FATHER STANLEY L. JAKI: REVISIONIST by Paula Haigh
Webster's New Collegiate ( l975 ) defines revisionism as: 1) advocacy of revision [as of a doctrine or policy or in historical analysis] 2) a movement in revolutionary Marxian socialism favoring an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary spirit. Fr. Jaki's history and philosophy of science are revisionist in the sense that he advocates revision of "historical analysis" in science and favors "an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary spirit" in the progress of science. In his Catholic Essays (1) Chapter I is entitled "Science for Catholics" and contains some subsections that deal with the history of science. We will examine these one by one. In "The stillbirths of science" Fr. Jaki speaks of considerations that relate to the "surprising youth of science, that is, to its relatively late rise in history about four hundred years ago." This is the first and foundational revision of Fr. Jaki's over-all revisionism, f
