By Peter Milward SJ

SJ House, Tokyo, May 7 2014

Like Joseph Pearce (as mentioned in his introduction to the new issue of StAR), I, too, only met the great philosopher-scientist Father Jaki once.  I had already been introduced to him, if only by name, by my scientist friend Dr Peter Hodgson of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.  It was he who linked for me the names of Stanley Jaki and Pierre Duhem, as upholders of the medieval origins of modern science in the persons of Buridan and Oresme.  Yet already the name of Pierre Duhem I had come across in the writings of Christopher Dawson, especially his Progress and Religion.  I also helped to introduce the writings of Peter Hodgson to the academic world of Japan in the form of two booklets of his, one on “Science and Christianity” (with an emphasis on the work of Buridan) and the other on “Nuclear Energy”.

As for my meeting with the great man himself, it must have taken place when I was enjoying a year’s sabbatical in 1988, partly at the Jesuit Loyola College of Maryland at Baltimore, when on my way by Amtrak to New York I stopped over at Princeton.  There I was met by Father Jaki and driven round Princeton University in the pouring rain.  He seemed to be under the impression that I was interested in Princeton, whereas I was only interested in him and his various ideas, especially in those related to Shakespeare and Catholicism.  Maybe it was this connection, owing to his subsequent republication of JH de Groot’s The Shakespeares and the Old Faith (1946), that prompted me to seek his acquaintance, though when we met he expressed his primary admiration for Mutschmann and Wentersdorf’sShakespeare and Catholicism (1952), which had in fact been my own introduction to the subject from the time of my arrival in Japan in 1954.

On receiving this latest issue of StAR devoted to “The Legacy of Fr Stanley Jaki”, I typically (in Japanese fashion) began at the end and worked my way through article after article with varying interest, while keeping my eye open for any mention of his interest in Shakespeare – only to be disappointed till I came to the Editorial.  There I was impressed by three statements, the first with which I have begun these comments, the second which I have just mentioned with reference to Shakespeare, and a third referring to his reputation “for being somewhat abrasive and for not suffering fools gladly”.  Not that I personally found him either abrasive or impatient with myself, but I couldn’t help contrasting him with Jesus, who was continually subject to the folly of his disciples, not least Simon Peter.  Nor could I resist the temptation to make a pun on his name of Jaki, since in Japanese that name evokes the similar word jakuten with the meaning of defect.  That was, I am sorry to say, his chief defect!