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Science and creation;: From eternal cycles to an oscillating universe,

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The temporal nature of the universe of matter is one of the fundamental questions examined by all societies from antiquity. For those who who have taken this issue seriously, "fundamental philosophical considerations are at play in the acceptance of the idea of a universe that goes on forever through a supreme cycle." Jaki sifts through the details of those considerations with great skill and energy spanning the range from the ancient Hindu and Babylonian cultures to modern scientific thinkers of this century.

I had the great fortune to work through this volume with the author in a graduate course at Seton Hall University in the early eighties. Your understanding of the history and philosophy of science will be greatly enriched by investing your reading effort in this remarkable book.

"Science and Creation" is the first systematic probing into perhaps the most puzzling, but least discussed fact of cultural history: the birth of science. Cultural history abounds in parallel achievements, but it happened only once, between 1250 and 1650, that rudimentary science turned into a self-sustaining enterprise. Such a singular process can hardly be without a lesson, the grasp of which might be of crucial importance for the future of mankind.

To unfold this lesson the author, Stanley L. Jaki, Professor of the History of Physics and Astronomy, Seton Hall University, New Jersey, and an internationally known historian of science, first gives a detailed analysis of ancient Hindu, Chinese, Maya, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Greek cultures, all of which, especially the Greek, could boast a valuable start in science. Yet, in all of them science suffered a stillbirth. They all failed to muster in a sufficient measure faith in progress, confidence in the rationality of the universe, appreciation of the quantitative method, and a depersonalized view of the process of motion, all qualities which are the main features of the scientific quest.

Because the Koran overemphasized the will of the Creator, Muslim scholars fell pry to a mistrust in the validity of rational laws, and as a result science came to a standstill among the Arabs as well. Quite different was the case in the Christian, medieval West, where the biblical faith in the Creator permeated for the first time a whole culture and effectively produced the qualities described above. The ultimate results was the rise of classical physics. Today, in an age of space travel, atomic energy, and computerized production, science looms as a threatening factor. The reason for this may very well lie in an erosion of Western man's commitment to the biblical view of the world as a once-and-for-all linear process with its absolute values. No wonder, that at the same time great popularity is accorded to a cyclic conception of the world, the idea of an oscillating universe.

Such is the main theme of a highly original book, in which an astonishing wealth of information is marshalled to unfold, as the author states, 'the ultimate consequences of some basic presuppositions'. The work is a classic effort of synthesis, full of drama that vibrates through the long history of science.

This book is a tour de force of historical narration.

Jaki devotes the first half-dozen or so chapters to explaining how the fixation upon the cosmos as a grand, endless cyclical flux (esp. as the "Great Year") in many cultures (viz., Hindu, Egyptian, Chinese, Greco-Roman, Mayan, Aztec, Incan, Babylonian, Persian) crippled the advance of science beyond more than an "astrological" or "practical" level.

People live and die by their values and societies live and die by their highest beliefs. As such, Jaki shows how the hypnosis of a perpetually recycling cosmos could either (smoetimes, both) weaken the will of researchers to look for anything "new under the sun" or (and) stupefy the mind under a welter of constantly shifting astrological phenomenalism and fatalism. The celestial wheels within wheels within the great wheel of time kept great civilizations spinning their wheels at best. Once, however, a civilization as a whole took a firm stand on the unmoving and absolute origin of all things by God, science found traction and moved ahead. Exact, experimental science got its start in the idea of "impetus," and the idea of impetus was rooted in the impetus of secondary causation imputed to nature by God ab origine (cf. Philoponus, Buridan, Oresme, et al.). Likewise was the contingency of the world as one of many possible creations, rather than as an eternal, necessary emenation of divinity, crucial to inspiring scientific exploration. Further, the goodness of matter inspired Christians to delve into it as stewards made in the image of God.

I found the most interesting chapter to be his discussion of the how the radically voluntaristic emphasis in medieval Muslim theology undermined what surely had the greatest potential for science in the Muslim world. By the 8th century, the Muslim world was in possession of the core of Hellenic wisdom and was making great strides in mathematics and many medical sciences. By the end of the 12th century, however, science there was at a virtual standstill, either enmeshed in astrological animadversions or driven underground by religious zealots who rejected natural laws as a pagan affront to Allah's total sovereignty.

It's a shame that some people might get scared off by the, I am glad to say, gradually better and better known "hubbub" over "the Duhem-Jaki thesis" (i.e., about the medieval Christian origin of science), for, if readers could bracket their ideological sensitivity to such a "preposterous" idea, and just sit at the feet of a master of historical research, they could learn so much from this book. You might say I came to the "Duhem-Jaki thesis" as one unnaturally born, since I was first exposed to Jaki in his -The Savior of Science-, which is a very truncated précis, nearly two decades later, of -Science and Creation-, and then wended my way through numerous of his essays and related writings in the ensuing years, until I finally secured a (signed!) copy of this book. Part of the problem is that, once you "get" Jaki's thesis in this book, and once you admit, yes, science did suffer "stillbirths" in all civilizations until medieval Europe, you might be daunted to work through the 350-odd, densely printed pages of -Science and Creation-. In other words, you really need to have an interest in the history of science as such to invest in such a book. By no means am I saying it is a "hard read," for it is lucidly written and quite well organized. My point is simply that, if you want the gist of this book but would rather not pay so much for a copy and invest more than a little time reading it, you're better off reading either/both -The Savior of Science- or/and any of the numerous essays online pertaining to the Duhem-Jaki thesis. (Google "Jaki, creation, science, stillbirths, Hooykaas, Crombie, Clagett, Duhem, Hannam, etc.").

Thomas Woods's -How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization- and Rodney Stark's -For the Glory of God- and -The Victory of Reason- have fine chapters dealing with the same topic. You should also read Frances Yates books dealing with hermeticism, memory, and Rosicrucianism, since they provide ample (and very compromising) details on the alleged post-medieval "Renaissance," and are few of the books I have seen Jaki consistently and wholeheartedly endorse as a scholar.