Abstract

This book is a very expensive disappointment. It is a series of edifying discourses on the limits of the knowledge of physics for understanding the universe in all its dimensions. To bring home the point that physics can provide no ultimate metaphysical, theological, moral/ethical, or even cosmological answers to questions which must inevitably be raised, Jaki races up and down the pages of the more reflective and perhaps near-philosophical utterances of famous physicists, chemists, etc. The fruits of his obviously omnivorous reading are a welter of names, quotes, and footnotes served up to the reader en masse in an attempt to establish by authority, apparently, a general position which might or might not have been establishable by analysis and argument. There are some curiosities that may interest the historian of science in the book, but the philosophical pickings are slim.—E. A. R.