The Universe of Sir Edmund Whittaker

Extract

As in the lecture room, so in writing. Sir Edmund Whittaker's presentation of his material is made attractive by a certain elegance. It is apt to fill his hearers and readers with at least a temporary sense that new realms of thought have been rendered thoroughly intelligible to them. His Donellan Lectures (1946) were no exception, if we may judge by this book which holds the substance of them. But elegance is the least important quality of an enquiry so serious in its import as to be concerned with the capability of man’s reason to demonstrate that God exists. Hereafter we shall give evidence for what we can only call the scientific levity with which this grave subject is here treated. Let us first express our immense disappointment that the author should handle with such evident lack of understanding, not to say lack of knowledge of what is being talked about, matters that do not pertain to his own science. This is particularly regrettable on the part of one who is so hot against the misdemeanours of philosophers and theologians in their approach to technicalities of physics in which they may be without expert competence. He specifies, grounds of serious complaint against the Aristotelians of the seventeenth century. Today it clearly appears that there are equally serious ones on the other side.

It is deplorable that the prestige of great attainments should be lent to 140 pages of misunderstanding that results in continual verbal equivocation. The ‘analogy’ here defined and depreciated is not the analogy of the metaphysician and of the Five Ways.