Books, Arts & Manners: Safeguarding Sanity

Chesterton: A Seer of Science, by Stanley L. Jaki (University of Illinois, 176 pp., $12.50)

Most people are aware of Chesterton as a master of English prose, a coiner of startling paradoxes, a writer of ingenious detective stories. It may come as a surprise to see his name associated with science. But although he had no scientific training, he had an astonishing insight into the nature and limits of science. Again and again he identified the central issues in the debates of his times and expressed his accurate diagnoses in trenchant and memorable language. It was an excellent idea to study his writings in this perspective, as Professor Jaki has done here, and to show the magnitude of his contributions to some of the fundamental issues raised by the development of modern science.

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P. E. Hodgson

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Chesterton: A Seer of Science, by Stanley L. Jaki (University of Illinois, 176 pp., $12.50)

Most people are aware of Chesterton as a master of English prose, a coiner of startling paradoxes, a writer of ingenious detective stories. It may come as a surprise to see his name associated with science. But although he had no scientific training, he had an astonishing insight into the nature and limits of science. Again and again he identified the central issues in the debates of his times and expressed his accurate diagnoses in trenchant and memorable language. It was an excellent idea to study his writings in this perspective, as Professor Jaki has done here, and to show the magnitude of his contributions to some of the fundamental issues raised by the development of modern science.