Einstein and Aquinas: A Rapprochement by John F. Kiley (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 527 Einstein and Aquinas: A Rapprochement. By JoHN F. KILEY. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969. Pp. 164. Guilders ~0.70. Although the title modestly claims for this comparative study that it merely proposes a rapprochement between two thinkers who lived centuries apart, who were concerned with widely different areas of knowledge , and who operated out of totally diverse thought contexts, the author apparently has more serious intentions. He wishes to show that Einstein's theory of relativity is the fruit of a unique epistemological procedure, that this procedure is grounded in a realist metaphysics, and that the latter is none other than the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas. Einstein's epistemology forms the starting point of the study, and from its outset Kiley was convinced that Thomism, " especially if its claims to being a true metaphysics were valid . . . ," could provide " a solid and sure foundation" for Einstein's "critical and epistemic views." (pp. 107-108) One is not surprised, therefore, to read the final result to which Kiley comes: "It is the conclusion of this study that there is no main Einsteinian epistemological doctrine that does not receive, in a completely natural and undistorted manner, such hoped-for support by way of essential explanation within the relevant metaphysical and psychological positions of St. Thomas Aquinas." (p. 108) This result is ultimately seen by the author as advancing the Leonine program of Aeterni patris, with its insistence on " vetera novis augere et perficere," i.e., perfecting the old with the new for a genuine advancement of knowledge. (p. 109) The study, as should be obvious from even this brief summary, labors under many defects and does not merit an extended review. Suffice it to mention that the author's knowledge of Einstein is derived largely from the latter's published works and secondary sources and takes no account of recent studies based on his vast correspondence and unpublished writings. Like many another famous scientist Einstein can be, and has been, quoted on both sides of practically every controversial issue. With regard to the problem of knowledge, Kiley's finding " a unique epistemological procedure " in the discovery of the theory of special relativity rests largely on his own interpretation of the limited evidence available to him. For example, Kiley bases his case for " the inductive beginnings " of relativity theory on Einstein's alleged dependence on the null result of the MichelsonMorley experiment. (pp. 16, 18, ~8, 33) Later on in the study he ties in these beginnings with Aquinas's theory of the agent intellect and its illumination of the imagination, proposing that " it would not be distorting Einstein's own statements about his cognitive life to justly picture the latter mentally ' examining ' an imaginary representation of the Michelson experiment in an attempt to understand its true meaning." (p. 93) He goes on: " And it is on this very point of the active intellect of Einstein, which 'saw something,' as it were, in his imaginary reproduction of the 528 BOOK REVIEWS Michelson experiment which his contemporaries did not, that St. Thomas' doctrine of the agent intellect impinges with the greatest force." (p. 93) Now, apparently unknown to Kiley, in a long article published in the same year as his study, Gerald Holton examines all of the evidence for the influence of the Michelson-Morley experiment on the discovery of special relativity and comes to the conclusion that such an inuence is largely illusory and may even be "the stuff of which fairy tales are made" (see G. Holton, "Einstein, Michelson, and the 'Crucial' Experiment," Isis, 60 [1969], pp. 133-197) . And Einstein's own statements are as of little help here as they are in resolving the debate over whether he subscribed to a " positivist " or to a "metaphysical " philosophy of science (see Robert Neidorf, "Is Einstein a Positivist? " Philosophy of Science, 30 [1963], pp. 173-188, an article crucial to Kiley's thesis but which is not even listed in his bibliography). For, as Holton observes, "Einstein himself made different statements about the influence of the Michelson experiments, ranging from 'there is no doubt that Michelson's experiment was of considerable influence on my work .. .' to ' the Michelson-Morley...