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Scientistic Ideology vs. Christian Realism
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12751 |
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BOOK WORLD
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3 / 1987 |
3,384 Words |
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Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk is the author of more than thirty books,
including The Conservative Mind, now available in its seventh
revised edition. |
CHESTERTON, A SEER OF SCIENCE
Stanley L. Jaki
University of Illinois Press, 1986
164 pp., $12.50
CHANCE OR REALITY, AND OTHER ESSAYSS
Stanley L. Jaki
University Press of America, 1987
249 pp., $13.75
Sometimes a distinction is drawn between the word 'sage' and the word 'philosopher.' The latter term tends to imply systematic study within certain confines. But 'sage' may suggest intuition, remarkable insights by powers difficult to explain; at the very least, John Henry Newman's "illative sense." Thus the Seven Sages of ancient Greece were presumed to possess wisdom beyond ordinary private rationality. A "seer" may be blind, as was Homer; that does not matter, for he opens doors of perception forever closed to most men and women, he sees truth that a thick veil conceals from other folk.
So it is that Stanley Jaki quite rightly calls G.K. Chesterton a seer of science. A Christian apologist, a master of paradox, a romantic poet, a creator in fiction of ingenious parables, an accomplished journalist and tractarian - so we ordinarily think of the author of Orthodoxy and the Father Brown stories. Chesterton, nevertheless, was something more than a versatile man of letters: He perceived truths about the modern temper and the modern intellect which today's professors of philosophy obdurately refuse to glance at - after the fashion of Professor Eames in Chesterton's
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