This work represents Dr. Jaki's rebuttal of contemporary claims about the existence of, or possibility for, man-made minds. His method includes a meticulously documtned survey of computer development, a review of the relevant results of brain research, and an evaluation of the accomplishments of physicalist schools in psychology, symbolic logic, and linguistics.

A hundred years of two cultures.--Knowledge in an age of science.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THOMAS AND THE UNIVERSE STANLEY L. JAKI Seton Ha,ll Uni1;ersity South Orange, New Jersey FEW SUBJECTS MAY appear so discouragingly vast as Thoma's and the Universe. Few have pmduced a work vaster, let alone deeper, than did Thomrus. As to the universe, its Viastness as well as its depth ·are succinctly stated in Newman's Idea of a University:" There is but one thought greater than that of the (...) universe, and that is the thought of its Maker." 1 There is in aiddition the vastness of the history of the notion of the universe and the.large number of Thomas' interpreters, not all of them immune to prolixity. At any rate, Thomas' best known ~0th-century interpreters offer, as will be seen shortly, at most a brief chapter or a subsection of it on Thomas and the universe with very little on the universe as such. A possible reason for this is that in rthe vast writings of Thomas there is no chapter or question on the universe as suoh. By as such I mean the very core of the notion of the universe, or its 'being the totality of consistently interacting things and their very unity. Thomas, as will 1be seen later, is not iat all silent on this point. Brut if one tries to focate his relevant dicta hy looking through the detailed fables of contents in, say, the Para:na edition of his works, one is not given much guidance. No different is the cruse when one looks through the subject indices. Entries under "universum" are almost as scarce as hen"s teeth. As to entries under " mundus," they.are of no great help on the worild or universe as such. Authors who let their publishers undertake the compilation of the subject index of their books will p11obably agree that the 1J. H. Newman, The Idea, of a, University (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1888), p. 462. 545 546 STANLEY L. J AKI result is very unsatisfactory in most cases. Few reaiders can really sense the nuances of an author's real concerns, especially if, like Thomas, he has many important concerns. There is in addition the effect of the climate of thought. Under ordinary circumstances one does not pay attention to the air one hreathes in, and much less writes about it extensively, though one still can make incisive though brief references to it. In the intellectual atmosphere surrounding Thomas, the reality o[ the universe :as such 'Was taken to he a most obvious fact. There were debates whether the universe was eternal or temporal; whether it was uncreated or created out of nothing or out of some prime matter; whether any creature could he given a creative power; whether the unive11se was governed providentially; whether it was properly ordered; whether anything occurred in it :by chance or thy accident; whether it was absolutely or relatively the best; whether it could have been otherwise; whether it was necessarily spherical; whether it could move or not-but nobody.felt the need to discuss ·at length whether there was a universe,.that is, a totality of consistently intemcting things 1aH of which verged toward unity. Democritus' claim aibout a large number of universes was, of course, known, but just a;s well known was the illogicality of it. Either those universes interructed with one,another, and in that oase they clearly formed one :single universe, or they were unknowaible to one another in the 'absence of such interaction. 'lihe arguments Aristotle offered 2 on behalf of the unicity of the universe were widely adhered to even in the latter half of the 17th century. The idea of the plurality of worlds that came then into vogue l1ested largely on taking planets and stars for worlds, though hardly ever with the intent of destroying the notion of the universe as a totality. The spontaneous acceptance of a real universe remained part and parcel of Western consciousness until Kant's Critique of Pure Reason began to make a real impact through the rise of Neo-Kantiani:sm fil'om the 1870s on. Reaction to that impact 2 Aristotle, On the Heavens, Bk I, ch. 8-9. THOMAS AND THE... (shrink)

This new collection of writings from America's foremost authority on the relationship between science and religion, Templeton Prize-winner Stanley L. Jaki, is an incisive overview of the intersection of science with the most fundamental areas of human culture.

"In The Savior of Science Jaki illumines one of the best kept secrets of science history - the role theology has historically played in fruitful scientific development." "The volume begins by portraying a most-neglected yet all-important facet of cultural history - the invariable stillbirths of science in great ancient cultures, including Greece, China, India, and the early Muslim empire. This overview provides the background for the first major thesis of the book: belief in Christ, the only begotten Son of (...) God - a belief absent in all these cultures - secured for science its only viable birth in a period beginning in the High Middle Ages." "In the second part of the book Jaki continues his critique of science history with a number of meticulously argued theses about Christian monotheism. These include the view that Christian monotheism provides intellectual safeguards for the cosmological argument (an argument powerfully supported by modern scientific cosmology), that Christian monotheism vindicates the sense of purpose destroyed by materialist theories of evolution, and that Christian monotheism secures firm ethical guidelines against fearful abuses of scientific know-how."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Following Einstein's prediction of the gravitational bending of light, and in the course of experimental work aimed at its verification, only sporadic and at times misleading references have been made to Johann Georg von Soldner. In a paper published in 1804, Soldner derived the gravitational bending of light on the classical Newtonian basis and calculated its value around the sun with remarkable accuracy. Soldner's paper, inaccessible even in German, is now presented in English translation and put in the perspective of (...) Soldner's life and the science of his day and ours. (shrink)

This book, an expanded version of eight lectures the author delivered in Oxford in November 1989, offers an answer to the question: "What is the purpose of life?" True to his reputation as an internationally acclaimed philosopher and historian of science, the author casts in a new mould the argument from design. In doing so he submits its traditional and modern forms, among them the anthropic principle and process philosophies, to insightful and unsparing criticism. He shows that both historically and (...) conceptually the idea of purposeful progress is rooted in the Biblical recognition of free will as a carrier of eternal responsibilities and prospects. (shrink)

The exploitation of Einstein's relativity theory on behalf of the relativization of all norms and values is the most conspicuous aspect of a culturally disastrous trend, which, in its various ramifications, is the critical target of this book. Students of history, psychology, sociology and metaphysics will find much food for thought and rich material in this latest of the author's long-standing efforts aimed at the demythologization of science. This book presents fourteen not readily available essays of the winner of the (...) Templeton Prize for 1987. Co-published with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. (shrink)

Disorder and suffering are increasing significantly in our society. Violent crime, unemployment, escape through drug-taking are all on the increase. It is apparent, also, that much of this disorder and suffering, and the anxiety it fosters, is rooted in science and its technological off-spring. The un-employment produced by a micro-technology is only one small example. It is also apparent that one of the principal foundation stones for the scientific enterprise was Christianity.