Stanley L. Jaki (1924-2009) was a Hungarian Benedictine priest and Professor of Physics at Seton Hall University, New Jersey; he wrote many other books, such as A Mind's Matter: An Intellectual Autobiography,The Road of Science and the Ways to God,Miracles and Physics,The Limits of a Limitless Science and Other Essays,Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe,The Savior of Science,Bible and Science, etc.

He wrote in the Foreword to this 1979 book, “In endowing in 1943 a short course of lectures, Sir Francis Fremantle… stipulated that the lectures should serve the purpose of making known ‘the relation of Science to Christianity and the Christian life (a) in essence, (b) in its application to the education, thought and life of the masses of our people, (c) in its sympathetic explanation of the differences between several religious communities with a view to a common basis for the defence and spread of Our Lord’s Gospel.’ … A strict compliance with Sir Francis’ stipulations is the unabashed aim of these lectures. They aim at showing the crucial role played in the origin of science by a widely shared belief in the first article of Christian creed, an article placing the origin of all in the creative act of God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” (Pg. vii)

He says, “Bailly knew that he was rebuffing the theologians on a far more fundamental issue, namely, the question of original sin. It was that notion which was mostly resented by the men of Enlightenment determined to spread the rationalist gospel that man needed no redeemer except himself. Between this gospel and the Gospel there could be no meeting of the minds. Such is the real root of the irreconcilable dislike of the philosophes for the Middle Ages, an age all too conspicuously rooted in the Gospels. It was that dislike that prevented them from perceiving the medieval beginnings of the only viable birth of science.” (Pg. 41)

He says of Pierre Duhem, “He certainly proved that in respect to science the medievals were not caught in noonday slumber, or that mental stupor in which [William] Whewell believed them to be lost. On the contrary, they opened up crucially new perspectives useful for science. That these new perspectives are most helpful for the historiography of science as well as for Christian apologetics may disturb only those who cultivate that historiography in the hope that it may provide ammunition for anti-Christian apologetics, however covertly cultivated.” (Pg. 68)

He comments on Ernst Mach, “an agnostic turned Buddhist… Mach … sidestepped cosmology in the very sight of a most central issue of it… Mach was resolved not to let science touch on reality as such because that would have made science an ally of all rational believers in God who always rest their case on the reality of the universe in so far as it points to God through its peculiar coherence proclaiming its contingency. Duhem, the Christian, could only be appreciative of such a universe and that is why he held that the gradual refinement and universalization of physical theories provided an ever more reliable picture of its ontological reality.” (Pg. 72)

He observes that Kant’s successors “saw well enough that the middle-road dream of the Enlightenment about a cosmic and historical progress without origin and without end was a dream indeed. With the reality of God having been discredited the universe could readily become the ultimate reality, and as a reality its motion had to be cyclic.” (Pg. 91)

He says of non-Western cultures, “If there is a major characteristic common to them all it is their being steeped in a concept of cosmos and history subject to endless, repetitious cycles. That in all those cultures---Chinese, Hindu, Maya, Egyptian, Babylonian, to mention only the most significant ones---science suffered a stillbirth, can be traced to that mesmerizing impact which the notion of eternal returns exercised on them.” (Pg. 93) He continues, “The only exception to that wholesale yielding to the logic of eternal returns was a belief stubbornly maintaining itself within a small people, the Jews, who time and again were ready to exchange that belief with the worship of idols, a worship tied to the worship of a nature going through an endless birth and death cycle. Once that belief had become concretized in the life of the hero of the Gospels, a new and even more powerful challenge was laid to a view of cosmos and history deprived of origin and end… a Christian could not being himself to seeing Christ betrayed by Judas time and again if redemption in him had any meaning at all.” (Pg. 94)

He points out, “from Oresme through Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Maxwell to Planck, Einstein, and even beyond, all great creators of science found most useful, nay indispensable, for their scientific creativity, the belief that the universe is fully ordered. It seems indeed that in the shallowness of the philosophy of historicism there is no room for the basic truth about science, namely, that all science is cosmology.” (Pg. 99)

He summarizes, “[the Greeks] would have needed a conviction that mechanism and purpose are not irreconcilable notions and that in order to save one the other need not be jettisoned. Such a conviction… was mustered first … during the Middle Ages. It was then, in an age steeped in the Gospel, that man was able to convince himself that since both means and purpose are the products of the Creator’s wisdom, they cannot be irreconcilable no matter how disparate and mutually exclusive they may appear. It was that conviction inspired by the Gospel that made possible that science in which data wholly devoid of purpose are investigated for a purpose that can only be recognized through a vision which man alone is able to achieve.” (Pg. 106)

This book expands on themes in Jaki’s ‘The Road of Science and the Ways to God,’ and will be of great interest to anyone (particularly Christians) studying the philosophy of science.

Jaki is not only a priest and a scientist but a prolific writer who has penned numerous works concerning the relationship between science and Christianity. He is convinced that science and the study of reality reveals a Creator. This book is both a historical and philosophical examination of the origins of modern science - an event that certainly had its beginnings in Christian Europe.
Laki discusses the reasons why science as we know it did not evolve sooner; he also explains why science evolved when and where it did. Several excellent points are made: Chinese, Indian, Maya, Egyptian and Babylonians cultures arrested all developments toward a scientific structure. Once the very nature of science - the discovery of the Creator's universe - was accepted, the outlook toward science began changing and the modern world was created.
One can accept his historical and even his philosophical explanations without swallowing the theological ones. Still, this is an erudite piece of writing deserving of more attention that it has received.

Stanley seeks to link the Scientific Revolution that took place in Western Europe with the Christian Faith. In particular, he contrasts belief in Eternal Recurrences in pagan faiths that do not lead to a Scientific Revolution and a belief in Creation and linear History that leads to Scientific Knowledge.

But the author fails to consider two important examples where his thesis seems to falter: the Byzantines and the Muslims. They had the required faith but that did not lead to Scientific Revolutions.

In particular, the Byzantines had everything going for them. The Author criticizes other Historians of Science for being dependent upon the Unique Genius of Western Europeans but his theory is hardly any better.