Causality and Scientific Explanation by William A. Wallace (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 678 of Biblical Theology. This dictionary, by the way it treats the subject matter, opts for a systematic understanding of Biblical Theology, an understanding which is itself un-biblical. Uon-Dufour, in the new article "Jesus Christ," recognizes that "the mystery of Jesus ... cannot be reduced to a single system," (~71) yet he seems to attempt to do just that. The view of Biblical Theology taken by this work is most clearly manifest in the index which was added in this edition, an index which offers a systematic arrangement of all the subjects treated in the dictionary. There are forty new articles in this edition which fill in most of the important areas neglected in the first edition. Among them are " Apparitions of Christ," " Conscience," "Jesus Christ," "Predestine" and "Providence "; however, there is still no article on Paul . The foreword claims that "most of the articles have been revised and corrected," (v) but a comparison of fifty articles showed that very few had been altered and what changes there were were minimal. Some notable inconsistencies between articles, inevitable in a collaborative work, have been eliminated from the earlier edition such as the conflicting views on paraclete found respectively in the articles " Consolation " and " Paraclete," but other revisions that one might have expected were not made. The article "Resurrection ," for example, is identical with the earlier one although the new article "Apparitions of Christ " brings new insights to the divergencies manifest in the various layers of tradition, insights that certainly would have improved the article " Resurrection." In spite of the above criticisms, the new edition retains all of the virtues of the previous edition with enough significant improvements tl) render it a most useful tool for students of the Bible. Dominican House of Studies Washington, D. C. TERENCE J. KEEGAN, 0. P. Causality and Scientific Explanation. Vol. II Classical and Contemporary Science. By William A. Wallace. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan 1974. Pp. 4~~- $14.00. This second volume of Causality and Scientific Explanation proves beyond all doubt that Father Wallace has secured a permanent place among the scientific methodologists of our time and that his philosophy of scienc:e must be recognized by all future thinkers in the field. Fully acquainted in both volumes with the latest secondary sources, he is deeply immersed in the primary sources of each period of history. It would be a mistake, however, to consider these volumes a mere historical account of causality 674 BOOK REVIEWS and scientific explanation. It is much more. It is a critical justification of the principle of causality as a valid, scientific explanation of physical phenomena enjoyed by scientists in every age, including our own. The first two chapters of this volume continue the critical analysis of modern science begun in volume one. The first chapter discusses the philosophers of classical science from Rene Descartes to Immanuel Kant. Understandably , the focal points of this chapter are David Hume's rejection of objective causation and Kant's attempt to ground the awareness of causality on an a priori form imposed by the mind on phenomena. For Kant the notion of causality is indispensable to science; and " scientific explanations , for him, are causal explanations" (p. 74) such as are found in Newtonian physics. The second chapter is a brilliant and original discussion of the main methodologists of classical science: Francis Bacon, Auguste Comet, John F. W. Herschel, William Whewell, John Stuart Mill, and Claude Bernard. While Comte and Mill followed the positivist program and embraced the Humean interpretation of causality, Herschel and Whewell reacted agagainst the Comtean restrictions, insisting on some element of production and efficacy in the exercise of real causality. By far the most formidable and impressive part of this volume deals with contemporary science, both in its use of the causal principle and in its scientific demonstrations. The principal areas of consideration are relativity theories and quantum physics, both of which are shown to employ the notion of real causality in its scientific explanations. In three illuminating chapters on contemporary science Fr. Wallace faces the problem of causality in contemporary thought straight on and talks in terms that modern science and philosophy can understand. Here the most...