Science Was Born of Christianity

Science Was Born of Christianity: The Teaching of Fr. Stanley L. Jaki, by Stacy Trasancos.
A very brief summary of the book:

• Fr. Jaki defined science (more precisely, exact science) as “the quantitative study of the quantitative aspects of objects in motion.” (It's not clear to me if the italics are from Fr. Jaki or Dr. Trasancos.) This settles the questions of science vs. theology by drawing a distinct line between the two, so that much of what passes as “scientific” discussion of various matters is excluded from science properly speaking. This also leaves physics as the only true science, though the more chemistry becomes reducible to physics, the more it becomes a true science as well, and the more biology becomes reducible to chemistry, the more it in turn becomes a true science. 
• Although many civilizations achieved great things in mathematics and practical physics, science as an ongoing study of quantitative aspects etc. only became a self-sustaining enterprise in a society that was rooted in a Christian view of the world.
• Others societies ultimately became bogged down because of beliefs in a cyclical nature of reality, flowing in and out of existence. Only Christianity with its insistence on a God who is wholly distinct from creation, yet who also became incarnate in that creation, was able to break the cycle.

It’s an interesting enough argument, but the book is far from problem free.

Its most attention-getting claim, one that drew to it the attention of an atheist blogger who inadvertently gave the book wider publicity, is this: 

To understand this claim is to understand why the Catholic Church has a legitimate right and authority to veto scientific conclusions which directly contradict divinely revealed dogma. (Kindle Locations 136-137).

The claim is never supported. I read the book and I still don't understand how this follows from what Fr. Jaki wrote. The Church can speak about pseudo-scientific conclusions drawn by scientists who do not understand the limits of their subject matter, but if “scientific conclusions” in the quoted passage is taken to mean only the results of quantitative study etc., then the Church has no grounds on which to veto anything.

The book also suffers from stylistic problems. It was originally Dr. Trasancos master's thesis, and it reads like a master's thesis. It is badly in need of a professional editor to untangle sentences that are made to do too much work, making three or four points at a time, and none of them clearly. (An editor could also have helped with punctuation issues that make the text even harder to follow.)

Then there's the discussion of the famous Paris condemnations of 1277. The author cites several of the condemned propositions, but she does so like this:

Proposition 27 asserted that God can make as many worlds as He wills. “That the first cause cannot make more than one world.” (Kindle Locations 1815-1816).

Proposition 27 is actually the material within the quotation marks. The proposition is false and therefore condemned, and from that one can draw the conclusion that God can in fact create more than one world (though not, in fact, the conclusion that “God can make as many worlds as He wills," true though it is). So it is with all the cited propositions: They all assert falsehoods, and it is from their condemnation that we can infer the truth. For someone who does not understand how the process of condemning propositions works, this section of the book cannot help but be confusing.

Then there is at least one outright factual errror:

By 711 the Arabs took Spain and twenty-one years later France.... (Locations 1029-1030).

This would come as news to Charles Martel.

I am well aware that summarizing Fr. Jaki's work into one short book was a Herculean task, and I did learn something from reading the book. It wasn't a waste of my time or money, but it isn't exceptionally good either.