2013. március 31-én, Húsvét vasárnapjén, életének 94. évében elhunyt Jáki Zénó atya. Gyászjelentése az alábbiakban olvasható. Requiescat in pace.
"Freeman Dyson is considered to be one of the greatest living thinkers and intellectuals on the topics of science and technology. His ideas have had a profound and widely regarded impact on many fields – physics, biology, history, philosophy, and theology.
"Professor Dyson’s lecture entitled “Living through Four Revolutions” will provide a first-hand witness reflection on the history of science and technology over the last half century. In particular, his contemplation will be about the four modern scientific and technological revolutions which were space, nuclear energy, genomics, and electronic computing. He’ll look at how these revolutions started, how they slowly transformed the world during the past half century, and how they are still transforming it today."
An Interview with Father Stanley Jaki
Interviewer: Your books and studies have been published in Hungarian since 1987 when you were awarded the Templeton Prize. You were known in Benedictine circles even before that as your two brothers are Benedictine Fathers as well, and you started your life as a monk in Pannonhalma. As far as I know, your monastic life began in 1942 but how did it continue abroad and what is the reason for having more than 20 books and 60 studies published abroad before having your first one in Hungary?
Father Jaki: The Benedictine Order sent me to Rome in 1947 to finish my theology studies so that I could teach theology in Pannonhalma – to teach theology! but by the time I had received my PhD at the end of 1950 the Order suggested me going to the USA. I was invited to the Saint Vincent Archabbey to teach theology at their faculty of theology and I taught theology and dogmatics there for three years until I lost my voice for 10 years at the end of the third year as a consequence of an operation. Later I saw that it was the Divine Providence working then. That is how I started to deal with sciences then with the history of science but I always considered the interests and aspects of theology. When I had to give up teaching theology, or rather a year before, I realized that the issues of theology and science can only be analyzed if you have a PhD both in theology and in any of the sciences and I chose physics. At Saint Vincent I took up advanced courses in mathematics in order to have my Hungarian academic results accepted easily. In 1960 I went to Princeton as an assistant professor and as I became aware of the fact that I would not be able to teach any more because of my [vocal] chords, I started to think what I would do in my life. I realized that writing books is much more pleasant than digging ditches. So I began to concentrate on writing a book but the most important factor of it is to be seized by an interesting subject. I clearly remember standing on the stairs of the Princeton post office in the autumn of 1962 when the idea of my first book on the history and philosophy of physics hit my mind. This book of 600 pages was published by the University of Chicago Press at the end of 1966. My problem was what NOT to include in the book, as if a book has already 600 pages it is very difficult to convince publishers that you want to add one more chapter to it. The title of this book is The Relevance of Physics where I cover the relationship of physics and biology, physics and ethics, physics and metaphysics and physics and theology, but I also wanted to add a chapter on the relationship of physics and psychology. The publishers did not accept it, therefore, a year later I started to write a book on the relationship of physics and psychology that lead me to the issue of artificial brain, so the original one chapter grew into five and this book was published with the title of Brain, Mind and Computers. Three months later it was awarded the Pierre Lecomte du Nouy Prize.
Interviewer: Yes, and this prize has a special character and aspect that is why it was given to your book. Who is this prize named after?
Father Jaki: It is named after a famous French biologist, Pierre Lecomte du Nouy, a typical Frenchman given Catholic education, but during his university years he left his faith and became a first class biologist working at the Rockefeller University in the 1920s and elaborated a new experiment to define the Avogadro number. In the 1930s he started to have doubts about agnosticism and materialism and during the 2nd World War he returned to faith. After the 2nd World War he started to visit the American universities to tell the story of his mental odyssey and as in those days public opinion was strongly turned towards Christianity, and in the postwar years people felt that life was uncertain, Pierre Lecomte du Nouy had an enormous impact. His widow collected this fund to award authors illustrating Pierre Lecomte du Nouy’s mental conversion.
Interviewer: Let me ask you about your other prize because if someone is given the Templeton Prize by the Consort of the Queen of England [the Duke of Edinbrugh], then it must be another kind of prize awarding other issues.
Father Jaki: Talking about the Templeton Prize first I have to say something trivial. It is the biggest award in the world as far as money is concerned. Now nearly 1 million dollars are given with it. I remember that in 1968, on 1st January 1968 [Father Jaki probably means 1988, as he won in 1987] one of the New York dailies gave a questionnaire to its readers and the most successful answer was awarded with 1000 dollars, and one of the ten questions was that who had received the biggest sum of money as a prize in the previous year: an actress, a scientist or a monk, and of course there was hardly anyone to guess that it was a monk being a scientist at the same time who had received that prize.
Interviewer: We know that the history of thinking is also your field. We learnt at school and elsewhere that science and Christian faith cannot be reconciled but you seem to claim the opposite in your books. Historically speaking when did this process start?
Father Jaki: Historically, this process began with the Renaissance, a conscious return to classical paganism in Western Europe. The structure of the society, however, did not allow attacking Christianity or Catholic faith openly, therefore the Renaissance pagan movement could not affect a large number of people. It was, in fact, the business or entertainment of the intelligentsia, a very dangerous entertainment as it resulted in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Both Reformation and Counter-Reformation mean a certain recurrence to medieval Christianity. When the Reformation and Counter-Reformation lost their strength and impetus after the peace of Westphalia which meant the end of the wars of religion as everybody got tired of religions, it became obvious by 1700 that the so-called enlightened, the rationalists were in full buoyancy. The dictionary of the Encyclopedia was published as well as the dictionaries of philosophy, and by the middle of the century the French enlightenment was feeding not the enlightenment –as this is a misleading label- at a maximum speed, but the blindness towards the transcendent or conscious blindness. This is the point of enlightenment. Around 1800 they were almost so successful to claim that the end of Christianity was being witnessed and that the Papacy would die before our eyes.
Interviewer: Your books and lectures, Professor, tell us that you have not taken all problems of science and the relationship and coherence of faith and science, the desires of the human soul and other data only from books and from the history of science but from the living world around us. How did you see these problems reflecting in people?
Father Jaki: It is an interesting story. In fact, in my first writings you can hardly find any references to Christianity. First I tried to address the agnostics being agnostic in a good sense, that is, who are not really anti-religious. I tried to show them that the scientific method is extremely limited therefore it cannot contribute to the basic questions of human life, ethics and values. Later, I found the time to deal with a great French physicist, historian and philosopher of science called Pierre Duhem who was born in 1861 and died in 1916 and wrote 30 books and 300 enormous theoretical and physical treaties. He is considered to be the greatest French Catholic genius at the turn of the 20th century. I realized why the universities in the world did not want to acknowledge and his genius. The reason for it is that unwillingly Pierre Duhem discovered that Newtonian physics is rooted in the 14th century, in the Catholic Sorbonne. For an agnostic or materialist scientist or ideologist that discovery may seem like a red scarf for a bull. Although our agnostic fellows and academic circles are willing to admit that Catholicism has certain values, for example Gregorian music, beautiful Gothic-style buildings, organized economic and social structure, they will never admit that the Catholic Church has anything relevant to do with creating science, no matter the quantity of evidence presented.
Interviewer: In recent years you have been to Hungary several times. You have had the chance to compare our society to the societies in Western Europe and in the USA. Our society, mainly our youth was greatly influenced by Marxism and materialism in the past 40 years. That is why I am asking your opinion about Hungarian people’s attitude towards ideological problems.
Father Jaki: I left Hungary in 1947 and I returned first in 1964. I witnessed a gloomy and desperate financial situation, but spiritually it was not so. I am not a specialist of Hungary, and I met only a limited number of people, but they were certainly strong spiritually. From the early 1970s I saw materialism rising, not dialectical materialism but materialism from the West. That materialism coming from the West threatened the faith more than the terror of dialectical materialism. From the 1950s on modern technology caused the spreading of materialism in a way that is unique in world history and in modern history as well. This is the real problem discussed by Pope Paul VI and the same problem seems to be staying with us now and it will be more so in the coming decades. Western European societies together with the USA fell victim of this problem and the same will happen to the societies of Central and Eastern Europe as well as that of Japan. The explanation is simply theological, it is the explanation of the original sin: you can see what is good but you do not do it, you can see that there should be limits but you disregard them, it has been going on so in our whole history and it will go on the same way until the end of the world.
Interviewer: Your books being rich in subject matters cover a great number of questions regarding science and religion. How would you summarize the essence of your books?
Father Jaki: My point is to try and show Christians of this technological and pragmatic world that the technological and scientific method is absolutely inadequate to discuss basic human questions, and is even less adequate to solve them. Technology, science and economy will never cease existential restlessness in people. It is the same restlessness about which Saint Augustine wrote: 'Our heart is restless until it rests in You.’ In points 34 and 35 of Gaudium et Spes there are about 5 lines saying that progress has not been able to fulfil its promises yet. Then 3 other important lines follow in which the Vatican Synod [Council] says in Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope) that there is a desperate fight between Christ and the world, a mortal combat that will go on until the end of the world. If this is the real character of world history then it is clear why in the past 30 years theology, religious education, Catholic newspapers talked so little about this cruel fight. Now as I am getting older approaching 70 I deducted that the most realistic description of this situation is that we live in a rock garden. Not in a beautiful and plain meadow where you can sort out everything liberally with fantastic technical solutions, but we are in a rock garden where among the many rocks you can also find many small fertile patches. God entrusts us either personally or bodily with a diocese or the Church is entrusted with a relatively small area to work on, to grow fruit, but you should not have any illusions that rocks can be ground to fertile land. These rocks mean the continuous opposition of the world. If we accept that this is true, and it is the real character of the world, then we will be able to do our best with a peaceful mind. In this case, we will not be victims of illusion of which I could tell a lot of stories. Young priests, young theologians, young Catholic philosophers start their lives and carriers with great hope and huge perspectives, and if the Divine Providence is with them then they will lose hope in the human sense in ten years and became realists. Then they could start their real work.
La importancia de reconocer los límites del método científico, que impide a la ciencia experimental tratar realidades no cuantificables, ha sido expuesta como una de las principales aportaciones del sacerdote y físico Stanley Jaki.
Destacados especialistas abordaron el tema Ciencia y fe en Stanley Jaki, en un curso de verano del 11 el 13 de julio en el Colegio Mayor San Pablo CEU de Madrid, ciudad donde el sacerdote y físico húngaro falleció hace dos años.
Los ponentes pusieron de relieve, como aspectos más sobresalientes del pensamiento de Jaki, los límites del método científico, la distinción entre ciencia experimental y saber humanístico, y la importancia de distinguir sin oponer ciencia y fe, informó a ZENIT uno de los coordinadores del curso, el profesor de la Universidad San Pablo CEU Leopoldo Prieto.
Intervinieron, entre otros, el matemático y profesor de Filosofía de la ciencia de la Universidad de La Sorbonne Jacques Vauthier, el físico y filósofo de la Universidad de Comillas Manuel María Carreira y el profesor del Ateneo Regina Apotolorum Paul Haffner.
Las instituciones organizadoras del Congreso fueron la Universidad CEU San Pablo (Madrid) y el Ateneo pontificio Regina Apostolorum (Roma).
Cuestión metodológica
Todos coincidieron en que Stanley Jaki, en su obra, se preocupó por poner al descubierto los límites del método científico, intentando continuamente deslindar el objeto de la ciencia y el objeto de la religión.
En una entrevista realizada en 1991, Jaki hacía suyas las palabras de Maxwell: “Una de las pruebas más difíciles para una mente científica es conocer los límites del método científico”.
A la obligada pregunta de cuáles son estos límites, Jaki respondía: “Los límites de la ciencia (y al hablar de ciencia me refiero aquí a la física) los fija su propio método”.
“El método de la física versa sobre los aspectos cuantitativos de las cosas en movimiento –continuaba-. Sólo podemos aplicar legítimamente el método científico-experimental cuando captamos rasgos cuantitativos en las cosas”.
“Pero cuando ante las cosas nos surgen preguntas como ¿es esto bello?, o ¿existe esto?, o ¿es moralmente buena esta acción?, nos preguntamos cosas que la ciencia no puede responder”, añadía.
Según los ponentes del congreso, ésta es una idea fundamental y “muy sana” de los límites del método científico en la que hay unanimidad en la epistemología actual, no sólo entre los catolicos.
Ciencias y humanidades
Precisamente en razón de los límites del método científico, el científico y sacerdote húngaro señaló que la ciencia experimental no está capacitada para tratar realidades que no son cuantificables o medibles, y pertenecen al saber humanístico.
Acerca de la distinción entre saber humanístico y ciencia experimental, Jaki afirmaba: “Los estudios humanísticos y los científicos deben estar separados. No se debe intentar fundirlos porque parten de presupuestos distintos y emplean métodos también distintos”.
“En humanidades, por ejemplo, cuando estudiamos a Dante, no preguntamos: ¿cuántas letras hay en tal o cual obra de Dante?, pregunta que en el campo científico sería lógica”, señalaba el sacerdote científico.
Jaki indicó que “debemos cultivar tanto los aspectos cuantitativos de las cosas como aquellos que no son mensurables”.
Contra el cientifismo
Los ponentes también destacaron que el padre Jaki denunció el cientifismo como un enfoque de la ciencia que no reconoce los límites de su propio método.
El Diccionario de la Real Academia Española presenta dos acepciones de cientificismo. La primera pone de manifiesto sobre todo el aspecto metodológico del cientificismo, definiéndolo como la “doctrina según la cual los métodos científicos deben extenderse a todos los dominios de la vida intelectual y moral sin excepción”.
La segunda acepción de cientificismo se centra en su aspecto de contenido, definiéndolo como la “teoría según la cual los únicos conocimientos válidos son los que se adquieren mediante las ciencias positivas”.
Jaki llegó a afirmar que el gran crimen de este siglo es decir que el único verdadero conocimiento es aquel que pertenece al campo de lo misurable cuantitativamente.
Preguntado por las consecuencias más relevantes, el sacerdote húngaro respondía: “Es un crimen en el sentido de que estas aplicaciones unilaterales del método cuantitativo llegan a privar al ser humano de su comprensión de los aspectos inconmensurables de la existencia”
Según Jaki, “la principal consecuencia es la relativización de los puntos de vista morales”.
“En lugar de movernos en una perspectiva moral, según la cual una acción es intrínsecamente buena y otra es intrínsecamente mala, ahora seguimos un modelo behaviorista”, explicaba.
Para el científico húngaro, “esta es la base del relativismo moderno que se fundamenta en la creencia de que existen varios patrones de comportamiento, o, como dice la popular frase americana, existen “estilos de vida alternativos”. Después no se hacen más preguntas”.
Complementariedad
En este sentido, el coordinador del curso, Leopoldo Prieto afirmó que “asistimos a una nueva oleada de presiones de una pretendida ciencia biológica militante atea”.
“Frente a un dogma clásico del cientifismo, que afirma que ciencia y fe son incompatibles, el padre Jaki reitera una doctrina clásica de la Iglesia –explicó Prieto-: sí hay una distinción de métodos entre ellas, pero ninguna oposición, sino perfecta complementariedad”.
Para el padre Jaki, ciencia y fe son dos modos de acercamiento, ambos racionales, con métodos distintos.
En opinión de Prieto, bajo la pretendida oposición entre ciencia y fe “quien vive una religión lo hace a expensas de una carencia de racionalidad; se condena a un estatuto inferior a aquella persona que cree en Dios y asume la verdad de lo que la Iglesia propone”.
Además, se cae en el materialismo, promotor de cuestiones como el aborto y la eutanasia.
En su intervención, el profesor de la Universidad de Leeds John Beaumont destacó que el padre Jaki siempre se movió por la convicción de que “la ciencia y la religión apuntan hacia Dios, pero lo hacen por caminos distintos”.
Una idea central del pensamiento de Jaki expuesta por Beaumont se refiere a que la ciencia empírica no conduce necesariamente al descreimiento de las realidades inmateriales que escapan de su enfoque.
Por ello, el sacerdote y físico húngaro manifestó que incluso si uno acepta los principios del darwinismo, la persona sigue siendo algo distinto.
Por eso, destacó el ponente, las tesis darwinistas no suponían para Jaki ningún problema sino hasta el momento en que se convierte en ideología.
Sacerdote y científico
Stanley Jaki nació en 1924 en Győr (Hungría). Sacerdote benedictino, fue profesor de Historia y Filosofía de la ciencia en la Universidad Seton Hall de South Orange (Nueva Jersey).
En 1950 obtuvo la licenciatura en Teología sistemática en el Ateneo Pontificio Anselmianum (Roma). Siete años después, obtuvo el doctorado en Física en la Fordham University (Nueva York).
Se especializó en historia y filosofía de la ciencia. Escribió más de cincuenta libros y más de 400 artículos.
Recibió los premios Lecomte du Nouy en 1970 y Templeton en 1987, así como siete doctorados honoris causa.
Era miembro honorario de la Academia Pontificia de las Ciencias y de la History of Science Society, así como miembro correspondiente de la Academia Nacional de las Ciencias, Bellas Artes y Artes de Burdeos.
Durante los años 1974-1976 impartió en Edimburgo dos ciclos de las prestigiosas Gifford Lectures y en 1977 fue Fremantle Lecturer en el Balliol College de Oxford.
Durante casi 50 años el P. Stanley Jaki ofreció conferencias en las más prestigiosas universidades americanas y europeas.
Jaki ha contribuido con sus estudios históricos, ante todo, a la clarificación del origen cristiano de la ciencia moderna, en continuidad con lo que habían sostenido precedentemente otros historiadores de la ciencia como Alasdair Crombie, Edward Grant, Herbert Butterfield, Alexander Koyré y Reijer Hooykaas.
No descuidó el estudio de importantes cuestiones científico-epistemológicas, ni la apologética.
El 7 de abril de 2009, después de un ciclo de conferencias impartidas en Roma, murió en Madrid, a la edad de 85 años, el padre Stanley Jaki, monje benedictino, físico, filósofo y teólogo.
vía ZENIT – Reconocer los límites del método científico, herencia del padre Jaki.
"This book is a collection of papers given at various meetings of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, all held in its headquarters, the Casina Pio IV in the Vatican Gardens. The lectures deal with the relation of science and culture, with the nature of exact science as different from other branches of learning, and with evolution. Their basic thrust is to show that there is no conflict between a science and a religion (Catholicism in particular) that are aware of their respective limitations. The latter derive from the unique function of quantities versus the function of all other words. While the latter can operate with the phrase "more or less," the former cannot do so without undermining the very definition of numbers, of integers in particular. The general title should not suggest that the contents and claims of these essays reflect the position of the Vatican. They reflect conclusions which the author reached after pondering the relations of science and religion for half a century."
Where Honest Scientists Trace Their Roots
By Edward Pentin
ROME, APRIL 29, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Without the Christian faith, there would be no modern science as we know it today.
That was the groundbreaking assertion made by Benedictine Father Stanley Jaki, a Hungarian-born physicist and theologian, who died last year aged 84.
A man of deep faith, lucid intelligence and great creativity according to those who knew him, Father Jaki’s expertise in science and theology led him to become one of the Church’s greatest thinkers, especially regarding the relationship between science and religion.
According to Father Paul Haffner, a professor of theology at the Pontifical Regina Apostolorum university in Rome, Father Jaki’s biggest contribution to modern science was the discovery that it “arose under the influence of a medieval Christian culture.” Before then, such a claim was strongly opposed by those who thought science was born out of the Enlightenment.
“They thought the Middle Ages were a dark ages, but in fact we know historically that’s not true,” explained Father Haffner, himself a prolific author who has written "Creation and Scientific Creativity," a theological study of Jaki’s thought. He cited great scientists of the medieval Church, in particular Jean Buridan, the 14th century French priest who sowed the seeds of the Copernican revolution (Copernicus was also a priest, a fact often overlooked in the Galileo controversy).
Buridan developed the concept of impetus, or momentum theory, which according to Father Haffner “anticipated Newton’s first law of motion by a couple of centuries.” Buridan’s theories were later developed and made known by Nicole Oresme, the bishop of Liseux.
Other pioneering scientists in the medieval Church included St. Albert the Great, who taught St. Thomas Aquinas, and the mystic, Hildergard of Bingen. “They all used the scientific method of observation, the formulation of a hypothesis, and perfecting a hypothesis,” said Father Haffner. He said their findings led Father Jaki to describe their contributions as the “cradle of modern science” because they showed that a world created by God is rational, ordered, good, and therefore attractive to investigate.
Father Jaki found that what inspired this early scientific method was a Christological vision. Non-Christian cultures tended to either adore the world, pantheism for example, or hate it. But Christianity, Father Jaki would say, “put the cosmos in its place” and only then could science begin to flower. The Church was the “womb of science," also because it used to be a leading financier of early scientific research.
Father Haffner pointed out how science has dangerously departed from those Christological foundations. “Now that society has become secularized, you’ve got this problem in bioethics, of things happening which shouldn’t be happening,” he observed. “Science has lost its connatural matrix and going on it’s own pragmatist road: ‘what is useful is good’ rather than what we say, that ‘what is wise will be good.’” The way of wisdom, he said, “has been lost in science,” becoming instead a means to make money or to be at the service of vested interests.
Father Jaki had a remarkable academic career: a “Distinguished Professor” at Seton Hall University, New Jersey, he authored 50 books and around 500 articles. He had a doctorate in physics, gained another one in theology, and held prestigious lecturing positions at Oxford and Yale. In 1987 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for furthering the understanding of science and religion.
At a Rome conference April 13th, speakers also discussed his other significant contributions to the Church, which included him being a “true apologist” for the faith along the lines of Cardinal John Henry Newman, someone who was anxious to discover the true face of God through a humble and sincere search for the truth.
Stanley L. Jaki’s theories on the Christian origins of modern science weren’t well received by everyone, of course, but his opponents tended to be mostly proponents of relativism or liberalism, according to Father Haffner.
He believes this was because Father Jaki’s work was “not only a challenge” to relativist and liberalist thought, “but an antidote.”
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The International Conference in Commemoration of Father Stanley L. Jaki was held in Rome, at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum on April 13th, 2010. Among the presenters were Antonio Colombo, Prof. Jacques Vauthier, John Beaumont, Fr. Pedro Barrajon, Prof. Paul Haffner, Lucia Guerra Menendez, and Prof. Alexandra von Teuffenbach. Also in attendance were Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, President of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and Father Jaki's younger brother, Fr. Teodoz Jaki who traveled from the Archabbey of Pannonhalma, Hungary. Fr. Haffner announced the creation of The Father Stanley L. Jaki Foundation, which will carry on Father Jaki's work. Fr. Haffner is the President and Antonio Colombo the Secretary of the new Foundation. For those interested in the Foundation, please contact me at magdalenross at yahoo dot com. Many thanks to Fr. Haffner and Fr. Rafael Pascual for their efforts in organizing the conference and their devotion to Fr. Jaki's life and legacy.
At Catholic University in Washington, D.C., August 2007.
Atop the North American College, just before his final lecture. Father loved to meet new people.
With Father Agius at the Angelicum, Rome 2008.
Catching Mary when she least suspected it! (At the Angelicum, March 2008)
Regaling Don Oscar Maixe and me with stories of his student days in Rome in the late 1940s (in the rooms of St. Philip Neri at San Girolamo della Carita, March 2009).
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