Jaki was 42, with two doctorates to his name, when he published it in 1966, by which time certainly a mind as powerful as his had "crystallized" into a distinct shape which his later works would only illuminate.

-The Relevance of Physics- is comprised of 12 chapters (in four sections), the first three dealing with the organismic, mechanical, and mathematical world pictures of physics over two millennia or so; the next three dealing with the endless stretching into space of "big" exploration (astronomy), the relentless increase in precision in "small" exploration (particle physics), and the increasing mathematization of physical theory; the next four chapters discuss the relationship of physics with biology, metaphysics, ethics, and theology; and the last two chapters discuss the woeful vagaries of scientism and the shallowness of an "ahistorical" teaching of physics as a truly HUMAN endeavor. The dual thesis of this book is, first, that when physics tries to "bite off more than it can chew," it loses its own intelligibility and usefulness, and, second, experimental science is as deeply driven by faith as any form of human quest for truth. Physics is as relevant as it is, in its proper domain, only insofar as it is not conscripted into a seemingly "complete" but actually irrelevant explanation/method in all domains.

This is simply a treasure trove of quotations by leading scientists and provides a vast amount of grist for the mill of one's mind. It was a timebomb in 1966 and is still ticking in its own quiet way. -The Relevance- is a masterpiece in every sense of the word and I can't recommend it strongly enough.

Physicists often think that their theories describe everything: ethics, existence and so on. This book will help for us, scientists to understand where the borders of our science are. I wish it would be a required reading for all physicists.