Quantities rule modern life and do this increasingly. Their rule at times is tantamount to tyranny. For this man can only blame himself. Galileo was the first to show that motion, and therefore everything in this life, is ruled by verifiably exact laws. But it was the same Galileo, who gave for mankind a pattern in hubris, which in this case was all the more alluring as it came wrapped in science. Galileo argued that only quantities put man into contact with reality and that secondary qualities were a purely subjective matter. The first scientific dent in man's inordinate respect for quantities came when Gödel formulated, in 1930, his theory of the incompleteness of arithmetic, this basic systematization of numbers. He, however, lacked philosophical and personal qualities to reverse the trend initiated by Galileo. Instead, enormous hearing was given to pontifications in the name of mathematics, such as Norbert Wiener's statements on cybernetics as if it impinged even on religion. Power over quantitative laws gave mankind undreamed riches, but also impoverished his grasp of his sense of purpose, which implies immensely more than mere quantities.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 978-1-892548-47-4 •  viii + 76 pages  •  softcover