The Purpose Of It All What is the purpose of it all? Is an abiding sense of purpose assured by scientific and technological progress? Is biological evolution a carrier of purpose? What is the ultimate purpose of economic prosperity? These and similar questions turn up in most unexpected contexts. One such context was a blueribbon conference hosted in Moscow by the Soviet Academy of Sciences in June 1989. There a US Senator effusively praising free-market economy was stunned by a Soviet scholar’s blunt question: “What is the purpose of life?” An answer to that question is offered in this book, the expanded version of eight lectures the author delivered in Oxford in November 1989. True to his reputation as an internationally acclaimed historian and philosopher of science, Professor Jaki, winner of the Templeton Prize for 1987, 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 penetrating 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. By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki 261 pages   •  softcover   •  ISBN 1-892548-48-8  •  $18

The Paradox of Olbers Paradox Olbers' paradox is the puzzle of the darkness of the night sky, which should be ablaze at every point if the universe were infinite and filled everywhere with stars. Ever since the German astronomer Wilhelm Olbers' reformulated the puzzle in 1823, he and many after him tried to save the presumed infinity of the universe. They did so for pseudo­metaphysical reasons: an infinite universe could readily pass for the ultimate entity and serve thereby as a substitute God. In the process science suffered. This is the paradox of the paradox, or the paradox of the scientific mind in the presence of a more than scientific puzzle.  By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki ISBN 1-892548-10-0   •  325 pages  •  soft cover  •   $24

The Savior of Science The author, a renowned historian and philosopher of science, has been known for some time for his erudite opposition to long-standing cultural clichés concerning the history of science. In The Savior of Science Jaki boldly illumines one of the best kept secrets of science history - the role theology has historically played in fruitful scientific development. The volume begins with a portrayal of a most-neglected, yet all-important facet of cultural history - the invariable stillbirths of science in great ancient cultures, including Greece, Cina, 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 those 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 matherialist theories of evolution, and that Christian monotheism secures firm ethical guidelines against fearful abuses of scientific know-how. Christ and Science, a booklet that deals briefly with the same argument can be found on this page. By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki 253 pages   •  softcover   •  ISBN 978-0-9790577-2-4   •  $18

God and the Cosmologists Fr. Stanley L. Jaki, an internationally known historian on cosmology, unfolds some crucially positive contributions of 20th century scientific cosmology to prove the existence of God, while exposing many extravagant claims over the past century. By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki 286 pages  •  softcover   •  ISBN 0-9641150-0-X   •  $19

Genesis 1 Through the Ages     Around 1900 or so, two leading Catholic exegetes, Lagrange and Hummelauer, admitted that none of the countless interpretations of Genesis 1 that had been offered during the previous eighteen hundred years could carry conviction. The source of that debacle was concordism, or the belief that Genesis 1 was cosmogenesis in a scientific sense, however indirectly. This dispiriting state of affairs is re-examined in this book on a scale hitherto unparalleled. Rabbis, Church Fathers, Scholastics, Reformers and Counter-Reformers are passed in review. Scientists are taken to task for wading into exegetical waters. The author submits to unsparing criticism various 20th-century exegetical efforts, Catholic and Protestant, aimed at finding a clue to Genesis 1 by taking it for a legend. The concluding chapter also contains an interpretation of Genesis 1 which is literal without being literalist and eliminates thereby the specter of concordism. The Creator's Sabbath Rest, a booklet that deals briefly with the same argument can be found on this page. By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki 303 pages   •  softcover   •  ISBN  1-892548-00-3   •  $19

The Road of Science and the Ways to God Human life has become wholly science-conditioned and yet is shows needs that remain vivid in spite of their antiquity.  Religion is more alive than ever and its relation to science prompts many studies.  A novel probing into that relation is offered in this book. By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki 478 pages   •  softcover   •  ISBN 09774826-7-7   •  $24

Angels, Apes and Men   In modern times, which have become increasingly the times of science, three views about man have come sharply in focus.  One view has for its matrix rationalism whose inner logic prompts its devotees to present man a an almost disembodied being, an angel of sort.  This view originated with Descrates and culminated with Kant and other German idealists.   The view that man is a superior sort of animal found in Rousseau its major prophet and in Darwin its principal scientific advocate. A powerful corrective to these two extreme views arose through the scientific achievements of Einstein and in spite of Einstein’s emphatic claim that bodily death was the end of man.   By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki ISBN 0-9774826-3-4   •    131 pages •    $14