Contemporary Issues in Islam and Science Volume 2 9780754629177, 9781315259475

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Contemporary Issues in Islam and Science

Islam and Science: Historic and Contemporary Perspectives Titles in the Series: Studies in the Islam and Science Nexus Volume 1 Muzaffar Iqbal Contemporary Issues in Islam and Science Volume 2 Muzaffar Iqbal New Perspectives on the History of Islamic Science Volume 3 Muzaffar Iqbal Studies in the Making of Islamic Science: Knowledge in Motion Volume 4 Muzaffar Iqbal

Contemporary Issues in Islam and Science Volume 2

Edited by

Muzaffar Iqbal Center for Islam and Science, Canada

O Routledge

S^^ Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2012 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Muzaffar Iqbal 2012. For copyright of individual articles please refer to the Acknowledgements. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Wherever possible, these reprints are made from a copy of the original printing, but these can themselves be of very variable quality. Whilst the publisher has made every effort to ensure the quality of the reprint, some variability may inevitably remain. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Contemporary issues in Islam and science. - (Islam and science ; v. 2) 1. Islam and science. I. Series II. Iqbal, Muzaffar, 1954297.2'65-dc23 Library of Congress Control Number: 2011935821 ISBN 9780754629177 (hbk)

Contents

Acknowledgements Editor's A cknowledgem ents Introduction PART I

FORMULATING QUESTIONS ON ISLAM AND SCIENCE NEXUS

1 Ziauddin Sardar (1988), 'Where's Where? Mapping Out the Future of Islamic Science (Part I)', Journal of Islamic Science, 4, pp. 35-63. 2 Ziauddin Sardar (1989), 'Where's Where? Mapping Out the Future of Islamic Science (Part II)', Journal of Islamic Science, 5, pp. 69-110. 3 Mohammad Hashim Kamali (2003), 'Islam, Rationality and Science: A Brief Analysis', Islam & Science, 1, pp. 11-29. 4 Mehdi Golshani (2003), 'Does Science Offer Evidence of a Transcendent Reality and Purpose?', Islam & Science, 1, pp. 45-58. PART II

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3 33 75 95

MAJOR VOICES

5 Wan Suhaimi Wan Abdullah (2007), 'Ibn Slna and Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadl on the Origination of the Soul (huduth al-nafs) and the Invalidation of its Transmigration (ibtal al-tanasukh)', Islam & Science, 5, pp. 151-64. 6 'Adi Setia (2004), 'Fakhr al-Dln al-RazT on Physics and the Nature of the Physical World: A Preliminary Survey', Islam & Science, 2, pp. 161-80. 7 Ibrahim Kalin (2003), 'Between Physics and Metaphysics: Mulla Sadra on Nature and Motion', Islam & Science, 1, pp. 59-90. 8 Muhammad Maroof Shah (2003), 'Iqbal's Appropriation of Modern Science vis-a-vis Religion: A Critical Appraisal', Journal of Islamic Science, 19, pp. 25-76. 9 Yamine Mermer and Redha Ameur (2004), 'Beyond the "Modern": Sacld al-Nursfs View of Science', Islam & Science, 2, pp. 119-60. 10 Ahmed Bouzaid (2004), 'Science and Technology in the Discourse of Sayyid Qutb', Journal of Islamic Science, 20, pp. 9-33. 11 Ibrahim Kalin/Seyyed Hossein Nasr (2001), 'The Sacred versus the Secular: Nasr on Science', in Lewis Edwin Hahn, Randall E. Auxier, and Lucian W. Stone, Jr. (eds), The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr: The Library of Living Philosophers, 28, pp. 445-68. 12 Wolfgang Smith/Seyyed Hossein Nasr (2001), 'Sophia Perennis and Modern Science' in Lewis Edwin Hahn, Randall E. Auxier, and Lucian W. Stone, Jr. (eds), The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr: The Library of Living Philosophers, 28, pp. 469-92.

Ill 125 145 177 213 255

279

303

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13 'Adi Setia (2003), 'The Philosophy of Science of Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas', Islam & Science, 1, pp. 165-214. 327 PART III

ISLAMIC COSMOLOGY

14 Muzaffar Iqbal (2006), 'In the Beginning: Islamic Perspectives on Cosmological Origins', Islam & Science, 4, pp. 61-78. 15 Muzaffar Iqbal (2006), 'In the Beginning: Islamic Perspectives on Cosmological Origins - IF, Islam & Science, 4, pp. 93-112. PART IV

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OPERATIONALIZATION OF ISLAMIC SCIENCE

16 Seyyed Hossein Nasr (1988), 'Science Education: The Islamic Perspective', Muslim Education Quarterly, 5, pp. 4-14. 17 Shahanr bin Mohamad Zain (2003), 'Some Specific Methodologies of Relating Mathematical Sciences and Islam', Journal of Islamic Science, 19, pp. 112-26. 18 'Adi Setia (2008), 'Some Upstream Research Programs for Muslim Mathematicians: Operationalizing Islamic Values in the Sciences through Mathematical Creativity', Islam & Science, 6, pp. 153-96. Name Index

379

419 431

447 491

Acknowledgements

The editor and publishers wish to thank the following for permission to use copyright material. The Center for Islam and Science for the essays: Mohammad Hashim Kamali (2003), 'Islam, Rationality and Science: A Brief Analysis', Islam & Science, 1, pp. 11-29. Copyright © 2003 by the Center for Islam and Science; Mehdi Golshani (2003), 'Does Science Offer Evidence of a Transcendent Reality and Purpose?', Islam & Science, 1, pp. 45-58. Copyright © 2003 by the Center for Islam and Science; Wan Suhaimi Wan Abdullah (2007), 'Ibn Slna and Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadl on the Origination of the Soul (huduth al-nafs) and the Invalidation of its Transmigration (ibtal al-tanasukh)', Islam & Science, 5, pp. 151-64. Copyright © 2007 by the Center for Islam and Science; ' Adi Setia (2004), 'Fakhr al-DTn al-RazT on Physics and the Nature of the Physical World: A Preliminary Survey', Islam & Science, 2, pp. 161-80. Copyright © 2004 by the Center for Islam and Science; Ibrahim Kalin (2003), 'Between Physics and Metaphysics: Mulla Sadra on Nature and Motion', Islam & Science, 1, pp. 59-90. Copyright © 2003 by the Center for Islam and Science; Yamine Mermer and Redha Ameur (2004), 'Beyond the "Modern": Sacld al-Nursfs View of Science', Islam & Science, 2, pp. 119-60. Copyright © 2004 by the Center for Islam and Science; 'Adi Setia (2003), 'The Philosophy of Science of Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas', Islam & Science, 1, pp. 165-214. Copyright © 2003 by the Center for Islam and Science; Muzaffar Iqbal (2006), 'In the Beginning: Islamic Perspectives on Cosmological Origins', Islam & Science, 4, pp. 61-78. Copyright © 2006 by the Center for Islam and Science; Muzaffar Iqbal (2006), 'In the Beginning: Islamic Perspectives on Cosmological Origins - IF, Islam & Science, 4, pp. 93-112. Copyright © 2006 by the Center for Islam and Science; 'Adi Setia (2008), 'Some Upstream Research Programs for Muslim Mathematicians: Operationalizing Islamic Values in the Sciences through Mathematical Creativity', Islam & Science, 6, pp. 153-96. Copyright © 2008 by the Center for Islam and Science. Journal of Islamic Science for the essays: Ziauddin Sardar (1988), 'Where's Where? Mapping Out the Future of Islamic Science (Part I)', Journal of Islamic Science, 4, pp. 35-63; Ziauddin Sardar (1989), 'Where's Where? Mapping Out the Future of Islamic Science (Part II)'', Journal of Islamic Science, 5, pp. 69-110; Muhammad Maroof Shah (2003),' Iqbal's Appropriation of Modern Science vis-a-vis Religion: A Critical Appraisal', Journal of Islamic Science, 19, pp. 25-76. Ahmed Bouzaid (2004), 'Science and Technology in the Discourse of Sayyid Qutb', Journal of Islamic Science, 20, pp. 9-33; Shaharlr bin Mohamad Zain (2003), 'Some Specific Methodologies of Relating Mathematical Sciences and Islam', Journal of Islamic Science, 19, pp. 112-26. Open Court Publishing Company for the essays: Ibrahim Kalin/Seyyed Hossein Nasr (2001) 'The Sacred versus the Secular: Nasr on Science', in Lewis Edwin Hahn, Randall E. Auxier and Lucian W. Stone, Jr (eds), The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr: The Library of Living Philosophers, 28, pp. 445-68. Copyright © 2001 by the Library of Living Philosophers;

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Wolfgang Smith/Seyyed Hossein Nasr (2001), 'Sophia Perennis and Modern Science' in Lewis Edwin Hahn, Randall E. Auxier and Lucian W. Stone, Jr (eds), The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr: The Library of Living Philosophers, 28, pp. 469-92. Copyright © 2001 by the Library of Living Philosophers. Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

Editor's Acknowledgements

The four volumes in this series owe a great deal to the painstaking work of a small group of historians of science who have studied numerous manuscripts, treatises, and instruments over the last four decades and whose work has been instrumental in revising our understanding of the Islamic scientific tradition. This series was made possible by their vigor and insights. It provides new perspectives on Islamic scientific tradition by presenting their work in a certain thematic order. I am grateful to all the authors and researchers whose work is included in this series. I wish to express my love and thanks to my son, Basit Kareem Iqbal, whose thoughtful critique of the four introductions has been helpful in reformulating certain arguments. His interest in various academic debates on themes related to Islamic scientific tradition and attention to detail and academic rigor has been inspiring. Needless to say that only I am responsible for the shortcomings in selection or presentation. A work of this nature cannot be free of editorial biases, even though one tries to present a balanced view of the fields. One hopes, nevertheless, that this series provides a broad spectrum of views on various aspects of Islamic scientific tradition and contributes to a richer understanding of the field in some small way. Wuddistan 9 Dhul-hijja, 1432/5 November 2011

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Introduction

This second volume of the series Islam and Science: Historic and Contemporary Perspectives complements the selection of Volume I, further explores the Islam and science nexus in the post-1950 era, and broadens the conceptual categories needed for a better understanding of the making of the contemporary discourse. Like all intellectual work, the discourse on Islam and science has not existed in isolation from its social and political contexts; it is difficult to isolate various strands of the discourse which crisscross, mesh together, and weave a pattern that has only attained a certain degree of differentiation in the last three decades. As mentioned in the introduction to the first volume of this series, the contemporary discourse on Islam and science continues to be overdetermined by the colonial conditions under which it began. To be sure, some of the confusion and psychological investment in this discourse could have been checked at its nineteenth-century inception by the Islamic intellectual tradition had it not then been experiencing its lowest ebb. While the Muslim world has gained a certain degree of political independence in the years since World War II, it continues to suffer from economic, cultural, and intellectual dependence on the Western world, and its sudden ushering into modernity has been accompanied by violence and trauma. All of these have had a major impact on the nature of the discourse on Islam and science. The most important of the institutions of Islamic civilization destroyed during the colonial era were those related to education and research, which were completely uprooted from their natural environment. The rapid invasion of modern science and technology into the Muslim world, where most people still lived in the age of animal-drawn ploughs until the middle of the twentieth century, and the sheer magnitude of the resultant transformation of the physical, intellectual, and cultural landscape of the Muslim world has also contributed to the making of the discourse in the post-colonial era. The sudden appearance of modern highways, railways, airports, telephones, oil refineries, and the Internet in deserts where until recently only camel riders travelled under the vast star-strewn skies could not but influence the way science and technology were perceived and linked to Islam. The arrival of new tools and techniques in a world unfamiliar with the scientific principles that gave birth to them is a process that has far-reaching consequences, as Werner Heisenberg (1901-76) once remarked (1958, p. 28). No doubt, the impact of modern technology on Western civilization has not been minor either, but, as Heisenberg suggested: in those parts of the world in which modern science has been developed, the primary interest has been directed for a long time toward practical activity, industry and engineering combined with a rational analysis of the outer and inner conditions for such activity. Such people will find it rather easy to cope with the new ideas since they have had time for a slow and gradual adjustment to the modern scientific methods of thinking. In other parts of the world these ideas would be confronted with the religious and philosophical foundations of native culture', (ibid.)

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II

Although periodizing the Islam and science relationship is a fraught project (as well demonstrated by attempts to date the historical decline of Islamic science; see Volume III of this series), it is possible to heuristically mark 1950 as a turning point in the modern discourse on the topic. During the pre-1950 era, the most important aspect of the modern Islam and science discourse involved the use of Islam as a justification for acquiring modern science; post-1950, this initial casting was buttressed by the involvement of the states newly formed from colonial territories and which enthusiastically took on the reformers' agenda. This is evident from the fact that, soon after their independence, almost all Muslim states started to send their best minds to their former colonizers or to the United States of America to 'acquire' such science. 'Science and technology' became the buzz words in development strategies, often with devastating results for the overall development of the country. Ministries of science and technology were established to prepare official policies aimed at raising scientific output, large sums of capital were designated for the establishment of new institutions for scientific research, and the mass media was used to show links between Islam and modern science. During the 1980s, when certain Muslim countries experienced a windfall through oil revenues, the discourse took on a new coloration by state-sponsored research on the socalled scientific miracles of the Qur'an. The most vibrant of these new institutions was the 'Commission for Scientific Miracles of Qur'an and Sunnah,' established in Saudi Arabia by the World Muslim League with six goals and objectives: (i) To lay down governing rules and methods [for studying] scientific signs in the Holy Qur'an and Sunnah; (ii) To train a leading group of scientists and scholars to consider the scientific phenomena and the cosmic facts in the light of the Holy Qur'an and Sunnah; (iii) To give an Islamic Character to the physical sciences through introducing the conclusion of approved researches into the curricula of the various stages of education; (iv) To explain, without constraint, the accurate meanings of the Qur'anic verses and the Prophet's Traditions relating to Cosmic Sciences, in the light of modern scientific finds, linguistic analysis and purpose of Shariah; (v) To provide Muslim missionaries and mass-media with Dawah; (vi) To publicize the accepted researches in simplified forms to suit the various academic levels and to translate those papers into languages of the Muslim world and the other living languages. (as-Sawi, 1992) The Commission has published about twenty books so far, all dealing with the 'scientific miracles' of the Qur'an in such varied fields as embryology, botany, geology, astronomy and cosmology. The Commission also organized five major international conferences between 1987 and 2000 in various countries, including Pakistan, Jordan and Lebanon.1 These involved splendid ceremonies, princes, high officials of Arab kingdoms and states, and Western scientists 1

In due course, these conferences have covered all verses of the Qur'an that have any relevance to various branches of science such as embryology, geology, and medicine. The audiovisual recordings of these conferences are available on scores of websites and numerous books have been published in various languages that use material from these conferences.

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who were given royal treatment in exchange for verifying the 'miracles'. These scientists were provided specific 'scientific verses' of the Qur'an and were asked to demonstrate their scientific validity. The result was the emergence of a pseudo-scientific hermeneutics that generated tremendously popular apologetic material which tried to prove the scientific correctness of the Qur'an on the authority of great Western scientists and its Divine authorship. A famous case is that of the Canadian embryologist Keith Moore, who was a regular keynote speaker at such conferences during the 1980s. His textbook on embryology, The Developing Human, was published by the Commission with 'Islamic Additions: Correlation Studies with Qur'an and Hadith'. In the foreword to this edition, Moore wrote: I was astonished by the accuracy of the statements that were recorded in the 7th century AD, before the science of embryology was established. Although I was aware of the glorious history of Muslim scientists in the 10th century AD and of some of their contributions to medicine, I knew nothing about the religious facts and beliefs contained in the Qur'an and Sunnah. It is important for Islamic and other students to understand the meaning of these Qur'anic statements about human development, based on current scientific knowledge. (Moore, 1982, p. 10)

During the Seventh Medical Conference held by the Commission at Dammam, Saudi Arabia, in 1981, Moore said: 'it has been a great pleasure for me to help clarify statements in the Qur'an about human development. It is clear to me that these statements must have come to Muhammad from God, because almost all of this knowledge was not discovered until many centuries later. This proves to me that Muhammad must have been a messenger of God.' During the question session, when Moore was asked, 'Does this mean that you believe that the Qur'an is the word of God?' he replied, 'I find no difficulty in accepting this.' The applause one hears after this remark is a resounding indication of how pleased Moore's audience was by his 'verification' of the Book. In the post-9/11 days, however, almost all the Western scientists who had repeatedly participated in these conferences claimed that they had been 'manipulated' and that their comments, taken 'out of context', sounded 'silly and embarrassing' (Golden, 2002). Despite the fickleness of this effort, thousands of websites continue to propagate this strand of the discourse. A precursor to this apologia was the work of French physician Maurice Bucaille, who became the family physician of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. Bucaille's enormously popular book, La Bible, le Cor an et la science, first published in 1976, has been translated into every language spoken in the Muslim world and thousands of websites refer to it as the authoritative reference establishing the scientific validity of the Qur'an.2 Bucaille attempted to show that the Qur'an contains scientifically correct information about the creation of the heavens and earth, human reproduction, and certain other aspects of the natural world - whereas the Bible does not, thereby affirming Islam's supersession of Christianity (despite Europe's historical ascendancy). Bucaille's work is also a forerunner to numerous other works that attempt to interpret the Qur'an on the basis of modern scientific knowledge. In most of these works, the Qur'anic Translated by Alastair D. Pannell and the author as The Bible, the Qur 'an, and Science: The Holy Scriptures Examined in the Light of Modern Knowledge, this was first published in English in 1978 by the North American Trust Publications, Indianapolis, and has since been published in hundreds of pirated local editions all over the Muslim world. 2

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vocabulary is often placed within the framework of modern science and its verses are interpreted to show the existence of 'scientifically correct' knowledge in the Qur'an. The creation of the heavens and earth is a popular theme in this strand of Islam and science discourse. Certain verses of the Qur'an are chosen to demonstrate that the Qur'an foretold the occurrence of the 'Big Bang'. The two most often cited verses are Q 21:30 and Q 41:11. The former states, Do the disbelievers not see that the heavens and the earth were joined together, then We clove them asunder and We created every living thing out of water. Will they then not believe? The latter reads, in part: God turned toward the heaven and it was smoke ... In the first verse, the two key Arabic words ratq andfatq are translated respectively as 'fusing or binding together' and 'the process of separation', and they are then correlated to scientific terms used in the Big Bang model (Bucaille, 1976, p. 149). Other verses pertaining to creation mention 'six days' during which the heavens and the earth and all that is between them were created by God. Six 'days' (ayyam) are shown, on the basis of a linguistic argument, to mean six indefinite periods of time. In itself, this interpretation is unproblematic, and appears supported by Qur'anic usage of the term ayyam. However, Bucaille goes on to superimpose these verses onto specific data arising from specific strands of modern science. He also interprets the 'smoke' (dukhan) of Q 41:11 as 'the predominantly gaseous state of the material that composes [the universe, which] obviously corresponds to the concept of the primary nebula put forward by modern science' (ibid., p. 153). It is this one-to-one correspondence that begins to stretch Qur'anic hermeneutics, as the entire enterprise remains motivated by a deep desire to reveal 'science' in the Qur'an. 'The existence of an intermediate creation between "the heavens" and "the earth" expressed in the Qur'an may be compared to the discovery of those bridges of material present outside organized astronomic systems,' writes Bucaille (ibid., p. 153). The foregone conclusion of this deductive approach toward the relationship between the Qur'an and science is that, although not all the questions raised by the descriptions in the Qur'an have been completely confirmed by scientific data, there is in any case absolutely no opposition between the data in the Qur'an on creation and modern knowledge on the formation of the universe (ibid., pp. 153^). Bucaille was building on the trends in Islam and science discourse already present in the nineteenth century, but his contribution received popular support (as the earlier work of Egyptian writers did not) perhaps because he was a European who fulfilled a psychological need of Muslims emerging from two centuries of colonization. The attention received by Bucaille's book produced reactions, including a Christian rebuttal by William Campbell entitled The Qur 'an and the Bible in the Light of History and Science (1986). This work attempted to show the opposite of what Bucaille had set out to prove that is, that the Qur'an has it all wrong, while the Bible is sound. The works of Bucaille and Campbell are thus mirror images of one another, both employing a strained hermeneutics and labouring to meet a scientific burden of proof. Ill

In addition to the strands described above, the post-1950 discourse saw the emergence of new aspects informed by the movement for 'Islamization of knowledge' led by Ismail al-Faruqi (1921-86), who sought to find an epistemological correction for modern knowledge. This movement was based on the premise that the root of the decline of the Muslim world was the 'educational system, bifurcated as it is into two subsystems, one "modern" and the other

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"Islamic"' (al-Faruqi, 1982, p. viii). To redress this division, al-Faruqi sought to unite the two educational systems and to 'Islamize' knowledge. Al-Faruqi's approach to the problem was premised on the supposition that earlier reformers in Muslim lands were unsuccessful in their efforts because they failed to understand the deep structural roots of modern knowledge. They assumed that the so-called 'modern' subjects are harmless and can only lend strength to the Muslims. Little did they realize that the alien humanities, social sciences, and indeed the natural sciences as well were facets of an integral view of reality, of life and the world, and of a history that is equally alien to that of Islam. Little did they know of the fine and yet necessary relation that binds the methodologies of these disciplines, their notions of truth and knowledge, to the value system of an alien world. That is why their reforms bore no fruit (ibid.).

The solution to this 'malaise of the Ummah', as al-Faruqi conceived it, was, 'in concrete terms, to Islamize the disciplines, or better, to produce university level textbooks recasting some twenty disciplines in accordance with the Islamic vision' (ibid., p. 14). This idea led to the establishment of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (HIT), which continues to pursue al-Faruqi's vision. Al-Faruqi, however, was not interested in studying the epistemological foundations of modern science, and his plan made only passing references to the Islamization of the natural sciences. This may have inspired Ziauddin Sardar, a UKbased journalist of Pakistani origin, to imitate the Islamization of knowledge movement in that domain. He put together a loosely-knit group of friends, who called themselves 'Ijmalis', and initiated a new strand of the Islam and science discourse. (The work of these thinkers is included in Volume I of this series and the first section of the present volume.) Sardar's major work on the subject, Explorations in Islamic Science (1989), was inspired by the previous decade's worldwide surge of interest in Islam. During his research on the role of science and technology in the development of the Muslim World, he realized that many working scientists felt that there were some problems between their religious ethics and their professional work as scientists. No one actually articulated the problem in any clear way - it was slipped in during complaints about how science is ignored, lack of funding, absence of adequate research facilities and so on. When posed a direct question, most scientists avoided talking about ethics in science or the notion of Islamic science. The explanation offered by a Turkish scientist placed this reluctance in perspective: 'Obviously,' he said, 'I have my own opinion on the relationship between science and Islam, but I would not discuss the subject in my office or indeed at any scientific or public gathering. This would be the fastest way to lose the respect of one's colleagues, become isolated and labeled as a fanatic. In fact, such a discussion would mean the end of my scientific career' (Sardar, 1989, p. 1).

This situation was to change: 'in less than five years,' Sardar noted, 'Muslim scientists were more assertive about their religious and ethical concerns' (ibid., p. 2). What changed was their understanding of modern science. The first step toward the evolution of this strand of discourse was a realization by a number of Muslim scientists and thinkers that 'while science itself is neutral, it is the attitude by which we approach science that makes it secular or Islamic' (ibid.). Thus, according to Sardar, it was now asserted with increasing emphasis that science is intricately linked with ideology in its emphasis, scale of priorities, and control and direction of research. Sardar and his associates in the Ijmali group developed their discourse on the following assumption:

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The purpose of science is not to discover some great objective truth; indeed, reality, whatever it may be and however one perceives it, is too complex, too interwoven, too multidimensional to be discovered as a single objective truth. The purpose of science, apart from advancing knowledge within ethical bounds, is to solve problems and relieve misery and hardship and improve the physical, material, cultural and spiritual lot of mankind. The altruistic pursuit of pure knowledge for the sake of 'truth' is a con-trick. An associated assumption is that modern science is distinctively Western. All over the globe all significant science is Western in style and method, whatever the pigmentation or language of the scientist. (Ibid., p. 6)

Working with these assumptions, Sardar then developed a foundation for his exploration: Western science is only a science of nature and not the science. It is a science making certain assumptions about reality, man, the man-nature relationship, the universe, time, space and so on. It is an embodiment of Western ethos and has its foundation in Western intellectual culture. Different constellations of axioms and assumptions may lead the sciences of two different societies to highly divergent interpretations of reality and the universe, interpretations which may either be spiritual or materialistic according to the predisposition of the society. (Ibid.)

This approach thus recognizes that the Islam and science discourse is intimately connected with a host of other issues emerging from the Muslim encounter with modernity and that, in the broader context, it is also a search for a modus vivendi in a world dominated by modern science and technology. The work of the Ijmalis developed insights into the concrete social, political, and economic realities of the Muslim world. For instance, Sardar perceived the real-life dilemmas of Muslim scientists who 'tend to propagate two different sets of values: one that is evident in their professional output and another that they cherish in their personal lives'; he attempted to explain this by categorically dividing the knowledge of Muslim scientists into operational and nonoperational forms (that is, their scientific training and Islamic values, respectively). 'Most Muslim scientists, therefore, suffer from an acute schizophrenia, the seeds of which are planted at the beginning of their [Western/scientific] education' (ibid., pp. 24, 26) Sardar and his associates situated science in social and utilitarian realms, reducing it to being no more than a tool for 'solving problems and relieving misery'. However, higher science dealing with the structure of physical reality has no immediate utility: for instance, Einstein's four papers published in 1905 neither relieved misery nor did they solve practical problems; they had no impact on the nature of the hardship or physical and material lot of mankind, yet they fundamentally altered our concepts of mass, time, motion and light, leading to the emergence of a new kind of physics. Sardar and his group were not blind to this, but their emphasis lay elsewhere, on a culture-specific construction through which they could raise certain social issues. They built their critiques on the need for each civilization to produce its own specific kind of science within its own worldview - but the difference between the science of one civilization and that of another was to lie merely in terms of priorities of research, the utility of science, and the social prestige and salaries of scientists. The Ijmalis left out metaphysical considerations from their sociological discourse; in other words, they built an epistemology of science without any ontology. Sardar identifies three elements of Islamic science: (i) humility; (ii) the recognition of the limitations of scientific method; and (iii) respect for the subject under study. This list, however, can be expanded to include other 'Islamic' elements such as reverence for the creation of

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God, an attitude of care and preservation, demands for social justice, links between science and holistic progress, and so on, fundamentally modifying the enterprise of modern science. What Sardar and his associates failed to critique were the foundations on which the modern enterprise of science has emerged. Their discourse served to deconstruct myths of scientific superiority, produced an enhanced awareness of the enormous difference between the status of Western scientists and those working in the Muslim world, and vehemently rejected certain trends such as the aforementioned 'Bucaillism'. (Sardar criticized such trends as 'dangerous' and traced them back to the psychological needs of some Muslims.) The Ijmali position seemed important during its heyday, but the power of its critique faltered as the freelancers associated with the group moved on to other matters during the 1990s.

IV

The discourse as surveyed thus far matured through inter-Muslim debates on the respective natures of 'Islamic' and 'non-Islamic' science. It was nourished through sustained reflection by some of the leading Muslim scholars of the twentieth century. As it developed, new questions were articulated: (i) What was 'Islamic' in Islamic scientific tradition before the rise of modern science? (ii) How does modern science differ from the historical Islamic enterprise of science? (iii) How does the concept of tawhid (divine unicity), which is the heart of Islam, influence the study of the natural world? (iv) What are the implications of the subtle presuppositions of modern science in relation to the questions of the Beginning and the End of the physical world? (v) How does this understanding differ when viewed from Islamic perspectives? (vi) How are space, time, and matter understood in Islam and in modern science and how do such understandings influence the course of science? These and similar questions have informed the contemporary discourse on Islam and science, which substantially differs from the earlier reformers' modernist discourse. These new dimensions opened paths to a metaphysical foundation that draws on the centuries-old Islamic tradition of reflection on the physical world from the perspective of its ontological dependence on the Creator, its relative position in the overall scheme of creation, its purpose, and its ultimate 'folding back', as it were, to its Originator. While exploring this strand of the contemporary Islamic discourse on science, we encounter a terminology that deals with the physical cosmos in terms of its sacrality, its inviolability, its ontological status, and its unfathomable links with higher realms of existence. Built on the insights of sages of previous centuries, this strand of Islamic discourse on modern science emerged through the work of a handful of scholars who are often called 'traditionalists' for their insistence that a legitimate philosophy of science can only be articulated through drawing upon the underlying and transcendent principles of 'traditional' metaphysics. Part II of the current volume presents work of some of these scholars. It also contains chapters on the views of certain pre-modern Muslim scholars in order to provide links with the theoretical foundation of the Islam and science nexus before the rise of modern science.

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The traditionalists propose that one of the most important differences between the traditional sciences that studied the physical cosmos and modern science is that the traditional sciences derived their principles from revelation whereas modern science derives its principles from human reason. As a result, modern science has embarked upon the study of the physical cosmos in total disregard of its sacrality, and the results have been devastating for the planet and those who inhabit it. This discourse emphasizes notions of teleology and the symbolic and spiritual meanings of the physical entities that are the subject of modern science. Built on the repository of metaphysical writings of Muslim scholars of previous centuries, this strand of the discourse on Islam and science attained its present form through the pioneering work of scholars including Rene Guenon (d. 1951), Frithjof Schuon (d. 1998), Titus Ibrahim Burckhardt (d. 1984), Martin Lings (d. 2005), and Seyyed Hossein Nasr (b. 1933). At a different level and in his own way, Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas (b. 1931) has also contributed to this discourse, which continues to inspire a new generation of thinkers. This approach is a marked departure from the attempts surveyed above to graft Islamic ethics and values onto modern science. Here the discourse is built upon a metaphysical framework of inquiry that constructs a concept of nature according to the primary sources of Islam. Concepts such as hierarchy, interconnectedness, isomorphism, and unity - which are built into the very structure and methodology of traditional sciences of nature - are used here to identify the dissonance of modern science with Islam. Seen from this perspective, modern science appears as an anomaly, 'not simply because we have to pay a high price by destroying the natural environment, but because modern science operates within a seriously misguided framework in which everything is reduced to pure quantity and by which modern man is made to think that all of his problems, from transportation to spiritual salvation, can ultimately be solved by further progress in science' (Kalin, Chapter 11, p. 280 below). Critics of this approach often construe this discourse as being anti-science, archaic, nostalgic, and impractical. However, one does not find an 'anti-science' attitude in the original work of these writers. On the contrary, these writers often reassert the traditional view that the cosmos must be studied, due to its essential nature as a matrix of signs of the Creator. What they emphasize, rather, is that the framework of modern science is wholly unsuited to such study. The enterprise of modern science, and indeed the whole outlook of modernity as it has developed since the seventeenth century, is seen by the advocates of this discourse as a disastrous loss of the sacred. Rene Guenon and Frithjof Schuon, in particular, contrast the levelling functions of modern civilization with pre-modern, traditional civilizations, where the natural sciences existed as part of a harmonious hierarchy of knowledge that paid attention to the physical world in due proportion. They believe that modern science emerged through and as this hierarchy was broken and that it participated in the process that has plunged humanity into multiple and deep crises. This process, starting with the European Renaissance (the beginning of the 'dark age' of modernity), is understood by the traditionalists as when 'a word rose to honour,' a word 'which summarized in advance the whole programme of modern civilization: this word is "humanism"'. Men were indeed concerned to reduce every principle of a higher order, and, one might say symbolically, to turn away from the heavens under the pretext of conquering the earth; the Greeks, whose example they claimed to follow, had never gone so far in this direction, even at the time of their greatest intellectual decadence, and with them utilitarian considerations had at least never claimed the first place, as they were very soon to do with the moderns. Humanism was already the first form of

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what has subsequently become contemporary laicism; and, owing to its desire to reduce everything to the measure of man as an end in himself, modern civilization has gone downwards step by step until it has ended by sinking to the level of the lowest elements in man and aiming at little more than satisfaction of the needs inherent in the material side of his nature, an aim which is, in any case quite illusory, as it constantly creates more artificial needs than it can satisfy. (Guenon, 1942, pp. 25-6)

Guenon understood the term 'physics' in its original etymological sense, meaning the 'science of nature' without any qualification; for him, it is a science that deals with the most general laws of 'becoming', for 'nature' and 'becoming' are really synonymous (physis)\ and it was thus that the Greeks, and notably Aristotle, understood this science. As opposed to this understanding, 'the modern world has subjected the word "physics" to designate exclusively one particular science ... this process of specialization arising from the analytical attitude of the mind has been pushed to such a point that those who have undergone its influence are incapable of conceiving of a science dealing with nature in its entirety' (ibid., p. 63). This view of modern science gained further clarity in the lucid work of Frithjof Schuon. 'Modern science, which is rationalist as to its subject and materialist as to its object,' he wrote, 'can describe our situation physically and approximately, but it can tell us nothing about our extra-spatial situation in the total and real Universe' (1965, p. 111).3 This 'total and real Universe' is seen as beyond the reach of modern science, which is sometimes described as 'profane science' to distinguish it from sacred science: Profane science, in seeking to pierce to its depths the mystery of the things that contain - space, time, matter, energy - forgets the mystery of the things that are contained: it tries to explain the quintessential properties of our bodies and the intimate functioning of our souls, but it does not know what intelligence and existence are; consequently, seeing what its 'principles' are, it cannot be otherwise than ignorant of what man is. (Ibid.)

The most representative voice of the traditionalist discourse on modern science specifically as it relates to Islam is that of Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Beginning with An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (1964), Nasr's scholarly writings have explored various aspects of Islam's relationship with science for almost half a century. His unique position in the Islam and science discourse stems from his thorough training and understanding of both modern Western science and traditional Islamic hikma (wisdom). His critique of modern science, as Ibrahim Kalin has summed up his position, identifies five main traits of modern science: (i) the secular view of the universe that sees no traces of the Divine in the natural order; (ii) mechanization of the world-picture upon the model of machines and clocks; (iii) rationalism and empiricism; (iv) the legacy of Cartesian dualism that presupposes a complete separation between res cogitans and res extensa, that is, between the knowing subject and the object to be known; and (v) exploitation of nature as a source of power and domination (Kalin, 2001, p. 453). Further explaining his position on the 'religious view of the cosmos', Nasr rejects the external understanding of religion prevalent today as a result of which this phrase means only the acceptance of God having created the world and the world finally returning to God. These truths This work, translated by Lord Northbourne as Lights on the Ancient Worlds, was originally published in French in 1965 as Regards sur les mondes anciens. 3

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Contemporary Issues in Islam and Science are of course basic for understanding 'the religious view of the cosmos,' but they do not include all that this phrase implies. Rather, by 'religion' in the term 'religious view' here is meant religion in its vastest sense as tradition which includes not only a metaphysics dealing with the nature of the Supreme Reality or Source, but also cosmological sciences which see all that exists in the cosmos as manifestations of that Source, the cosmological sciences themselves being applications of metaphysical principles to the cosmic domain. The religious view of the cosmos relates not only the beginning and end of things in the external sense to God, but also studies all phenomena as signs and symbols of higher levels of reality leading finally to the Supreme Reality and all causes as being related ultimately to the Supreme Cause (Nasr, Chapter 11, pp. 297-8 below).

Part II of the present volume also presents an exposition of the philosophy of science of Syed Naquib al-Attas, who stands apart from the traditionalist school but who also shares some of their views. His writings on the relationship between Islam and science can best be understood within the integrated system of thought he developed by applying traditional Islamic philosophy to the contemporary situation. Examining science from the metaphysical perspective of Islam means a construction that takes into consideration the authority of revelation, sound traditions of the Prophet, and intuitive faculties granted humanity by the Creator. One key aspect of al-Attas's views on modern science is the epistemological considerations he brings to the discourse. He observes that Islamic metaphysics and modern science are based on divergent foundations with regard to their respective positions concerning the sources and methods of knowledge. 'It is implicit in al-Attas's conception of science as "definition of reality" that "science" is to be understood in the wide sense of the term as any objective systematic inquiry, including the intellectual, psychological, natural, social and historical disciplines' (Setia, Chapter 13, p. 334 below). In his opinion, modern science and philosophy suffer from a myopia that limits our understanding of reality. 'God is not a myth, an image, a symbol, that keeps changing with the times,' he wrote in his Islam and the Philosophy of Science, 'He is Reality itself. Belief has cognitive content; and one of the main points of divergence between true religion and secular philosophy and science is the way in which the sources and methods of knowledge are understood' (al-Attas, 1989, p. 3). Al-Attas's critique of modern science considers the denial of the reality and existence of God - which he considers an implied component of modern science - as the key source of all problems. Modern science conceives the existence of things in terms of their coming into being from other things, as a progression, a development or evolution. This perception of the world construes it as a self-subsistent system evolving according to its own laws: The denial of the reality and existence of God is already implied in this philosophy. Its methods are chiefly philosophic rationalism...rationalism, both the philosophic and the secular kind, and empiricism tends to deny authority and intuition as legitimate sources and methods of knowledge. Not that they deny the existence of authority and of intuition, but that they reduce authority and intuition to reason and experience. (Ibid., p. 6)

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As should be evident from the preceding survey of different strands of the Islam and science discourse, it is possible to categorize various approaches according to the emphasis they place on ethics, epistemology, or ontology. As Ibrahim Kalin explains,

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The ethical/puritanical view of science, which is the most common attitude in the Muslim world, considers modern science to be essentially neutral and objective, dealing with the book of nature as it is, with no philosophical or ideological components attached to it. Such problems as the environmental crisis, positivism, materialism, etc., all of which are related to modern science in one way or another, can be solved by adding an ethical dimension to the practice and teaching of science. The second position, which I call the epistemological view, is concerned primarily with the epistemic status of modern physical sciences, their truth claims, methods of achieving sound knowledge, and function for the society at large. Taking science as a social construction, the epistemic school puts special emphasis on the history and sociology of science. Finally, the ontological/metaphysical view of science marks an interesting shift from the philosophy to the metaphysics of science. Its most important claim lies in its insistence on the analysis of the metaphysical and ontological foundations of modern physical sciences. (Kalin, 2002, p. 47)4

Part I of the present volume (Chapters 1^) further attempts to formulate basic questions in the field. Part II of the present volume (Chapters 5-13) is devoted to an in-depth exploration of some of the most important voices in the contemporary Islam and science discourse. It also contains three essays which link various conceptual strands of the discourse with the classical period, thus providing a historical depth. In this regard, special attention is given to the concept of the natural world as conceptualized by Fakhr al-Dln al-RazT, who considered science of nature 'the science which studies existents (al-mawjudaf) that are constituted of matter (al-maddd)\ just as Ibn Slna (d. 1037) had done before him. As Adi Setia points out in here in Chapter 6, al-RazT defined physics 'as that science whose subject matter is the body (al-jism) insofar as it undergoes change (al-taghayyur\ and is in motion (yataharrak) and repose (yaskuri). Hence, physical or natural science is the study of material bodies that undergo change and are either in motion or repose' (p. 127 below). For Muslim scholars of the pre-modern era, the natural world was layered, connected, interdependent, and linked to higher realms, from whence came its principles. Several studies on the work of contemporary Muslim scholars in this section complement their own works represented in Volume I of this series. The two chapters of Part III of the volume (Chapters 14 and 15) explore fundamental questions in the discourse, but from the perspective of sacred cosmology: How did the cosmos come into existence? When? Is there an end to this beginning? These articles do not deal with modern science per se, but with the sacred cosmology based on the Qur'anic view of creation of physical objects, some of which are studied by science, while others - such as the Guarded Tablet, the Pen, the Throne, and the Footstool - are understood to lie beyond the realm of science. These aspects of cosmology may seem irrelevant to the study of the natural world proper, but must be considered in order to appreciate the Islamic interweaving of different levels of creation and existence. The relationship between lower and higher realms is a sine qua non for the existence of the physical world at the lower plane of existence. Part IV (Chapters 1 6-1 8) presents a new and emerging field devoted to operationalizing the theoretical formulations that have been articulated over the last fifty years. In many ways, this section complements Part IV of Volume I of this series by extending the scope of the quest for the revival of Islamic scientific tradition to new areas including science education and mathematics. Critics of such Islamic perspectives on science often ask how 'Islamic science' 4

Kalin's essay Three Views of Science in the Islamic World' is reprinted in Volume I of this series.

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would actually differ from modern science, especially since there is currently no place on earth where the enterprise of science is rooted in the Islamic view of the physical world. What is being done in the name of science in Makkah is no different than what is being done in Washington, DC, or Moscow, or Berlin. Indeed, there is not even a fully developed theoretical framework for the teaching of science from an Islamic perspective. This challenge has become the focus of work of many Muslim scholars and it may well be the main thrust of the Islam and science discourse in the years to come. This final section of the volume thus provides some contours to this aspect of the discourse and points in the direction of future research.

Wuddistan 14 Shawwal 1432/12 September 2011 References Al-Attas, S.M.N. (1989), Islam and the Philosophy of Science, Kuala Lumpur: International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization. Bucaille, M. (1976), La Bible, le Cor an et la science: les Ecritures saintes examinees a la lumiere des connaissances modernes, Paris: Seghers; translated into English by A.D. Pannell and M. Bucaille as The Bible, the Qur 'an, and Science: The Holy Scriptures Examined in the Light of Modern Knowledge, Indianapolis: North American Trust Publications, 1978. Campbell, W. (1986), The Qur 'an and the Bible in the Light of History and Science, Upper Darby, PA: Middle East Resources. Al-Faruqi, I.R. (1982), Islamization of Knowledge: General Principles and Work Plan, Washington, DC: International Institute of Islamic Thought. Golden, D. (2002), 'Western Scholars Play Key Role in Touting "Science" of the Quran', The Wall Street Journal, 23 January. Guenon, R. (1942), The Crisis of the Modern World, London: Luzac & Co. Heisenberg, W. (1958), Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science, New York: Prometheus Books. Kalin, I. (2002), Three Views of Science in the Islamic World', in T. Peters, M. Iqbal and S.N. Haq (eds), God, Life, and the Cosmos: Christian and Islamic Perspectives, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 43-75. Moore, K.L. (1982), The Developing Human: With Islamic Additions, Jeddah: Commission for Scientific Miracles of Qur'an and Sunnah. Nasr, S.H. (1964), An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; reprinted Albany: State University Press of New York, 1993. Nasr, S.H. (2001), 'Reply to Ibrahim Kalin', in L.E. Hahn, R.E. Auxier and L.W Stone, Jr (eds), The Philosophy ofSeyyedHosseinNasr, Peru, IL: Open Court, pp. 463-8. Sardar, Z. (1989), Explorations in Islamic Science, London: Mansell. As-Sawi, A.J. (1992), Proposed Medical Research Projects Derived from the Qur'an and Sunnah, Jeddah: Commission for Scientific Miracles of Qur'an and Sunnah. Schuon, F. (1965), Lights on the Ancient Worlds, trans. Lord Northbourne, London: Perennial Books; first published in French as Regards sur les mondes anciens (1965).

Parti Formulating Questions on Islam and Science Nexus

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[1] Where's Where? Mapping Out The Future of Islamic Science (Part-I)

Ziauddin Sardar Intellectual Studies Foundation London

While examining various schools of thought in the contemporary discourse on Islamic Science, the author refers to four schools and discusses their ideological positions and intellectual stands. In this part of his essay the author elaborates on Guenon/Schuon school of thought represented by S.H. Nasr. It is infact a fusion of the Ismaili esoterism with the Guenon/Schuon philosophy based on esoteric and sapiential teachings of Platonism, Vedanta, Sufism and Budhism. The author's stand is that their views have nothing to do with Islam as claimed by their protagonists in the literature produced by them. In the development of every discipline, from time to time, points are reached when it becomes necessary to critically examine the stock of accumulated ideas, look at the parameters within which the discourse on the discipline has meaning and significance and study the direction towards which the discipline is moving. The nascent discipline of Islamic science has, over the last decade, produced a body of ideas and criticisms as well as cherished positions and metaphysical expositions which need to be examined throughly if the direction that the discipline is taking is to be delineated. At this juncture in the hisotry of the contemporary development of this discipline, scholars find themselves in a circular bind: the same arguments are repeated again and again, positions are restated without regard for the counter-

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arguments and the weight of evidence that is brought against them, and an overall sense of direction is only conspicuous by its total absence. In this paper, I intend to examine the ideas of various contemporary 'schools of thoughts' which are taking part in the discourse rather loosly defined as 'Islamic science' and delineate the future direction towards which I think the discourse and discipline should be moving.

Ticket to Ride

At least three recent papers have tried to develop a typology of positions within the discourse in Islamic Science.1 However, these typologies attribute beliefs and positions by drawing similarities between the approaches of various authors without making their positions clear or developing appropriate correlation between their approaches. If we attribute beliefs simply by drawing superficial similarities between authors we end up producing strange assimilations. For example, because Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Parvez Manzoor, Munawar Ahmad Anees and myself consider western science to be culturally biased and value-laden, Mohammad Zaki Kirmani assumes that the approaches of Nasr and the other three are the same;2 in fact, the differences between these approaches are so fundamental that they constitute two totally different ways of looking at science, indeed even the notion of science in the two approaches are totally different. Again, M. Kaleemur Rahman assumes that because both Nasr and I have justified the use of the term Islamic science' we are in fact talking about the same thing3; not just our justifications come from radically different perspectives, but the mould in which we cast Islamic science are also totally different. The imputation of beliefs should be based on a critical examination of the text of an author, indeed, not just a single work but where possible an entire ouvre. Creative minds do not remain static, they grow, they learn not just from their own experience but more so from the arguments and evidence brought forward by others. An ouvre of an author therefore may reveal changes in position. However, much more interesting than attributing beliefs to individual authors, is the imputation of beliefs to group of authors4. Our imputation of beliefs to group of scholars or schools of thought assumes that individuals, and their affirmations and utterances, express intellectual positions which are borne by the group to which they belong. While there is no such metaphysical entity as a group mind which thinks over and above the heads of the individual, or whose ideas the individual merely reproduces,

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nevertheless it would be false to deduce from this that all the ideas and the sentiments which motivate an individual have their origin in him alone, and can be explained solely on the basis of his own life-experiences. Can we attribute positions to a group of scholars randomly or is there a more reasonable way of ascribing intellectual stands? One obvious criterion is where the members of the relevant group are willing to affirm the attributed position as their own and demonstrate the use of ideas in their work. This criteria is met by two groups of scholars who are taking an active part in the discourse on Islamic science. The first consists of Hossein Nasr and his followers, most notably Osman Dakar, who have produced a corpus of literature; I shall refer to them as the 'Guenon/Schuon' school of thought as they derive most of their ideas from the scholarship of Rene Gueon and Fritjof Schuon. The second school of thought describes itself as the group ofljmal: the root work jml conveys the ideas of beauty on the one hand and wholeness on the other; Ijmal captures the substance of synthesis with the style of aesthetics. The name suggests this group seeks sythesis within a particular framework. On the discourse on Islamic science, three Ijmalis are well known: S. Parvez Manzoor5, Munawar Ahmad Anees6 and myself. The names of four others are also familiar to those who are aware of the existence of a new trend in muslim intellectual thought first introduced by the now defunct journal, Inquiry:Gulzar Haider7 Merryl Wyn Davies8, Mohmmad Iqbal Asaria9 and Ibrahim Sulieman10 . While the Ijmalis are a heterogeneous group, their intellectual position is united by a methodology of conceptual analysis, that can be seen in all their works, which aims at synthesis and future-oriented expressions of the values of Islam in all aspects of contemporary thought and life. Group identity is not fixed to declared intellectual positions, objective interests and stated goals. It can also arise by the connection of a group of scholars to a particular institution. Scholars affiliated to an institution tend to work on similar problems and even though their individual positions may be different there is an overall unity to their work which comes from regualr interchange of ideas and constant criticisms from colleagues. Thus in the sociology of knowledge, we have the noted Edinburg school of thought, attached to the University of Edinburg, which works on the relativist account of science, and at the opposite end the hisotric Vienna Circle which produced the original logical positivist stance on science. In the discursive field of Islamic science this position is held by the Aligarh school, based at the

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Centre for Studies on Science in Aligarh, India, and consists of the group of scholars who contribute regularly to the MAAS Journal of Islamic Science. Once again the positions within the group vary, but there is unity in the overall concerns and emphasis of the group: the Aligarh is essentially a school of criticism of science, and most of its original ideas have emerged from criticisms of established positions, with a dominant concern for methodology. This group includes Mohammad Zaki Kirmani, Mohammad Riaz Kirmani, M. Kaleemur Rahman and Rais Ahmad. Finally, group identity can also emerge as an outcome of discursive processes in the world at large. Different scholars may express their positions in different ways, articulate their thoughts using different concepts, may emphasise different areas of discourse, but their underlying, fundamental epistemological positions may be the same. As Foucault says, "the frontiers of a book are never clear cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration and autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts other sentences: it is node within a network."11 Many authors who have contributed to the discourse of Islamic science, are part of the network of western science. However they may couch their thoughts, whatever values they may seek to protect, whatever beliefs they may confess, they are essentially propagating the dominant, positivist and realist view of science. This view, or ideology, sees science as a universal, objective pursuit of Truth. Muhammad Abdus Salam, Ali Kettani, S. Waqar A. Husaini, Z. R. al-Nejjar and Jamal Mimouni belong to this school, but most Muslim scientists hold this belief. I intend to critically examine the positions of each of these schools and then suggest some positive ways in which the discourse on Islamic science can move forward. Nowhere Man Let me begin with Nasr and his followers. To understand where Nasr is taking the discourse, and through his prolific output Islamic science itself, we must appreciate where he is coming from. One needs to understand his world-view, not because one wishes to make cheap sectarian points, but because his distinctive outlook permeates everything he writes; indeed, his whole ouvre is an extended apologia for his rather specific and circumcised outlook.

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I am not concerned here with Nasr*s personal beliefs; the brand of Islam he follows is his own affair. I am concerned with his published views; and a reading of his ouvre reveals that he is heavily influenced by Ismaili thoughts and is a strong—this is probably an understatement—supporter of the Guenon/Schuon school of thought. To understand Nasr's whereabouts, it is important to appreciate both Ismaili thought and Guenon/Schuon worldview which form the basis of his own Weltanschauung. I will explore both by looking at a representative segment of Nasr's ouvre; and where necessary I will provide that amount of background and historic information which is essential to the argument. Ismailism branched off from the mainstream of Islamic thought around the latter part of the eighth century. Its main dispute with mainstream Shia orthodoxy concerned Ismael, son of Imam Jafar Sadiq, the sixth Imam, who they believed should have been designated the seventh Imam of the Shia. They emphasise the internal and symbolic teachings of the Qur'an, from where—along other sources to which we shall turn shortly—they derive a distinct body of esoteric teachings and particular cosmology. As Hakim Mohammad Said and Ansar Zahid Khan point out, "the Abbasid period saw this branch of Shiism developing regional and ethnic affiliations. It was able to gain Yemen and North Africa to its cause. At one stage coinciding with the decay of the Abbasids, the Ismaili beliefs nearly overwhelmed the whole Muslim world. The tenth century witnessed the greatest period of glory for these beliefs under the Fatimids (909-1171 AD.) with their new capital at Qahira (Cairo founded in 969 A.D.). In the east their movement was characterised by two developments. In Iran and Transociana where the Abbasids had been successful, they developed a rational and philosophical style while in Sind they closely identified the idea of redeemer with that of the awaited incarnation of Vishnu. The former gave birth to Ikhwan al-Safa, while the later resulted in Dasa-avtar, one of the canons of modern Ismailis".12 Thus Hindu philosophy, particularly the notion of reincarnation any cyclic time became part of Ismaili doctrines at a very early stage. The Ismaili doctrine has two main facets: the zahir, or the outwardly, which is essentailly similar to the Shia theology and

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practices; and the batin, or the hidden, an esoteric system of philosophy and science, amalgamated with some notions of the Qur'an and serving as a guide to its inner content, providing religious prescriptions and, in its original formulation, intended to prove the divine origins of the institution of the Imamate and the exclusive rights of the Fatimids to it. The most prominent elements of this system are the gnostic traditions of the Greeks, including the mystical teachings of Pythagoras, the neo-Platonic philosophy, the natural philosophy of Aristotle, aspects of Hindu philosophy such as the notion of cylic time and elements of Zoroastrianism. All these heterogenous elements are combined with an Islamic gloss to produce an occult framework where gnosis circles around alchemy, angelology, numerology and astrology and other forms of esoterism. Nasr fuses his Ismaili esoterism with the religio perennis philosophy of the Guenon/Schuon school of thought. This philosophy, based on the esoteric and sapiential teachings of Platonism, Vedanta, Sufism and Buddhism, seeks a rediscovery of alchemy and other occult sciences and owes its formulation to the originator of movement Rene Guenon (d. 1951) and its main expositor, Frithjof Schuon. Guenon, a French mystic, attacked the modern world from a 'Platonic' point of view in such works as The Oriental Metaphysics13 and Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times14. He considered all traditional forms to be various expressions of the one supra-formal Truth, which he sought to illustrate with exposition of traditional symbols. Frithjof Schuon took Guenon's philosophy to the realm of religio perennis which he expressed in The Transcendent Unity of Religions,15 Castes and Races16 and Light on the Ancient World.17 An important aspect of Schuon's (who is now reliably reported to be having visions of the Virgin Mary) philosophy is that the ancient Orphic and Dionysian mysteries led to, in Nasr's words, "a veritable Greek miracle" and such figures as Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus were associated with this 'miracle' and thus had divine qualities. (Indeed, Nasr wants to believe that Plato was a Prophet—a Prophet who advocated oligarchy, eugenics, a dissolution of the family, controlled sexual relations between men and women, and found homosexuality rather acceptable!—and that "Greek philosophers had learned their philosophy from the Prophets"). Other members of the school include the Swiss sufi Titus Burckhardt (d. 1984,)18 the Hindu mystic Ananda K Coomaraswamy (d. 1947),19 the British mystic Martin Lings,20 Victor Banner21, Jacob Needleman22; Gai Eaton23

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and Osman Bakr are new recruits, and other mystics such as Ali Ashraf24 and Hadi Sharifi, aspiring members. (Lings and Eaton lean towards Islamic Orthodoxy). The group focuses round the British journel Studies in Comparative Religion, in which their writings regularly appear. In all his works, whether he is writing about art, science, religion, philosophy, history or Islamic way of life, Nasr is propounding the philosophy of Ismaili esoterism and religio perennis; this is why, whatever the context, he essentially says the same thing; this is also why he is so prolific (since he has nothing new to say). Almost all the references in his book are to the other members of the group or to two noted contemporary exponents of Ismaili gnosis: Louis Massignon25 and Henry Corbin.26 And as befits the devotee, a great deal of his output is simply an exposition of the masters' philosophy: "we wish to express our gratitude especially to Frithjof Schuon whose uparalleled exposition of traditional teachings is reflected, albeit imperfectly, upon many of the pages which follow."27 Not suprising when "Schuon seems like the cosmic intellect itself impregnated by the energy of the divine grace surveying the whole of the reality surrounding man and elucidating all the concerns of human existence in the light of sacred knowledge".28 Having specified the context in which Nasr is writing, let us examine what he is actually saying. For Nasr, at a certain level of reality, all religions are the same; this in fact is the basic thesis of "scientia sacra (which can be) expounded in the language of one as well as the other perspective. It can speak of God or the Godhead, Allah the Tao, or even nirvana".29 When Nasr uses the terms knowledge', 'sapience' 'intelligence', 'science', 'consciousness', he means one and the same thing; Ismaili Guenon/Schuon version of gnosis. In the beautifully illustrated, Islamic Science, the context in which Nasr is writing can be clearly seen. When setting out the cosmology of Islam, Nasr takes particular care to ground it in his particular world-view. "Islamic cosmology", he writes, "aims at providing a vision of the cosmos which enables man to pierce through the visible world to the higher states of existence and creating a science of the cosmic domain which acts as a ladder to allow man to mount to the 'roof of the cosmos', to use the well-known phrase associated with Rumi, and even beyond it behold Metacosmic Reality which transcends all the planes of cosmic manifestation. The Origin of the Principle of the Universe is at once Being, conscious-

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ness and bliss (wujud, wujdan and wajd in Arabic) and these qualities flow in the arteries of the cosmos precisely because the cosmos is a manifestation of the principle. Traditional cosmologies are means of gaining knowledge of this positive aspect of the cosmos; in the bosom of metaphysical doctrines and with the aid of appropriate method of realisation they enable men to gain access to that consciousness and experience, that bliss which is already a taste of paradise".30 Thus in this highly reductive definition, Islamic cosmology is equated simply with mystical experiences; normal questions of cosmology such as origins and structure of universe, its ethical and value dimensions, are totally ignored. Furthermore, by mentioning Rumi, and then immediately bringing the notion of 'traditional cosmologies', Nasr makes it appear that 'traditional cosmologies' are an integral part of Islamic cosmologies. Now in Guenonite thought, the notion of 'traditional cosmologies' have a specific meaning, and that Nasr is referring to the Guenonite notion is borne by the fact that there are no less than four citations to Schuon (as if Schuon is the only person who can enlighten us on this topic on a single page!). What is the Guenonite notion of 'traditional cosmologies'? Two colour plates later, Nasr tells us: "Islamic cosmology has made use of such diverse elements as Quranic symbolism, concepts and symbols drawn from the doctrinal formulation of Sufism (itself developed to a large extent from the Quar'an and Hadith), theosophical and philosophical descriptions of the cosmos, numerical symbolism and traditional astronomy".31 For 'Quranic symbolsim' read the esoteric Ismaili interpretation of the Qur^an. The 'doctrinal formulation', even though they are based on the Qur^an and Hadith, must clearly be distinctively different from Islamic doctrines otherwise it would not constitute one of the 'diverse elements'. And what theosophical and philosophical description of the cosmos' is Nasr referring to? He gives an example from the schemes found in the writings of Sayyid Haydar al-Amuli who "had a particular love for geometric patterns and made use of them as symbols of his cosmological doctrines. He designed the mandalas to be contemplated by the adept, complicated patterns in which the twelve Imams of Shi'ism enter into the

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cosmic scheme to play a major role as so many epiphanies of the Logos and reflections of the Divine Light. The number twelve naturally plays a central role in these patterns, which unify angelology, imamology and astronomy in grand schemes unveiling the contours of the Islamic cosmos with its particular Shi'it colour."32 As to 'numerical symbolism' that comes from a combination of "Aristotelian doctrine of the three kingdoms and the Pythagorean philosophy of numbers with Islamic metaphysics while making use of the sciences concerned with symbolism of the Arabic alphabet as well as symbolism of certain words and phrases. In the case of the Ikhwan al-Safa, whose Epistles reflected the thought of certain circles within Shi'ism, especially Ismailism, and which are related in many ways to the Jabirean corpus, there is to be found more than anything else a Pythagoreanism combined with Aristotelian natural philosophy and integrated into the matrix of Islamic esotericism, while in the works of such man as Shams aldin al-Buni certain Hermetic and also magical ideas enter into a picture."33 What is Pythagoreanism? And Hermeticism? And what aspect of Aristotelian natural philosophy are we concerned with? And why does Nasr insists on making them a central part of Islamic cosmology. The answer lies in the theology of Guenon and Schuon, in the religion of gnosis, what Nasr refers to as 'traditional cosmologies'. Gnosis emerged as a cult in Palestine in the first century BC, although its exact origins are still disputed by scholars. At the end of the Hellenistic age, Greek philosophy fused with Persian dualisms and orthodox Judaism in Egypt and Palestine to produce the lethal religion of gnosis—knowledge of the true nature of things. Pythagoreanism already provided a fertile ground for it. This esoteric cult was founded by the Greek mathematician whose name is associated with the famous theorem. Established in Croton about 530 BC, this confraternity believed in the doctrine of reincarnation of the soul into the bodies of men and animals and even certain plants. Pythagoras had a very good memory which enabled him to recall his former lives. The sect practiced a severe discipline which included secrecy, respect for the authority of the master, ritual purifications, memory exercises, examination of conscience and various food taboos. Pythagorian cosmology gave an essential place to numbers, which were represented by points juxtaposed to form squares, triangular and rectangular figures. "Things are numbers", Pythagoras

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used to say. He discovered the relations of principal numbers (2/1, 3/2, 4/3), which determine the principal intervals of musical scales (fourths, fifths, octaves). Pythagoras believed that events in the heavens had earthly counterparts and that through appropriate disciplines men could become immortal gods. The last stanza of the golden verse of Pythagoras, which formed the basis of his creed, reads: "And when, after having divested thyself of thy mortal body, thou arrivest in the most pure Aether, thou shalt be God, immortal, incorruptible, and death shall have no dominion over thee"34. Hermiticism, based on the treatises on alchemy and magic of Hermes Trismegistus, provided another impetus of the emergence of gnosis. In the Asclepius, the last and most advanced teachings of Hermes, one finds the bold claim that he who has grasped its meaning will be 'omnium bonorum tota mente plenissimus'\ in other words he will have attained to complete gnosis, he will *see God', or be united with God.35 Aristotle's theology, developed in Physics36 and De Anima37 added further fuel to the rise of gnosis. It is from this Greek theological background that gnosticism derives its central notions: secrecy, authoritarianism from Pythagoras; the true nature of knowledge from Hermes Trismegistus; the notion that an improbable order reigns in the celestial domain while a large place is left to hazard and liberty in the sublunary domain from Aristotle; the ideas of oligarchy, purity and hierarchy from Plato. For example, a Gnostic-Platonist will explain the notion of hierarchy by stating that from the higher gods emanate lower gods, in vast hierarchy that stretches down from the One and the archetypal Ideas to the Demiurgic Jupiter, who made the planet we live on. The human soul, naturally a part of the higher planes, is sunk in matter and in ignorance, and its task is to journey laboriously upwards, leaving behind the world of substance to join its native star, or even to be subsumed in the very Absolute itself. Add Islamic terminology, and you have the gnosis of Nasr. So where does Islam figure in all this? It is clear that there is little Islamic content here but as Greek Gnosticism is able to fasten like a parasite on Islam, it is able to present the whole thing in Islamic terminology. It is hardly surprising then when it comes to the actual history of Islamic science, Nasr presents it essentially as a history of esoterism and occult, interpretation and adoptation of Greek methodology by the Muslims, and takes every opportunity to glorify gnosticism. In the chapter on mathematics, he presents highly distorted and selected examples constantly trying to read 'cosmological and magical schemes' into Muslim mathematics.

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Thus 'Pythagoras was Islamized rapidly' because 'there already existed an 'Abrahamic Pythagoreanism' in Islam!38 Moreover, almost all of Muslim mathematics was concerned with and "closely connected with the study of magic squares and amicable numbers, which were applied to various occult sciences from alchemy to magic."39 We know that algebra emerged to deal with the laws of inheritance, as is even evident in al-Khwarazmi's classical work from whence the discipline takes its name. But Nasr chooses to totally ignore the arithmetic of inheritance and describes algebra as "closely related to certain metaphysical principles so central to Islamic doctrines".40 The implication being that Algebra grew not out of the physical necessity of dealing with the laws of inheritance but was a natural ourcome of the Greek mythological cosmologies which the Muslims were supposed to have adopted! Quite a few assertions of Nasr are simply statements of beliefs and have nothing to do with the history of Islamic science. Thus, becuase the Aristotelian system is an important part of both Ismaili and Guenonite theology, Nasr attributes Al-Biruni with making a meaningful model of the Aristotelian system; no doubt al-Biruni would have made it if it was possible, but it is impossible, even with the help of gnosis, to make meaningful models based on the Aristotelian system! When we come to astronomy, we discover that Nasr is not the least bit interested in the particularly Islamic aspect of Islamic astronomy: the determination of the visibility of the lunar crescent, the determination of astronomically defined times of prayer, the determination of the direction of the qibla—a task that occupied Muslim astronomers for over a thousand years and form a vast corpus of the literature on Islamic astronomy. Instead we are presented with selected works of'outstanding Persian* scholars to whom all sorts of things are attributed. For example, he attributes the calculation of the tables of tangent to the thirteenth century Persian astronomer Nasir al-din al-Tusi, when we know that he simply plagiarized them from the tenth century Egyptian astronomer, Ibn Yunas. He attributes the invention of declimal fraction to Kashani, "the outstanding Persian mathematician", when it has been established that al-Uqlidusi of Damascus write on decimal fraction five centuries ago. Similary, the "earliest astrolobe is from 4th/10th century Isfashan" while at least six earlier ones can be traced back to Iraq. There is a great deal of emphasis on astrolobes because of their alleged astrological significance but there is nothing on the two instruments which Muslims really developed the sun-dial and quadrants. Instead, astrol-

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ogy, that most Islamic of Islamic science, gets appropriate attention: "It was the profound symbolism inherent in astrology which made its integration into Islamic civilization and especially into certain aspects of Islamic esotericism possible, despite obvious external differences between astrological attempts to predict future events and the Islamic emphasis upon the ominipotent character of the Divine Will. ..But the branches of astrology among Muslims are the same as among the Greeks or ancient Persians. They include judicial astrology, dealing with the prediction of the future of events or institutions, genethliac astrology, dealing with the horoscope of individuals, and the cosmological aspects of astrology."41 But if Islamic astrology is the same as Greek and ancient Persian astrology, what is Islamic about it? Why adjectivise it with Islam, especially when it contradicts the Islamic notion of an ominipotent God? It is because of his fundamental belief in Greek esoteric mythology and its association with Islam, that Nasr demeans the formidable contribution of Muslims in this field. As David King points out Nasr pays "perhaps the weakest tribut to the Islamic astronomical tradition. One of his final comments on p!33 must suffice as an example: 'but perhaps the most enduring contribution of Muslims to the history of astronomy was their transforming the Ptolemic spheres from merely mathematical models to physical realities'. It happens that we know that Ptolemy's Planetary Hypotheses, which was the starting point of muslim investigations of theoretical astronomy, is a description of the arrangements of the heavens based on the assumption that the models of planetary motions have a physical existence. And since modern astronomers no longer believe in the physical reality of the planetary spheres this 'enduring contribution' of the Muslims (and the Greeks) is not generally recognised today".42 It is not just in mathematics and astronomy that occult, magic and Greek mythology is disguised as Islamic history of science. "Science principles of physics are to be found solely in metaphysics and nowhere else"43 (a statement of belief I find absurd) we are launched into another magical, mystery tour. Nothing is spared: even animals and plants come in for occultish treat-

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ment. Thus, botony involved "the study of the occult properties of plants, as well as their symbolic and spiritual significance in the cosmos,"44 although not a single example is given of the occult study of plants. Animals are symbols of cosmic qualities and spiritual attitudes45 And space itself has occult and sacred properties. Cast within the world view of Islam and centred most of all upon the vast confines of dar al-Islam, the science of geography drew from any sources, such as Babylonia, Greece, India and especially Persia. Pre-Islamic Persian geography had already influenced pre-Islamic Arabic geographical ideas,, as the Arabic word barzakh, which comes from the pahlavi farsang, reveals, and it played a central role in the early Islamic geography as well. The ancient Persian saw the earth as an angel and possessed a highly developed 'visionary geography'. Their division of the world into seven circular 'regions' (kishwars) was a terrestrial reflection of the sevenfold spiritual heirarchy and left its deep effect upon geographers of the Islamic period, who were fully aware of the symbolic significance of seven in both the Greek scheme of the climate and the Persian scheme of the kishwars. Likewise, the central cosmic mountain of the ancient Persians became transformed into the Mount Qaf mentioned in the Qur'an, and at least among a great number of Islamic geographers the central region of the world was conceived in anew fashion so as to encompass Mecca, the centre of the Islamic world and the point where for Muslims the heavenly axis touches the terrestrial plan. In Islamicizing' the natural world about it Islam in fact incorporated much of the symbolic and sacred geography of the traditions before them, sanctifying them anew through the power of the new revelation. How many mountains, lakes and other distinct loci can be found today in the Islamic world which are of particular religious significance now and were also of special religious significance in the traditions which preceded Islam.46 None; with the obvious examples of the Haramain, including Jerusalem. But that does not give rise to a 'sacred geography' as a discipline! Then, of course, there is the piece de resistance: a whole chapter on occult sciences. Islamic science, we are told,

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"include a category called the hidden (khafiyyah) or occult (gharibah) science, which have always remained liidden'. both in the content of their teachings and in the manner of gaining accessibility to them, because of their very nature... These sciences in their unadulterated form... deal with the hidden forces with the cosmos and the means of dealing with these forces. In a traditional world, these sciences were kept hidden in order to protect society from their being used, or rather misused, by the unqualified, much like esotercism itself, of which they are branches... Moreover, in the light of the esoteric dimensions of the Qur'anic revelation, these sciences, some of purely Semitic origin and others inherited from the Hellenistic, Egyptian, Babylonian and Iranian worlds, become like shining stars in the firmament, providing so many keys for the contemplative understanding of the inner processes of the natural order.47 This, of course, is a pure statement of belief: a description of the Ismaili doctrine of gnosis. It also happens to be one of the two chapters in the book containing a section of modern practices; physics does not deserve one, astronomy does not deserve one, even the chapter on environment does not discuss the contemporary work done by Muslim environmentalists and architects, but occult sciences deserve an 'Islamic alchemy today' section!48 Even in his bibliographical work, Nasr's only concern is to propagate his Ismaili and Guenon/Schuon theology of gnosis. Science is said to "embrace nearly all the traditional 'intellectual sciences'" with the exception of "those elements which are not related to either the world of nature or mathematics". But it includes all branches of philosophy except "practical philosophy such as ethics, politics", and all areas of Sufisim and theology, including magic, folk medical practices and popular 'occult' sciences.49 Thus once again in the guise of Islamic science we are treated to Ismaili philosophy and theology, writings of Ismaili occultists and works on occult and Hermetic subjects. As a purely bibliographical work, this is simply third grade for it fails to differentiate between fundamental and trivial works, books and pamphlets, gives no indication of whether the book contains any illustrations, indexes, bibliographies, provides no distinction between important authors and minor figures, contains hardly any annotations, virtually no mention of reviews, has a daft classification, countless errors, a reservoir of misinformation, and important ommissions; but I am not concerned here with the merits of

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the bibliography (those interested in this can read Robert Hall's assessment of volume I,50 but more its ideological orientation. Nasr is concerned with an intellectual space called 'Islamic science' that he wants to define according to his own perceptions and world-view and ultimately control, dominate and shape its content. Thus the notion behind the bibliography is that if Islamic science in history* can be equated with Ismaili gnosis and Greek traditional cosmologies, then the contemporary debate on the subject can be focussed in this arena. Thus to ensure that the student using the bibliography does not discover the real content and nature of Islamic science, Nasr does not provide entries for established basic works in the area. Thus, Fuat Sezgin's Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums51 does not get an entry; it is not possible for a scholar trained in the history of Islamic science to overlook the basic bibliographical tool for Muslim scholars to 1040 CE. Neither does the Dictionary of Scientific Biography which contains the standard accounts of Muslim scientists many by noted Muslim historians of science. Noted serial bibliographies such as Abstraca Islamica also do not get a mention. Moreover, to ensure that his particular notions of Islamic science get prominence, Nasr describes his own book science and Civilization in Islam in grandeoise terms and cites every chapter and section of the book! In volume 2 we are treated to a long section on Greek mythology and philosophy where all the favourites—Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle—appear in a very sleeted form. When we move to individual sciences, we are treated to a real hotch potch of mysticism and occultism. Under mathematics and astronomy, for example, we find enteries on "the problems of the souls of the sphere from the Byzantine commentaries to Aristotle through the Arabs and St. Thomas to Kepler", "Arabic transmission of science" and "the mercury horoscope of Marcantonio Michiel of Venice"52 Further still we get a special treatment of Near Eastern, Iranian, Indian and Chinese varities of myticism and gnosis in the guise of mathematics, cosmology and medicine. In case we still have not got the message, there is a specail section on cosmology and cosmography with "specific problems" like angelology, light' (out of ten citations in this section 8 are to Henry Corbin, one to Louis Massignon—needless to say talking about Ismaili gnosis, p.278) and time-space. So there we have it: anyone ploughing through An Annotated Biblography of Islamic Science could be forgiven for believing

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that Islamic science is another name for Ismaili gnosis, great mystery religions and the occult. Both in his Bibliography and Islamic Science, Nasr makes what is marginal, on the whole unimportant, and essentially side issues and ideas, the main focus and hence the norm of Islamic science. Even if one accepts Nasr's ideas as 'Sufism', which I do not, we know that Sufism was not the only trend, or indeed the dominant trend, in Muslim intellectual history. Nasr's treatment is like writing a history of sexuality in Muslim civilization and making homosexuality (and homosexuals certainly existed throughout Muslim history) the dominant and normal sexual behaviour! (this would be the case if one were to read Greek notions of love in Islam as homosexuality played a major part both in Greek society and thought.53 It is worth noting that in contrast, Ahmed Y al-Hassan and Donald R Hill in their recent work, 7slamic Technology: An Illustrated History** do not consider Hermeticism, Pythagorian numerical mysticism, occult, magic, astrology and alchemy as part of Islamic science even though one finds that they are discussing many of the same scientists and their works, and intellectual developments and trends. Indeed, these categories hardly make an appearance in their work. It is also worth mentioning that al-Ghazzali, who was himself a Sufi, rejected all this magical, mystical construction and labelled them as blames worthy knowledge. Of astrology, he writes: "...astrology is purely guesswork and in the opinion of the average man, (the influence of the stars) is not determined either with certainty or even with probability. Prouncements in connection with it are the result of ignorance. Consequently astrology has been pronounced blamesworthy because of its ignorance, not because of its knowledge. Furthermore, this knowledge, it is said, was of miraculous (nature) possessed by the prophet Idris, but has now vanished and is no more. The rare cases in which the astrologer happens to be correct are coincidences... For this reasons, even the strongest minded person has been forbidden to (practice) astrology.. (Moreover) it is of no use at all. The most which can be said on its behalf is that it is, at its best, an intrusion into useless things and a waste of time and life which is man's most precious belonging. Such a thing is the most serious loss."55 So much for history. Let us now look at the theological and practical aspect of Nasr's programm for Islamic science. In his forthcoming book Philosophy of Islamic Science Nasr devotes a

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whole chapter to explaining "What is Islamic science?" We shall examine it point by point.56 1. "To understand the nature of this science", Nasr writes, "it is important first of all to distinguish it from its application in the form of technology and even from the ethical implications of this science."57 To distinguish, of course, does not necessarily means to divorce. But in his vast output, Nasr have never once discussed the ethical implications of Islamic science or its practival and applied applications. One is forced to conclude: Nasr's Islamic science is divorced from ethics and pragmatic concerns. 2. "A science worthy of being called Islamic must reflect and lead to unity; it must not hide the interrelation of all things which is a reflection upon the level of multiplicity of unity but rather accent and reveal it", and, "Unity must also be reflected in any Islamic science through its awareness of Unity as the Divine Principle and not only as the principle of integration and interrelation."58 A number of questions arise here. How does a science lead to unity? How does one avoid not hiding the interrelations of at least a few things? Nasr's notion of unity is not what conventional Muslims like myself understand by Tawheed; the unity of God. Nasr is talking about some sort of underlying metaphysical unity which does not distinguish between the Creator and the created; both are an extension of the same Unity. Elsewhere, we get an explanation of it: "the metaphysical knowledge of unity comprehends the theological one in both a figurative and literal sense, while the converse is not true"59 In other words, Nasr's metaphysics of unity is greater than religion itself, and as such it is clearly above our theological understanding of Islam. But if this Unity does not distinguish between the creator and created then surely only a super-human person, or another diety, can claim not to "hide interrelationships of all things?" Clearly an absurd assertion. 3. We proceed: "the concern of certain mathematical physicists in this century for mathematical symmetry and beauty almost as scientific argument represents a philosophy similar to this aspect of Islamic science expect that Islamic science connotes invariably this mathematical harmony and beauty to the Beauty of God and sees in this harmony an imprint of the Wisdom of the Creator."60 And in the footnote we read: "This aspect of Islamic science resembles greatly the Pythagorean-Platonic tradition which Islam integrated so easily with its own world-view precisely because this was a wisdom based on Unity and harmony and therefore close to the perspective of Islam but not the cause of it."61 Why does Nasr insists on drawing parallels between the Islamic

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notion of Unity and the Pythagorean-Platonic tradition? Because he sees the whole notion of Unity in Pythagorean-Platonic terms. If, as the Pythagoreans believed, numbers correspond to heavenly activities, then by decoding these numbers scientists are discovering Absolute Reality. Thus Nasr believes in mathematics not as an instrument for solving problems but as a magical system for removing the hidden veil of Reality. What this literary means is that Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Schrodinger's Equations, Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, et cetera reveal the Beauty and Reality of God! 4. More follows in the same vein: we are told that mathematical models must correspond to reality, largely because Ptolemy said so. "In Islamic science this nexus between science and reality must exist. Science must correspond to some ontological aspect or aspects of what it studies. It cannot remain satisfied with mathematical models which can predict events and describe phenomena but which do not correspond to physical reality"62 Thus in Islamic science mathematical models are not just tools but have one-to one correspondence with reality. But this assumes two possibilities: one that we know reality so that we are in a position to tell that the correspondence is exact; for example, we really have to know—as we know a chair or a cat—wat are neutrinos, quarks and quantum waves and not just some of their properties. This is clearly an impossibility; and what this assertion does to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle I shudder to think. Second, as Parvez Mansoor points our "the only kind of world that submits itself to decodification by the ciphers of mathematics is the one that has been encoded so."63 So if you believe that God has been writing equations in the heavens you will be on to a good thing. But this possibility also has an ironic side-effect in that it actually writwes off God from the whole eterprise. Manzoor again: science "posits, the existence of a world that is already amenable to mathematical codification and whose 'essential' attributes are mathematical. The ultimate reality of science, therefore, is a physical universe that is devoid of any ultimate goal. The universe of mathematical ciphers is a universe without ethical purpose..."64 5. Furthermore, "the goal of any science which can be characterised as being Islamic must be to study the nature of things, or some level of reality in its ontological sense and not only accidents and phenomena independent of substance and the noumena."65 So Islamic science is essentially an ontological enterprise, it deals with the nature of being and not with the physi-

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cal, biological and meterial aspects of phenomena. It is a metaphysics and not a practical enterprise. 6. "Conjecture and hypothesis must never be mistaken for science which in the Islamic context always implies certitude. There is a place in Islam for a 'science' of the physical order which 'grows* from the less exact to the more exact but this type of 'science' which grows from the knower to the unknown must be subordinated to that highest science which is based on certitude and permanence"66 Does that mean that scientific activity should be guided by immutable and certain values? No. Since Nasr equates Urn (knowledge with al-haqqiqa (the Truth), it is the 'certitude and permanence" of al-haqqiqa, or rather the mystical experience of al-haqqiqa that becomes the prime mover of science. Such an endeavour has nothing to do with a problem solving enterprise. "No science can claim to be Islamic which seeks to study the material universe independent of the higher levels of existence and as if it were an independent order of reality. Nor can a science be Islamic if it does not remain aware of the levels of consciousness and modes of knowing."67 How do you integrate 'higher modes of existence' in material phenomena? By ascribing them with symbolic, magical and occult properties, of course. 7. And finally to the crunch: "Without hierarchy there is no Islamic science no matter how many pious assertions are made about studying nature as God's creation."68 One could reasonably assume that by hierachy Nasr means classification of science to set priorities and emphasis, to delineate what should be done first establish an appropriate order for doing science, solid state physics before high energy physics, diarrhea research before cancer cures, food research before slimming diets. But one would be wrong. Nasr's obsession with hierarchy and that clear precise declaration that "without hierarchy there is no Islamic science" hides a deeper meaning. In Ismatti gnosis and Gnenon/Schuon theology, hierarchy has a special significance: it is an integral part of Imamology and angelology. The Angelic world is structured in a strict hierarchy from the level of the Uppermost Heaven, the First Intelligence, the Natiq,vrho signifies the literal or exoteric statement of positive religion, to the Second Intelligence, the Heaven of the Fixed Stars, where the Asas provides the exegesis of the estoteric meaning, to the Third intelligence, Heaven of Saturn, the domain of Imam, who has personal mastery over the community, and so on.69 Accepting this hierarchy therefore signifies submitting to the appropriate level of Intelligence. A science that submits to this hierarchy becomes sub-

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ject to the esoteric interpretation of the Imam. Scientists therefore become the devotees of the Master and this is how their science acquires its ontological significance and the ultimate end of science becomes God. Thus, for Nasr, only that science is Islamic' which functions on the model of the Pythagorean cult, or a Platonic republic ruled by a master race of purified gnostics, or in gnostics framework where all owe unqualified allegiance to the Master who gives it a purpose and direction: "hierarchy also exists in the subject which studies the objective order. There are not only levels of reality to be studied but also levels of consciousness or modes of knowledge of a hierarchic nature capable of studying that objective reality. The Qur'an itself refers to the level of the soul ranging from the nafs al-ammarah to the lawwamah, mutmainnah, radiyya and mardiyyah. Likewise, it refers to levels of those who know, distinguishing between those who know and those who do not, and furthermore between those who are 'firm in knowledge' (al-rasikh-un fVl-ilm) and ordinary knower".70 Thus those who know the Truth (al-haqqiqa),\ike Ismaili Imams, Guenonite masters, practioners of alchemy and other esoteric occultism, have a divine right to be accepted as masters, give esoteric interpretation to science and scientific output, and lead the scientific community to the path of God. A study of Nasr's ouvre leads to the conclusion that he is a nowhere man, occupying a nowhere land: his discourse is neither about Islam, nor about science; but, as we shall see shortly, it is a purely totalitarian enterprises. Ground Control to Mtegor Tom So what do we actually learn from Nasr's discourse on Islamic science? Nasr is telling us that: 1. All religions, including secular world-views such as Buddhism, are the same at a certain level of reality. 2. Pythagorean cult, neo-Platonism and other ancient esoteric mythologies are the basis of Islamic metaphysics. 3. The Zoroastrian notion of a world perpetually in battle between the forces of light and darkness is a part of Islamic metaphysical system. 4. The Hindu notion of cyclic time, reincarnation and karma are also an integral part of the Islamic metaphysical system. 5. Gnostics are somehow superior beings who know the Truth. 6. Islamic cosmology is essentially a combination of gnosticism and occultism.

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7. The history of Islamic science is basically a history of astrology and magic, numerology and aclhemy, sacred geography and geometry, gnosis and Greek mystical mythology. 8. Islamic science has nothing to do with the practical realm, it is a purely abstract from of mysticism. 9. Islamic science is divorced from thics. 10. The goal of Islamic science is Unity, but since this Unity is so all pervasive that there is no distinction between the Creator and the created it is essentially an elusive goal. 11. Islamic science is the study of ontological reality. 12. Islamic science is hierarchal which means that it must submit to the authority of the Gnostics and others who know the truth so that the correct esoteric interpretations can be given to Islamic science. Following Feyerabend, we can say that this system of 'science' is neither superior nor inferior to any other system of science. There are, however, certain social factors associated with this framework of thoughts that ought to be appreciated. Apart from its Islamic gloss, and the fact that it is a very confused and incoherent mixture, the underlying metaphysics is not entirely new. Throughout history, it has existed in one form or another, indeed, the fact that Nasr can borrow so easily from this ancient cult and that religious cosmology, means that the barebones of the framework have existed since the beginning of history. That it is not an expression of Islamic ideas and ideals should be evident; what may not be apparent is that, throughout history, emergence of such gnostic frameworks of thought, and the authoritarianism and extremism which goes with it, are associated with certain developments. For example, the emergence in the late ninteenth century of the volkishch ideology in Germany and Austria owes a great deal to this type of metaphysical framework. This ideology emerged as a reactionary response to the problems of nationality and modernity and led to the theories of Aryan German racial excellence and eventually to the emergence of the Third Riech. Occultism was invoked to endorse the enduring validity of an obsolescent and precarious social order. The occultism that formed the basis of volkisch ideology, as Nicholas Goodrick Clarke points out in his powerful and scholarly study, The Occult Root of Nasizm71 was based on Gnosticism, the Hermetic corpus, Pythagorianism, neoPlatonism, the Hindu belief in reincarnation, karma and cyclic time, the Cabbala and religious trappings of Christinity. This lethal formula was turned by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (d 1891), a Russian occultist, into a framework of thought which

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came to be known as theosophy and became the foundation stone of Nazism. The founder of the Theosophical society, expressed the basic beliefs of her occultmetaphysics in The Secret Doctrine, one of her many books which had such titles ad Isis Unveiled and The Coming Race. Goodrick-Clarke summarizes her metaphysics expressed in The Secret Doctrine in three principles: "Firstly, the fact of a God, who is ominipotent, eternal, boundless and immutable... Secondly, the rule of periodicity, whereby all creation is subject to an endless cycle of destruction and rebirth... Thirdly, there exists a fundamental unity between all individual souls and the diety, between the microcosm and the macrocosm. But it was hardly this plain theology that guaranteed theosophy its converts. Only the hazy promise of occult initiation shimmering through its countless quotations from ancient beliefs, lost apocryphal writings, and the traditional Gnostic and Hermetic sources of esoteric wisdom can account for the success of her doctrine and the size of her following amongst the educated classes of several countries.72 These ideas were adopted by German theosophists such as Guido von List, Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels, Rudolf von Sebottendorf and Karl Maria Wiligut, all practicing occult gnostics, and shaped the mythological mood of the Nazi era. Goodrick. Clarke demonstrates convincingly that the desire to found a nation of pure Aryans evolved directly from elitism and authoritarianism of gnosis. In Muslim history itself, there are examples of gnostic totalitarian groups. An abvious example is the Ismaili Order of Assassins which, from the late eleventh to the closing quarter of the thriteenth century, freely and frequently carried out assassinations of their political opponents. The Assassins were organised into a hierarchical secret society and owed blind obedience to their gnostic head, the Grand-Master. One of their first victims was the celebrated wazir, Nizam al-Mulk who founded the famous Nizamiyyah Madrassah and library in 1065 in Baghdad. The impact on the individual of authoritarianism and blind obedience and following of the Master, inherent in Nasr's type of gnostic metaphysics is quite devastating. It circumscribes thought within a fixed framework, thus introducing intellectual rigidity and killing creativity. The devotee is almost duty bound to limit his thought to the ouvre of the Master and the Master's

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Master. An illustration of this is provided by Osman Bakr, a recent convert to Guenon/Schuon metaphysics. In "The Question of Methodology in Islamic Science1'73 Bakr, allegedly prsenting a Sufi metaphysics, quotes only from Schuon and Nasr despite the fact that he has been introduced to Sufism not by his current Guru, Nasr, but by his original teacher Naquib al-Attas whose output on Sufism is truly monumental, and who, no doubt, also introduced Bakr to works of rriginal Sufi masters.74 Because of the complete surrender of his mind to Guenonite philosophy, Bakr cannot see the contradiction and authoritarianism implicit in this metaphysics. We are thus told that methodology only has meaning if it is related to the "faculties of powers of dicernment within man" (in other words, the hierarchal social structure that Guenonite gnostics wish to perpetuate). Why should methodology be a function of social structure? Clearly a deft statement unless you believe that certain individuals are superior to others and by virtue of this superiority have access to certain (secret? occult?) methods which are not accessible to ordinary mortals. Bakr also tells us that "Devine origins of creative ideas should not be denied; neither should the divine origins of that which sustains man be denied". No Muslim will deny the Divine origins of creative ideas; but what is this "divine origins of that which sustains man"? Surely, God sustains man; and He is clearly Divine. Could it be the soul? No, Bakr is referring to something else (otherwise this statement is tautological): he is attributing divine origins to the hierarchal social structure that Guenonite gnosticism seeks. In other words, accept this hierarchy and become the devotee of my Guru for this is the only methodology that Islam allows for. We are then told that the methodology of Islamic science is gnosis. But how can gnoisis be a methodology? Bakr explains: "what is implied here is a spititual travel, a return of the soul to the Divine origins. This is the basis of the purification of the soul, which is an integral part of the methodology of knowledge in Islam. This particular methodology has often been described as a higher form of empiricism. What is now the object of observation and 'experimentation' is no longer the external object but the soul of the experimenter itself'.75 So those engaged in Islamic science should base their work purely on gnosis and after each experiment have their soul checked by the Master of gnosis! The true nature of Bakr's methodology comes to the fore when he tries to bring the Qur^an into the whole equation.

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"The methodology of tafsir of the Holy Book, as it has been developed traditionally, including especially the method of linguistic analysis, must constitute an integral component of the over-all methodology of Islamic science that is to be revived in the modern world. This is because the Book of nature is the macrocosmic counterpart of the Holy Qur'an"76 There is nothing wrong with using linguistic methodology to understand science: the suggestion is not as baffling as it sounds for symbolism inherent in language is similar to that inherent in mathematics. But Bakr has something else in mind which becomes clear when tafsir ends and tawail begins: "As applied to the Holy Book itself, where the method of tafsir ends that of tawil or hermenutic interpretation refers to the knowledge of the inner meaning of the sacred text"77 In other words, Bakr wants to interpret the Qur'an not according to the well laid out rules of tafsir, or even that of Qur'anic linguistic analysis, but by the magical and alchemical notions of Hermiticism—we are back to the occult. This is taking Greek mythology right to the heart of Islam; if a non-Muslim had suggested this the entire Muslim world would be up in arms! One of the duties of the devotees is to propagate the ideas and world-view of the Master. Here again, Bakr follows the path of true gnostics. Critique of Evolutionary Theory78 is a collection of essays edited by Bakr. The book is a tribute to the Guenonite contribution in this area and with one or two exceptions—put there for good measure and to make the whole exercise look more pluralistic—the essays are by noted members of the School. It is worth noting that these essays do not present any arguments or evidence against evolution; they simply make statements of metaphysical beliefs. Bakr's own contribution reads like an undergraduate essay, which it is, and clearly demonstrates the circular and confined nature of his thought. Bakr opens his introduction with the assertion that the arguments against the theory of evolution has been suppressed by the scientific community. This allegation may have been true over two or three decades ago; there is now overwhelming evidence that scientists themselves have taken stand against the theory of evolution; they have criticised it at length and deliberated upon the various perspective offered by Charles Darwin—although Bakr is simply unaware of this. However, Bakr has himself included in this book an essay by W. R. Thompson, a noted Canadian biologist. Thompson's essay was published as introduction to the 1958 edition of Darwin's

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Origin of Species. With the very first chapter of this book being a critique of the theory of evolution by a scientist, how can Bakr claim loud and high that scientists have tried to silence the critics of evolution? There is, however, truth in Bakr's assertion that anti-evolutionary view "is being maintained and upheld only by the non-scientific people especially those who have their religious views and interest at stake." How else could he justify his own totally non-scientific view of the theory of evolution, particularly when he is quite incapable of differentiaing between the popularly held myths about evolution from what the scientists are actually saying? almost all the essays in the book are obsolete with regard to the prevalent scientific view on the subject. The criticism of this theory within the scientific establishment is based on insights from contemporary knowledge of molecular genetics and not on the preliminary observations on taxonomy of this or that phylum. Had Bakr, instead of reading and re-reading Nasr, Schuon and other members of his gnostic circle, bothered to read Mary Midgley79 Gillian Beer80 a host of Marxist scholars and even committed Christians such as Alan Hayward81he would have been furnished with arguments and real evidence. But since the entire purpose of this absurd book is to promote Guenonite world-view, understanding of scientific issues, getting the facts right and up-to-day are irrelevant matters. It is possible that Bakr does not know what he is saying or doing; after all gnosticism has a horribly damaging effect on the mind. I like to believe that. Apart from the emergence of totalitarianism, suppression of creativity and blind Guru worship, there is another factor connected with the rise of occult gnosticism: decline and fall of civilizations. For example, a correlation has been noticed between the proliferation of gnostic and occult sects and the breakdown of the stable agricultureal order of the late Roman Empire.82 Given the overall, extreme emphasis on other-wordly activities in occult esotericism, and the insistence on seeing the underlying Reality of all physical and material phenomena, it is not surprising that it leads to the degeneration of the material world and collapse of civilization. After all, since the beginning of time, no civilization has ever been built on occult gnosticism and its sciences of alchemy, astrology, numerology and the like. To be concluded

Notes and References

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1. M. Zaki Kirmani, Issues in Islamic Science', MAAS J. Islamic Sci., 3 (2), 41-70 (1987); M. Zaki Kirmani, Imitative-Innovative Assimilation: A Critique of Waqar A Husaini's Scheme of a Contemporary Islamic S and T Rebirth', MAAS J. Islamic Sci., 2 (2), 69-74 (1986) and M. Kaleemur Rahman, Treface to Islamic Science', MAAS J. Islamic Sci., 3 (1) 45-56(1987). 2. M. Zaki Kirmani, Issue in Islamic Science', op. cit. 3. M. Kaleemur Rahman, Terspective of New Science' MAAS J Islamic Sci.,1(2), 75-80 (1985). 4. By working in groups scholars create and maintain an 'intellectual space', a piece of intellectual territory that they then defend from all outsiders. See Ziauddin Sardar, 'Intellectual Space and Western Domination: Abstracts, Bibliographies and Current Awareness', Muslim World Book Review,4(2\ 3-8 (1984) 5. S. Pervez Manzoor's numerous articles have appeared in the Ideas' section of Inquiry, see also his 'Environment and Values: An Islamic Perspective' in Ziauddin Sardar (Ed), The Touch of Midas, (Manchester University Press, 1984). 6. Munawar Ahmad Anees presents an Ijmali perspective on biology in his forthcoming book, Islam and Biological Futures, (London: Mansell, 1988). 7. Gulzar Haider's numerous papers looking at nature from the conceptual matirx of Islam can be seen in Inquiry, see also his penetrating essay, *Habitat and Values in Islam A Conceptual Formulation of an Islamic Cit/ in Ziauddin Sardar (Ed), The Touch of Midas, op cit. 8. See her brilliant new book, Knowing One Another: Shaping An Islamic Anthroplogy, (London: Mansell, 1988) 9. Iqbal Asaria's many articles on Islamic economics have appeared in Inquiry. 10. Ibrahim Sulaiman's ideas are found in The Islamic State and the Challenge of History,(London: Mansell, 1987). See also his A Revolution in History (London: Mansell 1986), and the forthcoming The Future ofShari'ah. 11. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge,(London: Tavistock Publications) p.23 12. Hakim Mohammad Said and Ansar Zahid Khan, Al-Biruni: His Times, Life and Works, (Karachi: Hamdard Foundation, 1981), p.34 13. Paris, 1951 14. London, 1953 15. Faber and Faber, London, 1953; and Harper and Row, New York, 1975. 16. London, 1959, reprint, Perennial Books London, 1982. 17. London, 1965 18. For Titus Burckhardt's thought see his posthumous work, Mirror of the Intellect: Essays on Traditional Science and Sacred Art, (Cambridge: Quinta Essentia, 1987), see also his Art of Islam (London: World of Islam Festival, 1976) 19. For A.K. Coomaraswamy's ideas see his Selected Papers-Traditional Art and Symbolism, (Princeton, 1977, 20. For Martin Ling's thought See A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century, (Berkeley, 1973) and What is Safusn? (Berkeley, 1977). 21. See his rather pedestrian new book, The Islamic Tradition: An Introduction,{New

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York: Amity House, 1988) 22. For a flavour of Needleman's ideas see his edited work The Sword ofGnosis, (London: Penguin, 1974). 23. Gai Eaton's philosophy is outlined in The King of the Castle and Islam and the Destiny of Man, Albany. 24. All Ashraf and Hadi Sharjfi are at the Islamic Academy in Cambridge. 25. The 'Christie embodiment' that Massignon represents is well described by Nasr in Traditional Islam in the Modern World, (London: KPI, 1987), chapter 15. 26. For Corbin's worldview see his Cylic Time and Ismaili Gnosis, (London: KPI, 1983). 27. Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred, (Edinburgh University Press, 1981), p.ix. See also Mohammad Salman Raschid's dissection of this book in Thisosophia Perennis Universale Imperium', Religion, 13, 155-171 (1983). Raschid concludes: 'As a Muslim I am bound to say that Professor Hossein Nasr's book cannot be read as Muslim statement since it does not represent the ex-pression of Islamic (i.e. Qur*anic) ideas. It is rather based upon a confused mixture of what could be characterised as 'Neoplatonized Semitic Theism with an admixture of distroted Vedanta'. If this sounds like an extraordinary incoherent formulation I submit that it is a direct reflection of the basic incoherence in Nas's whole case'. (p.170) 28. ibid. p. 107. Is he describing a man or a god? 29. ibid p.137 30. Islamic Science: An Illustrated Study, (London: World of Islam Festival, 1976) p.28 31. ibid p. 31 32. ibid p. 31, 36 33. ibid p. 36 34. See The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, (London: Concord Grove Press, 1983). p.20 35. See Hermitica edited and transacted by Walter Scott, (Boston: Shambhala, 1985) (3 vols) (original edition, 1926) 36. Aristotle's Physics, Books I and II translated and edited W Charlton, (OUP, 1970), Books HI and IV translated and edited by A Hussey, (OUP, 1983). 37. A penguin edition was published in 1986. 38. ibid, p 83 39. ibid, p.79 40. ibid p.84 41. ibid, p.126,127 42. See his catalogue of absurdities found in Islamic Science in Journal for the History of Astronomy, ix, 212-219 (1978)

43. Islamic Science, p. 135-136 44. ibid. p. 54-56 45. ibid, p.68

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46. ibid. p. 36-37 47. ibid.p. 193 48. It is because of its rather un-Islamic stances that the publication of Islamic Science led to protest by members of the Federation of Students Islamic Societies in front of the offices of the Festival of Islam. Despite its name, the festival had little to do with Islam and more to do with the celebration of Genounite thought—all publications of the Festival were produced by the Genounite savants. 49. An Annotated Bibliography of Islamic Science, (Tehran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, 1975), p xiii. 50. Robert Hall, 'review of Bibliography/ ISIS,69,457-461 (1978). 51. Brill, Leiden, 1972-84 (8 volumes published) 52. These citations occur on p.116, 114, 111 respectively of volume 2 of the Bibliography, (Tehran, 1978). 53. See Michel Foucault, The Uses of Pleasure, volume 2 of The History of Sexuality, (Penguin, 1984 54. Cambridge University Press, 1986 55. Al-Ghazzali, The Book of Knowledge, translated by Nabih Amin (Lahore: Fans, Ashraf, 1962) p. 75-76 56. The chapter explaining Islamic science will also appear in Munawar Ahmad Anees (ed), Issues in Islamic Science, (London: Mansell, 1988). The references are from the typescript presented to Anees. 57. ibid.p 1. 58. ibid. p.2. 59. Knowledge and the Sacred, op cit., p. 138 60. What is Islamic Science? p. 4. 61. ibid., p. 18-19 62. ibid., p. 5 63. The Paralysed Metaphysical Nerve', Inquiry,* (11) 42-49 (1987) 64. ibid, p.45 65. What is Islamic Science?, op dtp. 5 66. ibid. p. 15 67. ibid. p. 8 68. ibid. p. 8 69. See Henry Corbin, Cyclic Time and Ismaili Gnosis op cit. the table on p. 94 sums it all up. 70. What is Islamic Science?', op cit. p.7 71. The Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, 1985. 72. ibid. p. 22

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73. In Rais Ahmad and Syed Naseem Ahmad (Eds) Quest for New Science (Aligarh: Centre for Studies on Science, 1984), p. 91-110. Following his Master, Bakr describes Islamic science as "all disciplines relating to the world of nature, of the psyche and of mathematics' and these disciplines 'include psychology, alchemy, astrology and cosmology'. See his The Influence of Islamic Science on Medieval Christian Concepts of Nature', MAAS J. Islamic 4(1), 25-43 (1988). 74. Naquib al-Attas's output is truly monumental and since it is based on genuine Islamic tradition that owes nothing to Pythagoras, Hermeticism, and other forms of occult, it is deliberately and totally ignored by Nasr. See his The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri, (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1970), A Commentary on the Hujjat alSiddiq of Nur al-Din al-Raniri, (Kuala Lumpur: Ministry of Culture, 1986), and his brilliant Islam, Secularism and the Philosophy of the Future, (London: Mansell, 1985), and look out for his forthcomingTTie Metaphysics of Islam. 75. The Question of Methodology in Islamic Science', op cit., p. 105 76. ibid., p 102 77. ibid., p 103. 78. Islamic Academy of Science and Nurin Enterprise, Kuala Lampur, 1987. 79. See for example her, Beast and Men, and Evolution as a Religion, both published by Methuen, London, 1980 and 1985, respectively. 80. See for example his, Darwin's Plot, and Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin both published by R and K Paul, London, 1984 81. See his Creation and Evolution, (London: Triangle, 1985). 82. See Richard Cavendish, A History of Magic, (London, 1977).

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[2]

Where's Where? Mapping Out The Future of Islamic Science (Part-H)

Ziauddin Sardar Intellectual Studies Foundation London In this part the author shows the fallacy of the positivist's stand on science. He also critically evaluates the work hitherto produced by the Aligarh school of Islamic Science. In the end he tries to clarify the position of his own Ijmali school of thought and also points out to some important works to he carried out in order to evolve Islamic science. Look at All Those Lonely People The positivist approach to science, however, had been spectacularly successful both in providing civilizations with military muscle as well as in changing the material world itself. The history of positivist ideas is as old as the history of Gnosticism: both have their orgins in Greek philosophy and are part and parcel of the package labelled western thought. Plato imagined a knowledge untainted by human interests, and Bacon believed he had discovered a method (induction) for attaining it. Similar hope for a true knowledge of reality greeted the discoveries of Galileo, Trom Galileo to our time is short step in history. With the full weight of the western intellectual tradition and its scientific establishment behind it, it is hardly surprising that most Muslim scientists subscribe to the positivist interpretation of science. The position is exemplified by Jamal Mimouni in his reply to Anees* paper, "What Islamic Science is Not?1 Mimouni's criticisms are the standard since- science-is-neutral- objectiveand-universal-what-sense-does-it-make-to-talk-about-Islamic-science variety. This empiricist's assumption, that truth is amoral and facts are autonomous from value, also runs throughout Abdus Salam's article on "Islam and Science"2 In the first part of the article, Salam tries to prove that there is no contradiction be-

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tween science and Islam, there are no real limitations to science, and that some areas in theoretical physics echo metaphysical preoccupations of earlier times: the underlying assumption being that science, particularly physics from which most of his ex-, amples come, is an objective, value-free, neutral and universal enterprise. This position is also held by scholars who passionately advocate an Islamic alternative to science. Thus, while acknowledging that ideology is important in every activity, Ali Kettani states quite happily that we should not worry too much about "values and ideology in science".3 The assumption being that the good in western science is so good, and so universal, that it transcends ideological and value bias and that if science policy is tailor made, science can take root in Muslim societies. Some positivists, while acknowledging that science does not reflect reality or truth, still hold firmly to the neutrality of science doctrine. For example, Z R El-Nejjar is content with introducing individual elements of piety and metaphysical beliefs while accepting science as it is—a position that introduces a dichotomy between individual beliefs and scientific notions.4 In a survey of positions of Muslim scientists I did over a decade ago, El-Nejjar said that he was an evolutionist while inside the laboratory and a Muslim when he came out!5 But of all the positivist positions, S. Waqar Husaini's theses, which he has been putting forward for a decade now, centres around the notion of "innovative-imitation": while Muslims are lagging behind in numerous other things, they are certainly not behind in imitation, that is what they have done for the past two hundred years and no innovations have taken place. This is because imitation seldom leads to innovation, it yields to enslavement—a position clearly demonstrated by the Muslim world today. It is the belief in the neutrality and universalism of science and technology that led Husaini to the contradictory conclusion, in his Islamic Environmental Systems Engineering6 his only coherent work, (indeed, some of his papers and pamphlets are so confused and full of contradictions that it will require papers two to three times their lengths to point them all out7 that while historically Islamic science and technology reveal unique characteristics and institutions, the present-day salvation lies in importing from an un-Islamic tradition. Despite all the trappings of terminology like the consistent use of the shariah as an adjective, the underlying assumptions of Husaini are positivist, realist ones. Let me, then, briefly examine the positivist position to settle some of the issues and clarify certain others.

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Over the last twenty years, philosophers and historians of science, sociologists and anthropologists of knowledge, and Marxist radicals and environmental activists have shown that the view of science as the pursuit of Platonic Objective Truth, divorced from values and morals, with the results of science being universally valid to be patently false and misguided. Indeed, there is now so much literature on the subject that it is untenable, nay naive, for a self-respecting scientist and intellectual to hold this view. There are number of ways to argue and prove that science is not neutral and universal but a value-laden enterprise and I will give only the bare bones of the arguments leaving the interested reader to pursue detailed references. 1. Observation. Most scientists argue that science starts with observation. From these observations statements, bearing direct one to one relationship, are made. The singular statements are generalised into universal statements from which the theories and laws of science are derived. These universal laws and theories produce various consequences that serve as explanations and predictions. There are a number of problems with this model. First, we do not just observe; we observe within a framework. Scientists do not just observe phenomena, they test theories. In other words observation is theory dependent; analytical history of science shows that it is not observation that leads to theory but theory that leads to observation. So scientists look where the theory tells them to look. Moreover, observation is coloured with perception and often scientists see what they expect to see. Ian Mitroff proved this when he examined the perceptions, cherished theories and published results of those scientists who analysed lunar rocks brought back by Apollo 11. In almost all cases, these scientists found what they excepted to find leading Mitroff to conclude that scientific objectivity is nothing but a charade.8 Second, how do we get from a single statement about a phenomena to universal statements? Proponents of this model would argue that, given certain conditions, it is justified to generalise from a finite list of observation statements to universal laws, or to take an inductive leap. This generates further problems not least of which is that induction, as David Hume conclusively demonstrated two hundred years ago, is invalid. In What is this thing called science?, A.F. Chalmers illustrates the point by relating the story, attributed to Bertrand Russell, of the inductivist turkey.9 On the first morning of its arrival at turkey farm, our turkey was fed at 9 am. Being a good inductivist he did not jump to any conclusions from this single observation. But

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when he had collected a large number of observations of the fact that he was fed at 9 am, on different days of the weeks, under a wide range of circumstances, on rainy days, sunny days and so on, his inductive conscience was satisfied. He concluded: "I am always fed at 9 am". On Christmas Eve his conclusion was shown to be false when, instead of being fed, he had his throat cut. Inductive inferences with true premises can lead to false conclusions: logic does not justify induction. Moreover, past experience does not help much either. The argument that induction has been observed to work in the past, laws derived from it have been successfully used and tested, therefore it is legitimate to assume that induction is valid is also invalid: it is a circular argument, using induction to justify induction. The shift to probability theory is also of little help: it is not possible to justify statements making universal claims about an infinite number of possible situations from a finite number of observation statements. Thus, while on the one hand, it is untenable to see science as starting from statements that can be established as true or probably true in the light of given evidence, on the other it is not difficult to show that scientific observation in science is selective and biased, coloured with the perception of scientists, and is normally focussed in a particular direction by the narrow confines of a theory. 2. Problems. An alternative approach for the 'science is objective truth* exponent would be to start from problems. Scientists work with problems associated with the behaviour of phenomena and propose falsifiable hypothesis which can be disproved. These conjectural hypotheses are then tested, critically examined and refuted. The weaker ones will be eliminated while the stronger ones prove more successful. When a hypothesis which has successfully faced a whole range of stringent tests is falsified, new problems are produced which require new hypothesis an$ thus the whole scientific enterprise progresses. This is the 'objectivist* argument presented by Karl Popper in his monumental works The Logic of Scientific Discovery10 and Conjecture and Refutation.11 A more sophisticated approach moves from absolute degrees of falsifiability, from the merits of individual theory, to focus on the relative merits of competing theories. Here again, the fact that observation statements are theory dependent and fallible undermines the whole objective enterprise of science. Chalmers sums up the argument against this position: "If true observation statements are given, then it is possible to logically deduce from them the falsity of some universal

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statements, whereas it is not possible to deduce from them the truth of any universal statements. This is an unexceptional point, but it is a conditional one based on the assumption that perfectly secure observation statements are available. But they are not...all observation statements are fallible. Consequently, if a universal statement of a complex of universal statements constituting a theory or part of a theory clashes with some observation statement, it may be the observation statement that is at fault. Nothing in the logic of the situation required that it should always be the theory that is rejected on the occassion of a clash with observation".12 Moreover, history of science, despite Popper's repeated and heroic attempts to prove otherwise, does not support the falsificationists. There are numerous instances when observation statements have been rejected and the theory with which it clashed retained. For example, naked eye observation that Venus does not change size appreciably during the course of the year, which is inconsistent with Copernican theory was rejected and the theory retained. Sometimes major clashes between theory and fact are recognised and simply ignored and considered to be an unnecessary interference with the process of research which then leads to important discovery. This was the fate suffered by Kepler's and Descartes's rule that an object viewed through a lens is percieved at the point of intersection of the rays travelling from the lens towards the eye. The rule made a connection, and gave an empirical base, between theoretical optics and vision. It applies that an object situated at the focus will be seen infinitely far away. Borrow, Newton's teacher and predecessor, refused to test the theory announcing that his own ideas were 'manifestly agreeable to reason'13 T.S.Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution14 demonstrates the difficulties that falsificationists face in proving their claim, Paul Feyerabend's Against Method15 provides a host of examples which undermine the falsificationists theses. Falsification does not actually work in practice either. A typical scientific theory consists of whole complex of universal statements; and when it is tested further assumptions are added concerning the actual techniques of the experiments, the laws and rules governing the use of instruments, the experimental set-up and so on. Now, if an experiment set-up to record an observation that were going to disprove a theory actually yielded the expected observation, then the only logical conclusion would be that at

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least one of the assumptions, is false. The observation does not actually help us to identify the faulty assumption. The falsificationist approach to defending the objectivity of science does not stand up to thorough criticism. Scientists do solve problems, but there is nothing in their enterprise that proves that they do it in an objective, neutral way. 3. Selection.Values make a major input when it comes to the selection process inherent in science. The problems that scientists select to work on are not chosen for some altruistic reasons: they are chosen on the basis of certain benefits—economic returns, military goals, political expediency. CERN, of which Salam speaks with glowing terms, exist not because European nations have some humanistic desire to promote theoretical physics, but because theoretical physics is essential if Europe is to acquire an edge over the rest of the world in nuclear might. The fact that much of the world's research and development budget is geared towards weapons research says a great deal about the ideological dimension of science. Considering the truly giantic problems of food and famine, health and hygiene, disease and disasters that the people of the planet face, most of the world's scientists should be working on these problems, yet four out of five scientists in the world are working on some area of defence and weapons. This means that altruism and pursuit of Truth has little to do with science; but military control and domination, and the associated rise of the military-industrial complex, everything.16 Clearly certain values are directing science in a certain direction. At the individual level also selection is made on the basis of values. The clearest example of application of values and their subsequent suppression is in the teaching of science. The syllabus is presented to the students as though there was no choice of topics; neither any question of the correctness of the answer. Yet, all teachers know that scientific syllabuses are the result of acts of interpretation and selection. And the principles of selection are determined by considerations of feasibility and values. Similarly when individual scientists choose between problems, values come in; but not just values, also ego, peer pressure, political considerations (where is the funding coming from?) and personal preferences. Even at the heart of scientific method itself, selection is made on the basis of values and values are brought in the framing of the problems. For example, in testing the correlation between two variables one has to take account of the significance of the correlation being made. For a higher significant level, one would design a more rigorous test, with large sample and lengthy,

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laborious and careful testing procedures. For a low significant level, one need not be so thorough and painstaking. But what decides the basis of significant levels? What errors can be ignored and what errors can lead to fatal results? If one were testing for something highly dangerous, one would naturally be more rigorous and painstaking; for something quite straightforward, one would not waste too much time and save money on tests. But ultimately, what is important, or dangerous, and what is not so important are decided by value criteria. Thus even in "quantitative techniques, we have value loadings put on, which derive from the intended functions of a result and which then shape the hard experimental quantitative work".17 Pressure to save money often leads to expedient value judgement. If one were to ask a dozen nuclear physicists how much radiation can an individual sustain without damaging his/her health one would get a dozen answers and all would claim their answers to be experimentally proved scientific facts! 4. Facts I Truths. Scientific realists believe that scientific facts, no matter how they are discovered, are in themselves amoral; there cannot be two views about a given fact. Since facts are a reflection of reality, putting any value connotation on them is quite meaningless. How does an observation statement become a Scientific fact'? The transformation involves a social process. Scientific facts are not 'discovered* they are constructed. Every fact has a social history associated with it. For example, two decades ago the scientific commuhity declared safe many substances it now decalres poisonous or life-threatening. The pill was declared totally safe, now it is connected with breast cancer. Certain toxins and pesticides were established as safe, now they are decalred dangerous. So it seems that these things were not poisonous twenty years ago, but they became so when scientists decalred them to be so. Toxicity is thus socially defined. Scientific facts are created within a well defined theoretical structure and a social process. For example, the Tact' that light behaves as a wave is conveniently forgotten in photovoltaic effects where it is treated as consisting of photons; but the Tact' that it behaves as a particle is ignored in explaining the phenomena of Newton's rings. The nature of calculations determines which Tact' is regarded as Tact'. When we examine the evolution of scientific facts the social process which goes into constructing them becomes evident. In Laboratory Life: Social Construction of Scientific Facts, Bruno Latour and Steve Woolger18 examine the detailed history of a single fact: the existence of Thyrotropin Releasing Factor

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(Harmone), or TRF(H) for short. The existence of TRF(H) is now an established fact, it started with the statement in 1962 that 'the brain controls thyrotropin secretion' to the statement in 1969 that TRF(H) is Pyro-Glu-His-Pro-NH2'. To begin with TRF(H) has meaning and significance according to the context in which it is used: it has different significance for medical doctors, for endocrinologists, for researchers and graduate students who use it as a tool in setting up bioassays, for a group of specialists to which TRH represents a subfield to those who have spent their entire professional career studying it. But outside this network TRH does not exist. The history of TRH involves many values and choices including the funding for the project iand the crucial moments during the project when it was about to be cut off, choice of strategy involved in the decision to obtain the chemical structure, tlie imposition of the fourteen criteria which had to be accepted before the existence of a new releasing factor could be accepted, the personalities of the two rival groups in the field and the dispute between them over priority, the dispute over the name of the substance (TRF or TRH), the doubts over the peptidic nature of TRF, and finally the use of mass spectrometry which introduced an ontological change in the research and put an end to the dispute. The story of TRH is best told in the words of Latour and Woolgar: "From their initial inception, members of the laboratory are unable to determine whether statements are true or false, objective or subjective, highly likely or quite probable. While the agonistic process is raging, modalities are constantly added, dropped, inverted or modified. Once the statement begins to stabilise, however, an important change takes place. The statement becomes a split entity. On the one hand, it is a set of words which represent a statement about an object. On the other hand it corresponds to an object in itself which takes on a life of its own. It is as if the original statement had projected a virtual image which exists outside the statement. Previously scientists were dealing with statements. At the point of stabilisation, however, there appears to be both objects and statements about these objects. Before long more and more reality is-attributed to the object and less and less to the statement about the object. Consequently, an inversion takes place: the object becomes the reason why the statement has formulated in the first place. At the outset of stabilisation, the object was the virtual image of the statement; subsequently, the statement becomes the mirror image

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of the reality 'out there'. Thus the justification for the statement 'TRF(H) is Pyro-Glu-His-Pro-NH2' is simply that TRF really is Pyro-Glu-His-Pro-NH2. At the same time the past becomes inverted. TRF has been there all along, just waiting to be revealed for all to see. The history of its construction is also transformed from this new vantage point: the process of construction is turned into the pursuit of a single path which led inevitable to the 'actual' structure".19 But how do Latour and Woolger counter the argument that the transformation of statement into fact is itself determined by the Veal TRF' which was there all along simply waiting to be discovered since 1969? They point out that this transformation of statement into fact is reversible: that is, reality can also be deconstructed: "TRF may yet turn out to be an artefact. For example, no arguments have yet been advanced which are accepted as proof that is present in the body as Pyro-Glu-His-Pro-NH2 in 'physiologically significant' amounts. Although it is accepted that synthetic Pyro-Glu-His-Pro-NH2 is active in assays, it has not been possible to measure it in the body. The negative findings of attempts to establish the physiological significance of TRF have thus far been attributed to the insensitivity of the assays being used rather than to the possibility that TRF is an artefact. But some further slight change in context may yet favour the selection of an alternative interpretation and the realisation of this latter possibility".20 The unavoidable conclusion is that reality cannot be used to explain why a statement becomes a fact since it is only after a fact has been constructed that the effect of reality is obtained. The notion that facts are a reflection of some reality out there is increasingly coming under question. The ideas that if phenomena can be described in mathematical terms it must correspond to some reality is now proving to be fallacious. Does the muon actually exist in reality or is it simply a mathematical construct that works in certain models? The weight of evidence is towards the latter interpretation. Science uses two types of laws: phenomenological and theoretical; the distinction is rooted in epistemology. Phenomenological laws are things which we can at least in principle observe directly, whereas theoretical laws can only be

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known by inference. Theoretical laws are supposed to explain phenomenological laws; and physicists have transformed theoretical laws to fundamental laws, the assumption being that they describe some basic reality in nature. In science, phenomenological laws are meant to describe and they succeed reasonably well; but fundamental equations are meant to explain, and paradoxically enough the cost of explanatory power is descriptive adequacy. Really powerful explanatory laws of the sort found in theoretical physics do not state the truth. But the explanatory power of fundamental laws does not argue for their truth; in fact the way they are used in explanation confirms their falsehood. As Nancy Cartwright, the Stanford physicist and philosopher demonstrates in How the Laws of Physics Lie, "we explain by ceteris paribus laws, by composition of causes, and by approximations that improve on what the fundamental laws dictate. In all these cases the fundamental laws patently do not get the facts right".21 Whenever theory tests reality a host of approximation and adjustments are required, and as such, "the application of law to reality by a series of ad verum approximation argues for their falsehood, not their truth.22 The so-called fundamental laws of science do not govern objects in reality, they govern only objects in models—and the models are an artificial construction for the sake of convenience. Both the Tacts' of science and the 'truth' they are supposed to express are socially constructed and manufactured entities. All attempts to argue against this position have come to nought: the shifting of ground by the positivists to argue that science only 'corresponds' to truth, the so-called 'correspondence theory of truth', and its further retreat to 'approximation to the truth* theory, have not stood the test of logic. Values, it seems, are deeply ingrained in the facts, truths and laws of science and no attempt to ostracise them appears to be fruitful. Indeed, the distinction between facts and values is purely arbitrary, as an entity can shift from side to side in different formulations and sociological conditions. Any 'truth' of science can become an arch value as can be seen in sociobiology;23 and any value can be transformed into a fact. Consider the complex transformation of a category like essence which in theology is aiasic value; it is transformed into a fact in modern axiologies that insist on autonomy of value with respect to all metaphysical-structural elements. As long as every form of existence is seen as serving to express its essence, the essence has a guiding role, it is a value. But the theory of evolution destroys this status of essence; it simply becomes the pattern that happens to be hampered out, so the nature of things

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ceases to be registerd as self-justifying; essence now becomes a fact. Scientific Tacts' and 'truths' are like cows. They are not something we can take for granted as the solid rock upon which knowledge is built. Their nature is impregnated with values and is rather problematic—so much so that any serious confrontation scares them off. Like cows, they have become sufficiently domesticated to deal with mundane, run-of-the-mill events. This means, as radical marxist scholars have been arguing for decades, that science itself is nothing but social relations.24 5. Method. Science's claim to objectivity is based to a very large extent on its method. Scientific method, the positivists claim, is a detached, clinical and universal mode of inquiry based on reason and devoted to unearthing the truth. As is evident from the sections on observations, problems, selection, faith/truth, scientific method is a myth. If one were to go in a laboratory, where this method is allegedly in operation,what would one see? When Karin Knorr-Cetina, an anthropologist, studied scientists—as one would study a tribe—working in the laboratory, she was surprised by what she saw. To discover the scientific method in action, she writes, "We have had to go into the laboratory and observe the process of knowledge production. In view of the opportunistic logic we found at work in process, 'scientific method' can be seen as a locally situated, locally proliferating form of practice, rather than paradigm of non-local university. It is context-impregnated, rather than context-free. And it can be seen as rooted in a site of local social action, just as other forms of social life are."25 Laboratory observations, therefore, do not support a neutral value-free method. Neither does the history of science. We find that every rule of the idealised scientific method is broken at one time or another; indeed, during crucial moments in history science has advanced not because of its rational methods but irrational methods. For example, the phenomena that Galileo observed through a telescope could only be explained theoretically with Kepler's theory of vision. But Galileo rejects this theory on the simplest of possible evidence. It is his observation of Mars, which when seen through the telescope does change as Copernican theory predicts, rather than any deep understanding of cosmology or optics that Galileo approves of Copernicus. Galileo wins the day "because of his style and his clever techniques of persuasion, because he writes in Italian rather than Latin, and because

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he appeals to people who are temperamentally opposed to the old ideas and the standard of learning connected with them".26 Both history of science and contemporary anthropology of knowledge show that the method of science is 'anything goes'. When Thomas Kuhn surveyed the history of science in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he discovered that two alternative kinds of methodologies were at work. A great many scientists were engaged in refining scientific ideas within a very rigid framework of accepted beliefs and patterns. This he described as normal science and the framework of fundamental beliefs and accepted framework he termed paradigm. When normal science is dominant, the paradigm remains inviolate. However, eventually the paradigm ceases to yield interesting questions, and problems arise which after repeated efforts cannot be explained by the paradigm. A crisis begins to develop which forces some scientists to question the paradigm itself; thus revolutionary science takes over. A number of different paradigms mushroom all of which threaten the validity of much of the work done under normal science. Naturally, this is resisted by those whose life work faces extinction. Revolutionary science is short lived. Alternative paradigms are mercilessly attacked; eventually a dominant paradigm emerges and a time comes when for a scientist to remain a scientist he/she must subscribe to the new paradigm. The new paradigm then becomes the foundation of a new normal science. This continues until the new paradigm is again threatened by irreconciable evidence. The process repeats itself. The selection of the new paradigm, during the revolutionary phase, is not free from the political, personal and partisan considerations of scientists, because in the final analysis, there is no test which enables individual scientists to select from competing paradigms, for they are, to use Kuhn's term, 'incommensurable'. As many positivists have claimed, this analysis hits at the very foundation of science. If scientists can only choose between competing paradigms on the basis of personal and partisan criteria, the whole notion of an objective, value-free science falls to the ground. If there is a method in science, it is acceptance of the beliefs, practices and techniques of the dominant paradigm and solving problems and puzzles, by any means necessary, within the paradigm. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions begins with the words "history, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are not possessed:27 and ends with the extinction of the notions of:

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Realism: that science is an attempt to find out about one real world; that Truths about the world are true regardless of what people think; that the truth of science reflects some aspect of reality. Demarcation: that there is a sharp distinction between scientific theories and other kinds of belief systems. Cumulation: that science is cumulative and builds on what is already known, Einstien being a generalisation of Newton. Foundations: that observation and experiment provide the foundations for and justification of hypothesis and theories. Deductive structure of theories: that tests of theories proceed by deducing observation-reports from theoretical postulates. Precision: that scientific concepts are rather precise and the terms used in science have fixed meanings. Justification and discovery: that there is a context of justification and context of discovery and we should distinguish the psychological or social circumstances in which a discovery is made from the logical basis for justifying belief in facts that have been discovered. The Unity of science: that there should be one science about the one real world; less profound sciences are reducible to more profound ones, psychology is reducible to biology, biology to chemistry, chemistry to physics.28 All this makes those who still believe and argue for the bygone positivist doctrine of science as Universal, Objective pursuit of the Truth which is divorced from values, very lonely people. The philosophy of science has proved their position to be a total fallacy; sociologists of knowledge have pulled the rug of scientism from under their feet by revealing that their edifice is based purely on a belief system; anthropologists of knowledge have demonstrated that science far from being an enterprise of discovery is in fact a manufacturing process based on an 'opportunist logic', and archeologists of knowledge have shown that all knowledge is essentially politics and that truth does not exist outside power. Kuhn slew the notion of value-free, neutral, universal science; Feyerabend buried the corpse. Anyone who holds this view believes in a dead ideal.

I Should Have Known Better

The Aligarh school certainly does not hold this view, as a number of their writings indicate. Their work has been concerned with methodology and criticism of various positions on Islamic science. Zaki Kirmani, for example, argues that Islamic science

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exists in a specific conceptual framework and states the position of the group in these words: "When science and technology grow in the perspective developed by ilm and taskheer a unique blend of 'ethics' and 'knowledge* becomes a reality. Islamic science is therefore simultaneously both science and ethics. If for practical purposes, science is considered as a systematic study of matter and material phenomena and is carried out with the help of sense perception then Islamic science can be characterised as a study conducted with a view to understanding and applying Allah's will. However, if one thinks that an addition of a code of ethics to modern science will be sufficient to make it Islamic it will be gross misunderstanding on (one's) part. In fact method, techniques and philosophy of Islamic science stem from the Islamic framework and its epistemology. Thus it is the Islamic epistemology which distinguishes Islamic science from other scientific tradition".29 Much of the group's work has been an effort to relate Islamic ethics with science. And not surprisingly, this has meant a focus on methodology. Rais Ahmad, for example, has produced an interesting critique of reductionism which essentially argues that reduction can only be avoided by a drastic change in world-view and epistemology;30 in other words, given the assumptions of western science, reductionism will continue unabated. In another paper, he argues that Islamic methodology comprises three elements: the already acquired knowledge that helps formulate questions; the process of study adopted by a researcher to solve these problems; and the criteria used to verify and validate the conclusions. In the 'already acquired' category he includes revelation .as well as knowledge acquired by sense perception. He states that the Qur'an emphasises the proper use of sense organs, but unfortunately does not tell us what this 'proper' use is. On research methods he puts no restrictions, but argues that the conclusions should be subjected to verification of the teachings of the Qur'an. This raises the problem: "To limit the conclusions of a scientific study in this way is obviously to contradict the basic spirit of science and one may object to it. But as science is the study of matter and natural phenomena one of its objectives is to study the purpose of the

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material world and phenomena."31

the

occurrences of the

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natural

This conclusion is open to two criticisms. First of all it is attributing ontological properties to science-how can science study the purpose of the world? Second, even if science does study the purpose of the world, the assertion still does not meet the objection that one is putting limits to science. The dilemma arises from Ahmad"s formulation of methodology: only if one works on nonproblems or problems that arise outside the episteinological framework of Islam or social needs of the Muslims, would one produce results that will contradict the Qur'anic framework. Riaz Kirmani's attempts to tackle the questions of Islamic methodology have been more fruitful. In 'Qur'anic Method of Enquiry',32 he outlines the standard approach to knowledge in Islam, its basis being revelation, taqwa (which is "a particular attitude of man towards cosmic phenomena, social phenomena not excluded:), spiritual methods such as intuition and inspiration, history, observation, reason and inference and experimentation. He quickly moves, in "Structure of Islamic Science",33 to develop a paradigmic system for Islamic science. There is a problem with the whole concept of 'paradigm': it contains the notion of change in beliefs and value systems. Kirmani overcomes this problem by introducing the notion of absolute macro-and micro-paradigms as well as the idea of absolute hint paradigms. While, Kirmani's formulation of absolute hint-paradigms needs to be investigated and elaborated much more thoroughly, his formulation of absolute macro-and absolute micro-paradigms are much more specific and clearly point towards a research programme that can be undertaken. For example, Kirmani states that the absolute microparadigms for physical science and cosmology respectively are: perfect cause and effect relationships is known to Allah alone and there is a role of complementarity in the cosmos. These statements immediately liberate science from the imposed burden of the pursuit of Ultimate Truth while at the same time suggesting that Muslim physicists could be profitably looking for complementarity and correspondence in micro and macro phenomena. However, when it comes to applying his framework to practical problems, Kirmani totally fails to cope. In "Islamic Science on Production and Administration Plane",34 Kirmani applies the formulation of absolute macro-paradigm to study the production process and the structure of research organisations within the framework of Islamic science. He uses the Qur'anic concepts of

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tawheed, ibadah, khilafah and akhirah as analytical tools. Kirmani points out: "The concept of Tawheed forbids man from developing technologies which may endanger the unitary and ecological functioning of the cosmos. The scientific activity if considered to be an act of Ibadah, serves to raise its status into a more venerable activity than a mere problem solving exercise. It also develops a consciousness to participate only in those activities which serve to please the Creator. And God is pleased only with those activities which are good and useful to mankind. Moreover, the concept of Ibadah is also consistent with the fact of the obediei^ce of the entire cosmos to its Creator. Besides providing stimulation for the study of the cosmic phenomena, the concept of Khilafah defines man as a trustee of Allah and guardian of Nature rather than an irresponsible master of the universe. Akhirah serves to inspire man to endeavour to eliminate undesirable ego that usually grows with his predominant earthly attitude to life".35 So we are set to delineate the nature of the kind of production technologies that would come within the purview of Islamic science and which could be usefully promoted in Muslim countries. But instead, Kirmani begins to question the relevance of conceptual categories that the Ijmalis have used to pin down a viable notion of Islamic science. First of all he criticises us for not using the concept of Akhirah. Correct! But just because we have not used Akhirah as an anlytical category does not mean that others cannot use it; indeed, the Ijmalis have only used a handful of concepts from the Qur'an and Shariah, there are numerous others that ought to be used and, no doubt, will be used. Then, Kirmani singles out the concepts of halal and haram, adl and zulm, and Urn and istislah, and argues that: "These concepts despite being couched in language which have not served as medium for Islamic work done hitherto, are already known to scientists. Language does make things more intelligible and consequently enhances the profundity of effect, but simple replacement of English or for that matter German words by their Arabic equivalents cannot possibly bring out any radical change. This point apart there are at least two more important grounds which render these concepts less forceful for production research. Firstly the concepts are reductionist and secondly that their prediction

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value is zero. They are reductionist because the decisions arrived at the basis of these concepts-against or in favour of production research have to be taken separetly regarding the production of individual article. By zero prediction value, we mean that these concepts do not foretell anything about the kind of products that have to come under their jurisdiction. Only a long and continuous experience of scientific produce tells us about their benefits and hazards. A large number of products of medicine, pesticide, fertilizer, fabric, cosmetic technologies, and technologies other than these may be quoted. They were, in fact, first strongly recommended but finally rejected by scientists themselves. Islamic science requires more comprehensive, organismic and predictive values on the production plane".36 Wrong on all three counts. The concept of haram, for example, is not known to western scientist: if science is considered as the rational pursuit of Truth then everything is permitted; as Feyerabend tells us the method of science is 'anything goes'. Furthermore, these concepts are not reductive, while they may help in reductive analysis they are distributive, that is to say they operate across a whole spectrum of disciplines and shape synthesis. For example, we can use the concept of adl and zulm to see if certain agricultural practices promote one or the other. A detailed study in this field (asking such questions as: do these practices increase production? Are these increases at the expense of peasant farmers? What impact do they have on the environment? Do they lead to individual, local or national self-sufficiency or do they induce dependency? And so on.) can lead to the synthesis of a more Islamically appropriate policy. Similarly, they can settle the questions of scientific methodology: do certain experimental techniques lead to zulm on animals, where does reduction become meaningless and pursuit of knowledge ceases to be an ibadah, is a particularly expensive methodology being used at the expense of istislah? Et cetera. Finally, they do have a strong predictive value. If they can predict the direction of a particular policy, decide between what te desirable and what is not, point out that certain methods, processes, techniques, technologies and policies could be beneficial or harmful they certainly have a high predictive value. Following Gulzar Haider, Kirmani prefers to use the concept of taqtua which he himself admits has "no predictive value of its own (but) its precautionary value is of immense importance". Kir-

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mani is wrong here too, as Haider amply demonstrates in the construction of an Islamic theory of environment.37 So how does Kirmani, intend to solve the problem of generating predictive concepts? To solve the problem of prediction, Kirmani develops three principles of 'naturality* which are said to have a predictive value. But immediately after these principles are stated, it is declared that at least two (of three) "have no predictive importance of their own"! Kirmani now moves on to the organisation of research in an Islamic framework. He declares that science has ceased to be an individual activity and is now an organisational function; and ultimately, Islamic science will unite research organisations with the state. But this is largely how science is structured; certainly in all of the Third World and also in the industrialised countries where multinational corporations also play a large part in the production of science. The whole exercise seems hardly worth bothering about. It will be the 'wisdom of the personnel' which will guide research. Again this is what science claims today; and no matter how much wisdom, how much taqwa individuals claim to have, they are always prone to corruption. This is precisely why distributive concepts like adl and istislah are needed to place social and societal checks on the development of science.Kirmani further states that "to bring about efficiency in the administration, it is necessary that one should not impose restrictions from outside (i.e.state level) that may impede the process of inquiry and block the growth of knowledge".38 But how will this be possible when all research is in the hands of the state in the first place? Back to the drawing board! In his "Preface to Islamic Science",39 M. Kaleemur Rahman points out that Muslims have not done justice with the art of criticism; and that includes their own history. Muslims have uncritically accepted the whole of their history as Islamic, when despotism and injustice, suppression of knowledge and authoritarian rule has been widespread in the Muslim civilisation. This is indeed true; we need to look at our history much more critically and shift what is genuinely Islamic and what is mere zulm and error.40 This is particularly ihe case with the history of Islamic science and philosophy which needs to be studied from the perspective of the epistemology of Islam. In the classical period, falsifa was essentially Greek philosophy; there was no other philosophy about. This was why al-Ghazzali attacked falsifa with such formidable power: he was in fact dethroning Greek philosophy from the position it had been given by Muslim philosophers like al-Farabi. Before we accept the works of ibn

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Sina, Mulla Sadra, ibn Rushd uncritically as major contribution to Islamic thought, we ought to analyse them from the perspective of the world-view of Islam. Such an exercise will also help us develop a more thorough Islamic critique of modern science. As Manzoor has said, "all Islamic critique of modern science as a social theory is the problem of zulm in history";41 and we ought to be aware of zulm in our own history. But at the same time, as I pointed out in the above critique of Nasr's contribution to the history of Islamic science, we should not do zulm to our own history either. We should not present what is minor as a major development, what is a side issue as a norm and what is only a single trend of thought in a profusion of intellectual activity as the only strand of thought, or wrongfully attribute discoveries in a partisan manner or wrongfully promote one nationality at the expense of other. Unfortunately, the only concrete example that Rahman gives is unjust and wrong, even though it is attributed to ibn Khaldun. The example in question concerns Seyyidna Umar's letter of Sa'ad-Abi Waqqas instructing him to destroy large quantities of books and scientific papers he had come across in Persia. Umar is reported to have said: "throw them into the water. If what they contain is right guidance, god had given us better guidance. If it is in error, God has protected us against it." First, the following questions arise: is it possible for a man who had witness the revelation of God where he is repeatedly asked to seek and respect knowledge to issue such instructions? Is it possible for a man who was amongst the first to become a Muslim and who was one of the most trusted companions of the Prophet, who had said that one should go even as far as China to seek knowledge, to present such an attitude to knowledge? The story is utterly groundless and this was proved over fifty years ago, even if it keeps cropping up, by the American library historian, Ruth Stellhorn Mackensen. Mackensen, in fact, points a finger towards other quarters: "Possibly the story arose among a group of scholarly but heretical Moslems who greatly admired the remnants of Greek learning but regretted that so few survived and at the same time had little use for the early caliphs. One can quite well imagine such among the ranks of Ismaili savants who frequented the courts of the Fatimids, whose heretical caliphate in Egypt was brought to an end by Saladin in 567/1171. As partisans of the house of Ali, whom they believed was foully prevented from succeeding Mohammad as

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the true head of the Moslem state, they should have felt no scruples against representing Umar and his envoy as ignorant vandals. We know that the academy and library founded and supported by the Fatimid caliphs at Cairo was. definitely modeled on the Museum or Serapium and their sciences, of Greek origins, and literature were cultivated alongwith strictly religious studies. This institution was closed by Saladin and the books from its library were scattered all over Egypt and Syria. Or is it too far-fetched to imagine that the story may be no older than this event and took form as a protest or a bit of literary revenge on the part of some deposed scholar of the Fatimid House of Science".42 After uncritically citing ibn Khaldun, Rahman takes me to task for formulating my norms of western and Islamic science "in haste"43 and says "he has grouped faith in rationality in the norms of Western science...but Islamic science does not reject rationality". Moreover, "the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work has become a fashion in modern science. Therefore, in this context the categorization of Sardar is unsatisfactory... Sardar has included neutrality as a norm for Western science which in the contemporary sense does not find ground. It is now known that Western science or so-called secular sciences are not value-neutral".44 Of Munwar Ahmad Anees, Rahman claims, "Anees advocates methodological freedom for Islamic science but does not consider the reductive method for Islamic science. To assume that reductive method is always harmful is an error."45 These criticisms do not reveal a proper reading of Ijmali output. Let me make the points clear. Western science, or more appropriately a very large population of those who practice it, believes in rationality as the only method of inquiry; we believe in revelation but consider rationality as viable, indeed an important, tool of studying science. The distinction is between 'belief and 'tool'. Furthermore, it is not true to say that "interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work has become a fashion in modern science"; in fact those who are truly doing interdisplinary work can be counted on the fingers on one hand. Rahman makes an at-

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tempt at counting them but misses a few important figures: "David Bohm, Ilya Prigogine, Rupert Shaldrake, Karl Pribram have given new dimensions to Western science and have shifted the emphasis of the emerging science of wholeness from epistemology to experiment". But even if interdisciplinary work has become a fashion this does not negate my categories for as Rehman points out, this work may introduce "some changes in the present framework and values but by and large the world-view would remain Western". (See my criticism of their work below). I am suggesting interdisciplinary work should be done within the worldview of Islam, quite a different enterprise. When it comes to Rahman's assertion that I am claiming that western science is neutral, well, I should have known better. I was the first Muslim intellectual to argue that western science is value laden,46 then as now, I am saying that western science claims the norm of neutrality for itself; but intellectuals like myself and Rahman are not fooled. And finally to Rahman's criticism of Anees: of course, reduction is a viable methodology and in certain areas one cannot do without it. What Anees is attacking is the fact that reduction has been turned into an over-riding, omnipotent methodology, especially in physics and biology, where the western scintific establishment appreciates no limits to reduction. We Have Only Just Begun So what is the Ijmali position amongst all this? From my criticism of Nasr and the positivist thought, it is obvious that the Ijmalis do not equate Islamic science either with Greek gnosis or with neutrality and Truth. The formidable arguments and evidence brought against the positivist, realist view of science does not only spell the end of positivism, it also writes off much of Platonian and Aristotelian epistemology. This may generate problems for those theological positions which draw sustenance from Greek philosophy and metaphysics, but it is good news for the world-view of Islam. As I stated earlier, falsifa was essentially Greek philosophy; and al-Ghazzali realised that it was intrinsically un-Islamic. He was disturbed by the attribution of 'divine qualities' to Plato, and attacked the followers of Greek epistemology and metaphysics and heretics: "The heretics of our time have heard the awe-inspiring names of people like Socrates, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc. They have been deceived by the exaggerations made by the followers of these philosophers—exaggerations to the effect

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that the ancient masters possesed extraordinary intellectual powers: that the principles they have discovered are unquestionable: that the mathematical, logical, physical and metaphysical sciences developed by them are the most profound: That their excellent intelligence justifies bold attempts to discover the Hidden Things by deductive methods; and with all the subtlety of their intelligence and the originality of their accomplishments they repudiated the authority of the religious laws: denied the validity of the positive contents of historical religions...47 Al-Ghazzali rightly believed that even though some of their beliefs were justified, "they slipped into error and falsehood", but was willing to recognise "the solid achievements which lie beneath the repulsive facade of their thought".48 The Ijmali position is similar to that of al-Ghazzali. The propagandists for science, just as the propagandists for Greek philosophers, have attributed to science things which are beyond its abilities and scope. While we do not, indeed cannot, deny the solid achievements of modern science, we emphasise the 'repulsive facade' of its metaphysical trappings, the arrogance and violence inherent in its methodology, and the ideology of domination and control which has become its hall mark. However, it will be wrong to assume from this that the Ijmalis are simply Kuhnian; we neither sanction the extreme relativism of Kuhn, nor anarchistic epistemology of Feyerabend; neither do we support the class based science of radical Marxists, or a science based on 'evolutionary epistemologies' of the new schools-we do, however, recognise and appreciate the positive contribution of each and learn from their expositions, just as we have learnt from the positivist interpretation of science. But we do, even though we have only just began, have a unique position of our own which is derived solely from the ethical, value and conceptual parameters of Islam. The essence of Ijmali thought is reconstruction, complexity and interconnection or what Riaz Kirmam has called complementarity. Just as we have argued that the Muslim civilization itself has to be reconstructed49 and have made efforts to reconstruct a contemporary Islamic theory of environment50 and areas of knowledge such as Islamic anthropology,51 so a contemporary 'Islamic science' must be reconstructed. The basic tools for this reconstruction are the eternal concepts of the Qur'an and shariah at our disposal, what is genuinely Islamic in our tradition and history, and what we can synthesise and creatively assimilate52

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from the fruitful products of western science and technology. In this sense, the Ijmalis are neither willing to write off Islamic history and tradition not to reinvent the wheel. But the hallmark of the world that we inherit is complexity and interconnection. Nothing is amenable to simple, linear, onedimensional solutions, or black and white metaphysics. There is nothing in the complex web of problems that we face that can instantly and once and for all be solved by further injections of positivist science or by sprinkling the magic from the Hermetic corpus. The mechanical properties of linear cause and effect—like a piano, if you depress a certain black key, a certain note is struck every time—may work for a rather simple system but are of little use in complex environments. In complex system, the components do not have fixed properties. Moreover, each component changes with time, partly as a result of the learning process through these interactions. Complexity and multidimensional interactions change and obscure cause-effect relationships. In complex environments solutions have to operate on several levels specially when everything appears to be connected to everything else. Moreover, the past no longer becomes a sure guide to the future. If expectations are repeatedly frustrated, we lose confidence both in the validity of our judgement, in our ability to solve problems and in the very processes of structuring reality. Let me explain this further by delineating the Ijmali position vis-a-vis positivism, relativism, the Marxist position on science, the gnostic notion of science and the thought of the new paradigm and epistemological schools. Positivism: The Ijmali objection to positivism is that perceptions are not neutral, unequivocal reflection of 'reality', but depend on non-empirical conceptual categories that are indeed 'subjective'. Thus to talk about neutral, value-free, universal science makes little sense, particularly when we cannot find this category of science in history or in the laboratory, neither can we see them in facts and laws of science. As Chalmers puts it, "there is in general no category 'science* and no concept of truth which is up to the task of characterizing science as a search for truth".53 Thus to raise science above values and morals, to try to overlook the ideology inherent in it, is absurd. Quite apart from epistemological considerations, there is a clear paradox in the notions of a non-conventional, non-political truth. For if science claimed to be independent of established institutions, then it would necessarily constitute a challenge to those institutions, and hence would hardly be above politics. But because the positivists insist on a purist science leading to the

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absolute knowledge, science itself has become an arch morality, an intolerant, authoritarian endeavour based on the perpetuation of metaphysical and physical violence. The relentless pursuit of reason, over and above morality and values, in a supposed search for an elusive Truth, has turned science into a nightmare. As Foucoult says, "look hard enough at the western notion of reason and you will find madness."54 Those who criticize science, object to its mad and meaningless descent into reductionism and oppose its selfish and shortsighted applications, are the true guardians of its essential humanitarian ideals. As the positivist view of science is inadequate, should we throw reason and rationality completely overboard and descend into magic and myth—as is the want of so many western critics of science? This would clearly be an un-Islamic stand considering the emphasis that the Qur'an places on reason. However, if one thought that there is only one kind of reason, a single type of rationality, one would be wrong. As Paul Hirst notes, "western philosophy itself presents us with a bewildering array of definitions of rationality from opposed philosophical doctrines, each of which gives its own epistemological guarantees and legislation."55 Underlying these notions of rationalism there are numerous questionable and easily challenged assumptions about human beings, knowledge and* order, the world, and so on. This is because the notion of rationality is itself intrinsically linked to world-view. It goes without saying that observation and sense-perception, empirical work and experimentation, are essential features of Islamic science. But on what notion of rationality is it based? The Ijmalis argue for a circumspect rationality which connects pure reason to the conceptual matrix of Islam. Circumspect rationality reflects the complexity of our physical environment where decisions based on reason and cannons of logic can sometimes be morally irrational, and despicable moral code. Only when rationality is synthesised with values and morals does it produce a humanitarian science. In the framework of cautious, circumspect rationality 'pure' knowledge is never separated from moral knowledge. However, while this rationality is circumscribed by such Islamic conceptual categories as khilafah, adl, halal, haram, istislah, taqwa and so on, it is limitless in its use-a contradiction that is more apparent than real. Thus the Ijmalis have the complex position that they are not positivists in the sense that they endorse the fallacy of value/fact distinction, or support the inadequate use/abuse model of science which posits science in the Platonic ideal of the relentless pursuit

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of Objective Truth; but they are positivists in the sense that they do believe in an objectivity and rationality which is circumscribed by the value and conceptual framework of Islam. If codes of knowledge determine what is seen then let us bring our own Absolute codes of morality to the forefront; let us shape knowledge according to the codes in which we believe in hold dear for what is contained in the Qur'an and the Sunnah is the only Absolute Truth we can be sure of. Relativism: The Ijmalis agree with the proposition—indeed the weight of evidence in its favour is overwhelming-that theories are not ideal types bearing a one-to-one relationship with reality. They may be more or less coherent, aesthetically pleasing or morally desirable, but they cannot ultimately be equated with reality as they rest on acts of metaphysical faith. But our opposition to relativism is that the 'subjectivity' inherent in knowledge is itselt an objective, socially-necessary expression of social forces. In other words, instead of presenting 'subjectivity' as something mysterious and arbitrary which exists 'in itself, we hold that societal consensus, or ijma if you like, selects and shapes reality and nature in a particular way. This consensus is an objective phenomena because it arises from the basic values of the worldview and from the physical needs and requirements of a society. Social consensus or ijma therefore is an essential part of Ijmali thought. The notion of 'truth' is univocal for it applies equally to the judgement of lawyers, anthropologists, physicists, philologists, and literary criticism, as well as scientists and technologists. And as relativism demonstrates, there is no way to allot degrees of 'objectivity' or 'hardness' to all of them. But the presence or emergence of unforced agreement, a social consensus, an ijma, gives us everything in the way of 'objective truth' which a society may need. Since a society may have consensus on a body of absolute truths, this also undermines the moral objections one has against relativism. Thus the notions of Truth, Beauty and Goodness on which there is a complete social consensus, an ijma, are not changeable artifacts. Morally, relativism, with its distasteful extensions into a politics of lesser-evils and a practice structured around riskversus-benefits calculations, can be just as totalitarian as positivism. Indeed, as has been said about Feyerabend's dictum that 'anything goes' means 'everything stays': the seeming pluralism of a moral democracy has been known to encompass a fascistic ethics as easily as an anarchic one (which raises the interesting problems of how to keep a democracy voting itself out of

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existence!) This is why the Ijmalis insist on operating such notions as adl and istislah to keep extreme relativism in check and introduce a level of objectivity and morality in the enterprise of science. By connecting relativism as well as science to the conceptual matrix of Islam and societal consensus, ijma, we transcend both moral relativism as well as the dualism inherent in western scientific and philosophical tradition which pits humanity against animality, society against nature, freedom against necessity, mind against body, and in its most insidious hierarichal form men against women. This transcendance also gives an objective base to Islamic science as all elements in society agree with the conceptual categories of the Quran. At the same time it makes Islamic science accountable not just in the sight of God but also to society, its needs, requirements and wishes. The Ijmali stance on relativism, therefore is a complex one: on the one hand it accepts the relativistic nature of man-made knowledge, on the other it transcends moral relativism by making science accountable to moral conceptual categories and objective social consensus. Subjectivity is therefore demystified by an objective ijma. Radical Science: The Ijmalis appreciate the Marxist analysis of science which highlights the ideological characteristics of science and argues that science is an enterprise of competitive struggle, in which the specific issue at stake is the monopoly of scientific authority, defined inseparably as technical capacity and social power. However, our objection to radical science is that in their efforts to describe science in political terms, the Marxists rely on assumed knowledge of bourgeois society and class poisitions. This knowledge is of a sociological nature and its assumptions can be readily challenged but the Marxists take it uncritically in order to criticize the contents of medicine, biology or physics that mirror or distort this unjust society. The complexity with which a scientific discipline is constructed does not make it amenable to one-dimensional class analysis; while class may play a party in social relations of science, it is certainly not the sole factor which influences the social construction of science. The Marxist position is thus too limited and weak. Moreover, it is also self-contradictory because Marxists do not want to apply the criticism they apply to natural sciences to their own position, their own science of society and notions of historical meterialism and 'scientific' socialism. In the final analysis, Marxists are positivists. While they attack science for its ideological bias, they need a real, positivist science to ground their own radical science somewhere and per-

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petuate their own kind of ideology: while capitalism is exploitation of man by man, Marxism is simply the other way round. The Ijmalis, therefore, reject Marxism not simply on epistemological and religious grounds, but also on the basis of complexity: it is too simple, too one-dimensional an analysis, of a complex reality. And despite its rhetorics, Marxism as well as radical science has not introduced any real discontinuity: it sits comfortably, within an epistemological arrangement that welcomes and considers it its own legitimate child; in return Marxism had no real intentions of disturbing or indeed any real power of changing the structure of western civilization. In nineteenth century European thought and twentieth century epistemology of western science, Marxism exists like a fish in water. All this, however, does not mean that the real contribution of Marxist thought-of revealing the links between science and ideology, politics and racism—should be underestimated. Mystical Science: To the mystics the Ijmalis say: we accept higher levels of consciousness as well as gnosis as a method of understanding metaphysical reality. But it is only a method, and not necessarily the most elevated method either. Gnosis cannot be equated with revelation: as a method of understanding the truth revelation has come to an end with the Prophet of Islam. We have all the absolute truths that a society needs in the Qur'an. We do not deny the absolute values that exist in other religious traditions; however, the values of a tradition recommending absolute values may be absolute, but the tradition itself is not. And if Islam is a summation of the message of Allah, which is the basic belief of Muslims, then what need is there to look at other traditions for 'absolute values'? Intuition does play a part in creativity, this much must be recognized. But it should also be recognised that the mystics have appropriated intuition; they have reserved it for an elitist group and denied it to the vast majority of the people. By limiting intuition to organised and structured mysticism, they have mystified it and undermined its social acceptance. Intuition is open to all. Our understanding of knowledge should be derived from both intellect and intuition, but not from an intuition that is simply confined to secret orders, occult rituals and magic—but from that intuition which is the natural right of all humanity, which connects personal conscience with consciousness that is the root of the material universe, is cognizant of the whole, infinitely mobile and capable of great acts of creation and transformation. We need to recognise that intuition plays an important part in the social construction of knowledge and appreciate its true role in organised

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and systematic methods of inquiry which seeks to solve physical and material problems and gain a limited understanding of the relationships between physical phenomena. But all this has nothing to do with structured and institutionalised gnosticism, authoritarian Master-devotee relationships and elitist social politics. In a way the mystics want to have the best of all possible worlds: they want to limit their methodology within certain groups while seeking a social consensus on it; they propagate methodological relativism, on the one hand, and want their methodology to be an arch, omnipotent methodology, on the other, they want nothing to do with the physical world, yet insist that their methodology can help us shape physical reality. One thus finds double standards and moral dualism in the writings of mystics seeking to dominate science, and by implication, society. Reality, whatever it is, is much too complicated to be left solely in the hands of the mystics. New Paradigm and Epistemological schools: These schools are exemplified by the work of Fritjof Capra,56 Francis Verala,57 David Bohm58 and Ilya Prigogine.59 These scientists reject the mechanistic framework formulated by Descartes, Newton and Bacon and the associated methodology of reduction that goes with it as well as the belief that in complex systems the dynamic of the whole can be understood from the properties of the parts. In their work these scientists emphasise that the properties of the part can be understood only from the dynamics of the whole; indeed, ultimately, there are no parts at all; what we call a part is merely a pattern in an inseparable web of relationships. Moreover, there are no fundamental structures, but every structure is a manifestation of an underlying process. The entire web of relationships is intrinsically dynamic. There is also a shift away from seeing scientific descriptions as objective, independent of the human observer and the process of knowledge, towards epistemology—the understanding of the process of knowledge—which has to be included explicitly in the description of natural phenomena. Thus both reality is perceived as a network of relationships and descriptions of reality form an interconnected network representing the observed phenomena. In such networks there are no hierarchies or foundations. These scholars believe that all scientific concepts and theories are limited and approximate. Science can never provide any complete and definite understanding. Scientists do not deal with truth; they deal with limited and approximate descriptions of reality.

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The Ijmalis would argee with much of this, but it is worth noting that while all this looks radically new, it is nothing more than an acceptance of an imposed situation. It is what positivist science itself is telling us; and the new paradigm and epistemological schools are positvist scientists who do not believe in any values because they believe in all Values'. Despite their own analysis which shows western science to be destructive and inherently violent, they continue to believe in it and work within its parameters. Because they have realised that western science is epistemologically bankrupt, they are now engaged in a rescue job, casting for epistemologies here and there. And where have they looked for new espistemologies? Towards science itself or, in some cases, towards Zen Buddhism. Why? Because in both cases there are no axiological parameters to worry about. Modern science offers a secular, highly structured, totalitarian system of thought that permits no diversity. If it is to survive, it must look towards secular values: those seeking to enrich the banality and meaninglessness of western scientific thought are attracted either towards such areas as biology and ecology or secular, highly structured, totalitarian systems of metaphysics such as Zen Buddhism that permits no diversity. Since it is secularism in its number of different manifestations, including its manifestation as modern science, which is the root cause of the contemporary predicament of mankind, a synthesis of Zen Buddhism and western thought, or new epistemologies from the trenches of biology, are hardly likely to move us forward to the goal of constructing a new, humane science. However, the exercise here is not so much to construct a new science, but produce a final picture. This is science in a new phase of colonisation.60 The Ijmali position can be stated in the words of Feyerabend. "The more recent developments in physical sciences", he writes, "are holistic, emphasize historical processes instead of universal laws and let 'reality' arise from an (often indivisible) interaction between observer and the thing observed. For the authors who encourage the trend (Bohm, Jantsch, Maturana, Prigogine, Varela, the proponents of 'evolutionary epistemology' and others) defuse cultural variety by showing that and how it fits in their scheme. Instead, of providing guidance for personal and social choices they withdraw into their theoretical edifices and explain from there how things were as they were, are as they are and will be as they will be. This is the old objectivism all over again, only wrapped in revolutionary pseudo-humanitarian Ian-

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guage. This is the philosophy that our ways are right and we are not going to change them".61 Our criticism of various positions within and without science, should throw ample light on our own position on science in general and Islamic science in particular. The final point in regard to criticisms of science is that all critics want to maintain the status quo. Both Popper and Kuhn are all too protective of the establishment: both believe that science is always 'true' and 'good' although not true as theories advance, but the accumulative effect of science is Good; those who have articulated positions in their support are also conservatives: Imre Lakatos,62 Michael Polanyi,63 even Feyerabend for ultimately anarchism ends by strengthening the establishment. Marxists would simply like to replace one set of ideologues with another while preserving the same values. The epistemological schools and new paradigm thought aims at saving science by discovering new Values' in such areas as biology or ecology or simply by coopting secular atheistic traditions such as Zen Buddhism. What all these positions make clear is that one can no longer be naive about the relationship between the will to knowledge and truth and the will to power, between science and politics. Islamic science, the Ijmalis maintain, is the only scientific enterprise—and this can be proved from history—where the values are played out upfront. Moreover, since these values have their bearings in the epistemological framework of Islam and since many are clearly opposed to the cherished values of positivist science, Islamic science is the only science, at least in its theoretical construction, that presents a challenge to western science. Such values of Islamic science as tawheed, khalifa, adl, istislah, ijma and so many others, make it implicitly anti-status quo; it is the only revolutionary notion of science (in Kuhnian sense) that is around. Let me then formulate a working definition of Islamic science that incorporates the Ijmali synthesis: Islamic science is a subjectively objective enterprise: it is based on a circumspect rationality which connects human rationality to the conceptual matrix of Islam and hence sythesises 'pure' knowledge with moral knowledge; the subjectivity of Islamic science is itself objective as it is based on such Islamic conceptual categories as khilafah, adl, halal, haram, istislah, taqwa and numerous other concepts of the Qur'an and the Shariah—in. which it has its epistemological being—and on a social consensus, the ijma, of the Muslim community and civilization, the ummah;

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it uses methods in conformity with the questions it raises, the problems it seeks to solve, the needs it wishes to fulfill, it is universal not just because Islam itself is universal, but it is grounded in a rationality and a methodology, empirical and experimental work, which is objective and can be duplicated and repeated by people of all cultures, its nature and contents reflect its metaphysical and epistemological foundations as well as the needs, requirements and concerns of Muslim people; it seeks not to discover absolute truths but to delineate their exposition and highlight the complex and interconnected nature of reality—thus, it is ultimately a form of worship, ibadah, a way of glorification of God and elevation of man as well as a systematic and organised way of solving the physical problems and fulfilling the needs of individuals and society. Two things can be said about this formulation of Islamic science. The first is obvious: nowhere in the world can we see such a science in operation. The second, that it is a combination of ideational, social, cultural as well as behavioural processes: it is the use of ideas to transform the material world, it is the participation of society to evolve an unforced consensus and give social meaning to scientific work, it is to highlight and shape scientific activity with decalred and understood cultural value and it is the use of skills to create and use appropriate tools and processes. Needless to say that such an endeavour cannot be undertaken in isolation; Islamic science is intrinsically linked to other areas of Muslim society and civilisation as well as to the evolution of a dynamic, thriving Muslim civilization of the future. The question that we now face: how are we going to reconstruct this Islamic science? We Can Work It Out64 The reconstruction of Islamic science in our time is based on the firm realisation that science is the energy of civilization; and that in the 'future it will be even more important than the past. From the way I have argued, it is evident that this reconstruction has theoretical as well as emprical dimensions; it is based on a history, an epistemology that is described by the conceptual field of the Qur'an and an optimistic but realistic belief in the future. Indeed, any curative response to the almost total lack of science in the Muslim world, as well as the destructive nature of western science, requires a confidence in the future. Such confidence involves both a vision of something desirable and a willingness to risk a great deal to attain it. Without sacrifice, commitment, persistence, it is impossible to confront successfully a well-

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entrenched system of beliefs, practices and institutions. It is important to appreciate that the continuing 'success* and resilience of western science has become the focus for political and ideological loyalty (after all positivism, in its idealised form, goes as far back as Plato), the incredibly large funding behind it, including the power of the military-industrial complex that fuels its expansion. We cannot expect to transform the essential nature of science without challenging these pillars of modern science—a great deal of resistance for Islamic science would come from Muslim scientists themselves and those privileged groups in Muslim societies who benefit from it. The struggle for Islamic science therefore is at once theoretical, practical, educational and political. The reconstruction of Islamic science involves not just theory building, but also empirical and experimental work, setting up laboratories, constructing science policies raising the level of science consciousness amongst the people, mobilising resources and popular opinion behind just scientific causes, as well as preparing a generation of committed scientists who understand the ethical and conceptual dimensions of Islam and can thus produce work in quality and quantity to make Islamic science a viable enterprise. The reconstruction of Islamic science is thus a multi-demensional and multi-generational task. The reconstruction of Islamic science involves systematic and simultaneous work on at least eight levels. Let me briefly describe each level, the whole description being a preliminary, long-range research programme for the reconstruction of Islamic science. 1. Epistemology. We need detailed articulation of a contemporary epistemology of Islam. Up to now attempts at formulating Islamic epistemology have not gone beyond al-Ghazzali; we need to go beyond al-Ghazzali both in depth and scope. We need to examine every discipline, every branch of knowledge and from the purview of this epistemology to identify common ground as well as areas of conflict. But we need not just a total articulation of Islamic epistemoloty, we also need detailed exposition of the segments of this epistemology—for example: what is the Islamic view of man and where does this view come in direct conflict with modern biology? Moreover, we need to develop mechanisms to translate this epistemology into practical steps. How can we, as Hamid Khan suggests, "evolve a model of 'integrated and closed system of studies" 'in which "all disciplines of studies including disciplines of empirical studies should be integrated interrelatedly and interdependently with the whole",65 from this empistemol-

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ogy? How can we take this epistemology sight down to the level of the laboratory? How would it help in ethical choices involved in research? How would it help in theory building? What kind of predictions could we make with these theories? Furthermore, we need to evolve a system of priorities and emphasis for research based on this epistemology, including an Islamic classification of contemporary sciences.66 We need to use the conceptual categories of Islam to evolve ethical positions in such area as nuclear power and high-energy and particle physics, recombinant DNA research, emerging reproductive technologies, sociobiology, high-technology surgery and medicine et cetera. And finally, we need a system to institutionalise this epistemology: what would be the nature of this institutionalisation? How can it come about? How would it shape the content of research and science and technology policies, how would it change the nature of research institutions and administration of science, what impact will it have on scientific methodologies, and how can we evolve ethical guidelines for scientists and researchers? All these questions need to be answered in considerable detail if the development of a contemporary Islamic epistemology is to have an impact on science. 2. Methodology A vast amount of serious work needs to be done on the question of methodology if Islamic science is to become a viable enterprise. It is the extreme reliance of modern science on reduction and complete disrespect for other forms of life that has led Foucault to say that "all knowledge is linked to the essential forms of cruelty".67 And it is Bacon's dictum that "nature yields her secrets under torture"68 that has become the foundation of the methodology of modern science. How can we combat this intrinsic violence—so vivid in vivisection and experimental theoretical physics-of modern science? We need to examine the methods of modern science in minute detail, shifting every discipline, to see how violence and disrespect for God's creations have become such an important part of it.69 But we need to do more than simply identify the destructive parts of scientific methodology and denounce them. We need to produce alternative methods. If, for example, we denounce vivisection by Islamic ethical criteria, what do we replace it with? Does a change in methodology also mean a change in the problems that come under the purview of science? Can it be argued that vivisection, for example, itself motivates society to behave in certain manner and generates the kinds of problems which can only be solved by vivisection? A great deal has been said about synthesis: how can we turn synthesis into a methodology that can be brought down to the level of

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the laboratory? How can synthesis be introduced in all branches of science including theoretical physics? What problems amenable to synthesis have been overlooked (due to over-emphasis on reductionism)? What ethical criteria can we introduce in scientific work to check the descent of reductionism into destruction aind meaninglessness? And to the vexed question of intuition: what needs to be done to ensure that intuition is appreciated and acknowledged as a viable method for promoting original thought and creativity? We also need to explore the question of methods from the perspective of the Shariah: how can the Shariah help shape methodolgies for science? What tools does it provide and what do we need to do to operationalise these tools in contemporary society? How do we recapture and operate the Shariah as a problem solving methodology and a basis for ethical choices? 3. History. The history of Islamic science and technology has been one of the most neglected fields. Considering that many answers to the questions we face today lie in history, this is a dangerous shortcoming. We need to engage in a planned, systematic and organised attempt at reclaiming history of Islamic science and technology; an exposition even greater than that undertaken by Joseph Needham for history of Chinese science.70 We need to discover what was genuinely Islamic in Islamic science and we need to identify the ethical criteria and motivation which shaped the work of Muslim scientists. Up to now, almost all history of science has been a tourist guide, identifying major personalities and describing their work, focussing on discoveries and inventions. We need histories that are about science, about ideas which examine the impact of science and ideas on Muslim society. Furthermore, to be able to shift critically, we need to examine the rich scientific past of the Muslim civilization with the eternal conceptual categories of the Qur'an and the Shariah. Only by doing this can we distinguish betwen what is Islamic and what is merely Muslim in the history of Islamic science. In other words we need a questioning history: a history that asks questions about Islamic science and sets out to explore these questions in historical context. Since, Islamic science is intrinsically connected with ethics and the Shariah, we also need a history of the evolution of the Shariah: how did the Shariah shape the connections between science and ethics, what dictates of the Shariah led to establishments of specific institutions, how did the Shariah give sense and direction to the work of Muslim scientists?

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4. Policy. Using the conceptual matrix of Islam, we need to formulate detailed science policies. These policies need to be formulated not just for individual Muslim countries, but also at regional as well as the level of the ummah. Moreover, we also need to formulate policies for individual areas: agriculture, industry, biology, physics, material science, information technology and communication71 and so on. In todays complex world, few problems can be solved in isolation; cooperation and emphasis on interconnection and interdependence's the key to developing a viable ummah level science policy. Furthermore, we need to develop two kinds of mechanisms: one that connects the science policies of individual Muslim countries to regional situations as well as to the ummah as a whole, encouraging sharing of resources and cooperation, and ensuring that all areas of science get appropriate attention in some segment of the ummah; and another to persuade decision makers to adopt and pursue these policies. The old development myth that a country needs only spend one per cent of its GNP on science to get its needs to be demolished; a country that does not spend a sizable proportion of its GNP on research and development and does not have clear, precise policies in all areas of science, is writing off its future. Decision makers tend to be partially blind to this fact; moreover when political authority intervenes in science it tends to impose its own conception of scientific and technological development. We must therefore work towards the creation of appropriate social and political mechanisms to ensure that science gets the support and emphasis it needs. 5. Empirical Work. Empirical work is the backbone of science; without empirical work all other theoretical constructions collapse like castles in the air. Moreover, as experience of three decades of transfer of technology and know-how teaches us, science does not slowly detach itself from its empirical roots, the initial needs from which it rose, to become pure speculation subject only to the demands of reason; its development is not tied to the constitution and affirmation of a free subject; rather it creates a progressive enslavement and induces dependency on those who carried out the original empirical work. The notion that science or technology can be imported is dangerously obsolete. Every Mus lim country needs to undertake empirical research in such areas as food and basic needs, local health problems, agriculture, essential industry and so on; there are other areas of science where Muslim countries need to work in cooperation with each other: biotechnology, renewable energy and information and space tech-

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nologies, disaster management, desertification, social erosion, environmental problems-to mention just a few. The priorities and emphasis of research work needs to be set by examining the needs and requirements of individual countries, that is, by evolving science policies on the basis of value and conceptual criteria of Islam. That is, a country where Balharzia and water logging are major problems need to concentrate on these rather than go into high energy physics, a country that faces regular floods needs to invest on researching this area rather than back a programme for research on organ transplants—the conceptual categories, of the Islamic matrix help shape priorities and emphasis of research and experimental work. In addition to these, we also need to do empirical work on certain problems that highlight the nature of Islamic science. and show its methodology in action. What are these problems? Identifying these problems is itself a research task. This is where the predictive power of the theories built on Islamic epistemology has to be used to pin-point problems which could be solved directly by empirical work within the present nascent framework of Islamic science. Constitutions* A major component of the reconstruction of Islamic science is institution building. To begin with we need models of ideal institutions for Islamic science: what kind of institutions would be best suited to research based on synthesis rather than reduction? What would be the administrative and governance structure of such institutions. But it is not just laboratories, and centres of excellence in certain disciplines, that we are concerned with. We also need institutions devoted to history of Islamic science and technology, science policy and planning bodies, institutions pursuing theoretical and ethical research in the area of science—like the Center for Studies on Science in Aligarh. Moreover, these institutions are needed not just for individual countries, but also to serve the ummah as whole. How can we go about creating such institutions? what are the hurdles th^t face the creation of these institutions? Where can they be ideally located? How will they be funded? How can we motivate the decision makers to give political support to such institutions? These and numerous other such questions need systematic deliberation and action. 7. Education. As we systematically reconstruct Islamic science, we need to ensure that it is integrated with and becomes part and parcel of our education system. To begin with we can present a more accurate picture of science in our text books; it is worth

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noting that so far attempts to produce curriculum for natural sciences have been crude and naive, failed to highlight the ideological, value-laden and relativistic nature of science and concentrated on such simple formulas as replacing the term 'nature' with 'God'.72 We need to introduce elements of Islamic epistemology right at the beginning of science courses: only when students are aware of the ethical dimensions of knowledge would they be in a position to look at ethics of science critically. A systematic attempt is thus needed to produce sophisticated science textbooks that highlight the limitation as well as strengths of science, delineate the domains of ethical and methodological choices, and relate science to local environment and societal and social need. Curriculum for science education should focus on creativity, original thinking and experimental work. Here the need for appropriate experimental manuals cannot be overemphasised. At the university level, we need to ensure that Islamic epistemology, philosophy, history of science and ethics are on integral part of science education. It is by focussing on the ethical dimension of science that we will create appropriate Muslim scientists who will take the whole enterprise of Islamic science forward. Writing text-books and producing new courses is not a once-off exercise; it should be an on-going process; as our ideas of Islamic science get more and more refined, as we become more sure of our methodologies and empirical work, it should be incorporated in textbooks and become the standard fare for students. 8. Science consciousness* Just as social consensus, ijma, is an integral part of Islamic science, it is also an essential part of the process of reconstruction of Islamic science. We need to develop mechanisms for raising the consciousness of the people about science and the issues of science. Peoples, participation in the issues of science can only be ensured when the dogmatic belief in the excellence of expert knowledge is dethroned, when they have an appreciation of science and understand its importance for the modern world, when the ethical dimension of scientific choice has been presented before them. We need to change the mass perception of science by using the press, radio and television as well as modern information technologies, by constantly bringing issues of science and ethics in front of the public. But more than that: we need to get people involved in science by tackling their own problems, by developing their own tools, by looking after their own health and the health of their immediate environment and by discovering new means of demystifying science. The reconstruction of Islamic science thus involves taking science to

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the people: production of programmes of village science, participatory science, science for rural development, science for inner cities and so on. Jean Ladrier has summed up the disruptive character of western science and technology in the metaphor of uprooting.™ An appropriate metaphor for the reconstruction of Islamic science could be planting. At each of the eight levels where basic work is required, we need to plant the seeds which will eventually germinate into a full-fledged body of knowledge that can be universally and objectively seen to be Islamic science. The reason why western science tends to form a self-directed system as to its ends is that it is driven by a 'project', a sort of inner motivation or design which is that of its own growth. Once these seeds have germinated into plants, they too will be internally motivated by the 'project' of their own growth and fruition. If the proponents of Islamic science systematically work on the issues and questions related to the eight levels which will collectively reconstruct Islamic science, they would be planting change—a change that will lead to a human and humane science which would benefit not just the Muslims but mankind as a whole. The possibility of rational anticipation, which underlies the project of reconstructing Islamic science, shows the future in a new light: the future is no longer a continuation of past events, miseries and calamities, or entirely unseeable and uncontrollable events, instead it is a field in which action is to take place. The world is no longer a priori given, an assortment of facts and theories that one may endeavour to understand and is obliged to accept as they are. Instead, the world can be transformed by organised and systematic endeavour to understand and is obliged to accept as they are. Instead, the world can be transformed by organised and systematic endeavour, by working within ethical boundaries and with nature, by inviting people to participate in science and evolving a social consensus, by appreciating complexity and complementarity, by synthesis and empirical exposition. We can, indeed, work it out as we are no longer placed before a-reality which comes about of itself and to which we can, at best, attempt to adapt ourselves; instead we are faced with an incomplete reality which we are responsible for transforming. The universe is no longer a 'cosmos' but a world penetrated by human thought and activity and in which, to an increasing extent, this thought and activity merely rediscovers its own echo.

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Notes and References 1. MAAS J. Islamic Sci., 3 (1) 85-90 (1987) 2. MAAS J. Islamic sci., 2 (1) 21-46 (1986) 3. 'Science and Technology in the Muslim World', MAAS J. Islamic Science.,2 (2) 49-68 (1986) 4. 'The Limitations of Science and the Teachings of Science from the Islamic Perspective', American Journal of Islamic Social Sconce, 3(1)59-76 (1986) 5. Ziauddin Sardar, 'A Revival for Islam, A Boost for Science/ Nature,282t 354-357 (22 November 1979) 6. Macmillan, London, 1980. 7. Particular examples of Husaini's extremely confused thinking is presented in these two pamphlets: Islamic Science and Public Policies: Lessons from the History of Science and Teaching Islamic Science and Engineering both self-published from Kuala Lumpur, 1985. 8. Ian MitroiT, The Subjective Side of Science (Amsterdam: Elczevicr, 1974). 9. Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1982 (second edition), p. 14. Chalmers is a standard textbook on the nature of science. 10. Hutchinson, London, 1959. 11. R and K Paul, London, 1963. 12. Chalmers, op cit., p. 60 13. Paul Feyerabend, Farewell to Reason, (London: Verso 1987) of p.172. 14. University of Chicago Press, 1962, second edition, 1972. 15. NLB, London, 1975. 16. See Colin Norman, The God That Limps, (New York: W.W. Norton 1981) 17. 'Science and Values', in Ziauddin Sardar's,(ed.) The Touch of Midas, op cit., p. 47 18. Sage, London, 1979. 19. These quotations are from John Stewart's excellent review of Latour and Woolgar in Radical Science Journal, Number 12 (1982) p. 129-140. Page numbers are to the review, p. 131. 20. ibid., p. 132 21. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1983, p.3 22. ibid., p. 15. 23. The father of sociobiology is E.O. Wilson, see his Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, (Cambridge, Mass: Harward University Press, 1975). See also the brilliant critique from the radical left: Steven Rose, R C Lewontin and Leon J Kamin, Not in Our Genes, (London: Penguin, 1984). 24. The classical paper is by Robert Young, 'Science is Social Relations,' Radical Science Journal, Number 5 (1977) p. 65 - 131.

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25. Karin D Rnorr-Cetina, The Manufacture of Knowledge, (Oxford Pergamon Press, 1981) p. 47. 26. Against Method, op cit., p. 142. 27. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, op cit., second edition, p. 1. 28. This list of positions demolished by Kuhn is from Ian Hacking (Ed), Scientific Revolutions, (Oxford University Press, 1981). Introduction', p. 1-2. 29. M. Zaki Kinhani, 'On the Parameters of Islamic Science', in Rais Ahmad and S. Naseem Ahmad, Quest for New Science, op cit., p.175. 30. 'A Preliminary Thought on Reductionism', MAAS J. Islamic Sci., 2 (1), 107-112 (1986). 31. 'Some Thoughts on Methodology in Islamic Science' MAAS J. Islamic Sci.,3(2) 71-78 (1987), p. 75. 32. In Rais Ahmad and S. Naseem Ahmad's, Quest for New Science, op cit., p.79-90. 33. 'Structure of Islamic Science', MAAS J< Islamic Sci., 1 (2) 31-38 (1985). 34. MAAS JJslamic Sci., 2 (1) 47-54 (1986). 35. ibid., p. 48. 36. ibid., p. 49. 37. See his numerous articles on environment and cities in Inquiry, such as Gulzar Haider, The City of Learning', Inquiry, 2 (7), 45-51 (1985), and *Man and Nature', Inquiry, 2(8)47-52(1985). 38. op cit., p.53. There is a further contradiction in this paper which ought to he pointed out. One cannot on the one hand argue that 'modern science cannot possibly claim to have any absolute reality in its world-view', while on the other hand state" If an absolute truth comes into knowledge after a long course of investigation that too is not considered truth and is looked upon doubtfully because of the very nature of scientists' mind'. How, can absolute truths arise in modern science, if it has already eliminated them from its worldview? 39. MAAS J. Islamic Sci., 3 (1) 45-56 (1987). 40.1 argued the same point although somewhat differently, in The future of Muslim Civilization, (London: Mansell, second edition, 1987). See chapter 8. 41. Manzoor, 'Metaphysical Nerve...', op cit. p.44. 42. Ruth Stellhorn Mackensen, 'Background of History of Muslim Libraries', American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, 51, 114-125 (1934-35), the quote is from p. 121-122. 43. In Arguments for Islamic Science, (Aligarh: Centre for Studies on Science, 1985). 44. Rahman, 'A preface..', op cit., p. 54. 45. ibid.,p.54. 46. In Science, Technology and Development in the Muslim World, (London: Groom Helm, 1977). 47. Al-Ghazali's Tahafut al-Falsifah, translated by Sabih Ahmad Kamali, (Pakistan Philosophical Congress, 1958) p.29.

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48. ibid., p.4. 49. See Ziaddin Sardar, Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come, (London: Mansell, 1985). 50. See Gulzar Haider's work, reference 7. 51. See Merryl Wyn Davis, Knowing One Another, op cit. 52. But synthesis and assimilation can only take place between two scientific cultures of equal status, at present the Muslim world is too weak to exercise synthesis. In this regard see Parvez Manzoor's timely warning, 'science in Islam and West: Sythesis or Confusion*?, in Ziauddin Sardar, The 'fouck of Midas, op cit. 53. What is This Thing Called Science? op cit., p. 166. 54. See Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization, (London: Tavistock Publications, 1967). 55. Paul Hirst, *Is it rational to reject relativism,' in Joanna Overing (Ed), Reason and Morality, (London: Tavistock Publications, 1985) p. 85-103. 56. See his The Toa of Physics and The Turning Point, both published by Flamingo, London, 1976 and 1983, respectively. 57. See Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, El Arbol de Conscimento, Editorial Universitaria, Santiago, Chile, 1984 and Francis Varela, 'Living Ways of Sense-Making: The Middle Path of Neuroscience' in P Livingstone (Ed), Disorder and Order, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985). 58. See his Wholeness and the Implicate Order, (London: Ark, 1983). 59. See Hya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos, (New York: Bantam, 1984). 60. For a insightful critique of Capra from the Hindu perspective see Claude Alvares, *We Have Been Here Before* in Ziauddin Sardar, The Revenge of Athena: Science, and the Third World, (London: Mansell, 1988). 61. Farewell to Reason, op cit., p.6 62. Imre Lakatos's classic defence of the falsificationist programme is Talsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programme', in I. Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (Eds), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, (Cambridge University Press, 1970) p. 91196, see also Imre Lakatos: Philosophical Papers—Volume 1: The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes edited by J. Worrall and G. Currie, (Cambridge University Press, 1978). 63. See his Knowing and Being and Personal Knowledge both published by R and K Paul, 1969 and 1973, respectively. 64. Just in case the reader has not guessed it by now, I have been having fun at the expense of the lyrics from the late sixties pop songs: 'Ground control to major Tom' is attributed to David Bowie, *We have only just began' to the Carpenters, the rest are from the Beatles'. No indirect promotion of pop culture is intended. 65. Hamid Ahmed Khan, How to Identify Islamic Science' in Rais Ahmad and Syed Naseem Ahmad, Quest for New Science op cit., p. 199. 66. While the classification of sciences was on of the major activities of the classical Muslim scholars, it has been totally ignored by in our time. For a primitive model of a classification scheme on science see Ziauddin Sardar, Islam: Outline of A Classification Scheme, (London: K G Sanr, 1979.

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science Z. Sardar/Where's Where? Mapping Out the Future of Islamic Science Michel Foucault, Mental Illness and Psychology (New York: Harper and Row, 1976) p.81.

67

68 Cited by Frederick Aicken, The Nature of Science, (Hcinemann, 1984) p.36. 69 For a detailed analysis of the violent nature of western science, see Vandana Shiva, The violence of reductionist science', Alternatives, 12 (2) 243-261 (April 1987).

^0 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China (Cambridge University Press, 6 Vols. 1956). 71 I have recently attempted to develop an ummah level information policy. See ziauddin Sardar, Information and the Muslim World: A Strategy for the 21st Century, (London: Mansell, 1988). 72 See for example, Mohammad Abdus Sami and Muslim Sajjad, Planning Curricula for Natural Science: The Islamic Perspective, (Islamabad: The Islamic Perspective Institute of Policy Studies, 1983). 73. Jean Ladriere, The Challenge Presented to Cultures by Science and Technology, (UNESCO, 1977) p.83.

[3] ISLAM, RATIONALITY AND SCIENCE: A BRIEF ANALYSIS Mohammad Hashim Kamali

The debate over the compatibility of Islam and science still continues to invoke responses from basically two opposite camps: those who reject outright the prospect and feasibility of a compromise between religion and science, and those who see a compromise not only reasonable but necessary if an equilibrium of values were to be kept into perspective. While identifying the basic points of tension between these two positions, this essay attempts to provide a survey and analysis of basic Qur'anic evidence on relevant issues. An attempt is also made to present a round up of modern opinion in Muslim scholarly circles on the various aspects of the debate. The basic hypothesis maintained here is that the Qur'anic epistemology is inclusive not only of traditional knowledge but also of scientific knowledge. Keywords: epistemology, metaphysics, induction, experimantation, secularism, education, philosophy, positivism, revelation, reason, hearing, sight, intuition, imitation, dictatorship, modernity, the West.

Mohammad Hashim Kamali, International Islamic University Malaysia, Faculty of Law, Jalan Gombak, 53100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Email: [email protected]

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i. Introductory Remarks The Islamic concept of knowledge encompasses transcendental knowledge as well as knowledge that is based on sense perception and observation. Islam also lays emphasis on beneficial knowledge that advances human welfare and seeks to utilise the resources of the universe for sound and beneficial purposes. The Qur'anic doctrine of vicegerency (khilafa) also places on Man, as a trustee and custodian of the earth, the responsibility to build the earth and utilise its resources with a sense of justice to oneself, one's fellow humans, the environment and other inhabitants of the earth. Scientific observation, experimental knowledge and rationality are the principal tools that can be employed in the proper fulfillment of this mission. Islam's perception of knowledge is thus value-oriented and informed by ethical and theological concerns. Many Muslim commentators have seen this as a basic pattern of harmony, rather than conflict, between Islam and science. But since the greatest achievements in science and technology at the present age are associated with Western civilisation, the Islamic proposition of basic harmony is not the accepted framework in that context. The West's perception of religion and science does not recognise any link between the two and does not commit science to any structure of values outside its own perimeters. Western science has no place for religion and it sets the scene therefore for disharmony and discordance with it. Whereas Islam envisages a basic harmony with science, secularly and positivism, which are the principal attributes of Western science, dissociate science from religion. Due to global domination of Western technology and science, and its resolute alienation of religion, the claim is also made, and made increasingly louder, that Islam is no exception. That Islam too is a part of the ancient world and the basic picture of conflict between science and religion therefore applies equally to Islam. In almost all contemporary Muslim societies, there is on the one hand the urge to follow the Islamic tenets and live in accordance with its outlook and values, and on the other hand, the enormous pressure on individuals and societies to learn and adopt science and technology if they were to harness them to their advantage. This has created a dichotomy: they can neither wholeheartedly support the secular and materialistic outlook of science, nor the age-old notions of religion as many would see it to be out of touch with the demands of modernity and science.

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It is the theme and purpose of this essay to test the accuracy of these claims, to ascertain the nature of the scientific method, and the extent of harmony and conflict between Islam and science. To do this, I propose to review some of the relevant passages of the Qur'an and then discuss the acceptability or otherwise of some of the tools of science, such as the inductive reason, to the epistemology of the Qur'an. I also address the claim that Islam did not propose an epistemology of its own and that Islam's outlook on reality and scientific knowledge has been shaped by Greek philosophy and thought. The last section of this essay looks into the pervasive impact of secularism on public education and certain other aspects of law and government in the Muslim world. I begin, however, with a brief characterisation of the principal themes of this inquiry, that is, religion and science. 2. Religion and Science Science is that branch of knowledge which deals with the material world, the world and natural phenomena that are observable, measurable and perceivable by the senses. Scientific knowledge is based on two important factors: observation, and reflection. The former involves the use of the senses, and the latter is concerned with the exercise of theoretical reason, speculation and hypothesis. The interpretation of experimental data normally involves preconceived ideas and hypotheses of the investigator. Observed scientific reality therefore acquires much of its meaning and significance through what a theory or hypothesis may give it. The researcher may otherwise have difficulty to make sense of his observations. Experimentation alone, without theoretical reasoning cannot therefore yield significant information about nature or the observed phenomenon. Positivism or the denial of reality to anything not perceived through the senses or not measurable by mathematics has become the tacit postulate of all that goes under the name of modern or western science. This attitude and outlook has pervaded all branches of science, including the humanities and social sciences. Every reality, whether natural or human, must be studied by one and the same

Cf., Muhammad Saud, Islam and Evolution of Science, Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 1986, p.3; Mehdi Golshani, u Philosophy of Science from the Qur'anic Perspective/' in International Institute of Islamic Thought, Toward Islamisation of Disciplines, Herndon, Va, 1989, p.75.

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method. It follows that all problems, including those of morality, society and politics can be addressed and resolved by the scientific method. The philosophy of science deals with philosophical issues that arise in connection with science. Questions such as how does our knowledge of the physical world obtains, and what are the postulates underlying scientific inquiry, the nature of causality etc., are addressed by the philosophy of science. The truth of an object in Greek philosophy, for example, lay not in the external manifestation of the object but in the inherent idea that the object manifested. This conception of truth reflected more on the essence rather than the material manifestation of truth. Such a view of the world was inclined toward mystical and allegorical meaning of reality and truth. Natural sciences, which studied matter, mortal and changing phenomena, could not therefore be a noble pursuit. Religion is concerned with the totality of existence both in this world and the next. Science concerns itself with this world alone and that too in a restricted sense. The exact sciences, as they are known, concern themselves with nature, whereas in social sciences both the natural and the social are combined. Religion is not as averse to science, one might say, as science is to religion. This is because religion does not reject scientific truth, whereas science does reject the religious truth. Some Muslim and Christian commentators have even read religion and science as an extension of one another. Sayyid Ahmad Khan (d.i8g8) went on record to say that "the word of God as expounded in the Qur'an, cannot be contradictory to the work of God." As the words of God are unchanging, so are the works of God and the laws of nature. Science tries to discover these laws. "Religion and science"' according to another observer are "close allies in the search for truth, and not adversaries/' Both strive to advocate the ultimate reality and truth. However, while science relies on the inductive and experimental method, it only discovers partial truth regarding the observable universe. Religion uses an intuitive and direct approach to knowledge and aims at uncovering the whole truth, which includes both the visible and transcendental realities. Thus the facts uncovered by science can help us understand the truth revealed by religion, while religious insight can help supply " the missing pieces

2

Cf., Roger Garudy, w Th Balance Sheet of Western Philosophy in This Century/' in TowardIslamisation, n.i, pp.^oo-^oi. 3 Cf., Ali Ashraf, New Horizons in Muslim Education, Cambridge: Islamic Academy, 1985, p.27

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in the puzzles of scientific knowledge/'4 Einstein went on record to say that "science without religion is lame, and religion without science is blind/' Max Planx similarly observed: "with religious people, God appears at the beginning of their thinking, with natural scientists, at the end/' Mutahhari (d.±979) has drawn attention to a certain shortcoming of science to address issues of concern to the human psyche: Half of human pains find no remedy except through science, but Man has other pains which relate to his human dimension. Here science provides no help, and when the scientists reach this point, they declare that science is neutral and indifferent; it is a means and it does not prescribe any goal for mankind. Religion and science are not in total harmony, but the tension that exists between them need not be exaggerated either. Human beings can remain spiritual and religious while enjoying the benefits of technology and science. The basic area of tension between religion and science is seen in the latter's materialist and experimental approach to reality that tends to preclude transcendental knowledge. The scientist does not speak, for example, of God and the creation of the first Man because he has no scientific data to refer to. The body of metaphysical discourse that draws attention to the existence of God, the creation of Man, and the intricacies of human psyche are not of primary concern to the scientist. The likely response of the scientist may be that he cannot go beyond what can be found and proved by evidence. This scientific attitude is very different from that of the ancient Greeks and early Muslim thinkers, who took an ontological view of knowledge which went beyond observable reality. Modern science aims not at ontological but at empirical knowledge. It denies the validity of the method of ontological science and believes in controlled observation, experimentation and generalisation. Scientific attitude and methodology cannot therefore be said to accept revelation as a source of knowledge. The spiritual aspect of man is ignored and man is regarded as a biological and social phenomenon.

4

Ahmad Afzaal, "Qur'an and Human Evolution" http://www.fortunecjty.CQm/brQzers/cheshire/i7Q/surviva l%2Q(i)htm! p.2. See also Ali Ashraf, NewHorizons7n.3, p. 27. 5 Both quoted in Murad Wilfred Hofmann "Has Islam Missed its Enlightenment?" 6 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 19 (2002), p. 9. Murtada Mutahhari, "History and Human Evolution" trans. By Alauddin Pazargadi: http://www.al-islam.org/al-tawhid/2human/evol.htm, p.37 Cf. Ashraf, New Horizons, n.3, pp. 7-8.

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3. Epistemology: Greek, and Islamic Muhammad Iqbal (01.1938) has advanced an incisive analysis of the Greek philosophy and its comparison with the worldview of the Qur'an, and has refuted some of the hitherto common parallels that were drawn between the two. To begin with, Iqbal acknowledged that Greek philosophy had been "a great cultural force in the history of Islam." Yet while the Greek philosophy broadened the outlook of Muslim thinkers, it also obscured their vision of the Qur'an. It was due to Greek influence that the study of physics among Muslim philosophers and theologians was based on ratiocination and was usually not dependent on direct observation. Muslim philosophers were also fascinated by Greek logic and metaphysics. The pervasive influence of Greek logic was incorporated, for example, in the science of the sources of law, the usul al-fiqh, and Greek metaphysics was assimilated into theology or V//r? al-kalam. Yet the worldview of Greek philosophy was in many ways very different to that of the Qur'an, but even so early Muslim thinkers were persuaded to uncritically embrace it, at the initial stages at least, and subsequent Muslim scholarship found it difficult to escape that influence. Iqbal highlighted the contrast between the two approaches when he noted that Socrates concentrated his attention on the human world alone. To him the proper study of man was man alone, not the world of plants, insects and stars. This is unlike the Qur'an which sees in the "humble bee a recipient of Divine inspiration," and constantly calls upon the reader to observe the perpetual changes of the wind, the alternation of day and night, the clouds and the planets swimming through infinite space. Iqbal continued: for Socrates's disciple, Plato, sense perception yielded mere opinion and no real knowledge. This too is unlike the Qur'an which regards 'hearing' and 'sight7 as the most valuable instruments of learning. Aristotle wrote extensively on physics without performing a single experiment, and on natural history without ascertaining the most easily verifiable facts. Earlier Muslim students read the Qur'an in the light of Greek thought. It took them 200 years to perceive, though not clearly, that the spirit of the Qur'an was essentially anticlassical. The Greeks essentially systematised, generalised and theorised while relying on logical deduction rather than on observation and experimentation. The patient method of investigation and scientific inquiry was altogether alien to Greek 8

Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Lahore: Muhammad Ashraf, 1982, pp.3-4. See also Saud, Islam and Evolution, n. i, p.13.

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temperament. Yet the Muslim students of physics basically followed this and the broad outline of Aristotle's teachings on the subject. It is also clear, Iqbal added, that the birth of the method of observation and experiment in Islam was not due to a compromise with Greek thought but to a prolonged intellectual warfare with it. Abu Bakr al-Razi (d-935) was probably the first to criticise Aristotle's logic. Ibn Taymiyya (d.rpS) and Ibrahim al-Shatibi (d.i398) widened the scope of this enquiry and undertook a systematic refutation of Aristotelian logic. Islam's affirmative stance on rationality and science did gain recognition and was manifested in "the spectacular development of the natural sciences during the Abbasid period, and in Andalusia and Sicily. Advances in the field of the sciences were such that Islamic culture globalised for centuries, from the early Middle Ages to the Renaissance." Q

Just as the Muslims were slow to absorb the Qur'anic epistemology on science, the Europeans were also slow to recognise the Islamic origin of their scientific method. Roger Bacon, who is credited with the introduction of experimental method, acquired his scientific training in the Muslim universities of Spain. Bacon acknowledged this and repeatedly emphasised the importance of Arabic and Arabic science to his contemporaries. Many Western commentators have also recognised that natural science and the scientific spirit represent the "most 10 significant contribution of Islamic thought to European life and culture." Induction may be singled out as one of the basic tools of science. The inductive method in science is based on detailed observation of incidents and phenomena that eventually lead to the formation of a general conclusion. Nature in the sense of the observable world is the principal subject matter of science, but nature as spoken of in science includes, in addition to physical nature, society in all of its observable manifestations, human nature and human behaviour. l:LThe scientific method attempts to make the chaotic diversity of sense experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought, which is provable, verifiable, and convincing. Inductive reasoning is also the basis of the epistemological appeal of the Qur'an. In numerous places and a variety of contexts, the Qur'an calls on its readers to Q

JHofmann, "Has Islam Missed its Enlightenment?" n. 4. p. 4. ai Roger Garudy, "The Balance Sheet of Western Philosophy/' n. 2, p.400. Cf. Ausaf Ali7 Islam, Science and Islamic Social Ethics, n.267 p.i8; Abdolkarim Soroush, Reason, Freedom and Democracy in Islam, tr. &ed. Mahmud Sadri and Ahmad Sadri, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 50.

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think, reflect and reason on the basis of what they experience and observe. They are encouraged to travel and explore the tracts of the earth, to study and observe the movement of the planets, the sun, and the moon, and reflect on the signs they see around them. Muhammad Iqbal went so far as to say in this connection that the Qur'an marked the birth of the "inductive intellect" and it is a religious obligation, therefore of every Muslim to master the inductive method to uncover 12 the laws of nature and society. In his article "The Islamic Worldview and Modern Science," Professor Nasr has envisaged, unlike Muhammad Iqbal, a direct clash of values between science and religion and denounced all attempts as "quaint" and "feeble" by modernised Muslims to read scientific subject matter in the Qur'an. This is because the very hypothesis of the existence of God is redundant in modern science. Then he poses the question " How can Islam accept any form of knowledge which is not rooted in God and does not necessarily lead to him?" Nasr goes on to answer the question on the same page in favor of a total conflict and irreconcilable alienation between Islam and modern science. To quote Professor Nasr: The adoption of western science can be carried out completely only by absorbing also its worldview in which case the consequences for the Islamic view of reality, both cosmic and metacosmic, cannot be anything but catastrophic. There seems to be an element of exaggeration in Professor Nasr's prognostication of "catastrophic consequences" for Islam in the acceptance of western science. In addition, a certain shift of focus in the argument is seen when Professor Nasr addresses a situation of complete and unquestioning reception of the worldview of the west. This is rather hypothetical: To the best of my knowledge hardly any Muslim commentator has proposed a complete and unexceptional acceptance of western scientific paradigms. The question often posed is over identification of certain lines of concordance or disagreement, and hardly, if ever, over attempting to establish complete harmony between the western scientific worldview and Islam.

12

Iqbal, Reconstruction of Religious Thoughts, n. 8, chapter 5. The article appears in Selected Paper on Sceince in Islam, published by Pakistan ^Association/or History and Philosophy of Science, Islamabad, 1998, p. 51. 14 ld.,p.52. 13

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Professor Nasr also tends to view knowledge and science as an extension of the dogma and belief of Islam and assumes that acceptance or rejection of the one must necessarily mean the same for the other. This is not quite in line with the purport of a renowned hadith, if I may quote it in this connection, in which the Prophet Muhammad advised his followers to "Seek knowledge even if it be in China -utlubu al-lilma wa-law kana bis-Sin." Surely in saying this the Prophet could not have considered knowledge as an extension, nor even a concomitant, of the belief and laqida of Islam. Far from it, the hadith takes a pragmatic and utilitarian view of knowledge, which can be sought outside Islam if necessity or benefit demands such. The underlying assumption of the hadith is that a person's loyalty and commitment to Islam is unaffected by his attempt to seek knowledge from a non-Islamic source, nor is the knowledge so obtained of any lesser validity for that reason alone. Knowledge that is found in China is surely not "rooted in God" nor is it expected necessarily to lead to Him.

The Qur'an contains numerous references to knowledge that is obtained through the senses, and to man's responsibility for the proper application and channelling of his powers of observation, sight, hearing, speech, and intuition. The text provides, for example: "God brought you out of the wombs of your mothers when you knew nothing, and He gave you the hearing, and the sight, and the heart..." (1678). All knowledge is therefore acquired through the use of these faculties. In another verse, it is provided: "And He gave you hearing and sight and feeling and understanding."(32:9) A science commentator noted concerning this verse that the special senses of hearing, seeing and feeling develop in this order. "The primordia of internal ears appear before the beginning of the eyes, and the brain (the site of understanding) differentiates last."15 Note also that references to the use of the senses in the Qur'an, especially to hearing and sight, are typically combined with a reference to intuition and understanding through the light of one's heart. This can be seen in the verses just quoted, and in another verse which reads: "verily the hearing and the sight and the heart will each be asked... " (17:36; 67:23). Another passage refers to those who deny the signs of God in the world around them even when their experience would tell them otherwise: "... but their ears and eyes and heart availed them not since they denied the signs of God" (46:26; 3:179). Also of interest here is that the reference to hearing in these passages consistently precede the reference to seeing, a point 15

Keith Moore, UA scientist's Interpretation of References to Embryology in the Qur'an/' http://www.quran.org.Uk/ieb-quran-embriologylogy.htm.p.i.

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which has prompted one observer to note that hearing is more widely used in the acquisition of knowledge. As of the moment of birth of a child, unlike the eyes which open gradually, the hearing is immediately functional. Similarly, when a person falls asleep, the eyes close but hearing continues to be receptive to sound. It is further noted in this connection that hearing (al-sam*) is the principal means of transmitted knowledge, whether by means of revelation (wahy) or through narration of past events. If one hears one's teacher's voice without seeing him, one can follow him, but it would be difficult to achieve the same if one could only see but not hear one's teacher.* In another place the Qur'an praises those "who listen to the word and follow the best of it" (or make the best possible interpretation thereof) (39:18). This clearly subjects the data of sense perception to the exercise of intellectual selection . Knowledge is gained through observation and experimentation backed by reflection, as in the following verses: Say: Travel in the earth and see how He made the first creation. (29:20)

Have they not travelled in the land so that they should have hearts with which to understand? (22:46) The first part of these verses refers to observation, and the second part to the use of reason, reflection and understanding. Experimental work is thus an indispensable tool for the understanding of nature. The text also teaches that there are realities in the physical world that we do not perceive through our senses: But nay! I swear by that which you see and that which you do not see (69:38) The Qur'an is virtually replete with reminders that in this or that there is a lesson or message for those who hear, for those who see, for those who think (yasma'un, yubsirun, yatafakkarun, ya'qilun) about the world, about the Qur'an, their own selves and their Creator.

16

Yusuf al Qradawi, al-lAql wa'l-lllm fi'l-Qur'an al-Karim, Cairo: Maktaba Wahba, 1416/1996, p. 234.

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This inducative experimental, and reflective method of the Qur'an can also be seen in its phenomenology, that is, the occasions of its revelation (asbab al-nuzul) in that a great deal of the Qur'an was revealed in conjunction with actual events that were experienced by the early Muslims, and the Companions often asked the Prophet questions about them. The asbab al-nuzul is a much wider phenomenon but explicit references to it can be found in at least fifteen Qu'ranic verses which begin with the phrase "they ask you (yas'alunaka)" about such and such, and then the text addresses the issue as the case may be. Furthermore, It is always the truth that must prevail, as the Qur'an provides: And say: the truth has come and falsehood has vanished away; verily falsehood is bound to vanish. (17:81) The word of thy Lord finds fulfillment in truth and justice. There shall be no alteration to His words. (6:115) The notion of beneficial knowledge (al-'ilm al-nafi') in Islam, which features prominently in the sayings and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, contemplates the end-result of knowledge and advocates utilitarian knowledge that contributes to human welfare, in preference to that which may have doubtful consequences. This would clearly discourage promotion of science and technology that inflicts prejudice and harm. Production of weapons of mass destruction, and environmental degradation and damage would be clear cases at point; legalisation of human cloning may prove to present a similar case. Islamic thought in the Middle Ages did not admit of the ontological distinction between tangible entities and entities of a spiritual or subliminal nature. This is certainly a more sound and realistic view of reality than is allowed for by modern positivist doctrines of science. Being is manifested at various levels and in several forms, none of which is less real than the other. Arabic thought employed the notions systematised in Stoic theory that divided being into three locations: verbal utterance, psychic representation, and reality - without this last in any sense having exclusive title to Being. Al-Farabi(d-95o) took up this view, and assimilated psychic representation to the entities of reason. Others rehearsed this division with the addition of a fourth location, that of Scripture. Existence thus had a four-fold manifestation depending on whether the thing existed immediately in itself, or whether its like was graven in the mind (dhihn, psyche), whether composed of sounds, which indicated psychic representation, or was it manifested in characters standing for sound and speech. All four have a basic

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characteristic in common, which is existence. ±7 While some thinkers and scientists confined their typology of existence (wujud, haqiqa) to the two genera of the mental and the immediate, this did not render the verbal and the spiritual existentially suspect. They were all part of a theory of knowledge in which the immediate and literal were identified as basic and original existence, while existence in the psyche formed part of the field of figurative existence. In all cases the truth, whether articulated in speech or represented in the psyche, was believed to consist of correspondence between a tangible immediate existent, a verbal existent, and a graphic existent. The ideal state of knowledge therefore was one which seized the very immediacy of the object of knowledge in which the correspondence between concept and thing was complete. It is a state in which the object is so assimilated by its concept, or the concept to its object, that they are interchangeable. Knowledge thus relates to its object in that the object is apprehended visually or quasi-visually. The latter refers not only to gnosis but also to idealised knowledge in general, as is indicated by the use of the term Y/m, and not ma'rifa, the latter being used to indicate mystical gnosis as opposed to articulated knowledge, which is science. * 4. Faith and Reason: AQur'anic Perspective The basic harmony of faith and reason is also manifested in the Qur'an through a series of exclusions which seek to clarify the correct from the misleading means and avenues of knowledge. These are manifested in at least four contexts, which 1Q may be summarised as follows: a) Rejection of conjecture (al-zann) vis-a-vis certitude (al-yaqin): This is a basic guideline that the Qur'an advocates not only in religious disputation but also in the context of learning, testimony and adjudication, and indeed in most other areas of human relations. Although certainty remains the ideal standard of knowledge, conjecture that inclines toward probability is nevertheless accepted as a basis of judgement in practical human affairs (mu'amalat), such as in court decisions that are often based on zann, for want of certainty, in order to facilitate resolution of disputes among people.

17

Cf. Aziz al-Azmeh, Arabic Thought and Islamic Societies, London: Croom Helm, ^976, p. 109. ig Id., pp. 109-112. Cf. Qaradawi, al-*Aqlwa'l-*llm, 11.13 PP- 250-270.

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The Qur'an precludes conjecture and probability as a basic of belief, as faith must be based in conviction, which precludes zann. To this effect the text takes its deniers to task, for their blind faith in what is no more than conjecture: "...they follow not aught but conjecture, and surely conjecture avails nothing against the truth." (53:28) Conjecture in this verse, as in many other places in the text (cf., 10:36; 6:116), is used in contradistinction with knowledge (l/7m, yaqin), and it is Y/m acquired through hearing, seeing and reason that command acceptance. This is what the believers are instructed in another verse to "...follow not that of which you have no knowledge(Y/m)- Surely the hearing and the sight and the heart are all accountable." (17:36) b) Rejection of passion and untrammelled desire (hawd): Qur'anic references to hawa occur in contradistinction to correct guidance and truth. Thus it is provided in an address to the Prophet-King David: " O David! We made you a vicegerent in the earth so that you judge among people with truth, and follow not the passion that sways you away from the path of God." (38:26) Confusion that can be caused by passion, whether consisting of love, hatred or anger etc., can be so powerful as to obfuscate rational judgement. The basic message of this verse is that the best qualified of judges, even prophets, are not immune to the influence of hawa. Equally clear is also the point that knowledge and truth must be pursued and vindicated through reasonable methods that are not influenced by personal sentiment and passion. The extensive influence of hawa is elsewhere indicated in the Qur'an, which provided in an address to Prophet Muhammad: "Have you seen (the predicament of) one who chooses for his god his own passion? Would you then be a guardian over him?" (25:43) Passion can dominate a person's outlook totally in which case truth and reason can have but little place in his order of priorities. The Prophet Muhammad has been repeatedly warned as to the little or no impact his teachings could make on such persons. This evidence sustains the conclusion that rationality is a means to knowledge, discovery of truth, and justice only when it is not tainted by the vagaries of hawa. c) Rejection of blind imitation: Islam's outlook on reason is also based on its intrinsic merit that is inspired by nothing less than conviction, as opposed to blind

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imitation of the custom and legacy of the past. The objectivity of reason is to be ensured by its independence from conventional practice which does not necessarily provide correct knowledge and guidance. The past must be judged in the light of reason and rejected if it is found misleading. The Qur'an has to this effect recounted the attitude of its deniers and the typical response they have given to the Prophet Muhammad: " Nay, we follow the way of our ancestorseven if their ancestors did not know nor were they rightly guided." (5:104; also 2:170) This was also the response that Prophet Abraham and many other prophets received from idol-worshipers but the text retorted it in such terms: " both you and your ancestors were clearly misguided." (21:52; 770; 11:87) These references to past events and prophets are made with a view to underline a certain continuity of values, and in this instance, also to confirm that knowledge and truth stand on their own merit independently of custom and convention of the past. d) Rejection of oppressive dictatorship: The Qur'an takes to task those who indiscriminately obey arrogant dictators who are themselves averse to enlightenment and truth. Thus it is provided that the plea of those who say on the Day of Judgement: u O our Lord! Surely we obeyed our princes and great men, but they misled us" (33:66) will have no merit. This is because, as the text explains, they rejected the correct guidance when it was conveyed to them. In another verse, the text refers to the Pharaoh who misled his people: We sent Moses with our signs and clear evidence unto Pharaoh and his chiefs, but they followed Pharaoh's command which failed to give the right guidance. (11:96) In another verse it is stated that the Pharaoh "persuaded his people to make light (of Moses), and they obeyed him. They were none other but a wanton folk." (43=54) People are thus advised to use their own judgement and distinguish between guidance and misguidance in the light of reason. This is because they themselves, and not their self-styled leaders, would ultimately be held responsible. The intrinsic value of truth and knowledge must therefore remain unaffected by the indulgent claims of oppressive men who often seek to subjugate others for their own selfish interests.

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Muhammad vAbduh (d.igos) held that there is no necessary conflict between religion and science. Both are founded in reason, and both study natural phenomena, albeit from different angles. Since the Qur'an encourages the Muslims to study and investigate the universe, Islam should be considered as a friend, not the enemy, of science. Y Abduh also observed that there was nothing against true Islam in modern civilisation and science, provided that Islam was rightly understood and rightly expressed. In saying this 'Abduh emphasised those of Islamic tenets and principles which are fundamental to Islam and are not meant to be of local and temporary application. 5. The Impact of Secularism It seems that the affirmative stance of Islam on scientific inquiry and method created a basic attitude of receptivity to modern/western influences in the spheres of education, the legal profession and the judiciary. Notwithstanding the many questions that were asked as to whether western secular methods should be accepted in Islam's traditional center's of learning, that resistance has gradually diminished and significant changes have been made to educational curricula and methods in Islamic schools and universities. Reforms of this kind continued to be undertaken even decades after the end of colonial rule in some Muslim countries. Public education in Muslim countries, including scientific education, was brought by colonial powers who replaced the Islamic educational system that prevailed earlier, or else the new methods were superimposed on an under-layer of the traditional system that still remained operative. The western approach to education basically precluded religion from the purview of science and led to inevitable conflict with it. The product of that combination was duality and bifurcation between the old and the new, a colonial legacy which persists to this day in the educational system of many Muslim countries. It has proved difficult to blend the two systems into an integrated whole, despite the fact that policy makers in Muslim countries have often tried to achieve that. The Western scientific approach to liberal education can be seen in the 1946 Harvard Committee Report entitled General Education in a Free Society, which divides knowledge into three categories: natural sciences, humanities, and social studies. General education is expected to develop certain capabilities of the mind

20

Quoted in Siddiqi, Modem Reformist Thought, pp. 92-93.

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which are "to think effectively, to communicate thought, to make relevant 21 judgements [and] to discriminate among values." Effective thinking is described as having three phases: logical, rational and imaginative. Logical thinking is applicable to practical matters such as whom to vote for and whom to befriend; it is also the ability to extract universal truths from particular cases and infer the particular from the general. It is manifested in the ability to analyse a problem and recombine its relevant elements with the help of imagination. By rational thinking the Report means the ability to think at a level appropriate to a problem. The Report adds that making relevant value judgement involves the ability of the student to bear a whole range of ideas upon the area of experience. "Discrimination among values" means the ability to distinguish various kinds of values, aesthetic, moral and intellectual and then to commit oneself to such values in the conduct of life. The Report excludes metaphysical knowledge and religious studies from the sphere of knowledge, and confines the attention of educationists to a concept of man for whom belief in God, or even pursuit of knowledge beyond the domain of the senses do not have any special significance. One commentator noted that by ignoring religious studies the Report failed to appreciate the effect of religion on personality and the direction that effective 23 thinking might take as a result of the impact of religion on the whole person. The view that Islam subordinates science to the teaching of religion finds support in Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr who wrote that by contrast to the western world which views the science of nature to be mainly concerned with "quantitative aspects of things," and science is closely identified with technology and its applications, Islamic science "seeks perfection and deliverance." To understand it requires placing oneself within its perspective as a "science of nature which has a different end, and uses different means from those of modern science." The ultimate aim of Islamic science, Nasr added, has always been to relate the corporeal world to its basic spiritual principle which seeks to unite the 21

Harvard Committee, General Education, p. 64, quoted in Ashraf, New Horizons, n.3, and pp. 36-37. Physics, chemistry and biology are natural sciences whereas economics, political science and sociology are social sciences, and anthropology, psychology and psychoanalysis are classified as human sciences. Quoted in Ashraf, New Horizons, n.3, p. 37. 23 Ashraf, New Horizons, n.3, p. 38.

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various orders of reality. 24 "The arts and sciences in Islam are based on the idea of unity" and its aim is to show the inter relatedness of all that exists. In contemplating the unity of the cosmos, man may be led to the unity of the Divine 25 principle, of which the unity of Nature is the image. Professor Nasr's view have been met with some reservation, as one of his critics noted: "For me the true worth of science lies in helping us to understand nature...We need science and technology not to make us more spiritual, moral and ethical...[but] to make us 26 more productive" and enable us to subdue and manipulate nature. I also have some reservation over the statement that Islamic science has different ends and uses different means compared to modern science. For I started the basic theme of this essay with a hypothesis that the inductive method, being the principal means and tool of modern science, is equally accepted in the Islamic theory of knowledge, be it the arts, the natural sciences or medicine. Soroush is of the view that modern science explains the world as if it was not created by a god, not denying his existence, but rather finding no need to postulate it. It is thus assumed that even if there were a god, science would nonetheless be able to explain the world without relying on his existence. Soroush has thus acknowledged a degree of disharmony between religion and science but added that the tension which exists between them need not be exaggerated ^ Secularism is widely regarded as one of the tools, and also a major contribution, of modern science, which stands at odds with spirituality and religion. Yet it is interesting to note that secularism has penetrated public education in the Muslim world especially during the colonial rule and ever since. Secularism is defined as the deliverance of Man "first from religious and then from metaphysical control over his reason and language." Secularism and modernisation both subscribe to a fundamental belief in rationality and scientific thought: Just as Nature is separated from the will of God, Man is 'freed7 from the 28 restrictive demands of religion. It would be difficult to claim that Islamic thought can accept secularism as such without some reservations. Yet certain aspects of secularism have been adopted in the Arab world and brought about

24

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science and Islamic Civilization, MA: Harvard University 1968, pp. 39-40. 2 6 ld. / P .22. Ausaf AN, Islamic Science and Islamic Sicial Ethics, Occsional Paper 24: Jslamabad : Islamic Research [institute, 1996, p. 26. Soroush, Reason, Freedom and Democracy in Islam, n.i2, p. 122 & 61; Ali, New 2£jorizons, no.3, p. 8. Cf. Ashraf, New Horizons in Muslim Education, n.3 p. 8-9. 2Press,

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considerable transformation in its institutions of learning, the judiciary and the status of religious scholars and ulama. It is also manifested elsewhere in the replacement largely of fuqaha' by lawyers, and of religious teachers by trained teachers in modern schools, especially when the kuttab/maktab, the Qur'anic schools, were transformed into modern schools on Western model, even though the process was gradual and uneven. One of the reservations that may be noted here is as follows: Muslims have adopted many of the premises of secularism without, however, isolating religion from public life. This may be said to be manifested in many of the formal constitutions of Muslim countries which recognise Islam either as the state religion or accord other forms of recognition to its validity and acceptance. The changes that took place in public education and Islamic institutions of learning were on a wider scale in other parts of the Middle East compared to Egypt, where for various reasons, al-Azhar kept its control over primary education. In the Maghreb, French colonialism divided the education system into a modern sector closely modelled on the French system and another, older sector, based on the kuttab. The transformation was extended with the replacement of the madrasas, which used to teach the fiqh, the Qur'an, the hadith and elements of Arabic, by universities applying modern curricula. Drastically revised curricula were later, and somewhat reluctantly, introduced by institutions like al-Azhar, and Zaytuna, perhaps less drastically in the former. But Zaytuna was transformed so much that reduced its status from a university to what is now a part of a modern university, known as the Faculty of Religious Studies. Changes in al-Azhar were not so radical as the new faculties, and their revised curricula, still remained under the umbrella of the old al-Azhar principles and traditions. Turkey under Kamal Ataturk had imported the western secular education without even attempting to reform the traditional system. Indonesia, and Malaysia, although Muslim majority countries, almost uncritically accepted secularism or else remained non-committal to the idea of a reformed Islamic educational system beyond retaining religious education as a subject in the curricula of their national schools. Both countries have in the meantime retained their traditional madrassas, some of which have been expanded, and to some 2Q extent reformed, in recent decades. 29

Cf. al-Azmeh, Islams and Modernities, 2n edn., London & New York: Verso, 1996, p. 47; Ashraf, New Horizons, n. 3, pp. 52-53.

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These changes led to a shift from a perception which saw public affairs, society and education through the prism of religion, to one that bore the imprint of modernity, or nahda (awakening), that implied openness to further modernisation. Changes were often accompanied by social upheavals that took place in Arab and Muslim societies far over a century that affected their education system and the judiciary more than most. The body of ulama was displaced from the leading places it had occupied in public life. The introduction of legal codes in many fields that were previously governed by the fiqh texts added to the marginalised status of the ulama. Formal constitutions introduced on the eve of colonialism in many Muslim and Arab countries were yet other instrument of secularism which articulated the ideas and foundations of the Western nation state in these countries. Conclusion The Islamic theory of knowledge is entrenched in the affirmation of both the physical and the metaphysical aspects of reality and truth. Belief in the Oneness of Being, or tawhid, is an article of the Islamic faith and a cornerstone of its epistemology. Yet for Muslims this only adds a dimension to their view of modern science. To identify the religious and scientic truths as of the same provenance tends to overcome the notion of an inherent conflict between religion and science. Science for the believers of Islam cannot, in other words, be pitted against belief in an Omnipotent God. There may be instances of tension between Islam and science, as our discussion has indicated, yet it does not seem to provide a rationally compelling argument for a Muslim to reject God and religion in order to be able to accept science. To see religion and science both as acceptable facets of one's worldview does not necessarily amount to a logical contradiction- from an Islamic viewpoint at least. To accept the metaphysical dimension of reality is an integral aspect of the Islamic worldview, and the Qur'an clearly demands that. In a similar vein, to acknowledge the reality of the human psyche and thought is just as natural as acknowledging his physical existence. This is bound to be ultimately a wholesome and a more meaningful approach to the undrstanding of reality and a sound foundation, therefore, of a valid epistemology. It is important, of course, to have a philosophical framework through which to give meaning to the data of sense perception and a sense of coherence to one's 3

° Cf. Id., p. 48.

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[4] DOES SCIENCE OFFER EVIDENCE OF A TRANSCENDENT REALITY AND PURPOSE? Mehdi Golshani In this paper, we elaborate on several crucial theological problems dealing with the role of science in providing some evidence for the existence of God and purpose in nature. It has become fashionable to eliminate notions of purpose and goal for the universe. Even many believing scientists ignore teleological considerations in their scientific work. In the Qur^anic view, however, God is the Creator and the Sustainer of the universe. He has created everything in measure and has decreed for it telos. In our view, modern science does offer some clues to the teleological aspects of our universe, as recent debates on anthropic principle suggest. Furthermore, some inferences from science can be used as a premise to construct philosophical arguments for the existence of God. Two theories have generated heated discussions about this matter: the theory of Big Bang and the Darwinian theory of evolution. We believe that empirical science can give us only a cognition of the works of God, but the deduction of God from His works is a matter of intellection or intuition. Keywords: Theological problems; teleology; Qur'anic view of cosmos; modern science; anthropic principle; arguments from design; telos; Qur'anic epistemology.

Introduction Modern science arrived in the Muslim world in the beginning of the nineteenth century. What affected Muslim intellectuals mostly was not science itself, but rather it was the transfer of various philosophical currents Mehdi Golshani is Professor of Physics, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran and Director, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Vali Asr Ave, P. O. Box 14155-1871, Tehran, Iran; Email: [email protected]. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Science and the Spiritual Quest Conference (Berkeley, June 1998). The author is grateful to the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences, Berkeley, for permission to publish the paper elsewhere.

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entangled with science that had a profound effect on the minds of Muslim scientists and intellectuals. Schools like Positivism and Darwinism penetrated the Muslim world and dominated its academic circles and had a noticeable impact on some Islamic theological doctrines. Response of Muslim Scholars to Modern Science In the Muslim world, there were four kinds of responses to modern science. (1) Some Muslim scholars rejected modern science as corrupt foreign thought, considering it incompatible with Islamic teachings, and in their view, the only remedy for the stagnancy of Islamic societies would be the strict following of Islamic teachings. (2) Other thinkers in the Muslim world saw science as the only source of real enlightenment and advocated the complete adoption of modern science. In their view, the only remedy for the stagnation of Muslim societies would be the mastery of modern science and the replacement of the religious worldview by the scientific worldview. (3) The majority of faithful Muslim scientists tried to adapt Islam to the findings of modern science; they can be categorized in the following subgroups: (a) Some Muslim thinkers attempted to justify modern science on religious grounds. Their motivation was to encourage Muslim societies to acquire modern knowledge and to safeguard their societies from the criticism of Orientalists and Muslim intellectuals, (b) Others tried to show that all important scientific discoveries had been predicted in the Qur^an and Islamic tradition and appealed to modern science to explain various aspects of faith, (c) Yet other scholars advocated a re-interpretation of Islam. In their view, one must try to construct a new theology that can establish a viable relation between Islam and modern science. The Indian scholar, Sayyid Ahmad Khan, sought a theology of nature through which one could re-interpret the basic principles of Islam in the light of modern science, (d) Then there were some Muslim scholars who believed that empirical science had reached the same conclusions that prophets had been advocating several thousand years ago. The revelation had only the privilege of prophecy. (4) Finally, some Muslim philosophers separated the findings of modern science from its philosophical attachments. Thus, while they praised the attempts of Western scientists for the discovery of the secrets of nature, they warned against various empiricist and materialistic interpretations of scientific findings. Scientific knowledge can reveal certain aspects of the physical world, but it should not be identified with the alpha and omega of knowledge. Rather, it has to be integrated into a

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metaphysical framework—consistent with the Muslim worldview—in which higher levels of knowledge are recognized and the role of science in bringing us closer to God is fulfilled. The Impact of Modern Science on Islamic Theology When we compare medieval science with modern science, we notice that they are different in several important aspects. This is especially noticeable in the case of some theological perspectives. When modern science penetrated the Muslim world, some Muslim scientists adopted western philosophical theological perspectives intact. Muslim philosophers and theologians, however, resisted the adoption of some doctrines which were considered to be harmful to basic Islamic teachings. Several crucial theological problems grappled with the role of science in proving the existence of God and purpose in nature. Teleological Explanation of the World For medieval scientists, every created thing had its especial place in the hierarchy of the created world, because it was created by a God who had a designed telos for the universe. The founders of modern science, however, ignored the notion of telos for the universe. Believing scientists did not deny the relevance of purpose to the created universe, but they believed that teleological considerations should not play a role in scientific descriptions. Weinberg's well-known statement is typical of their view: The present universe had evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

Currently, it is fashionable to eliminate the notion of goal to the universe. Thus, even many of the believing scientists ignore teleological considerations in their scientific work. In the Qur'anic view, God is the Creator and the Sustainer of the universe. He has created everything in measure and has decreed for it a telos. The creation is in truth, not for sport or vanity, and everything has a definite term (Q. 21:16; 38:27; 44:38; 46:3). The Qur'an has made a distinction between the Creator, the design and the internal order of the created things on the one hand and their guidance on the other hand. The 1. Weinberg, Steven (1977), The First Three Minutes, Basic Books, New York, p. 154.

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science 48 • Islam e> Science • Vol. 1 (June 2003) No. 1 direction that everything follows is not a result of its internal order. Rather, it is something beyond its orderly structure. The Qur'an mentions a universal notion of purpose and direction for the created universe (Q. 20:50; 87: 2-3). Fakhr al-Dm Razi, in his celebrated commentary on the Holy Qur'an, has elaborated on the distinction between the creation of a thing and its sense of direction. This sense of direction is a mysterious dimension present in everything, directing it toward its proper God-assigned role. One sees reference to it in the Qur'an for the human beings, animals, plants and inanimate objects: The Lord of all Being Who created me, and Himself guides me (Q. 26: 78); By the soul and that which shaped it and inspired it to lewdness and god-fearing (Q. 91: 6); And your Lord revealed unto the bees, saying 'take into yourselves, of the mountains, houses and of the trees ... then eat of all manner of fruit, and follow the ways of your Lord ...' (Q. 16: 68); And the stars and trees bow themselves (Q. 55: 6); ...and revealed its commandments in every heaven (Q. 41: 12). Thus, every creature receives a mysterious kind of guidance after its creation. It is like an automobile which has a material design, but it needs a guidance to accomplish its assigned role. This sense of direction is rather evident in humans, and to a certain extent one can identify it with instincts in animals. But at this stage of the development of science it is not noticeable in the inanimate world. However, it is very naive to deny it on the basis of our present knowledge of the physical world. The Qur'an mentions that everything in the world glorifies God, and that we do not understand the act of glorification (Q. 17: 44; 62: 1). Rumi, the Persian poet and mystic of the thirteenth century, eloquently expressed this point in spiritual couplets: All particles of the world say to you each day and night: 'We have hearing and sight and are conscious; though with you strangers we are mute'. Go from the world of inanimate into the world of spirit; then you hear the loud noise of the particles of the world. The glorification of God by inanimate objects will become evident to you; the doubts suggested by /false] interpretation will not carry you away. 2. Fakhr al-Din Razi (reprn. n.d.), al-Tafsir al-Kabir, Dar Ihya3 al-Turath alc ArabI, Beirut, vol. 31, pp. 138-40. 3. RumI, Jallal al-Din, Books III & IV, tr. by R.A. Nicholson (1982) as The Mathnawi ofjaldl al-dm Rumi, Gibb Memorial Trust, Cambridge, p. 58.

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According to the Qur'an, we originate from God and we shall return to God, and everything is created to worship God in its proper way (Q. 51: 56; 62:1). If we assume a purpose for the creation, then the evolution of created things is not without telos. In the Qur'anic outlook, the end of this motion is in the Hereafter, where everything meets its proper destination and the pious feel the presence of God. If there were no Hereafter, the creation would be in vain: Did you think that We created you only for sport and that you would not be returned to Us? (Q. 23: 115) One might argue that Hereafter is meaningful only for humans and possibly animals and that the universality of the sense of direction is disputable. In response, one could say that it is naive to deny non-humans a telos only on the basis of our present knowledge of the physical world. Furthermore, even if one assumes that anthropic coincidences in modern cosmology are indications of the special status of humanity and that the rest of the universe serves as a ground for the development of human beings, one can still infer the presence of purpose in the whole universe. As Paul Davies puts it: The success of human science and mathematics and the anthropic fine-tuning that is apparently a prerequisite for the very existence of human like beings strongly suggests that our existence is linked into the laws of the universe at the most basic level. Far from being a trivial and incidental byproduct of random and meaningless physical processes, it seems that conscious organisms are a fundamental feature of the cosmos. ...Clearly, the universe could have been otherwise. The fact that it is, as it is, and that its form is linked so intimately with our own existence, is powerful evidence that the universe exists for a purpose, and that in our small yet significant way, we are part of that purpose.

The Holy Qur'an is very explicit in attributing telos to the created universe and so Muslim theologians have never ignored teleological considerations, yet the silence of modern science about this point has not affected their view, although it has had a silencing effect on Muslim scientists.

4. Davies, Paul (1994), "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Science" in Templeton, John Mark (ed.), Evidence of Purpose, Continuum, New York, p. 56.

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The negligence of teleological considerations by the scientists of the last few centuries is partly due to their heavy involvement with mathematical manipulations and the predictive aspects of science and partly due to the false assumption that questions of teleological nature hinder the development of science. We don't believe that there is any inconsistency between holding a belief in a purposeful world and being a creative scientist. If we don't see telos for the created universe in the findings of modern science, it is because the philosophical framework in which contemporary scientists express their scientific work does not accommodate questions of teleological nature. Walter R. Hearn maintains that: the self-limitation of science to examining only secondary or mechanical causes should signal immediately that science has no capacity to deal with the existence—or non-existence—of a purpose behind the universe ...In my opinion, to say anything at all about ultimate purpose requires stepping outside the normal boundaries of science, even though individuals who deny divine purpose may claim that their argument rests on "what science tells us". The irrelevance of certain questions within science does tell us something, however, about the limited relevance of science to some of the deepest human concerns.

Nevertheless, we think that there are some clues to the teleological aspects of our universe in modern science. One has to be perceptive to discover such clues. For example the notion of purpose and design of the created universe has recently attracted much attention to the so-called anthropic principle, according to which the physical constants of nature are so-fmely tuned that if they were slightly different, carbon-based life could not develop and we should not be here. Anthropic coincidences call for an explanation, and there have been several explanations. In the monotheistic religions one can take them as an indication that God planned the universe with human beings in mind. Other explanations carry heavy metaphysical assumptions which, in my view, are much more involved than the explanation in terms of an a priori plan by an intelligent designer. For example, the most serious alternative to the design hypothesis is the manyworlds hypothesis, in which one postulates infinite universes to explain the order of just one universe. 5. Ibid. pp. 63-4.

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Science and the Existence of God In the Holy Qur'an, natural phenomena are referred to as signs of God, and it is implied that by understanding these signs, one can attain the cognition of the Lord of the signs: And of His signs are the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your tongues and colors. Surely there are signs in this for the learned (Q. 30: 22). In the Qur'an, one finds frequent reference to the creation, the constituents of objects, the thoroughness and orderliness of the creation and the harmony between man's existence with the rest of the physical universe (Q. 2: 29; 27: 88; 29: 20; 86: 5). The Qur'an quotes the prophet Abraham arguing from some phenomena of nature for the existence of God (Q. 6: 75-9). The QurDan also argues from the harmony of the creation for the unity of God (Q. 21: 22). The Qur'an even asserts that the study of signs of God in nature (natural phenomena) can eventually bring us closer to God (Q. 41:53).The argument from the presence of order and harmony in the creation for the existence of God, the so-called argument from design, is present in both the Qur3an and the Bible, and has been used frequently by the scholars of all monotheistic religions for this purpose. Eminent Muslim scientists of the past considered the study of nature as a way of seeing the signs of God in the universe. Al-Biruni, a distinguished Muslim scientist of the eleventh century, stated: When a person decides to discriminate between truth and falsehood, he has to study the universe and find out whether it is eternal or created. If somebody thinks that he does not need this kind of knowledge, he is, however, in need of thinking about the laws that govern our world, in part or in its entirety. This leads him to know the truth about them, and paves the way for knowing the Being Who directs and controls the universe, and for knowing His attributes. This is, in fact, the kind of truth that God enjoyed His knowledgeable servants to search for, and God spoke the truth when He said, "... And reflect upon the creation of the heavens and the earth [saying]: 'Our Lord You have not created this in vain [Q. 3: 191].' " This verse contains what I explained in detail, and if man works according to it, he can have access to all branches of knowledge

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and cognition.

6

The same point is made by the founders of modern science. Robert Boyle emphatically stated: When with bold telescopes I survey the old and newly discovered stars and planets...when with excellent microscopes I discern nature's curious workmanship; when with the help of anatomical knives and the light of chymical furnaces I study the book of nature...I find myself exclaiming with the psalmist, How manifold are thy works, O God, in wisdom hast thou made them all.

Muslim scholars thought that the study of natural phenomena can disclose the interrelation between various parts of the universe and the unity behind the world of multiplicity, and this may lead one to the unique Creator. With the infiltration of empiricist ideas into the Muslim world, some Muslim scholars asserted that even in theology one has to follow the methods of empirical science and that the only way to the cognition of God is the study of nature through the methods of regular science. The reference of the Qur'an to natural phenomena was taken as an argument for the sufficiency of the empirical science. Some even identified the Qur'anic wisdom with the positivistic philosophy. While we, too, agree that experiment and observation are indispensable tools for understanding nature, we don't believe that our understanding of nature is merely a matter of senses. Intellectual exercise over the findings of science is needed before one can get a picture of the physical world or one can get a theistic interpretation of our universe. We believe, as did the late Persian philosopher Murtada Mutahhari, that empirical science can give us only a cognition of the works of God, but the deduction of God from His works is 9 a matter of intellection or intuition. To substantiate this claim, we argue on the following grounds: (a) Science can at most inform us of some attributes of God, such as 6. al-Birum, Abu Rayhan, Kitab Tahdid Nihayat al-Amakin li-Tashih Masafat alMasakin, Persian trans, by A. Aram (1352 SH), Tehran University Press, Tehran, pp. 3-4. 7. Johnston, A. (ed. 1974), Robert Boyle's 1605 The Advancement of Learning, Clarendon Press, Oxford, p. 42. 8. Tabbarah, A. (1982), Ruh al-Din al-Islami, Dar al-cilm li'l-Malayeen, Beirut, p. 270. 9. Mutahhari, Murtada (1373 SH), Collected Works, Sadra Publications, Tehran, p. 893.

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knowledge, power, etc. But it can not lead us to an Omniscient, Omnipotent God. How can we get from the study of a limited part of the creation to an Eternal Transcendent God? The jump from finite to infinite requires an intellectual exercise. Even in science, we encounter the same situation. The laws of physics and chemistry are not direct results of experimental facts. Rather, they are deduced from the latter through an intellectual effort. Thus, for instance, matter itself is recognized through intellection, because experiments in physics or chemistry inform us only about the properties of matter. (b) The argument from design is neither a purely philosophical argument nor it is a merely empirical one. It has an empirical component and a philosophical one. It is the neglect of this fact that has caused confusion about this argument or has resulted in its refutation. Thus, Hume disputed the universality of this argument. In his view, this argument has an empirical character, and so it can't possibly prove an Omniscient and Omnipotent Transcendent God. What Hume missed was the fact that an empirical argument works when we observe an effect and try to find its causes by experimentation. It can't possibly work when are dealing with both natural and supra-natural. The real value of the argument from design is that it takes us to the frontier of science and metaphysics. It gives a hint that there is a supra-natural reality. But, whether that reality is one or more, is finite or infinite or has finite power or infinite power is beyond this argument. These aspects need separate arguments. (c) The opposition between theistic and atheistic interpretations of physical processes, especially those related to the origin and formation of the universe, is due to their different metaphysical presuppositions. Metaphysical assumptions are often deeply embedded in our interpretation of physical processes, and inattention to them could result in conflict. It is because of metaphysical presuppositions of this argument that many scientists don't deduce God's existence from their study of natural phenomena, and insist on their atheistic positions, no matter what they observe from the wonders of nature. The Qur'an, too, reminds us that the knowledge of natural phenomena, that is science in our modern terminology, can bring one closer to God, if one already has some faith in God. The study of nature and its secrets and beauties then fortifies one's

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faith: Say: Behold what is in the heavens and the earth; but neither signs nor warnings avail a people who do not believe (Q. 10: 101). It is interesting that the Qur3anic verses that invite people to ponder over the mysteries of creation end with phrases like surely, in this there is a sign for men of understanding (Q. 6: 67) and surely, in this there is a sign for thoughtful people (Q. 16:13).

In short, the study of nature through the methods of empirical science can lead to God, if science is interpreted within a proper metaphysical framework in which the limits of science and the existence of higher levels of knowledge are recognized. God and Creation

The problem of the creation of the universe has always been related to the problem of the existence of God, in one way or another. In the medieval ages, it was used in various ways as a premise in philosophical arguments for the existence of God. But in the last two centuries, it has been the subject of a scientific proof of the existence of God. Two theories have generated heated discussions about this matter: the theory of Big Bang and the Darwinian theory of evolution. (i) The Big Bang Theory Einstein's equations of general relativity have various solutions. Among them are those that imply that everything in the universe is both expanding and decelerating. If this is the case, then the present universe is the aftermath of an explosion. Thus, it has had a beginning, and so there must be a Prime Cause. The observations of Edwin Hubble in 1930's indicated that the galaxies indeed expanded in the way predicted by general relativity. Some astrophysicists, including H. Bondi, T Gold and F. Hoyle, in their steady state theory, attempted to avoid the beginning by suggesting continual creation. Some other physicists, including de Sitter, Tolman and Dicke proposed an oscillating universe, which goes through infinite cycles of explosion and implosion. Neither the steady state theory nor the models of oscillating universe have overcome the problems confronting them. Thus, they are not popular anymore. The works of S. Hawking, G. Ellis and R. Penrose in the late 1960's showed that if Einstein's equations of general relativity are valid and certain reasonable conditions are met, then space and time must have an origin coincident with that of matter and energy. This is taken by some believing physicists to be a strong argument for the creation by God. In the last thirty years, some cosmologists have attempted to circumvent the notion of beginning (that is, the initial singularity) by proposing that

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the universe is a quantum fluctuation arising from a state of vacuum containing quantum fields. But their quantum vacuum is far from an absolute vacuum. Certain laws and fields as background must be assumed. On the other hand, J. Hartle and S. Hawking, by applying quantum mechanical principles to the Big Bang and making use of the concept of imaginary time, attempted to show that space-time is finite but has no boundary. Thus, by negating creation in time they attempt to make God's existence superfluous. Hawking says that "so long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a Creator. But, if the universe is really completely self—contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end; it would simply be. What place then for a -,,10 creator? These attempts leave some questions unanswered. Where do the laws of physics come from? Why are these laws comprehensible to us? Why is there a universe in which such laws apply? Furthermore, the assumption of no beginning in time does not make the universe self-explanatory and independent of God. Paul Davies states: the fact that the universe might have no origin in time does not explain its existence, or why it has the form it has. Certainly it does not explain why nature possesses the relevant fields (such as the creation field) and physical principles that establish the steady-state condition.

A mistake often made is to think that for the universe to have a creator, there must be an initial time for the creation of the universe. Muslim theologians believed that only God is eternal. Everything else is created in time. Muslim philosophers, however, believed that creation in time is a property of the material world, where as supra-natural realities, as well as principles and universals, are eternal. In the view of theologians, "uncreatedness" in time meant not needing a Creator. Thus, the whole universe is created in time. In rebutting theologians' view, Muslim philosophers pointed out that a thing's need or lack of need for a cause depends on whether it is a contingent being or a necessary being respectively, and it has nothing to do with its creation in time or its eternity. Muslim philosophers' argument was based on God's absolute effulgence and beneficence: it is not acceptable to think of God's 10. Hawking, Stephen (1988), A Brief History of Time, Bantam, London, p. 41. 11. Davies, Paul (1992), The Mind of God, Simon & Schuster, London, p. 56.

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emanation and beneficence as terminating at a definite instant. Thus, God has caused an eternally created universe. According to these philosophers, creation simply means complete dependence of everything upon God, that is the dependence of the created on what is necessary by itself. The concept of origin in the case of creation refers to the causal origin rather than the temporal origin. In Mulla Sadra's theory of trans-substantial motion, every being has a graded reality which retains its identity despite its gradation. So the whole universe is continually in creation, everything is getting a new existence from God at every moment. The dependence of the world on God is not limited to any specific instant. Mulla Sadra states that: in general, every material object, whether it is the material of the stars or the elements, whether soul or body, constantly acquires new identity and personality and its existence is never fixed ...the proof of the principle indicated above is derived from the idea that nature is in a state of ever-renewing itself ... and when the Creator created it, He created its self renewing essence. Its self-renewal, however, is neither the creation of a creator nor the act of an agent ... the maker, in virtue of His durability and endurance, created this creature which is self-renewal in terms of its essence and identity.

(ii) Darwinian theory of evolution Another confusion concerning God and the creation of the universe relates to Darwinian theory of evolution. This theory challenged the fixity of species and claimed to explain the evolution of species in terms of natural selection and the survival of the fittest. According to Darwinism, life developed out of random processes and there was no plan for the creation of species. The order that has emerged in nature is the result of a wedding of chance and necessity. G.G. Simpson stated that "man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned." What this theory achieved was only the suggestion of a fully naturalistic mechanism by which the evolution of species can occur. But some evolutionists claimed that by challenging the immutability of species and the replacement of sudden acts of creation of species by a slow 12. Sadra, Mulla, Kitab al-Mashacir , tr. by Morewedge, Parviz (1992) as The Metaphysics of Mulla Sadra, The Society for the Study of Islamic Philosophy and Science, New York, pp. 80-1. 13. Simpson, George G. (1949), The Meaning of Evolution, Yale University Press, New Haven, p. 344.

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evolutionary process, they had eliminated the need for a creator. What they missed was the fact that by finding the mechanism of something one does not eliminate its having an inventor. The belief in an evolutionary mechanism for the emergence of species does not negate the idea of Divine creation. One has to explain the emergence of species, whether they are brought into being gradually or through a sudden creation. As Abu Majid Muhammad Rida al-Najafi al-Isfahani, an eminent Muslim scholar of the early twentieth century, pointed out, the theory of evolution is not against theism. It is only the materialistic interpretation of this theory that negates God. In his view, there is nothing in the Qur'an or the Islamic tradition to conclude whether all species were created separately or appeared through evolutionary random processes. In either case, we are dealing with God's activity. "What difference would it make if the fathers of camels were camels or frogs sing in the water, or the Grandfather of an elephant was elephant, or a bird flies in the air, since the evidence in all cases is obvious—God's 14 work." Nevertheless, al-Isfahani believed that what distinguishes humans from animals is their soul, and there is a clear difference between human mind and animal instincts. Conclusion All monotheistic religions view the study of nature as an attempt to see the works of God. This outlook was prevalent during the medieval period. The metaphysical framework accommodating the science of that era could provide a theistic interpretation of the universe. The founders of modern science shared this view. But, with the rise of the mechanistic interpretation of the universe and the prevalence of the empiricist philosophy, science divorced itself from metaphysics and played the role of a dominant ideology. The first half of this century witnessed the peak of the eclipse of metaphysics in the West. Modern science, as it is fashioned now, does not need to hypothesize God. Its normal enterprise is to explain natural phenomena without any appeal to supra-natural causes. Even many believing scientists ignore supra-sensible realities in their study of nature. It is assumed that normal science is sufficient for the explanation of all natural phenomena. Science, however, can lead one to God, if four points are recognized: First of all, science acquaints us with the character of some dimensions of the universe and not its totality. Secondly, science cannot answer our ultimate questions, like "Where did the universe come from?" and "What do we do here?" 14. Ziadat, Adel A. (1986), Western Science in the Arab World, Macmillan Press, London, p. 97.

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Thirdly, science needs a metaphysical framework which can justify its success and can give meaning to the world, and which admits suprasensible realities. The fourth point is that empirical science, by its very nature, cannot directly lead one to God, and whatever can be described by science cannot be God. If these considerations are taken into account, then science can fortify one's belief in God and in a purposeful universe created by an Omniscient, Omnipotent God. In the words of Pope John Paul II: To desire a scientific proof of God would be equivalent to lowering God to the level of the beings of our world, and we would therefore be mistaken methodologically in regard to what God is. Science must recognize its limits and its inability to reach the existence of God: it can neither affirm nor deny his existence. From this, however, we must not draw the conclusion that scientists in their scientific studies are unable to find valid reasons for admitting the existence of God. If science as such cannot reach God, the scientist who has an intelligence the object of which is not limited to things of sense perception, can discover in the world reasons for affirming a Being which surpasses it. Many scientists have made and are making this discovery. He who reflects with an open mind on what is implied in the existence of the universe, cannot help but pose the question of the problem of the origin. Instinctively, when we witness certain happenings, we ask ourselves what caused them. How can we not but ask the same question in regard to the sum total of beings and phenomena which we discover in the world? If the empirical science is augmented by an underlying metaphysical framework that can accommodate all levels of knowledge and all domains of human experience, then we can expect the science to become a ladder that can elevate one to the frontier of physical and metaphysical, where one can reach the state described by the Holy Qur'an: In the creation of the heaven and the earth, and in the alternation of night and day, there are signs for the people of sense; those that remember Allah when standing, sitting, and lying down, and reflect on the creation of the heavens and the earth [saying]: 'Lord, You have not created these in vain. Glory be to You.' (Q. 3: 190-1) 15. L'Observatore Romano, July 15, 1985.

Part II Major Voices

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[5] IBN SINA AND ABU AL-BARAKAT AL-BAGHDADI ON THE ORIGINATION OF THE SOUL (HUDUTH AL-NAFS) AND THE INVALIDATION OF ITS TRANSMIGRATION (IBTAL AL-TANASUKH) Wan Suhaimi Wan Abdullah This article presents a comparative survey of Ibn Slna and Abu al-Barakat's views on the problem of the origination of the soul and its transmigration (tandsukk) and contrasts their arguments and interpretations. The article identifies similarities and differences in the views of these two scholars, both of whom believed in and argued for the origination of the soul and rejected its transmigration, with particular focus on the way they differ in defining their views. Keywords: Ibn Slna; Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadl; psychology; the origination of the soul; tandsukh, the transmigration of the soul; Kitdb al-muctabar fi al-hikmah; al-Shifd^; alNajdt; al-Risdlah al-cadhawiyyahfial-macdd.

Introduction The problem of the temporal origin of the human soul (huduth al-nafs) and its immortality after the death of the body (baqff al-nafs bacda fanff al-badan) is one of the many important issues pertaining to the nature of the human soul. Moreover, this problem overlaps other fundamental problems concerning the nature of creation, the reality of the God-soul relationship, and the nature of human knowledge. In his Kitdb al-muctabarfi al-hikmah, Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi reexWan Suhaimi Wan Abdullah is Senior Lecturer, Department of cAqldah and Islamic Thought, Academy of Islamic Studies, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Email: [email protected]. This article is a revised version of a paper submitted to the Avicenna International Colloquium organized by Bu Ali University in Hamadan, Iran, August 22-24, 2004. The author would like to thank Dr. Adi Setia Muhammad Dom of International Islamic University Malaysia, who has kindly read and commented on the article.

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amines the philosophy of the earliest thinkers on this problem, especially the Aristotelian point of view as expounded by Ibn Sina, and evaluates it before expressing his own views. The central question here is whether the soul is originated or eternal, and whether the notion of the transmigration of the soul promoted by those who believe in the eternity of the soul is valid. The origination of the human soul and the impossibility of its transmigration, according to Ibn Sina Ibn Sma's view on the origination of the human soul and the impossibility of its transmigration is stated clearly in his major works, especially in al-Shifd\ al-Najdt and al-Risdlah al-cadhawiyyah fi al-macdd. He says that the human soul is "the first entelechy of a natural body possessing organs (kamdl awwal lijism tabici cali) insofar as it acts by rational choice and rational deduction, and insofar as it perceives universals."1 It is also "an immaterial substance independent of any material substratum" (jawhar qd^im hi dhdtihi)2 and it therefore is something 'spiritual' (ruhdni), free from any material basis.3 So, in this conception, the soul is an immaterial substance which is somehow connected actively to the body. In its relation to the body it plays the role of an agent for all actions and perceptive activities undertaken by the human being. This basic notion of the soul and its role in the body is commonly understood. However, when we try to think of the nature of 1. Fazlur Rahman, Avicennas Psychology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), 25 and Ibn Sina, Kitab al-Najdt (Beirut: Bar al-Afaq al-Jadldah, 1985), 197. See detail explanation on this definition in Ibn Sina, alShifd\ Physics, Book 6 (Kitab al-Nafs), ed. G. Anawati and Sacid Zayed, (Cairo: al-Hay D atal-Misriyyahal- c Ammahlial-Kitab, 1975), 6-10, hereinafter cited as Kitab al-nafs ofal-Shifd\ 2. Ibid., 22-26. Also see Ibn Sina, al-Ishdrdt wa al-tanbihdt, ed. Sulayman Dunya, 2nd ed. (Cairo: Bar al-Macarif, n.d.), 2: 350-355. 3. On the argumentation on how the human soul is free from any material basis, see Ibn Sina, Kitab al-nafs ofal-Shifd3, 187-196. On the definition and nature of the human soul in Ibn Sma's philosophy, see Ibrahim Madkur, "Introduction" in Ibn Sina, Kitab al-nafs of al-Shifd\ viii-ix. Also see Ibrahim Madkur, Fi al-falsafah al-isldmiyyah manhaj wa tatbiq, 2nd ed. (Cairo: Bar al-Macarif, 1968), 1: 154-169; Yahya Huwaydl, Muhddardtfi al-falsafah al-isldmiyyah (Cairo: Maktabah al-Nahdah alMisriyyah, 1965), 207-208; Mahmud Qasim, Dirdsdt fi al-falsafah alisldmiyyah, 2nd ed. (Cairo: Bar al-Macarif, 1967), 43-4; A. NasrI Nader, al-Nafs al-bashariyyah cindd Ibn Sina (Beirut: Bar al-Mashriq, 1968), 15.

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the soul prior to the existence of the body, many difficult questions come to mind. Did the soul exist at all, prior to the existence of the body? If so, how could this universal soul have become individuated and play its role in separate bodies? What then separates each individual from another and makes them differ from each other in their respective individuality despite partaking of a common universal soul? These are among the questions often raised in considering and understanding the ontological history of soul. Ibn Sma believes that all these questions would be reasons enough for taking the stand that the soul cannot pre-exist the body, but in fact originated with the body. Ibn Sma, in his argument for the origination of the human soul,4 stresses that the soul can neither be a single entity nor multiple entities before it exists in the body, and that, logically, something which is neither singular nor multiple is non-existent; therefore, the soul does not exist before the body. It is also impossible for the soul to be multiplied when it is attached to the bodies because an immaterial entity which is free from any bodily or materialistic elements is indivisible. Furthermore, it is absurd to think that the soul remains numerically one while attached to different bodies because such a phenomenon would imply that there is only one soul which is attached to various individual bodies. Ibn Sma explains in al-Shifd^ and Risdlah al-cadhawiyyah6 that if the conception of a single soul attached to different individuals is true, then every individual will be similar to one another in all respects. Thus, if there is only one soul, every single person or individual will know and acquire the same knowledge as the others. Similarly, the soul could not have been multiplied before the existence of the body because any multiplication of the soul at that stage would necessitate certain accidents (awdrid) or inseparable properties (lawdzim) in the soul. Ibn Sma explains that "the multiplicity of the species of those things with pure essences is only due to the substrata which receive them 4. See the argument in Ibn Sma, al-Najat, 222-223; Fazlur Rahman, Avicennas Psychology, 56-58 and 105-106; Ibn Slna, Kitdb al-nafs of alShifd\ 198-201 andhis Risdlah al-cadhawiyyahfi al-macdd, ed. Hasan cAsI, 2nd ed. (Beirut; al-MuDassasah al-Jamiciyyah li al-Dirasat wa al-Nashr wa al-Tawz!c, 1987), 115-116. Cf. Y. Huwaydl, Muhaddrdt, 238-239 and Muhammad Husaynl Abu Sacdah, al-Wujud wa al-khuludfifalsafah Abi al-Barakdt al-Baghdddi (Cairo: Maktabah Nahdah al-Misriyyah, 1993), 215-217. 5. Ibn Slna, Kitdb al-nafs ofal-Shifd\ 200. 6. Ibn Slna, Risdlah al-cadhawiyyah, 123.

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and to what is affected by them or due only to their times."7 Therefore, since all these accidental elements exist only with the material body, and since the soul at this stage is free from any materiality, then the soul is indivisible. On the other hand, the numerical multiplicity of the soul could not be ascribed to its very quiddity (al-mdhiyyah) and form (al-surah) because the form of the soul is one, and therefore the multiplicity of the soul would only be possible if there is a recipient of the quiddity (qdbil al-mdhiyyah) such as the body. Thus, based on the above consideration, one should not claim that the multiplicity of the soul is due to another body before this present body, because this would mean that the soul transmigrated from that earlier body. This is absurd because transmigration of the soul from one body to another is impossible.8 Ibn Sma's stance on the impossibility of the transmigration of the soul is based on his doctrine of the soul's resurrection in the Hereafter. Since he believes that only the soul and not the body will be resurrected in the Hereafter, and that the existence of the soul at that stage does not require any body, he rejects the idea of transmigration, however it is conceived. He devises special arguments to refute the idea of transmigration apart from his argument on the immortality of the soul.9 7. Fazlur Rahman, Avicenna's Psychology, 57. 8. Cf. Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadl, al-Muctabar f i al-hikmah (Hyderabad: Da'iratal-Ma c arifal- c Uthmaniyyah, 1358 H.), 2: 371. Ibn Sina discusses the question of the transmigration of the soul and relates it to the immortality of the soul in al-Shifff and al-Najdt, and with the Hereafter (al-Macdd) in Risdlah al-cadhawiyyah; see Ibn Sma, Kitdb al-nafs of alShifd\ 202-207; his al-Najdt, 223-227; and his Risdlah al-cadhawiyyah, 114-126. This is understood because Ibn Slna believes in the origination of the soul, and, since it is proven and established that the soul exists with the existence of the body, he thinks that it is not necessary to discuss the impossibility of transmigration of the soul before the body. However, when he claims that the soul is immortal and that there is life after the death of the body, then the explanation on whether the soul is possibly transmigrated or not is needed. His explanation of the impossibility of the transmigration of the soul after the death of the body thus implies that transmigration is impossible in whatever situation, before or after the death of the body. This is quite different in the case of Abu al-Barakat, who sees both issues, i.e., the question whether the soul is eternal or originated and the question of transmigration of the soul, especially before the existence of the body, as two interrelated issues which should therefore be reconsidered at the same time. 9. See his argument for the immortality of soul in, for instance, Kitdb alnafs ofal-Shifd\ 202-207; al-Najdt, 223-227; Fazlur Rahman, Avicenna's

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Although aware of the opinions and sometimes sophisticated arguments of those who support the idea of transmigration, either before its attachment to the body or after the death of the body, he presents his views and explanations on the absurdity of the transmigrationist arguments in his Risdlah al-cadhawiyyah.w There are several considerations to note when studying Ibn Sina's argument for the impossibility of transmigration. As discussed above, Ibn Sma has established that the soul comes into being only when the body is prepared to receive it. It means that the readiness of the body to receive the soul is among the essential requisites for the emanation of the soul from its cause. Ibn Sma believes that all these processes, i.e., the readiness of the body to receive the soul as well as the emanation of the soul from its cause, do not occur accidentally because that would imply that the body, which is an element of the multiplicity of the soul, could exist prior to the soul. If this is the case, then the multiplicity of the soul would not necessarily follow from the essential cause (al-cillah al-dhdtiyyah), which in this case is the soul, but rather due to the accidental cause (al-cillah al-caradiyyah), which is the body. This is unacceptable because the essential cause is logically prior to the accidental cause. On the other hand, one should not claim that individual bodies are varied, where some are ready to receive the incoming soul while others are not, because "the individuals of a species do not differ in matters which constitute their essence."11 Hence, it is clear that whenever there is a body, it must surely be ready to receive the soul which will govern the body, and that this same receptivity should be common to all bodies. Having explained these basal principles, Ibn Sma then expresses his argument for the impossibility of transmigration. He claims that if transmigration were possible, then it must be logically possible to have two souls attached to the same body at the same time—one soul which transmigrated from the previous body and another soul which come into Psychology, 58-63 and 109; Ibn Sma, Risdlah al-cadhawiyyah, 143-144. Also Ibrahim Madkur, Fial-falsafah al-isldmiyyah, 1: 177-190; Mahmud Qasim, Dirdsdt fi al-falsafah al-isldmiyyah, 44-46 and his Fi al-nafs wa al-'aql li faldsifah al-ighriq wa al-isldm, 4th ed. (Cairo: Maktabah alAnglo al-Misriyyah, 1969), 168-174; and Lenn E. Goodman, Avicenna (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 163 ff. 10. Ibn Sma, Risdlah al-cadhawiyyah, 114-126. 11. See Fazlur Rahman, Avicenna's Psychology, 64. Cf. Ibn Sma, Kitdb al-nafs ofal-Shifd\ 207 and his al-Najdt, 227.

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existence with this present body. As this is evidently not possible, transmigration of the soul too is impossible.12 Furthermore, according to Ibn Slna, the soul-body relationship is an active relationship. The soul plays the role of governing the body and the body is influenced by its actions. There is thus a conscious relationship between the soul and the body, and each of them is aware of the presence of the other. If we assume that there are two different souls in one body, we should necessarily be aware of the presence of them both. Since we do not feel and are unaware of any soul except the unique soul which governs and occupies our body, a second transmigrated soul into our body is an impossibility. Besides, it is absurd to claim that there is actually an unrealized additional soul in the body because this means that this additional soul is bereft of any relationship with the body and therefore is not the soul we are discussing about. Hence, transmigration is absolutely impossible.13 Such is Ibn Sma's stand on the origination of the human soul and the impossibility of transmigration. The soul, according to Ibn Sma, does not pre-exist the body but comes into existence when there is a suitable body to receive it, and which the soul governs and uses as its instrument. "This mutual suitability of the body-soul couplement gives to the soul its particular character which constitutes its unique individuality," and therefore "after the death of the body, the soul preserves its individuality and survives as such."14 Ibn Sma explaination and discussion in Risdlah al-cadhawiyyahw indicates a clear interrelation between the origination of the soul and the impossibility of its transmigration. The theses of the origination of the soul and the impossibility of its transmigration are complementary. Ibn Sma uses the proof for the origination of the soul to establish the impossibility of transmigration; he rejects the idea of transmigration based on the establishment of the origination of the soul.16 It is this circular aspect of his 12. Compare the idea that a soul can have only one particular body with Aristotle, De anima, ii, 3, 407b: 13-26 and ii, 2, 414a: 19-29. Also see Fazlur Rahman, Avicennas Psychology, 109. 13. See Ibn Sma's argument for the impossibility of transmigration in his Kitab al-nafs ofal-Shifd\ 207; al-Najdt, 227; Risdlah al-cadhawiyyah, 124125; and Fazlur Rahman, Avicenna's Psychology, 63-64 and 109. Cf. Abu al-Barakat, al-Mu'tabar, 2: 371. 14. Fazlur Rahman, Avicennas Psychology, 106. 15. Ibn Slna, Risdlah al-Adhawiyyah, 121. 16. Ibn Slna stresses that among the main confusions of those who believe

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argumentation that causes Abu al-Barakat to criticize Ibn Sma and accuse him of being mired in a vicious circle. In the following discussion, we will see Abu al-Barakat's viewpoints on this issue through his comments on Ibn Sma and his own approach in dealing with the problem. The origination of the human soul and the impossibility of its transmigration, according to Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi bequeathed us far fewer works compared to earlier philosophers such as al-Farabi and Ibn Sina. Abu al-Barakat focused more on re-examining the thoughts and ideas propounded before him than on an elaborate interpretations of them. Therefore, his philosophical works appeared in the form of compressed renditions and evaluations of major earlier ideas.17 The question of the soul was among the major questions Abu alBarakat dealt with in his philosophical works. It appears in various parts of his writings, and especially thoroughly in his major work al-Muctabar f l al-hikmah.18 He also discusses the issue in his other treatises such as Kitab in the soul's transmigration is that they think the soul exists before the body. Therefore, instead of answering each argument posed by them, he works on establishing the fact that the soul does not pre-exist the body, believing that, by establishing this, the whole argument based on this proposition is necessarily invalid. Ibid. 17. See Ahmad al-Tayyib, al-Jdnib al-naqdififalsafatAbial-Barakat al-Baghdadi (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2004), 46-47, hereinafter cited as al-Jdnib. On his contribution and works, see for instance Sulayman al-NadwI, "Kitab al-muctabar wa sdhibihi" appearing at the end of the Hyderabad edition of al-Muctabar, 3: 230-252; Shlomo Pines, Studies in Abu^l-Barakat al-Baghdadi]s Physics and Metaphysics (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press and Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1979); and Ahmad al-Tayyib, al-Jdnib, 46-53. Also see Jamal Rajab Saidabi, Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi wa falsafatihi alildhiyyah (Cairo: Maktabah Wahbah, 1996), 24-25 and (in Malay) Wan Suhaimi Wan Abdullah, "A Biography of Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi," Jurnal Usuluddin (Journal of Usuluddin), Kuala Lumpur: Academy of Islamic Studies, University of Malaya, no. 9 (July 1999), 73-96. 18. The question of the soul is primarily addressed in chapters sixteen ("On the state of the soul before its connection to the body and on what has been said on its eternity and originality"), seventeen ("On re-examining the arguments [concerning the origination and the eternity of the soul]"), and eighteen ("On clarifying the origination of the soul and invalidating the eternity and the transmigration of the soul"). These are to be found at pp. 368-379 of the Hyderabad edition. The psychological part of al-Muctabar is the longest part of the six books of its second volume. I have studied Abu al-Barakat's psychology and established a

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sdhih adillat al-naql f l mdhiyyat al-caqlig and (briefly) in his Kitdbfi cilm alnafs^ According to Abn al-Barakat, those who believe in the eternity of the soul and that the soul existed before the body also believe that the soul is an immaterial substance. On the contrary, those who believe in the origination of the soul and assert that it exists together with the body claim that the soul is an accident.21 After listing all the arguments of those who believe in the eternity of the soul, Abu al-Barakat mentions several arguments on the origination of the soul including the views of Ibn Sina, which Abu al-Barakat quotes without mentioning his name.22 Abu al-Barakat examines the arguments of all parties in order to clarify their weak points before presenting his own views and counterarguments. In criticizing Ibn Sma's view for the origination of the soul, based on the idea that immaterial entities are indivisible and therefore cannot exist prior to the body, Abu al-Barakat asserts that it is not proven that all immaterial entities are indivisible. According to Abu al-Barakat, divisibility of the soul is possible if we say that something material is divisible because of its physical dimensions (aqtdb) and that anything attached to it (including immaterial realities) is also divisible.23 Abu al-Barakat also rejected the uniqueness of the soul in its quiddity (al-mdhiyyah) and form (al-surah) which implies that the multiplicity of the soul is possible only when there is a recipient of the quiddity (qdbil al-mdhiyyah) such as the critical edition of this section of al-Muctabar in my doctoral dissertation at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC), Kuala Lumpur, entitled "Abu al-Barakat's Psychology: Critical Edition of the Section on Soul (al-nafs) from al-Muctabarfi al-Hikmah with Analysis and Translation of Selected Texts" (2007, unpublished). 19. Edited and published by Ahmad al-Tayyib in "Un traite cTAbu 1-Barakat al-Bagdadi sur 1'intellect," Annales Islamologiques, L'Institut Frangais d'Archeologie Orientale in Cairo, t. xvi, 1980, 128-147. Cf. Roxanne D. Marcotte, "La conversion tardive d'un philosophe: Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadl (mort vers 545/1150) sur 'L'Intellect et sa quiddite' (al-cAql wa mahiyyatu-hu)" Documenti e Studi Sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale, vol. XV, 2004, 201-226. 20. The manuscript remains unedited in Aya Sofia, 4855 in seven folios, hereinafter cited as Kitdbfi cilm al-nafs. We plan to work on this manuscript in our next project. The question of the soul is addressed in folio 5. 21. Abu al-Barakat, al-Mu'tabar, 2: 368. 22. Ibid., 2: 370-371. 23. Ibid., 2: 375.

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body.24 As mentioned previously, when AbU al-Barakat criticizes the arguments for the origination of the soul and the impossibility of its transmigration, he does not mean to oppose the underlying stand on the issue. Abu al-Barakat as well as other thinkers before and after him criticize Ibn Sma's views as part of an honest quest to search for the truth. A clear understanding supported by a strong argument must always underlie the acceptance or rejection of any view. He did not find the arguments and explanations presented by the earlier thinkers sufficient in terms of intellectual rigor. Now we will see how Abu al-Barakat himself views the issue and how he defends own argumentative alternatives. Abu al-Barakat clarified his stand on the origination of the soul and the impossibility of its transmigration in several sections of his "Book of the Soul" (Kitdb al-nafs) in al-Muctabar. His argument is based particularly on the idea that the soul is always active and effective (faccdlah mutasarrifah), and that among the essential activities of the soul is the one related to perception. He argues that to establish the existence of the soul prior to the body means to establish our perception and memory as well, and that this perception must apply as well to the state of the soul before being attached to the body. This implies, inversely, that, if we could feel and recall how we were before inhabiting our bodies, we could prove that our souls had existed prior to our bodies. That we do not experience such memories indicates that the soul does not exist prior to the body.25 Furthermore, as far as acquiring knowledge is concerned, he says that we know that the human soul develops from being ignorant to becoming knowledgeable. This development would not be possible if there is no involvement of an instrument or organ in relation to the body. Thus we can argue that if this single soul, which is present in every individual body, existed before this body, it was either previously in another body or it was itself free from attachment to any body (mufdriqat li al-abddn kullihd). In other words, it must be either active and effective (faccdlah mutasarrifah) or is inactive and unaffective (mu'attal can al-ffl wa al-inffdl). Since the latter is not possible because existential natures (al-tibdc al-wujudiyyah) cannot be inactive, the soul at that stage must therefore be active and effective. 24. Ibid., 2: 376. Cf. Yahya Huwaydl, Muhdddrat, 242; Ahmad al-Tayyib, alJdnib, 304-306; and Jamal Rajab SaidabI, Abu al-Barakdt al-Baghdddi, 192-198. 25. Abu al-Barakat, al-Muctabar, 2: 377-379 and his Kitdb fi cilm al-nafs, folio 5a-b. Also see Yahya Huwaydl, Muhdddrat, 234.

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He further adds that the activity and effectiveness of the human soul is of two categories: a rational perception (idrdk caqli) and a physical movement (tahrlk jismdni) which includes sense perception (idrdk hissi). When there is perception, there must necessarily also be memorization. This memory could not be located in any physical part like the body, because the body is limited compared to memorized objects. Therefore, the memory must reside in the soul, either in its very self or in a faculty attached to the soul. If we assume that the memory is in this faculty attached to the soul, one may ask further: on what conditions is this memory faculty related to the body and the soul? Is it its attachment with the soul that makes the soul's relationship with the body possible, or it is the other way round, i.e., that the soul's relationship with the body has led this memory faculty to be attached to the soul? Abu al-Barakat believes that the memory faculty could not be directly related to the body because this implies that its relationship with the body is either as a permanent accident (al-carad al-qdrrah) or as an effective agent, like our soul-body relationship. Both relational possibilities are impossible. As for the former, the accident is too limited to bear a huge stock of perceptions, whereas, in the case of the latter, the faculty acting like the soul would have us perceive two souls active in a single body (which does not occur). Thus, if we realize that this memory faculty is actually none other than that very soul of ours, then it is not worthwhile to contemplate all alternatives. Instead, according to Abu al-Barakat, we can simply say that the memorization faculty is in the soul itself, for if the memory faculty is merely attached to the soul and thereby became related to the body, then it must at all times be with the soul, whether before or after the soul comes into the body. This will then necessitate that the memory faculty will remember and memorize all the soul's experiences and knowledge as perceived before the attachment of the soul to the body, just as it could conceive in memory phenomena from when the soul is present in the body. Since we do not have any knowledge or memory of that particular realm in which the soul was not yet attached to the body, we can establish that the soul, before being in the body, had neither perception nor memorization. Therefore it does not pre-exist the body but is originated by virtue of the origination of its attachment to the body (hadithah hi huduth tacalluqiha bihi).™ 26. Abu al-Barakat, al-Muctabar, 2: 377-379 and his Kitdbfi "Urn al-nafs, folio

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Such is Abu al-Barakat's own argument for the origination of the soul. He considers this argument a kind of'first principles of the mental faculties' (al-awwaliyyah f l al-adhhdri), and as something of which all human beings are aware and conscious. Furthermore, he believes that this is also the correct argument for rejecting the views for the transmigration of the soul. According to Abu al-Barakat, if the soul had existed before the body, that is, prior to its (supposed) transmigration to its current particular body, then we should be able to remember and perceive certain realities of that pre-bodily period. Since we do not recollect anything from that period, the notion of transmigration itself becomes logically impossible.27 Concluding remarks It is evident from the above discussion that both Ibn Sma and Abu alBarakat believed in and argued for the origination of the soul and rejected its transmigration. Both of them gave their own arguments to support their thesis. They differed in how they defended their views. In what follows, I propose some personal observations concerning their arguments. It is to be observed that Ibn Sina's stand for the origination of the soul displays a certain inconsistency, because in his works such as the Qasldah al-cayniyyah he shows a clear inclination toward the idea that the soul existed before being attached to the body, and that the soul is emanated from the Active Intellect.28 Abu al-Barakat is more consistent in his views, since he rejects the doctrines of emanation and of the Active Intellect.29 As far as Abu al-Barakat's argument for the origination of the soul is concerned, one may question whether it is absolutely applicable or whether exceptions are possible. Do we have any unquestionable proof that no human being has any knowledge and perception whatsoever of that realm where the soul pre-exists the body, such that we can therefore unequivo5a-b. See also Abu Sacdah, al-Wujud wa al-khulud, 217-219. 27. Abu al-Barakat, al-Muctabar, 2: 379. Cf. Sadr al-Dm al-ShlrazI, al-Hikmah al-mutacdliyah fi al-asfdr al-caqliyyah al-arbacah (Beirut: Dar al-Ihya3 alTurath al-cArabI, 2002), 8: 296-297. 28. Cf. Yahya Huwaydl, Muhadardt, 238-239; Ahmadal-Tayyib, al-Jdnib, 303304; and S.M.N. al-Attas, The Nature of Man and the Psychology of the Human Soul (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1990), 37, hereinafter The Nature of Man. 29. See Abu al-Barakat, al-Muctabar, 3: 145 ff. Cf. Yahya Huwaydl, Muhadardt, 239-240; Ahmad al-Tayyib, al-Jdnib, 379-394; Herbert A. Davidson,^/farabi, Avicenna andAverroes on Intellect (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 154 ff.; Mm^d-ah, al-Wujud w a al-khulud, 168173; and Jamal Rajab Saidabl, Abu al-Barakdt al-Baghdddi, 101-110.

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cably assert that all souls are originated by its attachment with the body? Abu al-Barakat himself stresses that we will not find any concrete evidence to escape this inductive circle. The only available answer we have for this question is that which was revealed to us or whatever we may have heard from the experiences of others. This available support we have, according to Abu al-Barakat, should not be taken as something applicable for every person in general. We cannot thus make a blind generalization in this matter, believing that what is or is not in our memory would be identical to that of others, since souls are different in their substance and quiddity. What we can be assured of is that the majority of human beings do not have such a memory.30 Such is the manner by which Abu al-Barakat qualifies himself. On the other hand, we cannot be certain as to what is in Abu alBarakat's mind when he qualifies himself thus. Does he mean that there is a special kind of soul which can acquire memory of the pre-bodily state, and therefore that this kind of soul is not 'originated' as the other type of soul? How then would he explain the state of this particular soul before being attached to the body? How would this alter the question of transmigration? Is it then possible for certain souls to transmigrate and not others? Plato argued that the soul had all knowledge and perception before its pre-bodily existence, but when it became attached to the body its situation changed and the soul forgot all (or almost all) its pre-bodily knowledge. The bodily soul's inability to recollect this pre-bodily knowledge is not sufficient proof that it did not have that pre-experiential knowledge, because when the soul came into being in this material world it became overly occupied and forgot that prior state.31 Abu al-Barakat does not directly address these possibilites here, nor does he account for the idea of the holy covenant (al-mithdq) sealed between God and humanity and which was mentioned in al-Acrdf: 172, which implies that the pre-physical human souls know "God in His Absolute Unity as...Lord[, a knowledge which] has bound man in a covenant determining his purpose and attitude and action with respect to his self in his relation to God."32 30. Abu al-Barakat, al-Mu'tabar, 2: 379 and Kitabfi "Urn al-nafs, folio 5b-6a. 31. See, for instance, A. Rahman Badawi, Afldtun (Cairo: Maktabah alNahdah al-Misriyyah, 1944), 194-202. Cf. Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (London: Counterpoint, 1984), 147-156 and 163172. 32. On the reality of this covenant, see S.M.N. al-Attas, Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 2001), 45-46 and 143-145.

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Also problematic is Abu al-Barakat's claim that if the soul had existed before the body it should not be "inactive from any action or affection (mu'attal can al-ficl wa al-inficdl)" because "the existing natures (al-tibdc alwujudiyyah) cannot be inactive." One could argue conversely that an immaterial substance like the soul could very well be active and effective before being in the body. Could we then say that the inverse is true instead, that is, it is the body which causes the soul to forget all knowledge it acquired before, hence becoming less active and effective in its post- rather than pre-bodily period? It is thus quite possible to think that the soul was active and had knowledge before coming into the body, and the fact that now it does not retain any knowledge or memory of that particular pre-bodily realm does not necessarily mean that it did not exist before. It simply means that it 'forgets' itself due to over-occupation of the body and 'addiction' to bodily pleasures derived from over-attachment to the physical, sensual world. That Abu al-Barakat bases his claim for the origination of the soul merely on the fact of the post-bodily amnesia of the soul causes his argument to lose much of its force.33 Such argumentative weaknesses led later thinkers like Fakhr al-Dm al-Razi34 and Mulla Sadra35 to criticize Abu al-Barakat, particularly in relation to his view on the soul's memory before its attachment to the body as well as his view on the soul's pre-bodily inactivity. These views are not rigorous enough to constitute cogent arguments for the origination of The nature of the soul's pre-existence, as al-Attas explains, "refers to a state of being unlike that of existence that is known to us, but to an existence in the interior condition of Being, in the consciousness of God. To this state of existence refer God's words in the Qur'an when He asked all souls: 'Am I not your Lord?", and they answered: 'Yes indeed^ By virtue of the power that God gave them to respond to His call, we infer that the soul knows God as its Lord; it knows itself as His creature; it knows other souls as distinct from itself; and it possesses power to apprehend what knowledge communicates." He adds further that "this also means that the soul already has some form of knowledge of the realms spiritual before its attachment to the body. The human body and the world of sense and sensible experience provide the soul with a school for its training to know God also, this time through the veils of His Creation." Al-Attas, The Nature of Man, 38-39. 33. See Abu Sacdah, al-Wujud wa al-khulud, 219-220. 34. See ibid., 220-221 and Abu Sacdah, al-Nafs wa khuludihd cindd Fakhr alDm al-Rdzi (Cairo: Sharikat al-Safa li al-Tibacah wa al-Tarjamah wa al-Nashr, 1989), 248-249. 35. See Sadr al-Dm al-ShlrazI, al-Hikmah al-mutually ah, 8: 296-298.

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the soul. However, in regard to the argument for the impossibility of the transmigration of the soul, we find that al-Razi accepts and supports both Ibn Sina's and Abu al-Barakat's arguments,36 while Sadra accepted only the former's argument but criticized the latter's.37

36. See Abu Sacdah, al-Nafs wa khuludiha cinda Fakhr al-Dm al-Razi, 258261. 37. See Sadr al-Dm al-Shirazi, al-Hikmah al-mutacdliyah, 8: 297 and Fazlur Rahman, The Philosophy of Mulld Sadra (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975), 247. On this particular subject we presented a paper entitled "Mulla Sadra's Critique on Abu al-Barakat's argument on the origination of the Soul, with translation of the related text from Asfdr" at the International Conference on Philosophy, held in Athens, Greece, June 1-3, 2006.

[6] FAKHR AL-DIN AL-RAZ! ON PHYSICS AND THE NATURE OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD: A PRELIMINARY SURVEY "Adi Setia Fakhr al-Dm al-Razf s conception of physics and of the nature of the physical world is explored here through a preliminary survey of a number of his early and late works. Al-RazI defines the three grades of meanings of the term "nature". His definition is similar to the general consensus in Ashcarite kaldm which rejects the Avicennan notion of tabfah as an effective causal principle inherent in natural phenomenal processes. He also explores the notion of the existence of a multiverse in the context of his commentary on the Qur3anic verse, All praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds. He raises the interesting question of whether the term "worlds" in this verse refers to multiple worlds within this single universe or cosmos, or to many other universes or a multiverse beyond this known universe. Based on primary classical Islamic source texts, this survey provides an insight into the classical Islamic view of nature as expressed by one of its most important representatives. Keywords: Universe and multiverse; cosmic structure of the world; Fakhr al-Dm al-RazI; al-mawjuddt; al-cilm altabicr, tabfah\ cdlam; falsafah, hikmah; al-RazI's concept of nature; physics; nature; falak; harakah; sukun; jism; jawhar; carad.

Introduction As D. E. Pingree and S. Nomanul Haq have shown in their learned article, "al-tabica", the original Aristotelian term (pi)m(; in the literal sense of "nature" and in its functional Arabic equivalents of tabfah, tibdc and tabc, has accumulated complex, diverse, even mutually incompatible meanings in its long journey through the labyrinthal

c

Adi Setia, International Islamic Univerity, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Email: [email protected]

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history of Islamic scientific, philosophical, and theological thought. With the rise and dominance of peripatetic natural philosophy as represented by Ibn Sina (d. 1037 CE) and the philosophicotheological reactions it provoked, it was the Avicennan definition of the term that most attracted the critical attention of the 2 mutakallimun, including Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1209 CE) in a number of his works. Here we shall first explore his conception of tabfah in his late work Shark cUyun al-hikmah (SUH) , his critical commentary on Ibn Slna's 'Uyun al-hikmah (UH), and then go on to some of his other early, middle-period and late works. The Science of Physics ('Urn al-tabi'ah) Defined Following the UH, the SUH is divided into three parts: logic (mantiq), which includes a long discussion of the ten Aristotelian categories of being; physics (tabfiyydt), which covers the traditional ground from space, bodies, time, and motion to meteorology and psychology; and metaphysics (ildhiyydt), which includes discussion of matter and form, substance and accidents, and theology and eschatology. The physics part begins with a long introduction to philosophy (al-hikmah), its meaning and its division into the theoretical and the practical sciences. The latter (al-hikmah al-camaliyyah) includes the three basic sciences of politics (hikmah madaniyyah), household management (hikmah manziliyyah), and ethics (hikmah khuluqiyyah). The former (alhikmah al-nazariyyah) includes the three basic sciences of physics 1. Encyclopedia of Islam, new edition (£72), article "tabfa." 2. For a concise account of his life and works, see EI2, article "Fakhr al-Din al-Razi" by G. C. Anawati who cites the relevant classical biographical sources. A critically comprehensive account of alRazi's life and works is Muhammad Salih al-Zarkan, Fakhr alDin al-Razi wa Ard'uhu al-Kaldmiyyah wa al-Falsafiyyah (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1963), 8-36 passim; henceforth cited as Zarkan. An interesting nuanced reinterpretation is Tony Street, "Concerning the Life and Works of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi" in Islam: Essays on Scripture, Thought and Society, a Festschrift in honour of Anthony H.Johns (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 135-46. 3. Ed., Ahmad Hijazi al-Saqa, 3 vols. in 1 (Tehran: Mu'assasah alSadiq, 1415H?). 4. Ed. cAbd al-Rahman al-Badawi (Beirut: Dar al-Qalam, 1980).

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(hikmah tabfiyyak), mathematics (hikmah riyddiyyah), and metaphysics (falsafah ildhiyyah). In commenting on this tripartite division of theorectical philosophy, al-Razi clarifies further the relation of physics (i.e., natural sciences or sciences of nature) to mathematics and metaphysics: If the quiddity of a thing (al-mdhiyyah) is in need of matter (al-mdddah) for [realising] its external (al-khariji} and mental (fi al-dhihn) existence, then it is [included in] the science of physics (al-'ilm al-tabfi\ which is the lowest science (al-cilm al-asfal). If the quiddity [of a thing] is in need of matter for [realising] its external existence, but is independent of matter for its mental existence in the sense that the mind can grasp it without considering its materiality (mdddatiha), then it is [included] in the science of mathematics (al-cil?n al-riyddi), which is the intermediate science (al-cilm al-awsat). If the quiddity is independent of matter for [both] its external and mental existence, then it is [included in] the highest science (al cilm al-acld) and the first philosophy (al-falsafat al-uld).

Thus the science of nature for al-Razi (as for Ibn Slna) is the science which studies existents (al-mawjuddi) that are constituted of matter (al-mdddah). At another place, he defines physics as that science whose subject matter is the body (al-jism) insofar as it undergoes change (al-taghayyur), and is in motion (yataharrak) and repose (yaskun). Hence, physical or natural science is the study of material bodies that undergo change and are either in motion or repose. On the principles of this science, al-Razi follows Ibn Slna in saying that the principles constituting the bases of demonstrations in physics are derived not from physics itself but from metaphysics, and elaborates at some length on this point.

5. SUH, 2: 16ff. Words in round brackets are al-Razi's, either translated or transliterated, whereas those in square brackets are my contextual clarifications of the text. 6. SUH, 2: 16ff 7.SUH2: 19. S.SUH2: 19ff.

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Nature (Tdbfah) Defined In al-Mabdhith al-Mashriqiyyah, an early work, al-RazI explains that the term tab f ah has three grades of meanings: the generic (alc umum), the specific (al-khass) and the more specific (al-akhass). Generically tabfah refers to the essence of a thing; specifically it refers to the constitutive element (muqawwim) of the essence of a thing; and more specifically it refers to the constitutive element which is the principle of motion (harakah) and repose (sukun). This last meaning is the most relevant in the context of this study of his physics. Thus in the SUH, al-Razi comments on the Avicennan distinction between the two basic (internal) principles of motion, namely tab f ah and nafs (nature and soul), in which the former is defined as: ...the faculty (quwwah) existing in the body (al-jism) which has no consciousness (shu'ur) of whatever that proceeds from it (ma sadara fanhu), and that which proceeds from it [the body] is a single effect occurring in a single manner (atharan wdhidan wdqfan cald nahjin wdhidin). An aspect of this tab f ah is the earthly nature (al-tabfah ardiyyah) which he describes as: ...requiring settledness (al-istiqrdr) but on the condition that this [earthly] body (al-jism) is found existing in its natural place (makdnihi al-tabfi) which is the earth (al-ard)9 while the motion [of this body] toward it [the earth] is on the condition that this body is outside its [natural] place. The existing faculty (al-quwwah al-mawjudah) for this effect (al-athar) [whether of settledness or motion] is a faculty having neither consciousness nor apprehension (idrdk) at all of the effect, and furthermore this effect is a single effect (athar wdhid) occurring in a single manner (wdqfan c ald tanqatin wdhidatin). 9. Al-Mabahith al-Mashriqiyyah, ed., Muhammad al-Muctasim biLlah alBaghdadi, 2 vols. (Beirut: Bar al-Kitab al-cArabI, 1990), 1: 645; henceforth Mabdhith. 10. SUH, 2: 29-30. 11. SUH, 2: 29.

al-

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By this definition and example, tabfah is differentiated from the soul (al-nafs), which, as a motive principle (mabdac al-harakah), is divided into three classes: the vegetative soul (al-nafs al-nabdtiyyah), the corporeal celestial soul (al-nafs al-falakiyyah al-jismdniyyah), and the animal soul (al-nafs al-hayawdniyyah). The vegetative soul, though unconscious, produces various actions (afdlan mukhtalifatan) which cause increase in the length (tul), breadth (card) and depth (cumq) of the bodily organs (al-acddc), and give rise to various forms (suwaran mukhtalifatan) and distinct shapes (ashkdlan mutabdyinah) such as flesh (lahm), heart (qalb), and brain (dimdgh). The corporeal celestial soul, though producing only a single effect that occurs in a single manner, possesses consciousness; this soul is the faculty which is the immediate cause for setting into motion the celestial spheres (alquwwah al-mubashshirah li al-tahrik al-falaki). As for the animal soul that subsists (hallah) in the bodies of animals found in this world, it is a faculty that is both conscious of the effects issuing from it; these effects are diverse (dthdran mukhtalifatan) and occur in diverse 12 manners (mandhija mukhtalifatin). It is clear from the above that the principle by virtue of which a moving body actually moves is conceived as something distinct from the body itself. If the motive principle is intrinsic to the body then the motion is either due to nature (tabfah) or due to a soul (nafs); but if the motive principle is extrinsic to the body then the motion is imposed or coerced (harakah qasriyyah). So it seems that altogether there are three basic principles or causes of motion, namely, one external coercive principle, and two internal, namely, nature and soul. In brief, these three principles may be referred to respectively as the coercive (qasriyyah), the natural (tabfiyyah), and the animate (nafsiyyah) principles of motion. Haq has also noted in the article mentioned above that "al-Razi does not admit of tabfa in inanimate objects, and this clearly means that he is thinking of it exclusively in psychological terms; for him, tab fa was a faculty which necessarily implied volition, and this was certainly not Aristotle's cpvm^ This view of tabfah is certainly in 12. SUH, 2: 29-30. 13. EI2, "tabfa," 26, citing al-Razi's ethical and psychological treatise

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accord with the general consensus in Ashcarite kaldm on the rejection of the Avicennan notion of tab f ah as an effective causal principle inherent in natural phenomenal processes. This is also al-Razi's stand in another late work of his, the Mafdtlh al-Ghayb, where, in the long commentary on the verse, "And He (Who) has caused water to pour down from the sky, thereby producing fruits as food for you," he rejects the view that God creates in the water an effective nature (tab f ah mifaththirah) and in the earth a receptive nature (tab f ah qdbilah) by which nature's fruits are produced for humankind. On the contrary, he says that it is totally within the power of God to produce the fruits from the very beginning without recourse to the intermediary means of water and earth. Like al-Ghazali (d. 1111 CE), al-Razl considers intermediary means or causes such as water and earth not as real effective causes but as manifestative of divine custom (al-^ddah or sunnatuLldh)) in the phenomenal regularity of the physical world. In a sense, the perceived causal regularity in natural processes is, as it were, an intellecto-spiritual test for humankind, for as the saying goes, "Were it not for the causes the doubter would not have doubted!" Therefore, the tabfah in inanimate things as a principle of motion and transformation has to be taken, in the case of al-Razl, in the metaphorical (majdzi) sense, in the sense of cddah, that is, not in the sense of a real effective causal principle independent of God. AlRazl is also quite explicit in the al-Matdlib al-cAliyyah, yet another late work, in rejecting the ascription of effective causal agency to other Kitab al-Nafs wa^l-Ruh, ed. M. S. H. Macsumi (Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 1968). 14. Ibid. 15. Muhammad b. c Umar b. al-Husayn b. al-Hasan b. CA1I al-Bakrl alTabaristanl Fakhr al-Dm al-Razl, al-Tafslr al-Kabir, 32 vols. in 11 (Beirut: Bar Ihyac al-Turath al-cArabI, 1996), 1 (2): 342ff. This work is also known as Mafdtlh al-Ghayb, which means Keys to the Unseen; henceforth Mafdtlh. 16. al-Baqarah: 22. 17. Mafdtlh, 1 (2): 343-44. 18. Ibid., 343 (law Id al-asbdbu lama irtdba murtdburi). 19. For more on his conception of'ddah, seeMafdtih, 1 (2): 342ff.

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than God, thus he says, for example: Invalid is the claim (batala al-qawl) for the existence of an effective agent (mu'aththir) other than God, whether called planet (kawkab), celestial sphere (falak), intelligence (faql), soul (nafs), lofty spirit (ruh 'ulwiyy), or lowly spirit (ruh sufliyy)."* So for al-Razi even the animate soul, like inanimate nature, is an effective cause only in a derived metaphorical sense, in the sense of manifest divine custom according to which things in the world are regulated as they are. That al-Razi rejects the notion of nature or tabfah as a causal principle independent of God is also evident in his commentary on the verse: "And We have created above you seven 21 paths, and We are never unmindful of creation." He says that this verse: ...indicates the fallacy of the belief in nature (al-tabfah) for if one of those features (al-sifdt) had come about by nature then it would have necessarily persisted and not undergone change. And if you say that those features have only changed due to change in nature, then this nature is itself in need of a creator and an originator (mujid).~ Difference Between Tabi'ah, Tab" and Tibd" In the Shark al-Ishdrdt wa al-Tanbihdt, an early work, al-Razi makes a distinction between the terms al-tabfah and al-tabc: The difference between al-tabfah and al-tabc is well known. And this [difference] is that al-tabfah is a principle of motion of that [thing] in which it inheres without consciousness, whereas al-tabc is a principle in the unqualified sense whether or not it [the thing in which the principle inheres] has consciousness. Therefore al-tabc is more general than al-tabfah.

20. Cited in Zarkan, 356. 21. al-Mu'minun: 17. 22. Mafdtih, 8 (23): 267-68. 23. Cited in Samih Dughaym, Mawsu'at Mustalahdt al-Imdm Fakhr alDm al-Rdzl (Beirut: Maktabah Lubnan, 2001), 423, henceforth

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Another meaning of tabc is in the sense of khatm (seal, stamp), which in the Qur'anic context refers to God setting a seal on the hearts of obstinate, evil people such that they never believe. Thus in the Mafdtlh al-Razi comments: You have known that al-tabc and al-khatm according to us refer to the occurrence of a strong motivation (al-ddciyyah al-qawwiyyah) for disbelief which hinders the occurrence of belief. This is so because action without any motivation whatsoever is impossible. Hence when there arises a firmly grounded and strong motivation for disbelief, the heart becomes as if stamped with disbelief. Now, as for the occurrence of this motivation, if it is from the servant, an infinite regress (tasalsul) would ensure, but if it is from God, then the point is achieved (fa al-maqsud hdsil)' As in his understanding of tab f ah as cddah, al-Razi also shows himself, in this comment, to be an Ashcarite in theology, for the Ashcarites believe that all actions of human beings are, in the final 95 analysis, created by God." The World in the Totality of Being In the Matdlib," al-Razi divides the existent (al-mawjud) or being into three basic divisions: (1) the space-occupying (mutahayyizan), (2) that which subsists (kalian) in the space-occupier (al-mutahayyiz), and (3) Dughaym. 24. Mafdtih, 6(16), 157 (commentary on al-Tawbah: 87); also cited in Dughaym, 423. 25. The problem of human freedom of action and hence moral responsibility before God in relation to divine knowledge, will, and power is a complex philosophico-theological issue which shall understandably not be dealt with here. It suffices here to say that the Ashcarites are neither fatalists since they believe in human choice and moral responsibility nor voluntarists since they believe in divine predestination, but are somewhere in between; however this paradox can only be resolved not at the discursive, theoretical level but at the level of intuitive spiritual experience. 26. Al-Matdlib al-'Uliyyah min al-'Ilmi al-Ildhi, ed., Ahmad Hijazi alSaqa 9, vols. in 5 (Beirut: Bar al-Kitab al-cArabl, 1987), 4: 9ff.

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that which is neither space-occupying nor subsisting in a spaceoccupier. A space-occupier is either divisible (qdbilan lil-qismah), in which case it is a body (jism), or indivisible, in which case it is an atomic substance (jawharfard). As for that which subsists in the spaceoccupier, these are the accidents (al-a97crdd) which subsist in both bodies (al-ajsdm) and atoms (al-jawdhir).~ According to the philosophers, with whom al-Razi seems to concur, the accidents are of nine kinds (ajnds tiscah), which, together with the category of substance (jawhar), constitute the ten Aristotelian categories of being (al-maquldt al-^ashr lil-wujud). In the Mabdhith and SUH , al-Razi gives a fuller account of these nine categories of accidents, namely, the accidents of quantity (kamm), quality (kayf), relation (muddf, iddfah), where or place (aynd), when or time (matd), situation or posture (mawduc, wadc), possession (milk, an yakuna lahu), acting, doing what (ficl, an yafal), and being affected or acted upon (an yanfa'il, infi'al). Al-Razi makes it clear that the first two main divisions of being constitute the world (al-cdlam), which he defines in the Muhassal, a middle-period work, for instance, as "every existent other than God Most High," and which is "either substances (jawdhir) or accidents (acrdd)"° Also for al-Razi the world is contingent (mumkin), i.e., "not necessary in its essence (laysa hi wdjibin li dhdtihi)" and incipient (muhdath), i.e., "preceded by non-existence (masbuqan bil-cadam}"' He also conceives of cdlam epistemologically as a means for knowing God, thus he says: 27. Matdlib, 4: Off. 28. 1: 233ff. 29. 1: 95ff. 30. A concise account of the Arabic categories is J. N. Mattock, EI2, article "al-makulat." Sl.Mafafth, 1 (2): 444. 32. Muhassal Afkdr al-Mutaqaddimm wa al-Mutacakhkhirin mm al-culamdc wa al-kukamdc wa al-mutakallimin (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr alLubnam, 1992), 109; also cited in Dughaym, 433. 33. Shark al-Ishdrdt wa al-Tanbihdt, cited in Dughaym, 433. 34. Fakhr al-Razi, Kitdb al-Arba^m fi Usul al-Din (Hyderabad: Da'irah al-Macarif al-Uthmaniyyah, 1934), 7; also cited in Dughaym, 685.

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science 170 • Islam e> Science • Vol. 2 (Winter 2004) No. 2 The world (al-cdlam) is an expression (cibdrah) for every thing other than God Most High, and this is so because [the term] al-'dlam is derived, as previously shown, from al-cilm (ishtiqdq al-^dlam cald md taqaddama min al-cilm); and everything that is [providing] knowledge (cilman) of God and [providing] evidence (dallari) of Him is an cdlam. There is no doubt that every incipient thing (muhdath) is evidence for God Most High (dallan cala Allah Tacdld). Hence every incipient thing is a world.

As for the third of the three divisions of being, namely, the existent that is neither space-occupying nor subsisting in a spaceoccupier, al-Raz! affirms, based on certain, sound proofs (al-daldcil alyaqmiyyah), that God is such a being.0 As he has clarified earlier, this means that God is not in space, nor is He a body or a substance and neither is He infinite space/ He however then raises the question whether or not an existent (mawjud) from among the contingents (mumkindt), in contrast to God the necessary being, can belong to this third division? In other words, can a contingent being, like the necessary being, be neither space-occupying nor subsisting in a space-occupier? To this question, al-Razi gives an interesting reply that provokes in him (and in those of us who care to read him) a profound rethinking of the perennial problem of the incipience versus eternity of the world: The philosophers (al-hukama?) affirm it [i.e., affirm a contingent being neither space-occupying nor subsisting in a space-occupier] while the rationalist theologians (almutakallimun) deny it, even though the mutakallimun have no proof (dalll) showing the fallacy (fasdd) of this division. Their proof for the incipience (huduth) of the world (cdlam) deals only with the space-occupiers and the accidents subsisting in them, but not with this third division. Because of this, their claim that all that is other than God is incipient (muhdath) can only be completely argued for 35. Mafdtih, 1 (2): 444; cited also in Dughaym, 433. 36.Matdtib,4: 12. tf.Matdlib,2: 8ff. 38. Matdlib,4: 12.

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either by invalidating this third division, or, granted its existence, by stating a proof showing the incipience of this third division. And since they did not state anything in these two contexts, their discourse has not completely achieved its aim (wa lammd lam yadhkuru shaycan fi hddhdyni al-maqdmayni kaldmuhum ghayru tdmrmn fi al-maqsudi).

With this statement, al-Razi seems to be pointing out that the mutakallimun, in arguing for the incipience of the world, have not sufficiently taken into account a class of beings that, while still contingent, are not atoms nor bodies nor accidents, i.e., not physical in nature but spiritual. This is borne out in his commentary on the verse All praise belongs to God, Lord of the worlds, in which he specifies these contingent but non-physical entities: As for the third [division of being], namely the contingent that is neither space-occupy ing nor an attribute of a spaceoccupier, it is the spirits [al-arwdh], and these are either lowly (sufliyyah) or lofty (culwiyyah). As for the lowly spirits, these are either good (khayrah), and they are the pious among the jinn, or wicked and evil, and they are the rebellious satans (maradat al-shaydtm). The lofty spirits are either connected (muta'alliqah) to bodies, and these are the souls of the celestial spheres (al-arwdh al-falakiyyah), or not connected to bodies, and these are the purified, sanctified souls (al-arwdh al-mutahharah al-muqaddasah).

If this is the case, then, strictly speaking, instead of three there are altogether four basic divisions of being, namely, the three divisions of contingent beings: (1) the space-occupiers which are either atoms or bodies, (2) the accidents which subsist in the spaceoccupiers, (3) that which is neither space-occupying nor subsists in the space-occupiers; and (4) the one division of necessary being. 39. Matalib, 4:12. For a recent monograph on this issue, see Muammer Iskenderoglu, Fakhr al-Dln al-Rdzi and Thomas Aquinas on the Qitestion of the Eternity of the World (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 40. al-Fdtihah: 2. 4l.Mafdtih, 1 ( 1 ) : 198-99.

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These four divisions can be further reduced to two more fundamental ones: (1) contingent beings, and (2) the one necessary being. These four, ultimately reducible to two, divisions of being, are borne out also in the same context of his commentary on the verse, All praise belongs to God, Lord of the worlds, only the context is now cited at length: Know that the existent [or being = al-mawjud] is either necessary in its essence (wdjiban li dhdtihi) or contingent in its essence (mumkinan li dhdtihi). As for the necessary in its essence, it is God Most High only. As for the contingent in its essence, it is every thing other than God Most High, and it is the world. This is because the rationalist theologians (al-mutakallimm) say, "the world is every existent other than God (al-cdlamu ktdlu mawjudin siwdAlldhi)." The reason for the naming of this division (of being) as cdlam is that the existence of every thing other than God indicates the existence of God Most High. Thus for this reason every existent other than God is named cdlam. When you know this then we say: every thing other than God is either space-occupying or an attribute of the spaceoccupier, or neither space-occupying nor an attribute of a spaceoccupier. These then are the three divisions [of being]. As for the first division, the space-occupier, it is either receptive to division or it is not; if it is receptive to division then it is a body; if it is not like that then it is an atomic substance. As for the body, it is either from among the lofty bodies (al-ajsdm al-culwiyyah) or the lowly bodies (al-ajsdm al-sufliyyah). As for the lofty bodies, these are the celestial spheres (al-afldk) and the planets [or stars] (al-kawdkib). And the revealed law (al-sharicah) has established the existence of other entities apart from these two divisions, such as the throne (alc arsh)9 the chair (al-kursiyy), the lote-tree of the outermost boundary (sidrat al-muntahd), the tablet (al-lawh), the pen (al-qalam), and the garden (al-jannah). As for the lowly bodies, these are either simple (basitah) or compound (murakkabah). As for the simple bodies these are the four elements (al-candsir al-arbacah). The first of these [four] is the sphere of the earth (kurrat al-ard) together with whatever within it including the deserts (al-mafdwiz), the mountains (al-jibdl) and the inhabited lands (al-bildd al-macmurah). The second of these is the sphere of water (kurrat al-mdc), and it is the encompassing ocean (al-bahr al-muhit) and these great seas [or lakes] (al-abhur al-kabirah) that are found in this inhabited quarter [of the world] (hddhd al-rubc al-macmur) together with whatever is within it [this quarter]

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including the great rivers (al-awdicah al-canmah) the number of which none knows except God Most High. And the third of these is the sphere of air (kurrat al-hawdc)', and the fourth of these is the sphere of fire (kurrat al-ndr). As for the compound bodies (al-ajsdm al-murakkabah), these are the plants (al-nabdt), the minerals (alma'ddin), and the animals (al-haydwan) in all their numerous divisions and diverse kinds. As for the second division (of being) it is the contingent (al-mumkin) which is the attribute (sifat) of the space-occupiers, and this [division] is [that of] the accidents (al-acrdd). The rationalist theolgians have mentioned close to forty kinds of accidents. As for the third [division of being], namely the contingent that is neither space-occupying nor an attribute of a space-occupier, it is the spirits (al-arwdh), and these are either lowly (sufliyyah) or lofty (culwiyyah). As for the lowly spirits, these are either good (khayrah), and they are the pious among the jinn, or wicked, evil, and they are the rebellious satans (maradat al-shaydtln). The lofty spirits are either connected (mutacaliqah) to bodies, and these are the souls of the celestial spheres (al-arwdh al-falakiyyah), or not connected to bodies, and these are the purified, sanctified souls (al-arwdh almutahharah al-muqaddasah).

At another place, al-Razi also includes time (al-zamdn) and place (al-makan) among the Calamm = all existents other than God; thus he says: And included in the totality of what is other than God are place and time, for place refers to open space (al-faddc), spatial domain (al-hayyiz) and the extended void (al-fardgh al-mumtadd), whereas time refers to the duration (al-muddah) by virtue of which priority (al-qabliyyah) and posteriority (al-ba'diyyah) occur. His (God's) verse: "Lord of the worlds" shows that He is Lord of 1place and time, their _ 43 Creator (khdliqan) and their Originator (mujidari).

Cosmic Structure of the World Concerning the cosmic structure of the world, al-Razi says in the Matdlib: 4ZMafdtih, 1 (1): 198-99. 43.Mafdtih, 1 (1): 163.

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The world as a whole (jumlat al-'dlam) is constituted by eleven spheres (hurrah), five of which constitute the celestial sphere of the sun (falak al-shams), and these [five] are the sphere[s] of Mars (al-mirrikh), Jupiter (al-mushtari), Saturn (zuhal), the sphere of the fixed stars (falak althawdbit) and the Great Sphere (al-falak al-cfmm). The other five [spheres] are within the sphere of the sun, and these are the sphere[s] of Venus (al-zuharah), Mercury (cutdrid), the Moon (al-qamar), then the sublime sphere (alhurrat al-latlfah) of fire (al-ndr) and air (al-hawa*), and the gross sphere (al-kurrat al-hathifah) of water (al-md3) and earth (al-ard). And since the sun is like the king of the world of bodies (sultan cdlam al-ajsdm), it is not inappropriate that it should be located in the center among the spheres of the world (fi wasat kurrdt al-cdlam).

Commenting on the verse: They [the sun and moon] float each in an orbit, al-RazI gives an interesting interpretation of the meaning of falak (celestial sphere or orbit) and its relation to the movement of the celestial bodies, for it is quite clear to him, following the Qur'an, that the stars, planets, sun and moon are distinct from their respective spheres or orbits (afidk) in which they move: The falak, what is it? We say [that it is] the round body or the round surface or the circle, for the lexicographers (ahl al-lughah) agree that the whorl of the spindle (falakah almighzal) is named falakah due to its roundness, and the falakah of the tent is the wooden circular plate that is fixed to the head of the tent-pole so that the pole will not tear the tent, and it is a rounded sheet. If this is so, then it follows that the sky is circular, but most of the exegetes agree that the sky is spread out wihout having extremities [resting] on mountains, and it is like a flat roof; and this is indicated by the verse of the Most High: And the raised roof [al-Tur: 5]. We say that there is nothing in the [Sacred] texts that indicates categorically that the sky is spread out and not circular whereas the evidence of the senses (aldalil al-hissi) shows that it is circular, hence it is imperative to accede to it. 44. Matalib, 4: 332; cited also in Dughaym, 433; Cf, W. Hartner, "alFalak" and P. Kunitzsch, "al-Nudjum" both articles in EI2. 45. al-Anbiytf: 33; Yd Sin: 40. 46. Mafdtih 9 (26): 279-80.

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This is followed by a long and elaborate argument to prove the curvature and circular shape of the sky, after which he goes on to say: This [verse] shows that for each planet an orbit (falakan).... As for the seven itinerants [i.e., sun, moon, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus, Mercury], they each have an orbit, and as for the other planets [i.e., the fixed stars—alkawdkib] it is said that they have collectively an orbit.

This followed by a long discussion on the question of the physical structure of the spheres or orbits and their relation to the motion of the stars and planets in it. Earlier he has discussed the same question in the context of his commentary of another, similar verse. Are the spheres or orbits to be considered as real, concrete physical bodies or are they merely the abstract circles in the heavens traced out year in and year out by the various stars and planets? AlRazI relates that some people like Dahhak say that the^alak is not a body but merely the abstract orbit traced by the stars. Most of the learned, like the astronomers (arbdb al-hay^ah or ahl al-hay^ah) say that the falak are the bodies (i.e., solid spheres) on which the stars turn (hiya ajsdmun taduru al-nujum calayhd), and this view is closer to the apparent sense of the Qur'anic verses regarding the celestial orbits. The solid star-carrying sphere is likened by al-RazI to a hollowed out globe in which inner wall a nail is implanted, and so when the globe is rotated the nail is seen by an observer at5the center of the globe to be in circular motion about the center. Another possibility that al-Razi considers is that of four parallel circular planes encompassed within a sphere and on which planes the stars are positioned and put into orbital motion when the sphere is turned. Quite obviously, both the sphere and the planes have to be 47. Ibid., 280-81.

48. Ibid., 9 (26): 280-83. 49. Al-AnbiyaD: 33. M.Mafdtih,8 (22): 141. 51. Ibid. W.Mafatih, 9(26): 281. 53. Ibid.

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totally transparent to the sight in order for the stars embedded therein to be observable. But ultimately, al-Razi seems to be undecided as to which celestial models, concrete or abstract, most conform with external reality, for he says: "In truth, there is no way to ascertain the characteristics of the heavens except by authority [of 5 4 divine revelation or prophetic traditions] (al-khabdr)" Thus it seems that for al-Razi (and for others before and after him), astronomical models, whatever their utility or lack thereof for ordering the heavens, are not founded on sound rational proofs, and so no intellectual commitment can be made to them insofar as 55 description and explanation of celestial realities are concerned. In volume four of the Matdlib, al-Razi devotes a twenty-page section to elaborating further on the nature of this cosmic structure and of celestial entities like the sun, moon and stars therein and their beneficial influences on terrestrial life. There is also a thirty page section in the al-Mabdhith on the benefits of celestial bodies for the elementary world. Universe (cdlam) or Multiverse (calamin, cawdlim)? c

Alamm (in the genitive case as in rabb al-cAlamm = Lord of the worlds) and cawdlim are plural forms of cdlam = world. As in the case of the singular, the plural form of the word, i.e., al-dlamln, is defined as "an expression for every existent other than God Most High." Both forms are used to refer to both the physical and the spiritual worlds of contingent beings. An instance of al-Razi's use of'awdlim to refer to the spiritual world is as below: Know that the worlds of the divine disclosures Cawdlim almukdshafdt) have no terminal limit (Id nihdyata lahd), because these worlds represent the mind's journey (safar 54. Mafatih, 8 (22): 141. 55. Cf. Anton M. Heinen, Islamic Cosmology: A Study of As-Suyuti's alHay*a as-Saniya fi l-Hay^a as-Sunniya, with critical edition, translation, and commentary (Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 1982), 181-82. 56. Matdlib, 4:331-52. 57. Mabdhith, 2:103-138. 58. Mafatih, 1(1): 24; also cited in Dughaym, 436.

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al-caql) into the stations of God's majesty (maqdmdt jaldl Allah], the gradations of His greatness (maddrij cazamatihi) and the mansions of the marks of His grandeur and sanctity (mandzil dthdr kibriyaihi wa qudsihi). And just as there is no terminal limit for these stations (al-maqdmdt), so there is no terminal limit for the journey into these 59 stations.

In the context of his commentary on the verse All praise belongs to God, Lord of the worlds, al-Razi raises the interesting question of whether the term "worlds" (al-'dlamm) refers to multiple worlds within this single universe or cosmos, or to many other universes or a multiverse beyond this known universe. In other words, is al-cdlamm to be understood intracosmically or extracosmically? In clarification of this question, he says: It is established by evidence that there exists beyond the world a void without a terminal limit (khala la nihdyata lahd), and it is established as well by evidence that God Most High has power over all contingent beings (almumkindt). Therefore He the Most High has the power (qddir) to create a thousand thousand worlds (alfa alfi c awdlim) beyond this world such that each one of those worlds be bigger and more massive than this world as well as having the like of what this world has of the throne (alc arsh), the chair (al-kursiyy), the heavens (al-samdwdf) and the earth (al-ard), and the sun (al-shams) and the moon (alqamar). The arguments of the philosophers (daltfil alfaldsifah) for establishing that the world is one are weak, flimsy arguments founded upon feeble premises.

So it is quite clear that al-Razi rejects the Aristotelian and Avicennan view of the impossibility of multiple universes. In a short three-page section of volume six of the Matdlib, he overviews the main Aristotelian arguments against the existence of multiple 59. Lawamic al-Bayyinat Shark Asmac Allah Tacala wa al-Sifat (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-cArabI, 1983), 138; also cited in Dughaum, 504. QO.Mafdtih, 1 (1): 24. 61. Cf. Arif, Ibn Smd's Cosmology, 11-13, citing mainly the Shifd* and al-clraql, 371-73.

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universes and points out their weaknesses and refutes them. This rejection naturally follows from his affirmation of atomism which entails the existence of vacant space in which the atoms move, combine and separate. Al-RazI takes up the issue of the void in greater detail in volume five of the Matdlib. ~" Al-Razi's Symbolic Understanding of Nature The physical world can be studied on its own quite apart from the obvious fact of its ontic and causal dependence on the Creator, but it is clear in al-Razi's physics, as shown above, that the world is to be studied symbolically. This means that knowing the world is an integral aspect of knowing the Creator of the world, and so the world is not to be studied and known for its own sake but for the sake of knowing some aspects of the divine as manifested in the phenomenal entities, structures, and processes of the world. For alRazi this symbolic view of nature is borne out by the fact that the world is not self-explanatory, i.e., the diverse physical features and characteristics of the world are not explainable by reference to processes within the world itself, but by reference to what transcends the world, thus he says in the Mafdtlh: The bodies of the world are homogenous (mutasdwiyah) with respect their essential corporeality (mdhiyyat aljismiyyah) whereas they are different (mukhtalifah) with respect to their characteristics (al-sifdt), which are their colours (al-alwdn), places (al-amkinah), and modes of being (al-ahwdl). It is impossible that each body's specificity (ikhtisds) with regard to a particular characteristic be due to its corporeality per se or to the concomitants (lawdzim) of corporeality, otherwise the bodies will all be homogenous (husul al-istiwdc). Thus it is necessary that this specificity be due to the specifying act (takhsis) of a specifier (mukhassis) and the organization of an organizer (tadblr mudabbir). And this specifier, if it is a body, then the above will again be said of it ("dda al-kaldmu fihi); but if it is not a body, then that is the required point (al-matlub). 62. Matdlib, 6: 193-95. 63. Matdlib, 5: 155-85; see chapters two and four.

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Now this being, if it is not living, knowing and having power but whose efficacy (tcfthiruhu) is due rather to emanation (fayd) and nature (tab?ah), then the same problem of homogenity is again entailed; but if it is living, knowing and having power, then that is the point. Once you realised this then it will be manifest that each one of the particles (dharrdt) of the heavens and the earth is a truthful witness (shdhid sddiq) to and an articulate informer (mukhbir ndtiq) of the existence of the powerful, wise and omniscient God. And my father the shaykh, al-Imam Diya3 al-Dm c Umar, may Allah have mercy on him, used to say: "That [this witnessing and informing] is so, because it is possible for every atomic substance to occur, alternatively (cald al-badl), in an infinite number of places, and it is also possible for it to be characterized, alternatively, by an infinite number of characteristics. And each of these postulated situations (alahwdl al-muqaddarah), supposing they occur, points to their dependence [for their occurrence] on the existence of the Merciful and Wise Fashioner (al-Sdnic al-haklm, al-Rahim)" Thus it is established by what we have said that this domain of investigations has no terminal end. As for the realisation of guidance by way of spiritual exercise and purification, this way is an ocean having no shore. And for each wayfarer to God his peculiar route and his particular drinking place, as indicated in His verse: And for each a course he travels by. Conclusion

The foregoing preliminary survey of al-Razi's thoughts on the nature of the physical world shows that he sees physical nature to be worthy of humankind's intellectual reflection and investigation, for it is through nature that the reality of divine providence and wisdom is manifested. Contrary to popular modernist presumption, belief in a creative God of knowledge, will, and power does not put premature limits to the scientific curiosity innate in every human being, but rather it guides that curiosity toward genuinely fruitful ends and in 64. Mafatih, 1 (1): 26, commenting on al-Baqarah: 148.

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fact opens up new horizons of understanding of nature. The way before us, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, in modern science now is either God of the gaps or Chance of the gaps, for whether we like it or not, there is always an explanatory gap, however small, between what we term as cause and what we term as it its effect, and our actual, practical jump across that gap is always an act of personal commitment-a personal commitment either to the god of wisdom or to the god of chance. The choice before believers is obvious, for we know that in science nothing, absolutely nothing happens by chance, for chance is merely a convenient euphemism for ignorance, but ignorance can never be a productive, creative principle. Everything happens by intelligence, and the gaps in our scientific knowledge are merely reflective of the realms of infinite intelligence we have yet to explore and the pages in the never ending story of creation we have yet to read. And if all the trees in the earth were pens, and the sea, with seven more seas to help it, (were ink), the words of Allah would never be exhausted. Lo! Allah is Mighty, Wise.

65. For more on al-Razi's scientific appreciation of nature, see my article in Islam & Science, Vol. 2 (2004) No. 1, 1-32. 66. Luqmdn: 27. All translations of Qur'anic verses are based on Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Qur^an: Text and Explanatory Translation (Mecca: Muslim World League, 1977).

[7] BETWEEN PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS: MULLA SADRA ON NATURE AND MOTION Ibrahim Kalin Mulla Sadra's concept of nature and substantial motion treats many aspects of traditional philosophy and cosmology in a new light. By allowing change in the category of substance (jawhar), Sadra goes beyond the Aristotelian framework followed by the Peripatetics and Suhrawardi, turning substance into a 'structure of events' and motion into a 'process of change'. Sadra's reworking of classical cosmology through his elaborate ontology and natural philosophy leads to a new vocabulary of 'relations' and fluid structures as opposed to 'things' and solidified entities. In his attempt to make change an intrinsic quality of the substantial transformation of things, Sadra posits nature (tabfah) as the principle of both change and permanence, thus granting it relative autonomy as a self-subsisting reality. What underlies Sadra's considerations of change and nature, however, is his concept of being (al-wujud) and its modalities. Change as a mode of being and the de-solidification of the physical world goes beyond locomotive and positional movement, and underscores the dynamism of the world-picture envisaged by Sadra's gradational ontology. Keywords: Sadra; nature; change; substance; ontology; being; actuality; potentiality; matter; permanence; form; motion/movement.

Mulla Sadra's concept of substantial motion (al-harakat al-jawhariyyah) represents a major departure from the Peripatetic concept of change, and lends itself to a set of new possibilities in traditional Islamic philosophy and cosmology. By defining all change as substantial-existential alterity in the Ibrahim Kalin is Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross, 1 College Street, P.O. Box 78A, Worcester, MA 01610, USA; Email: [email protected].

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nature of things, Sadra moves away from change as a doctrine of external relations, as Greek and Islamic atomism had proposed, to a process of existential transformation whereby things become ontologically 'more' or 'less' when undergoing change. In his considerations of quantitative and qualitative change, Sadra takes a thoroughly ontological approach and places his world-picture within the larger context of his gradational ontology. Substantial motion and the dynamic view of the universe that it espouses can thus be seen as a logical extension of the primacy (asdlak) and gradation of being (tashkik al-wujud)—two key terms of Sadrean ontology. Sadra relegates all reality, physical or otherwise, to the infinitely variegated and all-encompassing reality of being, and this enables him to see all change in terms of being and its modalities (anhff al-wujud). Although Sadra accepts a good part of the Aristotelian view of motion and its types, it is this ontological framework that distinguishes his highly original theory of substantial motion from the traditional Peripatetic discussions of motion. In what follows, I shall give a detailed analysis of substantial motion and the ways in which Sadra incorporates and reformulates the traditional notions of qualitative and quantitative change in his natural philosophy. It should be emphasized at the outset that Sadra's views on nature and motion are not an isolated set of philosophical reflections but are rather closely related to his ontology and cosmology on the one hand, and psychology and epistemology, on the other. This is borne out by the fact that many of Sadra's novel contributions to Islamic philosophy are predicated upon substantial motion, among which we may mention his celebrated doctrine that the soul is "bodily in its origination, spiritual in its subsistence" (jismdniyyat al-huduth ruhaniyyat al-baqff] and the unification of the intellect and the intelligible (ittihdd al-cdqil wal-mc£qul). In this essay, I shall limit my discussion to Sadra's attempt to move away from a framework of external relations and positional motion to a framework of existential transformation whereby the cosmos is projected as marching towards a universal telos. The Aristotelian Framework: Motion as the Actualization of Potentiality Following the scheme of Aristotelian physics, Sadra begins his discussion of motion by explaining the meaning of potentiality. The word potentiality

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(al-quwwah) is defined in several ways. The most common meaning is the ability to execute certain actions. In this sense, al-quwwah as potency is synonymous with power (al-qudrah), which renders the motion or action of physical bodies possible. Ibn Sina gives a similar definition when he says that "potentiality is the principle of changing into something else". All beings that undergo quantitative or positional change use this potential power. Such corporeal bodies, however, need an active agent to actualize their dormant potentiality. For Sadra, this proves that a thing cannot be the source of change by itself, and there must be an outside factor to induce it to change. If the source of a quality or 'meaning' (ma no) in an entity were to be the thing itself, this would amount to an unchanging nature in that thing. The real nature of possible beings, however, displays a different structure. With Aristotle and Ibn Sina , Sadra takes this to mean that "a thing cannot have its principle of change in itself" and that "for every moving body, there is a mover outside itself". The relationship between a mover and a moving object presents a causal hierarchy in that the mover that sets other things in motion is not only actual but also enjoys a higher ontological status. In Sadra's terms, whatever has priority and more intensity in existential realization (ashaddu tahassulan) is likely to be more a cause and less an effect. In this general sense, it is only God who is rightly called the 'cause' of everything. By the same token, materia prima (al-mdddat al-ula/hayula) has the least potentiality of being a cause because it is weakest in existential constitution with a strong propensity towards non-existence. 1

1. Depending on the context, the word al-quwwah can also be translated as 'potency', and I shall do so here when Sadra uses the word in the sense of'faculty' and 'ability to do something'. 2. Ibn_Sma, Kitdb al-Najdt (ed. 1985), by Majid Fakhry, Manshurat Bar alAfaq al-Jadldah, Beirut, p. 250. 3. Aristotle, Physics, Book VII, 241b. 4. Ibn Sina, al-Najdt, pp. 145-6. 5. Sadr al-Dln al-Shlrazi (Mulla Sadra), al-Hikmat al-mutacdliyah fi^l-asfdr alarba'at al-caqliyyah (ed. 1981), by M. Rida al-Muzaffar, Dar al-Turath alc Arabl, Beirut, vol. Ill, Part 1, pp. 3-5. (cited hereafter asAsfdr) 6. Sadra cites six different types of 'agency' (al-fdcil) in so far as the movement of things is concerned. These are "by intention" (bfl-qasd), "by providence" (bfl-cindyah), "by consent" (bfl-irddah), "by nature" (b?l-tab'\ "by coercion" (bfl-qasr), and "by force" (bfl-taskhir). Cf. Asfdr, III, 1, pp. 10-3. 7. Ibid., p. 6. Cf. also Sadra (1377 A.H.), Huduth al-cdlam, 2nd edition

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After stating that motion and rest (al-sukun) resemble potentiality and actuality and belong to the potentiality-actuality framework, Sadra defines them as accidents of being-qua-being because being-qua-being is not subject to motion and rest unless it becomes the subject of natural or mathematical order. At this point, an existing body capable of motion must bear some potentialities and some actualities. A purely potential being cannot have any concrete existence as in the case of the prime matter (al-hayula). The state of a purely actual being, on the other hand, cannot apply to anything other than God who has no potentiality to be actualized. A being of such a nature should be a "simple being that contains in itself everything". As the Peripatetics before Sadra had argued, prime matter is 'infinite' because it is indefinite and ready to take on any form when realized by an actual form. As for contingent beings capable of motion, which refers to the world of corporeal bodies, they have the potentiality of gradual (tadrijan) transition from potentiality to actuality. The temporal term 'gradual' in the definition of motion, however, had caused some problems for Muslim philosophers because the definition of movement as gradual transition from potentiality to actuality implies that this process occurs in time. Although this statement is acceptable in the ordinary use of language, definition of time as the measure of motion leads to petitio principi and regression. This led some philosophers to propose a new definition of motion that contains no terms of time. Relying on Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi and al-Razi, Sadra rebuts this objection by saying that the meaning of such terms as 'sudden' and 'gradual' is obvious with the help of the five senses, i.e., through physical analysis. There are many clear and obvious things, says Sadra, whose inner nature we can never fully know. Nevertheless, this explanation did not satisfy the theologians , and, Intisharat-i Mawla, Tehran, pp. 195-9. 8. Ibid., p. 20. 9. Before Sadra, this idea was stated also by Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdadl. Baghdadl claims that since such terms as gradual and sudden are more evident and comprehensible to our common sense, we can easily understand the meaning of motion by employing such time-related terms. He thus sees no harm in using these terms in defining motion notwithstanding the seeming circularity. Cf. his Kitdb al-Muctabar, (Hydarabad, 1357 AH), vol. II, pp. 29-30. IQ.Asfar,!!!, 1, p. 23. 11. It is important to note, albeit briefly, that Sadra developed his concept of substantial motion against the background of the traditional theories

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12

following Aristotle , they defined motion as the realization of what is possible (mumkin al-husul). Since this definition indicates a move from potentiality to actuality and since actuality always implies perfection as opposed to potentiality, motion also signifies an act of perfection. Hence of motion as expounded by Peripatetic philosophers, Kalam thinkers, and Illuminationists (ishrdqiyyun). I shall discuss the views of the philosophers and the School of Illumination when analyzing Sadra's criticisms. As for the Kalam views of motion, I can only refer the reader to some traditional sources for further discussion. The Kalam views of motion are anchored in the central doctrine of atomism shared by the majority of Ashacrites and Muctazilites. Since the theologians conceived atoms as essentially indivisible and immutable, they were bound to define both qualitative and quantitative change as different compositions and combinations of the essentially unchanging atoms. This entails that change and motion come about only in the alteration of the accidental attributes of atoms, not in their essential constitution, thus reducing change to a system of external relations. To that effect, the Muctazilites developed the doctrine of'kawn', i.e., 'to be present in a place' or 'to exist in a position in concrete* . According to this view, atoms always 'exist' (kdin) in a particular location. Motion is therefore nothing but an atom's being (kdin) in one position after having been in another. This makes motion an accidental property of atoms. Consequently, change and motion in the essential structure of atoms is rejected unanimously by Muctazilites and Ashcarites alike. In the same way, change or motion is allowed only in four categories: 'where' (ayn), 'position' (wadc), 'quantity' (kam), and 'quality' (kayf). Any change in the category of substance is denied on the ground that this would lead, as Ibn Sma and SuhrawardI had also argued, to the dissolution of the original substance. Cf. Khayyat (1957), Kitdb al-Intisdr, al-Matbacah alKatulikiyyah, Beirut, p. 32 ff.; al-Shahrastam, M., al-Milal wa al-nihal (ed., 1961), by M. S. Ghaylam, Sharikat wa Maktabat Mustafa alHalabl, Cairo, p. 50 ff; al-Baghdadl, cAbd al-Qahir (1988), al-Farq bayn al-firaq, Maktabat Ibn Sina, Cairo, p. 101 ff; al-RazI, Fakhr al-Dln, alMabdhith al-mashriqiyyah (ed., 1990), by M. al-Baghdadl, Dar al-Kitab al-cArabl, Beirut, vol. I, pp. 671-793; al-Taftazam, Shark al-maqdsid (ed., 1989), by A. Umayra, cAlam al-Kutub, Beirut, vol. II, pp. 409-59; al-TahanawI, Muhammad, Kashshdf istildhdt al-funun (ed.,1998) by A. H. Basaj, Dar al-Kutub al-cllmiyyah, Beirut, vol. I, pp. 462-73; Mahmud, All b. Ahmad b., "Risalah fi bahth al-harakah" in Collected Papers on Islamic Philosophy and Mysticism (ed. 1971), by M. Mohagheghn and H. Landolt, Tehran University Press, Tehran, pp. 35-51; and Frank, Richard M. (1978), Beings and Their Attributes: The Teaching of the Basrian School of the Mu^tazila in the Classical Period, State University of New York Press, Albany, pp. 95-104. 12. Cf. Aristotle, Physics, Book III, 201, 10: "The fulfillment of what exists potentially, in so far as it exists potentially, is motion".

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the conventional idea that motion is perfection for the moving body. But this perfection is necessarily different from other types of perfection because it has no real existence other than 'passing to another place'. Understood as such, a moving body possesses two special characteristics. The first is inclination (tawajjuh) towards a particular point or aim (matlub), which Sadra associates with the inner nature of things. The second is that there should remain some potentialities in things that move even after they exhaust their potentiality to move towards a particular position. This implies that motion and rest resemble potentiality and actuality only in a 13 limited sense. The above definition of motion leads to the commonly held idea that motion is the first perfection for a potential being in so far as it is potential. This definition, says Sadra, goes back to Aristotle. Plato provides a similar explanation: It is coming out of the state of sameness, i.e., a thing's being different from its previous state. Pythagoras proposes a close definition: It consists of alterity. After mentioning these definitions and their partial criticism by Ibn Sina, Sadra states that these different definitions refer to one and the same meaning, which is the essential change of state of affairs in the moving body. Sadra then criticizes Ibn Sina's objection to Pythagoras that motion is not change itself but rather 'that by which change takes place'. Sadra rejects Ibn Sina's view by saying that motion is not a 'thing' or agent by which things change. To define motion, as the Mutazilites claimed , as an agent through which things move is to posit it as an accidental property of things -- the very view against which Sadra proposes his substantial motion. Instead, he insists on the definition of motion as change itself. As we shall see below, Sadra pays a particular attention to this point because it is closely related to the renewal of substantial natures (tajaddud al-akwdn al-jawhariyyah) on the one hand, and continuously 15 changing nature of things (tahawwul al-tabfat al-sdriyah), on the other. Two Meanings of Motion In the Shifd\ Ibn Sina gives two different meaning of motion: the first is the 16 'passage' (qaf) view of motion according to which the moving body is lS.Asfar,lII, 1, p. 23. 14. Cf. Frank (1978), p. 100. Ib.Asfdr, III, l , p . 26. 16. Sadra replies to al-RazI's doubt about the real existence of the passageview of motion (qaf) by relying on his teacher Mir Damad who holds

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taken as a present whole during movement. When the mind considers the moving body with the points that it traverses, it pictures these discrete points and time-instants as a present whole. But since this frozen picture corresponds to a body extended in space and time as a continuous whole rather than to an actual change, this kind of motion exists only in the mind. The second kind is called 'medial motion' (tawassut] because, according to this view, the moving body is always found somewhere between the beginning and end of the distance traversed. This view, however, refers to a state of continuation, viz. the body's being at a point at every time instant. As such, it does not allow change in the existential constitution of moving bodies but simply states a transposition from one place to another. For Ibn Sma and Sadra, it is this kind of motion that exists objectively in the external world. Having no quarrel with the medial view of motion, Sadra sets out to prove the objective existence of motion as passage. He first draws attention to a self-contradiction in Ibn Sina's rejection of it. Ibn Sma accepts time as something continuous in the external world because it can be divided into years, months, days, and hours. It is the very definition of time that corresponds to motion as passage. Upon this premise, Ibn Sma regards passage motion as the locus and cause of time. But if passage motion does that if a thing's being a continuous process as a whole or a unity is impossible, it should be impossible both in the mind and in the outside world. The possibility of the objective existence of the passage is "shown by a body extended in space where its parts are continuous and yet the whole also is given." Cf. Rahman, Fazlur (1975), The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra, SUNY Press, Albany, p. 95. In the process of time, a particular time-instant is followed by another. In the same way, one part of a moving body is followed by another in space. Since "a thing's existence as a whole in a time-instant is different from its existence in time, this thing may exist (as a whole) in time but its existence or some part of it (as a whole) cannot exist in a time-instant (an)". A moving body's being a present whole in a time-instant results not in motion but immobility. Sadra further stresses the point that this moving body as a whole may exist in time but not in a particular time-instance. The idea of gradual passage does not contradict a thing's being a whole or unity "because motion, time and the like are of the things that have weak existence (da'ifat al-wujud), every part of which contains the other's non-existence". Likewise, the 'gradual' passing is not negated by a thing's being a continuous single unity in time because time itself is nothing but a continuous single unity (amr muttasil wdhid shakhsi). Cf. Asfar, III, 1, p. 28.

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not exist objectively, how can it be the measure of time? In other words, how can something non-existent be the locus of something existent? Ibn Sina's denial of the passage view of motion results from his understanding of motion as an accidental property of physical bodies. A physical body is a stable substance that exists in every instant of time insofar as it exists. But motion has no existence in time-instants (an). If motion were one of the modalities of things, it would always have to be together with them. Motion exists in things only continuously (istimrdran) which, in turn, refers to the second meaning. To this, Sadra replies by saying that the locus of motion is not the thing as a stable substance but as the locus and place upon which an action is exercised. In order for a thing to receive motion and change, it should undergo some kind of change in its essential structure (darb min tabaddul al-ahwdl al-haylhiyyah). This is based on the idea that 'the cause of that which changes also changes' (cillat almulaghayyir mulaghayyir), and, likewise, 'the cause of that which is stable is 18 stable' (cillat al-thdbit thdbit). The main reason for the denial of the passage view of motion is related to the peculiar characteristic of this type of motion, which Sadra describes as having 'weak existence'. As the following quotation shows, 'weak existence' refers to existential dependence, namely to the fact that things of this sort are not self-subsistent and always caused by an agent: Motion, time and the like belong to the category of things that have weak existence (da" if at al-wujud). Accordingly, their existence resembles their nonexistence, their actuality is similar to their potentiality, and their origination (huduthiha) is nothing but their corruption (zawdliha). Each of these (qualities or attributes) requires the non-existence of the other; in fact, their existence is their non-existence. Therefore, motion is the very destruction of a thing itself after it (is established in the physical world) and its origination before it (is actualized in the external world). And this mode (of being) is comparable to the absolute being in the sense that all relational beings (al-iddfdt) have some sort of existence. Likewise the existence of motion 17. Asfar, III, 1, p. 33. Interestingly, in his note on the same page, Sabzawan rejects Sadra's criticism and insists on the subjectivity of the passage motion. 18. Ibid., pp. 33-4.

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displays ambiguity (shukuk) and similitude (shabah) (of 19 being close to both being and non-being).

Within the actuality-potentiality framework, there are, Sadra states, two poles of existence. The first is the First Reality or the Absolute Being, and the second the first hyle. The former, which contains no potentiality in and of itself, is pure goodness par excellence, and the latter, which is pure potentiality with no actual existence, is 'evil' containing in itself no goodness save accidentally. Nevertheless, since the hyle is the potentiality of all beings, i.e., the indefinite substratum ready to take on any form in actuality, it has some share of goodness as opposed to non-existence (cadam), which is pure evil. What Sadra calls the "First Reality" (al-haqq alawwal) terminates the chain of active agents that bring potential beings into a state of actuality, and thus functions as a cosmic principle in the 'great chain of being'. The ontological discrepancy between potentiality and actuality points to a hierarchy of beings in that things that are in actuality enjoy higher ontological status. At this juncture, Sadra insists that a simple body is always composed of matter and form because it has the potentiality of motion on the one hand, and contains 'the material form' (al-surat aljismdniyyah) or a single continuous substance (al-ittisal al-jawhari), which is something actual, on the other. This aspect of physical substances proves one of the cardinal principles of Sadrean ontology and natural philosophy, i.e., that 'a simple reality is ... all things' (basit al-haqlqah ... jam? ali a). ->\ 20 ashy The Mover and the Moving Body We may remember that Aristotle had proposed the concept of the Prime Mover to terminate the infinite regression of causal chain. Put simply, if everything is moved by something else, this must end in an agent that itself does not move. An important consequence of this idea is the stark distinction between the mover and the moving body ~ a complementary duality that was extended in posterity to positional motion. Considered from the perspective of vertical causality, every moving body needs a mover, and Sadra, following the Peripetatics, reformulates this relationship in terms of actuality and potentiality. Since the process of motion requires the two poles of actuality and potentiality, actuality refers to the mover (al19. Ibid., p. 37. 20. Ibid., p. 40.

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muharrik), and potentiality to the moving body (al-mutaharrik). In other words, the mover as the actual being provides the cause of motion, and the moving body as the potential being stands at the receiving end of the process of motion. This polarity shows that a single body cannot be both the active and passive agent of motion. In other words, we have to assume the existence of a prime mover to which all motion can ultimately be traced back. Sadra's argument runs as follows: The moving body, in so far as it is a potential being, has to be a passive agent, i.e., the receiver of the act of motion whereas the mover has to be an active agent, in so far as it is an actual being. These two qualities or 'aspects' (jihdt) cannot be found in the same thing simultaneously due to their exclusive nature. In other words, a physical entity cannot be both the source and locus of motion at the same time. At this point, all motion should go back to an active agent which is different from motion as well as from the locus of motion, moving by itself, renewing itself by itself, and necessarily the source of all motion. And this (agent) has its own agent (i.e., principle) of motion in the sense of being the source of its own continuous renewal. By this, I do not mean the 'instaurer' (jdcil) of its motion because instauration cannot exist between a thing and itself. This is so because the direct agent of motion has to be something in motion. Otherwise this would necessitate the difference of the cause (al-cillah) from its effect (mcfluliha). Thus, if this (chain of causation) does not end in an ontological agent (amr wujudi) that renews itself by itself, this would lead to regression or circularity.'

Sadra goes on to adduce proofs for the necessity of a prime mover as an external agent to set things in motion. He rejects and responds to some objections as follows. 1) If a thing were to move by itself, it would never reach rest because whatever endures by itself does so by its intrinsic qualities. Once these qualities or properties are disjoined from a thing, it no longer exists. 2) If a thing were to move by itself, parts of motion i.e. the subject of motion as a whole would be in rest, which means that the thing would not move. 3) If the principle of motion were to be in the moving body itself, it would have no 'fitting' or natural place to which it could 21. Ibid., pp. 39-40.

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incline. According to the conventional definition of motion, however, if there were to be no natural place for a thing to which it could incline, it could not move. 4) If self-motion were to be a real property of a moving body, it would be a universal quality of 'thing-ness' (shay^iyyah) shared by all corporeal things. But this is not the case in natural bodies. In reality, says Sadra, motion is a particular quality provided by an outside mover. 5) Another proof for the fact that a physical body cannot have the principle of motion in itself is that this would mean that both potentiality and actuality can be found at the same locus simultaneously. If this were the case, actuality would not be succeeded by potentiality. Because according to the definition given above, motion is the first perfection for what is potential. If a thing were able to move by itself, it would be actual in all respects without leaving any room for potentiality, which is obviously inconceivable for contingent beings. 6) The relation of the moving body to motion is established through contingency (bfl-imkdn), and its relation to motion as an active agent is necessary (bfl-wujub). If the moving body itself were to be the producer of motion, this relation would be necessary. But since contingency and necessity cannot coincide, the moving body has to be 22 different from the principle or source of motion. How Things are Set in Motion There are two possible ways for a mover to set things in motion: It moves things either 1) directly and by itself or 2) indirectly and by means of something else. A carpenter with his adz is an example for the second type of motion. The immediate act of the mover gives the concept of motion as an accidental property. The act of the mover by means of something else yields the notion of the moving body itself. The mover sets an object in motion without being in need of an intermediary agent like the attraction of the lover by the beloved or the motion of the one who has zeal and desire to learn by the learned one. The first mover, which itself does not move, either grants the moving body the immediate cause by which it moves, or attracts it to itself as its final goal. Everything in the physical world brings about a certain effect not by accident or coincidence but through an extraneous power added to it from outside. And this 'added quality' is either the nature it has or the voluntary power it possesses. In both cases, this power should be related to the thing itself viz., it cannot be 22. Ibid., pp. 41-2.

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totally 'relationless' in respect to it. If this were a kind of motion brought about by the abstract or 'detached' agent (al-mufdriq) in a universal manner, this would amount to something other than what is meant by motion in the usual sense of the word. Therefore, the Prime Mover needs and, in fact, employs in things an 'agent' by means of which it sets them in motion. This 28 agent in all contingent beings is 'nature' (tab?ah}. The next problem Sadra addresses is how the Prime Mover, which itself does not move, is related to contingent beings and material bodies. We may summarize Sadra's argument as follows: A thing's being capable of receiving the effect of motion from the 'detached' agent (al-mufdriq) can be attributed to three reasons: the thing itself, some special quality in that thing, or a quality in the detached agent. The first is impossible because, as shown previously, this would lead us to accepting motion-by-itself as a universal and intrinsic quality of thing-ness. Sadra briefly states that the second option i.e., motion through a property or ability in things is the right view. The third option has some points to consider. The actualization of motion through an aspect of the detached agent takes place when the detached agent originates an effect in the thing it sets in motion. This, in turn, may happen either through the will of the detached agent by manipulating something in the thing or through effecting it haphazardly according to its wish. The last option is not tenable because it terminates the idea of order in nature. Chances or accidental coincidences (al-ittifdqiyydt), says Sadra, are not constant and continuous in nature: Chances, as you will learn, are neither constant nor dominant (in nature) whereas order in nature is both dominant and continuous. There is nothing in nature that happens by chance or haphazardly. As you will learn, everything in nature is directed towards a universal purpose (aghrdd kulliyah). Thus, the effect of motion cannot be brought about by chance. What remains, therefore, (as a valid option) is a particular quality in the physical bodies (that move). This essential quality (al-khdssiyyah) is the source of motion, 23. Ibid., pp. 47-8. Even though Ibn Sma seems to approve this view in essence, he uses the word nature (tabfah) in the sense of 'natural inclination' and natural motion rather than as an essential quality of corporeal bodies that render all volitional and coerced movement possible. Cf. al-Najdt, p. 146.

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and this is nothing but potency (al-quwwah) and nature, by virtue of which things yearn, through motion, for 24 their second perfection.

Thus, we are left with the option that this effect occurs by means of an essential quality in physical bodies, which causes them to move. This Sadra 25 calls 'potency' and 'nature'. After positing 'nature' as the immediate cause of all motion , Sadra opens a long parenthesis and delves into a discussion of how actuality precedes potentiality. This long discussion is meant to show that the very idea of contingency requires existential transformation and that the continuous renewal of contingent beings is an essential quality that exists in concrete whenever possible beings are brought into actuality out of potentiality. Sadra's arguments also reveal some interesting aspects of his theory of matter. Every created being is preceded by being (wujud) and 'some matter' (mdddah) that bears it. This is a quality inherent in all contingent beings. Otherwise they would belong to the category of either necessary or impossible being. Matter with which contingent beings are united acts as one of the immediate principles or causes of bringing contingent beings out of non-existence and pure potentiality. It is to be remembered that matter and form, just like potentiality and actuality, are not 'things' but principles of existence. In this sense, the subject of contingency (mawduc al-imkdn) has to be an originated entity (mubdfari), otherwise it would be preceded by another contingency ad infinitum. Every possibility vanishes when it becomes something actual in the external world. This means that every contingency is preceded by another one until the chain of causation comes to an end in the Principle which has no contingency, i.e., potentiality. Sadra warns against the idea that potentiality is prior to actuality in an absolute sense. In fact, it is a common tendency to put potentiality before actuality like a seed's relation to a tree or like Nazzam's celebrated theory 27 of 'latency' (kumun and buruz). Some have said that the universe was in 24. Ibid., p. 49. 25. Ibid., pp. 48-9. 26. Cf. Aristotle, Physics, Book III, 200b. 27. The theory of latency was developed by the Muctazilite theologian Nazzam to explain origination and corruption (kawn wafasdd). Nazzam who, unlike most of the Muctazilites and the Ashcarites, had rejected atomism, presupposes a potential nature that is 'latent' in things and

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disorder and God bestowed upon it the best of all orders. In the same manner, matter has been regarded prior to form, and genus to differentia. According to another group of people whom Ibn Sina mentions in the Shifd\ the hyle had an 'existence' before its form, and the active agent gave it the dress of the form. Some have held the view that all things in the universe were moving by their natural motion without any order. God arranged their motion and brought them out of disorder. Sadra's overall reply to these claims is that in some cases, as in the relationship between sperm and man, potentiality precedes actuality in time. But, in the final analysis, potentiality cannot subsist by itself and needs a substratum to sustain it. We say that, as far as particular entities in the world of corruption are concerned, the relation between (potentiality and actuality) is like the sperm and the human being. Here, the potentiality specific (to the sperm) has priority over actuality in time. But potentiality, in the final analysis, is preceded by actuality for a number of reasons. Potentiality (i.e., the potential being) cannot subsist by itself and needs a substance to sustain it. And this substance has to be something actual (bfl-ficl) because whatever is not actual cannot exercise (any power) on something else. By the same token, whatever is not existent in an absolute way cannot accept any (exercise of power). Furthermore, there are certain actual beings in existence that have never been and are by no means potential in essence such as the Sublime First (Principle) and the Active Intellects (al-cuqul al-faccdlah). Then, potentiality needs the act (/icl) (of realization) to bring it into actualization whereas this is not the case with what is actual. Potentiality needs another agent (mukhrij) to bring it (out of non-existence), and this chain undoubtedly comes to an end in an actual being (mawjud b?l-ficl) which is not created (by something else) as we have explained in the chapter on the 28 termination of causes.

that becomes 'apparent' in time. Therefore, he regards any kind of change as the appearance (zuhur) of these dormant qualities. Cf. alKhayyat, Kitdb al-Intisdr, p. 28ff. ZS.Asfdr, III, l,pp. 57-8.

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After these considerations, Sadra introduces an axiological element into the discussion, which, in turn, confirms the ontological discrepancy that Sadra establishes between potentiality and actuality on the one hand, and existence and non-existence, on the other. Goodness (al-khayr) in things comes from the fact that they are actual whereas evil (al-sharr) stems from what is potential. A thing cannot be evil in every respect otherwise it would be non-existent. And no being, in so far as it is something existent, is evil. It becomes evil as a privation of perfection such as ignorance, or it necessitates its own non-existence in other things such as injustice (al-zulm). Since potentiality has some sort of actualization in the external world, its essence subsists by existence. And existence, as you have seen, is prior to essence in an absolute way. Therefore, potentiality as potentiality has external realization only in the mind. Thus, it is concluded that whatever is actual is prior to the potential in terms of causation (bfl-cilliyyah), nature (b?l-tabc), perfection (bfl-sharaf), time, and actual reality (bfl-haqiqah).

Nature as the Immediate Cause of Motion As we have stated previously, motion is the act of moving itself (mutaharrikiyyat al-shay^) for it refers to the continuous renewal and lapse of the moving body in a particular time-space coordinate. This point is of extreme importance for Sadra's purposes here for he tries to establish motion as an essential property of corporeal bodies, and this is a major step towards substantial motion (al-harakat al-jawhariyyah] as opposed to positional or locomotive motion. In this sense, the immediate cause of motion should be something whose essence is not stable. Otherwise 'a stable or enduring entity will contain in itself the passing phases of motion as a present fact, and this togetherness of all passing phases would amount to stability, not motion.' This leads Sadra to the following conclusion: The immediate cause of every motion should be something whose quiddity (mdhiyyah) is stable but whose being (wujud) is ever-changing. 2 9 . A s f a r , I I I , 1, p. 58. 30. Rahman (1975), pp. 95-6.

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74 • Islam & Science • Vol. 1 (June 2003) No.l The immediate cause of motion has to be something with a stable essence and continuously changing being (thdbitat al-mdhiyyah mutajaddid al-wujud). As you will see, the immediate cause of all kinds of motion is no other than nature. This nature is the substance by which things subsist and become actualized as a species (i.e., as a particular entity) . This refers to the first perfection of natural things in so far as they are actual beings (in the external world). Therefore it is concluded and established from this (consideration) that every physical being is a continuously changing entity with a flowing identity (sayydl al-huwiyyah) despite the fact that its quiddity is impervious to change.

The statement that the subject of motion should be something with a stable essence is true only when we mean by 'stable' (thdbit) the quiddity (mdhiyyah), viz., the mental image of things. Or, we understand from 'stable' the subject of motion, which is not a concomitant (Idzim) for the actual existence of the thing in question. To emphasize this point, Sadra introduces two kinds of motion. The first is the kind of motion which every material substance possesses as a concomitant of its existential constitution. In other words, this kind of motion exists as an essential property of corporeal things, and confirms substantial motion as a principle of 'substantiation'. The second kind of motion is that which takes place as an 'accident' as in the case of transposition (naql), transformation (taghayyur) or growth. Sadra calls the latter 'motion in motion' (harakahfi harakah). In light of this view, we can say that every moving body possesses and preserves a 'nature' that acts as its immediate cause of motion. This nature, however, is not something superadded to things from outside, like an accident, but conjoined with their substances. Thus nature is not only the immediate cause of natural motion (al-harakah al-tabfiyyah) but also that of forced or constrained (al-harakah al-qasriyyah) motion. In the latter case, any mover that moves something else uses 'nature' as agent of motion. In other words, it is this nature that renders possible both primary, i.e., substantial, 31. As I stated before, nature, like matter and form, is not a thing but a principle of existentiation and substantiation (tajawhur). 32. Asfdr, III, 1, p. 62. See also Kitdb al-Mashdcir trans, by Henry Corbin (1968) as Le Livre des penetrations metaphysiques, Institut Frangais d'Iranologie de Teheran, Teheran-Paris, pp. 64-5. 33. Asfdr, III, 1, pp. 61-4.

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and secondary, i.e., accidental movement. This is where Sadra takes his departure from traditional accounts of motion. And we are certain about the following conclusion on the basis of heart-knowledge (al-wijddn) rather than discursive proof (al-burhdn): the cause that makes a thing yield and induces it to move from one place to another or from one state (of being) to another cannot but be an actual power inherent in that thing. This is called nature. Thus, the immediate cause of material [i.e., physical] motion (al-harakat al-jismiyyah) is the substantial power that subsists in things, and all the accidents are subservient to the sustaining form (alsurah al-muqawwimah), which is nature... The philosophers have shown conclusively that every (physical body) which accepts the act of yielding (almayl) from outside has to have a natural inclination (mayl tibdci) in itself. It is thus proved that the direct source of motion is something flowing with a continuously changing identity (mutajaddid al-huwiyyah). If this (substratum) were not to be something flowing and ever-changing, it would be impossible for these natural motions to emanate from it on the basis of the principle that the ever-changing cannot emanate from the stable.

We may read this paragraph as an indirect response to Ibn Sina. Sadra's claim is that Ibn Sma has in fact accepted the principle that a stable being cannot be the cause of instability and permanent change at the same time. In other words, Ibn Sina is to be corrected on the principle that any change and transformation that we observe in things externally goes back to the constantly changing structure of their substance. Every direct or indirect motion is ultimately connected to and an outcome of nature that corporeal bodies possess. Nature as the Principle of Change and Permanence After criticizing the philosophers' idea of 'two consecutive phases' in motion, Sadra discusses briefly the problem of how changing things 34. Ibid., p. 65. 35. Sadra's criticism can be summarized as follows: The first phase is motion itself and the second is a thing's transposition from one point to another. According to this account, which is reminiscent of the passage

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(mutaghayyir) are related to an unchanging and permanent principle (thdbit). If every changing body is preceded by another changing body, this leads either to an endless chain or to a change in the First Principle, which we have already ruled out as impossible. Sadra eliminates this objection by saying that the continuous renewal of material bodies is their essential attribute, not a quality added to them from outside. When a corporeal thing moves towards its 'existential realization', viz., actualizes its potentialities by going through various forms and states of being, such as emerging from potentiality to actuality or moving from one location to another, it possesses its immediate cause of motion/change in itself, and does not need an extra 'cause'. Even when an extraneous stimulator is required for a thing to move externally, this is made possible only by having recourse to the nature inherent in things. The gist of the foregoing arguments is that every natural body carries the principles of change and permanence in itself simultaneously. Nature, for example, remains an enduring property in physical bodies while its very reality is change. By the same token, there are certain things whose actuality is their potentiality such as the hyle, or whose plurality is their unity such as the numbers, or whose unity is their plurality such as the view mentioned above, something always remains stable in the process of motion, and this is nature. A relationship of sorts is thus established between the stable which is nature and the changing which is a thing's passing through a certain distance. Sadra rejects this argument by restating the relationship between substance and accident: since substance is the source as well as locus of accidents, all accidental properties and changes should issue forth from substances. If there were no being whose very essence would be renewal and lapse, there would be no stages of motion. For Sadra, the weakness of this argument lies in the fact that a thing's changing its place from one point to another, which is regarded by the philosophers as the second stage in the process of motion, is not essentially different from motion itself. Therefore, both kinds of change are due to that 'reality whose essence is continuously changing in itself, and this is what we called "nature". But since the 'mental substances' are beyond the realm of existential transformation, they always remain stable and unchanged. This is also true, says Sadra, for the human soul which, from the point of view of its 'mental essence' or 'reality', is changeless, but from the point of view of its connection with the body, it is identical with continuously changing nature. Thus the gist of Sadra's argument is that a continuously changing structure cannot depend on a stable cause. The renewal of all changing beings is due to a cause whose very reality is change and renewal at every moment. Asfdr, III, 1, pp. 64-7.

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material body with its components as a whole. Thus, everything has a dual structure in its essential constitution. In this respect, nature and hyle appear to be the two basic points of connection between the changing and the unchanging. Considered in its aspect of permanence, nature is directly connected to the permanent principle. When considered in regard to its aspect of change and renewal, however, it is connected to the renewal of material bodies and the origination of created beings. In a similar way, the hyle serves as the connection point between the potentiality and actuality of contingent beings. It is thus concluded that "these two substances (i.e., nature and hyle) are simply means of origination and corruption of material bodies, and through them a relation is established between the 37 eternal (al-qadlm) and the created (al-hddith}\ Category of Motion

The question of which categories (maquldt) are capable of receiving change and motion is of particular significance for Sadra because substantial motion is ultimately nothing but change in the category of motion itself. We may remember that Ibn Sina, following Aristotle, had accepted change in categories such as quality, quantity and position but denied it in the category of substance (jawhar). Since substance was regarded by al-Shaykh al-Rais and his students as a stable substratum to which all accidental qualities are traceable, accepting change in the substance of a thing would amount to the dissolution of that particular thing, and, as a result, there would remain no subject or substratum for motion and change. For Sadra, however, since a stable substratum is not needed to support the 'general existence' of a physical body, change in the category of substance does not lead to destruction of corporeal bodies. This is predicated upon the principle that the subject of motion is 'some subject' (mawduc ma] rather than a 'particular subject' (mawduc). In other words, what is needed through the process of substantial change is not a particular locus or substratum, which would be destroyed by qualitative or quantitative change, but some subject that remains constant. We may summarize Sadra's analysis as 36. Ibid., p. 68. 37. Ibid., pp. 68-9. Sadra explains this complementary duality of things on the basis of the gradation (tashkik) of being which is, for Sadra, both the principle of unity and diversity in existence.

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follows. When we say that motion is 'within a category' (maqulah), four possibilities arise to consider: 1) the category is the subject of motion, 2) substance through a category is the subject of motion, 3) the category is a genus for motion, and finally 4) the substance itself is changing gradually from one species to another or from one class to another. Sadra emphatically rejects the first three possibilities by repeating his fundamental identification of the act of motion with the moving body. He repudiates the claim of the earlier philosophers that if we admit change in one of the four categories, then we would have to accept an infinite number of species being actualized in one single entity. It is obvious, however, that the realization of an infinite number of species in a finite being is impossible. In this respect, Sadra invokes Ibn Sma in support of his argument by quoting from the Tacliqdt. What happens during the essential change of categories is not that at every successive moment, a new amount of quantity is added up to the thing which maintains its previous existence in terms of quantity. In reality, the infinite number of species exists only potentially due to the very definition of motion, i.e., that it is an intermediary stage between pure potentiality and pure actuality. During the process of motion, a physical body, which goes through various degrees of existence, "has a temporal particular quanta-entity which is continuous, gradual and in perfect proportion with the time instants of motion". Such a body has an infinite number of 'instantaneous individuals' (afrdd aniyah) at every second. But these 'infinite instantaneous individuals' exist only potentially and do not point to a real actualization in the extra-mental world. Blackness, for instance, has an existence in actuality, which is of such a nature that the mind can abstract from it a series of new species at every instance. This particular existence of blackness is 'stronger' than 'instantaneous existences' (i.e. the possible species abstracted by the mind) in that as an actual existent, it represents (misddqan) in itself many species. By the same token, an animal's existence is stronger than a plant's existence because, as a single unity, it contains and represents every shade of existence that the plant possesses. The same holds true for the intensification of blackness since it encapsulates whatever blackness exists

38. Ibid., p. 72.

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in 'weak black entities'. Thus, motion or change does take place in 39 categories, and Sadra accepts this as the only possible view. As for the view that the category of substance is a species for motion, it is not tenable because, as Sadra repeatedly states, "motion is not the changed and renewed thing but the change and renewal itself just like immobility is not the immobile thing but the immobility of a thing". In this regard, it should be emphasized that the establishment of motion for constantly renewing bodies is not like the occurrence of an accident to a 'self-subsisting subject' (al-mawduc al-mutaqawwim bi-nafsihi). The idea of such a stable subject is rather one of the 'analytical [i.e., mental] accidents' (al-cawdrid al-tahllliyyah) i.e. mentally abstracted and posited accidents that the mind constructs. This, in turn, underscores the intrinsic relation between existential motion and actually existing entities, and affirms that the 'separation' of substantial motion from corporeal things is nothing but an outcome of our mental analysis. The 'occurrence' (curud) of motion to things is an event that takes place only at the level of conceptual analysis viz., when the mind analyzes an actually existing entity into its constituent parts. In a sense, this is comparable to the distinction between essence (mdhiyyah) and existence (wujud) - a distinction that exists only in the mind. Thus Sabzawan states that the distinction is merely a matter of 'naming' (hi40 hasab al-cunwdn). At best, the attribution of mental accidents to subject can be compared only to the attribution of differentia (fasl) to genus (jins). Sadra sums up his discussion by saying that "the meaning of motion being in a category is that the subject (i.e., the substance) is bound to change gradually, and not suddenly, from one species to another or from 41 one class to another."

Problem of Quantitative Change Even though the Peripatetics had affirmed, with Aristotle, that all categories, with the exception of substance, undergo change, explaining the 42 precise nature of quantitative change has posed some difficulties. Sadra 39. Ibid., p. 73. Sadra also states that if change in categories is not admitted, the opponent would be forced to adhere to the idea of 'leap' (al-tafrah) proposed by al-Nazzam. Sadra insists that the theory of leap is easily rejected by common sense. 40. Ibid., p. 74. 41. Ibid., p. 75. 42. For Ibn Sma's discussion of what he calls al-takhalkhul (diminution) and

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even says that Suhrawardi and his followers had denied quantitative change. The main difficulty seems to result from the assumption that increase and decrease in quantity necessitates the replacement of the original quantity as well as that which is quantified, i.e., the physical body that undergoes quantitative change. In contrast to the idea of quantitative change as rupture and replacement, Sadra sees change in quantity as a continuous and single process. His detailed discussion can be summed up as follows. Since motion signifies the actualization of certain qualities and quantities that exist for physical bodies potentially, Sadra reverses the picture and says that to become black means not the increase of blackness in the subject but rather the increase of the subject in blackness. In other words, it is not the case that during quantitative increase or decrease, there exist two blacknesses, the original blackness and the newly emergent one. The mind conceives this process as the conjoining of two separate and discrete quantities of blackness. When conceived as such, it becomes impossible to explain quantitative change because such a process corresponds not to the gradual augmentation or diminution of something but rather to the juxtaposition of two independent quantities. In the order of existence, however, blackness has only "one single identity (huwiyyah 44 shahksiyyah wdhidah) evolving in perfection at every instant". When we say that blackness has only 'one single continuous identity' (huwiyyah wdhidah ittisdliyyah) in the process of quantitative augmentation or diminution, we admit some 'degrees of intensification' (mardtib al-ishtiddd). In this case, says Sadra, three points should be made clear. First of all, there is an infinite number of species in one single entity only inpotentia. In the order of existence, this fact is complemented by the principle that "one single continuum has only one single being" (al-muttasil al-wdhid lahu wujud 45 wdhid). Secondly, although blackness has one single continuous identity in its perfection or imperfection, 'various species, essential properties and logical differentiae' occur to it in regard to its existential renewal. For Sadra, such a transformation in the substance of physical bodies is possible because it is being (al-wujud) that is fundamentally real and principial, al-takathuf (augmentation), see al-Najat, pp. 186-8 and pp. 242-4. 43. Ibid., p. 89. 44. Ibid., p. 82. 45. Ibid., p. 83.

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quiddity being thereby subject to it. The reason why Sadra invokes the primacy of being here is that he considers the ever-expanding reality of being as the primary context of all substantial change. Thirdly, the frozen picture of an increasing entity presents to the mind some instant-points that have occurred actually and some instant-points that may occur potentially. As Sadra repeatedly states, however, it is the mental representation of the order of being that yields the idea of quantitative change as a succession of two discrete species or entities. In contradistinction to the Peripatetics, a corporeal body that undergoes quantitative change always maintains its identity as a single and unbroken unity. Thus, an entity of this nature is a new emergent every moment with a continuous body in respect of which if we say it is one, we would be right or if we say it is many,... enduring or changing, all these would be right. If we say that it persists identically from the very beginning of change to the end, we shall be speaking the truth; if we say every moment it is a new emergent (hddith kulla hin) this will be equally true.

To further emphasize motion as a continuous process, Sadra turns to Ibn Sma one more time and takes him to task on the question of motion in the category of substance. We may remember that Ibn Sina had conceived motion in substance not as a single continuum but rather as the sudden destruction of original substance and its replacement by another one. Ibn Sina's criticism was based on the assumption that if substance were capable of intensification and diminution, the species that determines and particularizes it would either remain the same or change into another species. In either case, however, we would have to accept that there has been no change in the substance or that the original substance has been destroyed. Against this criticism, Sadra provides the following answer, which sums up his doctrine of the gradual perfection of being in terms of plurality-inunity and unity-in-process. If in the statement: 'either its species persists during intensification' by 'persistence of species' is meant its existence, then we choose that it does persist because existence as a gradually unfolding process has a unity, 46. Ibid., p. 84; Rahman's translation, op. cit., p. 103.

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and its intensification means its progressive perfection. But if the question is whether the same specific essence, which could be abstracted (by the mind) from it, still continues to exist — then we choose to say that it does not remain any longer. But from this, it does not follow that an entirely new substance, i.e., existence has arisen; it only means that a new essential characteristic (or specific form) has been acquired by it (i.e., by existence...). That is to say, this substance either has been perfected or has retrogressed (the latter however does not actually happen) in the two modes of existence and hence its essential characteristics have been transmuted. This does not mean that an actual infinity of species has arisen (just as it did not mean in the case of black that an actual infinity of black colors had arisen); it only means that there is a single continuous individual existence characterized by a potential infinity of middle points in accordance with the supposed time-instants in the duration of its (moving) existence...There is no difference between the qualitative intensification called 'change' and the quantitative intensification called 'growth' (on the one hand), and the substantive intensification called 'emergence (takawwuri)' (on the other) in that each one of them is a gradual perfection, i.e., a motion towards the actuality of (a new) mode of existence.

The gist of the foregoing argument is that being, as an unfolding single unity (al-wujud al-muttasil al-tadriji), travels through various essences, and assumes different forms and modalities. The gradual passing of a substance from one state of being to another means that it reaches a higher and more perfect mode of being at every successive point of movement. As we have stated before, however, this continuous process does not dissolve substances into different and discrete units. Identity and Endurance of Physical Bodies

A particular problem arises here as to how to account for the endurance of substantial forms when corporeal bodies undergo qualitative and quantitative change. To establish a substratum that endures throughout the process of change, Sadra argues that 'some matter' (mdddatun ma) 47. Ibid., p. 86; Rahman's translation op. dt.9 p. 104.

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particularized through a form, quality or quantity is enough for substantial change. In the course of the gradual perfection of a substance, a certain amount of matter (existence) remains as the persisting principle while taking on various forms, qualities, quantities, and positions. According to Sadra, the persistence of a certain amount of matter with its variegated modifications and particularizations is so subtle that the previous philosophers, including Ibn Sina, had acknowledged that the mind is incapable of perceiving it in its entirety. After stating this historical point, Sadra turns to the peculiar relationship between form and matter as an 48 essential property of physical bodies. In Sadra's view, the riddle of quantitative change, which has led many philosophers, including Suhrawardi and Ibn Sina, to denying change in the category of substance, can be solved by having recourse to the following principle: what is required in the process of motion is not a definite quantity but 'some quantity' (miqddrun ma) by which things become particularized. Suhrawardi's problem had arisen out of the assumption that adding a certain amount of quantity to another (block of) quantity (i.e., the increase or decrease of a certain quantity) necessitates the destruction of the original quantity, and when a part of this quantity is taken away from the whole, this also necessitates the destruction 49 (of that which is quantified).

In this view, any quantitative change in terms of increase or decrease leads to the destruction of the original body/substance. Ibn Sina had faced a similar difficulty when explaining change in organic bodies. In fact, Ibn Sina "was not able to solve" the problem of identity in plants and animals because he had postulated that unlike man who has both soul and character, organic bodies, i.e., plants and animals, possess no enduring quality. In response to these difficulties, Sadra asserts that IV

50

the subject of motion is a particular entity (al-jism almutashakhkhas), not a definite quantity (al-miqddr almutashakhkhas). And the particularization of a thing requires a definite quantity for the thing in its motion from one place to another as the physicians (al-atibba?) 48. Ibid., pp. 87-8. 49. Ibid., pp. 89-90. 50. Ibid., pp. 90-2.

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have asserted with regard to personal character (almizdj al-shakhsi). The motion takes place in the particularizations and (various) stages of quantities. Therefore what is enduring from the beginning to the end of motion is different from what is changing. The disjunction (al-fasl) and conjunction (al-wasl) (of a definite quantity with matter) do not cancel each other out except in the case of conjoined quantity taken, as a mental abstraction, in its natural state, i.e., without 51 being united with matter.

Thus the substratum of quantitative change is not a definite quantity but matter with some quantity. Therefore, the destruction of definite quantity does not necessitate the destruction of the thing itself. 'The natural body' (al-jism al-tabici), composed of thing-ness and form, also preserves its species through the definite form (al-surah al-mucayyanah), which functions as the principle of its final differentia (al-fasl al-dkhir}''. Thus it is concluded that no kind of qualitative or quantitative change leads to the destruction of a 53 physical body as long as the definite form endures. Change and Identity in Physical Bodies After securing the material existence of physical bodies when they undergo substantial change, Sadra proceeds to the most important and intricate part of his theory of substantial motion, which is the preservation of the identity of changing bodies. Reference was already made to the fact that differentia (al-fasl}, by definition, ensures the preservation of some quality or quantity-in-general despite the fact that the definite quality in the changing body is destroyed at every successive phase of its motion. Sadra states that whatever has the final differentia as its principle of perfection has some sort of preservation-in-general. The redefinition of differentia as a thing's principle of perfection becomes a forceful argument for Sadra because he seeks to replace the framework of traditional genus-differentia account with his gradational ontology. The differentia is now transformed from being a mere principle of difference (al-ikhlildf) among genuses into a principle of existential individuation of particular entities. An important outcome of this reformulation is that differentia, viz. the principle of 51. Ibid., pp. 92-3. 52. Ibid., p. 93. 53. Ibid., pp. 80-93.

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diversity and unity, is equated with being (al-wujud). Sadra illustrates this point as follows: Being capable of growth (al-ndmi) is the plant's differentia whereby its being is perfected, since its perfection is not due to its being a body alone. Rather, it (i.e., 'being capable of growth') is its principle of potency and carrier of its potentiality. Hence, there is no doubt that the change of bodily entities does not necessitate change in the substantial being of the plant itself since body is regarded here only in a general manner ('aid wajh al-cumum wcfl-itldq), (i.e., as body-ingeneral), not in a specified and determined manner (cala wajh al-khususiyyah wa^l-taqyid) (i.e., not as body-inparticular). The same holds true for the animal which is constituted by being capable of growth and perception, and for every existent whose existence is constituted by matter and form such as man in relation to his soul and body. Hence when 'being capable of growth' changes in quantity, its 'thing-ness' (jismiyyatahu) as an individual entity also changes but its substantial structure as an individual entity remains the same. Thus it (i.e., the plant), insofar as it is a natural body-in-general, is destroyed as an individual entity, but, insofar as it is a natural body capable of growth, is not destroyed, neither itself nor even its part. Because every being part of which is nothing but body-ingeneral in an individual (entity) is established (in the external world) in a manner of continuous existence (al-ittisdl al-wujudi). On the basis of this principle, the endurance of an animal together with its substance of perception can be explained. In the same manner, man in his old age loses most of his power of 54 vegetation whereas his identity remains the same.

The foregoing description of qualitative and quantitative change holds true for all natural bodies that have a constantly changing being with an enduring identity. In every change and motion, there remains an original principle that is perfected by the final differentia. For example, the final differentia in composite beings comprises every successive phase of increasing perfection, which intensifying or moving bodies undergo. Therefore, the succession of various degrees of being, which leads physical 54. Ibid., p. 94.

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bodies to a higher state of being, is not something added to the final differentia of corporeal bodies from outside. As we have stated before, a simple being (basil al-haqiqah) contains in itself all lower levels of being, and this principle is employed here by Sadra with full force to explain the peculiar relationship among species, genuses, and differentia. Within this framework, every species comprises in its state of being whatever is possessed and shared by lower species. Equally important is the fact that species is perfected into a genus by differentia. The main point, however, is that Sadra takes differentia not simply as a mental notion abstracted from physical entities as the principle of differentiation but equates it with being (wujud), which functions, as we have seen, as the principle of unity as well as 55 diversity in Sadra's ontology. The existential relationship between a physical body and its essential properties, or what Sadra calls 'concomitants' (lawdzim), can also be explained by having recourse to the description of things in our ordinary language. When we want to define or describe something, we naturally refer to its essence as well as its essential properties that are included in its definition. Sadra calls such properties 'a mode of being' (nahw al-wujud). In every mode of being, a particular piece of concrete reality appropriates and displays certain qualities that yield its 'derived differentia' (al-fasl alishtiqdqi). These distinctive qualities are generally called the 'individual properties of a thing' (al-mushakhkhasdt). They constitute what Sadra calls the 'signs of particularization' (caldmdl Ifl-tashakhkhus). Here is how Sadra summarizes his view: The (word) sign here refers to the name of a thing by which its concept is expressed. In the same manner, the derived real differentia (al-fasl al-haqiqi al-ishtiqdqi) is described as logical differentia (al-fasl al-mantiqi) in the case of 'being capable of growth' (al-ndmi) for plants, sense perception for animals, and intellection for human beings. The first of these (descriptions) is a name for the vegetative soul, second for animal soul, and third for rational soul. These are all derived differentia. The same holds true for all other differentia with regard to composite substances (almurakkabdt al-jawhariyyah). Each of these (bodies) is a simple substance designated by a universal logical differentia (fasl mantiql kulli) as a matter of naming 55. Ibid., pp. 93-100.

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things (tasmiyat al-shay^). These substances are, in fact, simple and specific (i.e., particularized) beings with no quiddity. In the same manner, the concomitants of individual entities are assigned to their individual possessors through naming. Thus, particularization is a mode of being. A particular entity becomes particularized by itself, and these concomitant (properties) issue forth from it just like the emanation of a ray of light from its 56 source and of heat from fire.

The logical differentia as a universal refers to entities in the order of mental concepts whereas the real or existential differentia refers to their individuation and particularization (al-tashakhkhus) in the order of being. At the conceptual level, we distinguish between a thing and its existential properties and thus obtain the essence-existence bifurcation. We apply such a conceptual process only 'to name a thing'. In reality, however, there are only individuated concrete existents, simple and unique, without requiring any 'quiddity'. Particularization of a thing comes about by its assuming a mode of being with certain essential properties (al-mushahkhkasdt). In other words, the relation between a body and its existential properties is reversed: a physical body does not become particularized due to appropriating such essential and/or accidental properties. On the contrary, these properties come into being as a result of thing's particularization in the existential order just like the expansion of a beam of light from its original source of light. Several conclusions can be drawn from Sadra's arguments. First of all, substance (jawhar) changes in accordance with the change of its essential properties. With this, the dividing line between substance and accident becomes rather provisional. A material substance is thus essentially a substance that is by itself continuous, quantified, positional, temporal, and inhering in a definite place. The change of quantities, colors and positions of the substance necessitates the renewal of the definite quantity of the individuated material substance.

56. Ibid., pp. 103-4. 57. Ibid., p. 104.

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Thus, we arrive at a twofold picture of the natural world in which 'material substances' or 'bodily natures' are aptly regarded as the proper locus of two interrelated dimensions of physical entities: transience and perpetuity. There is no doubt that every material substance has a continuously changing nature on the one hand, and an enduring and unchanging structure, on the other. The relationship between the two aspects is similar to the relationship between body and soul. While the body is in constant change and flow, the human soul endures because it preserves its identity by the passing of essential forms in an uninterrupted continuous process (wurud al-amthdl ^alcfl-ittisdl).

Natural forms of material substances share similar characteristics: They are renewed at every instant as far as their material, positional, and temporal existence is concerned, and there is a gradual and steady origination for them. As far as their mental existence and detached Platonic forms are concerned, however, they are eternal and perpetual in the knowledge of God.59

As this paragraph makes it clear, Sadra locates the enduring and disembodied forms of natural substances within the eternal realm of Divine knowledge. At this point, Sadra's notion of the great chain of being 58. Ibid., pp. 104-5. 59. Ibid. 60. After providing a thorough analysis of substantial motion as an intrinsic quality of things, Sadra gives an interesting example of self-defense by emphatically rejecting the charge that his theory is an 'innovation'. It is God, the Sage of all sages, says Sadra, who has laid down substantial motion as the very essence of the world-order. To this effect, Sadra quotes a number of verses from the Qur'an, all of which allude to the difference between appears to be reality and the real state of affairs in the world-order that can be grasped only at a higher level of consciousness. These verses also attest to Sadra's attempt to align his cosmology with that of the Qur'an: And thou seest the hills thou deemest solid flying with the flight of clouds: the doing of Allah Who perfecteth all things (Q. 27: 88). On the day when the earth will be changed to other than the earth, and the heavens (also will be changed (Q. 14: 48). That we may transfigure you and make you what ye know not (Q. 56: 61). In addition to the Qur'anic verses, Sadra also quotes from CA1I ibn Abl Talib's Nahj al-

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(dcfirat al-wujud) comes full circle, and the main dialectical assertion of Sadrean natural philosophy that the order of nature is both self-subsistent and dependent upon the First Cause is stated one more time.

Concluding Remarks Sadra's highly complex and original theory of substantial motion yields a number of important results. First of all, Sadra does away with the Aristotelian notion of a solid substratum as the basis of change and renewal in the world of corporeal bodies. Instead, he resolves the realm of physical bodies into a 'process of change' by introducing the notion of change-insubstance. The world of nature thus becomes a scene for the interplay of contingencies while preserving its 'substantial' unity and integrity. At this juncture, Sadra's concept of change as an existential property of things not only disregards Kalam atomism but also challenges the opaque worldpicture of the Peripatetics. It must now be clear that substantial motion as articulated by Sadra is essentially different from the Peripatetic formulations of generation and corruption. Whereas the latter conceives change as an event of destruction and/or 'coming into being', the former defines change as a process of gradual intensification or diminution in modalities of being. It is also clear that Sadra posits substantial motion as an intrinsic property of things, material and immaterial alike, and envisages a world-picture that is in constant flux on the one hand, and directed towards a universal telos, on the other. As we would expect, Sadra makes a profuse use of the concept of substantial motion and applies it to a number of philosophical problems. The relation between the changing (al-mutaghayyir) and the permanent (althdbit), i.e., God and the world, origination of the soul from the body, i.e., the Sadrean doctrine that the 'soul is bodily in its origination and spiritual in its survival' (jismaniyyat al-huduth ruhaniyyat al-baqcf), and the rejection of the transmigration of souls (tandsukh) are only a few among the philosophical problems that Sadra reformulates in light of his concept of nature and motion-in-substance. In this regard, the implications of Sadra's natural philosophy go far beyond the confines of our present study. It is, however, clear that Sadra conceives change and permanence, the two Balaghah, which points, once again, to Sadra's desire to construe the intrinsic-existential transformation of things as a religio-cosmological doctrine. Cf. Kitdb al-mashdcir, pp. 66-7.

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interdependent aspects of the order of nature, as modes of being (anhff alwujud). It is the all-encompassing reality of being (wujud) that connects together the cosmos from celestial spheres to animals and minerals. It is also the same reality that establishes an inexorable relationship between Sadrean physics and metaphysics.

[8] IqbaPs Appropriation of Modern Science vis-a-vis Religion: A Critical Appraisal

Muhammad Maroof Shah Iqbal is amongst the most influential Muslim thinkers of the 20th century who realized the great significance of the problem of modern science and tried to appropriate it. His response to modern science, especially its methodological and philosophical assumptions, is unique, unprecedented and highly unorthodox and bold. His modernist rationalist demy thologizing approach to traditional religion is conditioned by modern science and scientific Weltanschauung. IqbaPs appropriating, eclectic and synthetic genius is brilliantly displayed in his appropriation of modern science in Islam. He emerges as a grand apologist for modern science with its problematic methodological and philosophical assumptions. His belief in modern scientific project is unshakable and greatly conditions his approach to religion. His is perhaps the only significant consistent modernist approach to and appropriation of Islam. The post-Renaissance scientific and Enlightenment project he takes so seriously and approaches so sympathetically that he legitimizes the whole project within Islam and interprets birth of Islam as the birth of inductive intellect. He fully knew what it means to be modern and doesn't hesitate to pay the price for it. His whole philosophy and interpretation of Islam reveals influence of modernist scientific outlook. His belief in evolution with its methodological naturalism, his idea of perfect man who is yet to come, his belief in progress, his eschatology, his interpretation of the idea of finality of prophethood, his critique of classical spirit, his theodicy, his critique of mysticism, his empiricist rationalistic defence of religion, his inductionist outlook, his demythologization of the legend of the Fall, his divinization of time and time-centred interpretation of Islam, his panentheistic leanings, his praise of innovation, novelty and creativity, his humanism, his concept of moral evil (Iblis), his appropriation of the West as the further development of some of the most important phases of Islamic culture and thus welcoming Islam's movement towards the West, his epistemology, his critical attitude towards traditions, his privileging of becoming over being, time over space, deed over idea or contemplation, his understanding of prophetic and mystical experience, his elevation of scientist to the post of sagehood, his philosophy of ego, his rejection of traditional cosmology, his condoning of the Renaissance, his attitude towards Nature and environment, his interpretation of man's vicegerancy, his belief in a growing universe, his charecterization of intuition as developed intellect, his interpretation of Muslim culture and civilization, his critique of "Magian" supernaturalism, and 'worn out' or 'practically a dead metaphysics' of present day Islam - all these reveal the influence of modern science (the term understood in a broader perspective such as that of Paton)1 in Iqbal as will be discussed in the following pages. Although his The Reconstruction of Religious Thought In Islam "can't be said to be a critique of Magian supernaturalism, nor, perhaps, is it altogether a dissertation on Islamic awareness of inductive intellect or Islam's saying 'yes' to the world of matter and the unique emphasis it lays on the empirical aspect of Reality and thence on science and power over Nature",2 the fact remains that

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argues for a drastic reconstructive operation on traditional Islamic thought, conceding too much to modern Promethean and Faustian spirit in the process. What can become of the traditional religion like Islam at the hands of modern science is illustrated with great force and boldness in the pages of Reconstruction. How far can one go with Iqbal with his great grand synthesis of and modern science will be explored in this paper. The whole tradition of modernist Islam, of which Iqbal is the great spokesperson, is intimately connected with the proj ect of modern science. Modern science has created contemporary age which is appropriately referred to as the Age of Science. Modern age defines itself with respect to theory and practice of modern science. Modern consciousness or sensibility is primarily moulded or conditioned by modern knowledge which is province of modern science. Modern man is incapable of reliving the alien traditional universe, as a vital process. He has moved form the past traditional medieval "Weltanschauung to a modern one. He thinks that he has really evolved and judging from his evolutionary worldview that means rejection of "leading strings of tradition" and moves confidently into future unhampered by the past. Modern man, who thinks that he can't unlearn the development of knowledge in the last few centuries has committed himself to Enlightenment project. The post-Renaissance scientific worldview that created the modern western civilization prides itself on its achievements and can't relinquish them that have led to desacralized, areligious or irreligious secularist age of ours that sharply distinguishes itself from all traditional religious worldviews. The traditionalists reject the whole project of modernity and modern science, its philosophy, methodology and its grand claim to stand as judge over religion. Iqbal, speaking for the modern man shares his basic predicament, his compulsions, his psychology and positivist empiricist rationalist spirit, his anthropocentricism and his humanism. His addressee is modern educated man - Muslim or otherwise. He is himself a convert to modern project although he doesn't forget his traditional roots. Without being forgetful of modern sensibility he wants a space for Islam and tries to fit it in its mould. He approaches from the vantage point of modernity and modern science. He self confessedly sees through modern Western eyes. He takes modernity for granted as given, as something that is here to stay. He emerges, despite his serious criticisms of the West, as an apologist for modern age and its science. In his preface to The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam he gives reasons for embarking on the project of reconstruction of religious thought. He doesn't object to modern mind's inability to organically "assimilate on alien universe by reliving, as a vital process, that special type of inner experience on which religious faith ultimately rests."3 He accepts and even praises it and brings a Quranic warrant for it. Modern man's habit of concrete thought has rendered himself less capable of that experience [mystical religious experience] which he further suspects because of its "liability to illusion."4 He criticizes the later day representatives of Sufism for ignoring the modern mind and for having become absolutely incapable of receiving any fresh inspiration from modern thought and experience.5 He deplores the absence of "a scientific form of religious knowledge" provided by methods that are physiologically less violent and psychologically more suitable to a concrete type of mind.6 Naturally he finds traditional Sufistic techniques and literature as outdated as it uses outmoded medievalist phraseology and fits medieval rather than modern psychological framework. He accordingly reconstructs "practically a dead metaphysics" of traditional Islam and attempts to reconstruct

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manifestly "a deadening effect on the modern mind."8 According to him it is our duty to watch the progress of human thought, as if it affects metaphysics and religion in some vital manner. As charted out in the preface, he proceeds in his first two lectures to evaluate religion from scientific rationalist empiricist viewpoint. He attempts to reconstruct religion accordingly, in the light of modern scientific thought rather than the vice versa (i.e., critiquing or reconstruct modern science in the light of traditional Islam or Islamizing it.) His first lecture is titled "Knowledge and Religious Experience." This title looks very apologetic and even heterodox form the view point of traditional orthodoxy. The title implies that knowledge - which he identifies with modern scientific knowledge - could be vitally relevant in our evaluation of religion. This also makes a questionable assumption on science's ability to provide us genuine ideology free, objective certain knowledge. It assumes scientific enterprise to be rational and concerned with truth. It also tries to secure for religion questionable empirical foundation. It circumscribes the realm of religion to a part of our experience. It compromises independent metaphysical grounding of all-inclusive realm of religion. Religion is defined from a narrowly conceived experientialist position. He starts from the assumption that religion stands in greater need of a rational foundation than even the dogmas of science and approvingly quotes Whitehead that the ages of faith are the age of rationalism. He hazards a very bold suggestion that thought and intuition spring from the same root and complement each other. The one grasps Reality piecemeal; the other grasps it in its wholeness .... Both seek vision of the same Reality and which reveals itself to them in accordance with their function in life. In fact, intuition, as Bergson rightly says, is only a higher kind of intellect.9

In his search for rational foundations (a demand dictated by dominant scientific mood of modern age) for Islam he seeks the help of questionable grounds. He interprets the Prophet's prayer 'God! Grant me knowledge of the ultimate nature of things' as a search for the rational foundations of Islam. Modern science is the background paradigm or framework through and within which he approaches Islam. He accuses classical Muslim scholarship for approaching Islam through Greek eyes.10 However the same charge could be laid on Iqbal that he reads the Quran in the light of modern Western scientific thought. The justification for so doing, according to Iqbal, is the Quran's anti-classical and modern spirit itself. It is the problem of conflict between Reason and religion that Iqbal approaches in a unique way that reveals this unique appropriation of methodology and philosophy of science in Islam. He privileges science and its empiricist methodology to evaluate religion's claims. Modern man's bias for the concrete too is taken for granted. Religion must look scientific to appeal to Iqbal and to modern mind (much in the similar manner of Marx's anxiety to show scientific guise of socialism). Iqbal isn't comfortable with traditional metaphysics or metaphysical approach to the question in hand. The positivist spirit of Iqbal makes him to defend religion on non-metaphysical grounds. All regions of human experience are, for traditional cultures, expressions or manifestations of universal principles or permeated by the sacred. Religion, in a sense, is all inclusive; it excludes nothing. If religious experience - special region of human experience - is proved illusory through such approaches as that of psychoanalysis,

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approach of interpreting or explaining higher in terms of lower (of psychologizing Spirit or Religion, of applying philosophical test to religion) to which Iqbal is tempted to subscribe at certain places. Modern secularist man relegates religion to only a certain region of experience (mostly private) and tries to explain away its cognitive or independent autonomous status through various strategies. In order to avoid existence or knowledge claims of religion he has invented various stratagems. Iqbal too manages, though unsuccessfully, to keep religion's existence or knowledge claims - which create the intellectual impediment to it according to most modern scientists and philosophers of science and philosophers of religion in modern times especially - at bay, in order to avoid conflict between the two. He tries to sharply distinguish the domains of religion and science but is forced to defend religion on experiential or experimental grounds and this creates difficulties. To clarify the whole issue, I quote Paton's formulation of the thesis on possibility of conflict between religion and science. Iqbal's own position or formulation could be thus better contextualized and appraised. Paton's formulation which represents typical modern formulation of the problem runs as follows. All religions offer us a doctrine of man, a doctrine of history, a doctrine of the universe and a doctrine of God. Doctrines or dogmas necessarily claim to be true and this means that it enters into competition with other doctrines also claiming to be true. And these are the doctrines of science with which religion so far as it is doctrinal, may and does come into conflict. Here science includes "not only the natural science, but also the mental; and social sciences such as psychology and anthropology. It covers also the modern methods of historical and literary criticism - the development of all these disciplines in the last 400 years has brought religion face to face with a situation very different from any that existed before."11 Copernican revolution has threatened to submerge religion. Modern physics and astronomy have proved inimical to religion. The Book of Genesis (and the Quranic story of genesis is essentially similar to it) is no longer literally interpreted and non-literal interpretations doesn't convince many sceptical physicists. Man is no longer seen at the centre of universe. This universe hardly seems to have been designed keeping man in view. As Paton says, the main impediments to religion arise from two things - from the character of scientific method and form the conception of world as governed throughout by unvarying law. As early as Descartes it was already realized that physical laws were independent of, if not opposed to, the idea of purpose in the universe. It is this second interpretation which has prevailed. When Laplace, speaking on the existence of God, said "I have no need of that hypothesis," he meant that the conception of God's activity or purpose played no part in his formulation of scientific law In that specific sense the dictum of Laplace is universally held by science today.12 Modern physics has proved unfavourable to belief in miracles, in providence and in human freedom. Paton needs to be quoted at length: ...so far as physics is incompatible with miracles and has no use for the divine purpose in the universe, it is hard to see how we can retain the idea of providence in general and special providence in particular. But this isn't the worst. The character of scientific law appears to require a universal determinism which applies to the movements of human bodies as much as the movement of a smallest or the remotest star. This cuts at the roots of all morality and of religion as well.

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averages. Physics itself even recognizes the principle of indeterminacy and so leaves at last a chink for human freedom. Hence perhaps the future before religion is not quite as bleak as it has been painted. Without any wish to be dogmatic on these difficult subjects we must still ask ourselves whether those who find comfort in such considerations may not also be clutching at straws. To abandon the old fashioned views of causation is by no means to give up the universality of law: all it amount to is that the laws have a different character. The microscopic space left open by the principle of indeterminacy is far too small for the exercise of human freedom if indeed we can conceive human freedom at all as manifested only in the apparent chinks and interstices of the physical universe. The late Prof. Susan Stebbing was right when she said, "it can not be maintained that all that is required for human freedom is some amount of uncertainty in the domain of microphysics." And if we wish to argue that the new physics is less unfavourable to religion than the old, we must take our reckoning with what is called the second law of thermodynamics, according to which the universe is steadily running down. It is hard to see how this how this can offer any ground either for moral optimism or for religious faith.13 If Russell's oft quoted pessimistic charecterization of modern scientific outlook be regarded as suspect, we should listen to Albert Schweitzer, a deeply religious thinker. My solution of the problem is that we must make up our minds to renounce completely the optimisticethical interpretation of the world. If we take the world as it is, it is impossible to attribute to it a meaning in which the aims and objects of mankind and of individual man have a meaning.14

Much of the pessimistic and absurdist character of modern literature and philosophy is attributable to influence of modern science. Camus' is a case in point. Nietzsche's famous claim that 'God is dead' was partly made under the influence of modern science. Pessimism of post-Darwinian world, portrayed so acutely the works of such writers as Hardy, colours twentieth century literature. The challenge to religion from biology has especially been widely noted. The Darwinian evolution is perhaps the most important factor that has caused modern man to turn away from theism. The theory of evolution has strongly questioned the argument from design, which was commonly regarded as the most cogent proof for existence of God. The evolution, from a human point of view, seems wasteful and even cruel and the main qualities making for survival appeared to be lust and violence and deceit. It has given less than no support to belief in the wisdom and benevolence of the Creator or to the view that the end of creation was the furtherance of virtue, and as Paton notes "perhaps the greatest shock of all came form the discovery that man, far from having been specially created in the image of God, was himself the product of this unintelligent process of evolution and must look back to a long line of ape like ancestors."15 Another significant challenge has come from psychology. Mainstream psychology has proved more or less hostile to traditional religion. Although there have been attempts to make use of it in the interests of religion it produces an emotional and intellectual background so different from that of religious tradition that the combination of the two becomes very difficult.

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religion. Jung - another great name in modern psychology, too is agnostic with respect to metaphysical truth of religious beliefs. His psychologizing of religion is hardly reconcilable with traditional religious worldview. The Realm of the Spirit hardly figures anywhere; it is crudely appropriated in terms of the Realm of the Psyche. Erich Fromn, one of the most influential humanist psychoanalysts, is convinced that all theistic religions are destined to disappear. Skinner's behavourist psychology too is hostile to religion. There are other human sciences besides psychology, and their influence has also tended to be psychologically, if not logically, unfavourable to religion. Anthropology, coloured by evolutionary worldview, has been instrumental in perpetuating the view expressed in the words, 'from the subhuman to the human.' It finds parallels for the most sacred mysteries in the heathen superstitions. It suggests that religion is a survival of something primitive in the experience of the race, just as psychology suggests it is a survival of something primitive in the experience of the child. Even economics has joined in the unholy assault. Some economists have suggested that the "economic man" was the only kind of man there is and thus suggestion has been hardened into a dogma by the Marxists. All these human sciences, among which sociology also may be included, have the common characteristic of treating man as one object among other objects: they tend to explain his thoughts and his actions as the effect offerees outside himself, forces whose influence can be determined and even controlled in accordance with ascertainable scientific laws. The wave of historical method and historical criticism has also been highly significant scientific movement in recent times that has contributed heavily to erosion of traditional religion. Although it is the Bible that has received the most critical attention in this regard, the Quran too hasn't been spared from this attack. The orientalists have exploited this mode of inquiry. Orthodox scientific establishment is strongly resisting religious appropriation of science. It is usually agnostic if not atheistic in orientation. In the name of truth, facts and objectivity it has launched a crusade against "superstition" called religion. A leading authority (Julian Huxley) has vetoed against religious explanation of the world by saying that if events have natural causes, they don't have supernatural causes. The naturalist framework of modern science to which it is committed by its very methodology can't be but antagonistic towards theistic religion's existence claims. Richard Dawkins, the famous evolutionary biologist who wrote The Blind Watchmaker rejecting fashionable "way of two compartments" thesis i.e., positing separate domains for faith and science to avoid head on conflict between the two says, "It is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away form science's turf, restricting itself to morals and values .... Religions make existence claims and this means scientific claims"16 and thus as a scientist he must oppose religion tooth and nail as science only can make existence claims and religion's existence claims conflict with it. He is echoing Freud in this connection. Freud in his concluding lecture in New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis concludes with a statement of what he calls "scientific Weltanschauung" which represents more or less the official attitude of the Church of science. In essence, he thinks, "it asserts that there is no other source of knowledge of the universe but the intellectual manipulation of carefully verified observations, in fact, what is called research and that no knowledge can be obtained from revelation, intuition or inspiration." Freud makes the drastic implications of this statement quite explicit.

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ne snail draw nis convictions ana in wmcn ne snail place nis oenei.

He goes on to declare in a tone reminiscent of some ecclesial authority: such an attitude is considered particularly respectable, tolerant, broad minded and free from narrow prejudice. Unfortunately, it is not tenable, it shares all the pernicious qualities of an entirely unscientific Weltanschauung and in practice come to much the same thing. The base fact is that truth can't be tolerant and can't admit compromise or limitations; that scientific research looks on the whole field of human actively as its own and must adopt an uncompromisingly critical attitude towards another power that seeks to usurp any part of its province.

Religion is incompatible with science according to Freud because it too makes truth claims and can't surrender them. He asserts that science alone can correspond to reality and 'it is this correspondences with the real external world we call truth.' He then goes on to assert that when religion claims that it can take the place of science and that because it is beneficent and ennobling, it must therefore be true, that claim is, in fact an encroachment, which, in the interests of everyone, should be resisted. Not only religion but also philosophy, doesn't seem to Freud to offer man a genuine alternative to scientific truth. Insofar as it parts company with science by clinging to the illusion that it can produce a complete and coherent picture of the universe, philosophy must be regarded as an impostor in the halls of knowledge. The positivist philosophy of science has been so influential in the 20th century in usurping the place of all philosophy. Thus even philosophical test of religious truth which Iqbal undertakes may be of no value to scientific Weltanschauung. Only purely scientific tests aren't suspected by modern scientific age. Freud gives his verdict that philosophy any more than religion can't be a substitute of science. Both together fall under Freud's interdict. "Both together should be outcasts from human culture if what he calls "our best hope for the future" that is, the intellect - the scientific spirit, reason should in time establish a dictatorship over the human mind." The outlines of philosophy that can stand in post scientific age are prescribed by Russell, arguably the most influential interpreter of modern physics (on which Iqbal tries to cash ) in his oft quoted summing up of the general effect of the modern scientific outlook: That man is the product of causes which had no provision of the end they were achieving ; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinctions in the vast death of the solar system and that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of universe in ruins - all these things - if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain , that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundations of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation hencefortrh be safely built.17

Albert Einstein, the giant of 20th C.E. physics and most often quoted by modern religionists for his sympathetic views on the issue, couldn't keep his faith in personal God and traditional religion in the face of modern scientific outlook. He had no religious beliefs and had only a vague notion of impersonal Godhead that is in no way the Supreme Creator God of religion

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almost pantheistic vein, Stephen Hawking refers to the laws of nature as the 'mind of God.' This pantheistic God isn't the God of theism or traditional religion. This is not even the God of panentheism. Einstein once described the aim of enterprise of physics as to know why nature is the way it is and not otherwise." Thereby one experiences, so as to speak, that God Himself couldn't have arranged these connections in any other way than that which factually exists. This is the Promethean element of the scientific experience. Here has always been for me the particular magic of scientific effort."19 For most modern physicists the concept of God which has been discredited (or made incredible) in the modern scientific age, is "an interested God, a creator and law giver who has established not only the laws of nature and the universe but also standards of good and evil, some personality that is concerned with our actions, some thing in short that is appropriate for us to worship"20 in the eyes of modern physicists such as Weinberg. The modern scientist's God is mostly Einstein's "Spinoza's God who reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists," and not "a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."21 Weinberg, known for his critique of theism, makes pungent comment on it. "But what possible difference does it make to anyone if we use the word 'God' in place of 'order' or 'harmony', except perhaps to avoid the accusation of having no God? Of course, anyone is free to use the word 'God' in that way, but it seems to me the concept of God not so much wrong as unimportant."22 The development of secular theology is largely a response to modern scientific outlook. Weinberg is sceptical of possibility of finding an interested God in the final laws of nature. He notes that "all our experience throughout the history of science has tended in the opposite direction, towards a chilling impersonality in the laws of nature." He elaborates: Judging from the historical experience, I would guess that though we shall find beauty in the final laws of nature, we will find no special status for life or intelligence. An fortiori, we will we find no special standards of value or morality. And so we will find no hint of any God who cares about such things. We may find these thins else where, but not in the laws of nature.23

He gives his strong statement on the conflict between religion and science while discussing Gould's view that asserts that religion and science don't come in conflict (which is widespread today among scientist and religious liberals) in these words: This seems to me to represent an important retreat of religion from positions it once occupied. Once nature seemed inexplicable without a nymph in every brook and a dryad in every tree. Even as late as the nineteenth century the design of plants and animals was regarded as visible evidence of a creator. There are still countless things in nature that we cannot explain but we think we know the principles that have to look to cosmology and elementary particle physics. For those who see no conflict between science and religion, the retreat of religion form the ground occupied by science is nearly complete."24 Modern science is built on the dogma of denial of hierarchy of existence and the symbolist spirit of traditional sciences.

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vis-a-vis orthodox scientific approach. I again quote Weinberg who commenting on Phillip Johnson - who is amongst the most respectable academic critics of evolution -, says ... in another respect I think that Johnson is right. He argues that there is an incompatibility between the naturalistic theory of evolution and religion as generally understood and he takes to task the scientists and educators who deny it. He goes on to complain that 'naturalistic' evolution is consistent with the existence of "God" only if by that term we mean no more than a first cause which retires from further activity after establishing the laws of nature and setting the natural mechanism in motion.25

Von Till's Fully Gifted Creationism is disguised naturalism in this view. Dominant scientific orthodoxy argues that science has falsified Christianity (and theistic religion in general) on various doctrinal commitments in particular or at least science has shown that religious explanation of universe is either false if taken literally or it is non-cognitive discourse. Philosophical naturalist Wilfred Sellars puts it thus, "in the dimension of describing and explaining the world; science is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of what isn't that it is not."26 Nowhere is this attitude more prevalent than in the discourse of creation and evolution. As one atheist proclaimed, "Evolution has made the world safe for atheists." The famous evolutionary naturalist George Gay lord Simpson says: "there is neither need not excuse for postulation of non-material intervention in the origin of life, the rise of man, or any other part of the long history of the material cosmos.27 Contrary to what theistic evolutionists assert, there is a conflict between the religion and science on this vital issue. Philip E. Johnson rightly points out: The conflict between the naturalistic worldview and the Christian supernaturalistic worldview goes all the way down. It can't be papered over by superficial compromises.... It can't be mitigated by reading the Bible figuratively rather than literally ... .there is no satisfactory way to bring two fundamentally different stories together although various bogus intellectual systems offer a superficial compromise to those who are willing to overlook a logical contradiction or two. A clear thinker simply has to go one way or another.28

Many leading protagonists of science such as Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan have used evolution as shorthand for scientific naturalism. Theistic science holds that there is an unseen realm, the supernatural realm that sustains the visible realm. The division between natural and supernatural realms has to be maintained if religion isn't to be reduced to what Susan Sontag calls 'piety without content.' Miracles needn't be explained away. Demythologizing attempts of certain modern theologians inspired primarily by modern science are illegitimate in any theistic world view. Both methodological and metaphysical naturalism must be rejected by a consistent theist. Traditional religions and civilizations are inconceivable without what is called as hierarchy of existence that involves the idea of irruption of the supernatural into the natural realm. The vertical reference can't be severed. It needn't hold to the God of gaps position but naturalist critics of God of gaps thesis too can't be held. Pantheism and panenthiesm as theological positions are heterodox from a strictly theistic perspective of theistic science.

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methodological though not metaphysical naturalism of evolutionism. Iqbal adopts inductionist methodology, believing in rational, objective and realistic character of scientific enterprise. He is overawed by the achievements of science both in the realm of thought as well as the realm of practice. He avoids the conflict by separating the domains of religion and science but inconsistently seems to advocate an integrationist approach also. He argues for scientific character of religion and tries to provide an empirical basis for it. He extends science's jurisdiction over religion and holds that the former can evaluate, clarify and purify the latter. He attempts to unearth the scientific face of religion (Islam). He takes science as the master, the key and accordingly reconstructs religious thought. He is more respectful than critical towards basic methodological and philosophical premises of modern science. He hazards very bold reconciliatory hypotheses and attempts to woo modern man and appropriate the project of Scientism and Modernity. This is the brief summary of Iqbalian attitude vis-a-vis modern science. Now this will be elaborated and relevant questions clarified. We start from his characterization of scientific enterprise, its definition and its basic attributes and scope. Although he doesn't give us any standard definition of his own one can easily get on overall picture of his approach by clarifying the associated problems with which he deals. He seems to assume the problematic definition of science as the explanation of everything. He assumes that science has the ability to tell us what things are - his interpretation of Prophet's prayer 'God show me the things as they are' as a search for rational foundation of Islam29 shows this assumption quite clearly. He thinks that science reveals the behaviour of Ultimate Realty.30 Science is a window to the divine. Scientist is a sage. The role that religion has traditionally assumed of knowing the Reality, of ultimate nature of things along with their origin and destiny is almost usurped by science in Iqbalian perspective. If God is the most Real and science is observation of His character31 then it is clear that science has the capacity to know (nay live) the truth. Science is supremely and purely rational enterprise. He takes very simplistic and unproblematic view of science, its methodology and philosophy. He assumes unproblematic factuality and objectivity of science. He also assumes that science can define World-All or Whole and then scientifically also know it. He assumes, unwarrantedly, unproblematic nature of the language of science. He supposes cognitive instead of social and cultural nature of scientific method. He forgets that science can make statements which are absolutely certain or true; only mathematics (technical language of science) can make such statements but they would then be analytical or empirically vacuous and not synthetic statements. Synthetic statements of physical, biological and psychological sciences (which respectively deal with the three levels of experience, according to Iqbal and are involved in knowing the behaviour of Ultimate Reality) can only be probable or falsifiable. Traditionalist, Marxist, postmodernist and other critiques of science, its ideology and methodology especially its objectivity, universality and its epistemic sovereignty and certainty weaken and problematize any simplistic belief in the power of science as we see in Iqbal. He doesn't seem to concede that there exist a striking diversity of theories as to how rationality in general and rationality of science in particular are to be characterized and understood. Even worse it isn't clear how these disagreements may be settled rationally for each theory of rationality will quite rationally imply a different answer to the question of how

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are false.32 Since the time of Newton, the Cartesian intellectualism has been in disarray. The triumph of Newtonian over Cartesian physics, Kantian critique of pure Reason, discovery of non-Euclidean geometries, all led to scepticism in Descartes' rationalism. Hume forcefully attacked the Baconian empiricism as it is inconsistent with induction in that the latter required the acceptance of a principle whose own proof or justification can't rest upon experience. If empiricism fails to exhibit natural science as a rational enterprise, how can one adopt at constant empiricist attitude towards both science and religion in the manner of Iqbal? Currently the very popular view of rationality is the probabilistic view of rationality which as a form of fallibilism argues that science can't be proved true from empirical evidence; there is no certainty in science except, perhaps at the level of empirical evidence itself. Every attempt to secure certainty for evidence itself fails. As Popper and Carnap have shown the absolute probability of universal laws is zero, so probabilist view too isn't without difficulties. Kuhn and Feyerbend problematized the requirement that rationality be choice determinant between competing scientific theories. This choice is determined by socio-psychological factors (Kuhn) or by opportunistic propaganda (Feyerbend). Foucault's critique of Enlightenment or modernist rationality and his unveiling of unholy alliance between power and knowledge shows extremely problematic nature of rationality. How problematic, in the face of all this, is any attempt to secure scientific rational basis of Islam or prove that the Quran legitimized 'rational' modern science? How precarious and dangerous is any attempt at making modern science, its rationality, inductionism and empiricism ally of the Quran? How difficult to base any reconstructionist endeavour on too respectful an attitude towards the pretension of modern science which is by its very nature marginalizing, exclusivist, dogmatic and in conflict with much of religion as past history of relationship between the two shows. Modern science, which is to be sharply distinguished from traditional sciences (such as Islamic science) has come to dominate only when the latter were repressed and marginalized through brute force, propaganda and persecution in the manner of Inquisition as philosophical naturalism was given vogue. It is only the brutal repression of the realm of Unreason - that includes the mystical, the intuitive - was suppressed by the guardians of reason and enlightenment. Foucault's classic Madness and Civilization and The Birth of Clinic demonstrate how all this has been accomplished. Feyerbend, the great executioner of scientism, in his Against Method showed that for every principle or method or even of intellectual integrity, there was a violation committed by some great scientist, usually Galileo. For him science was a racket, protecting itself by a dogmatic orthodoxy as intolerant as any other in history. Iqbal's assumption is that science - and it is modern science that he takes as paradigmatic way of doing science paying hardly any heed to distinct character of traditional sciences and many heterodox or marginal sciences that have always existed but silenced by modern science that are built on very different methodological and philosophical assumptions. The associated philosophical perspectives are widely divergent. Mushrooming of alternative, heterodox and marginal sciences in recent years shows how naive is uncritical acceptance of inductionist and empiricist and rationalist character of modern science. The question is how can we ensure or define orthodoxy in science? How to differentiate between pseudo and true science? The so-called pseudo sciences like alchemy and astrology (Iqbal too seems to take them as pseudo

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is where and which is true science, true rationality and has science anything to do with truth? Both evolutionists and creationists are battling for declaring evolutionism and creationism respectively as only true sciences to be taught in schools. Islam, in an unprecedented move in the history of Islamic thought, is equated with the birth of inductive intellect by Iqbal and this is implicit legitimating of modern inductionist scientific project. His defence of the finality of the finality of prophethood turns out to be an apology for modern science with its problematic methodological and philosophical assumptions. For him the Prophet of Islam closes off the ancient age and announces the birth of modern age characterized by belief in inductionism and reason. Iqbal's appropriation of modern science in Islam is best discerned in his novel and unique interpretation of the finality of prophethood. He interpreted this key doctrine of Islam in such a way that legitimizes modern inductionist empiricist scientific project. This point will be elaborated below in detail. Iqbal's great synthetic genius is displayed brilliantly in his approach to the traditional doctrine of the finality of prophethood. His great efforts to reconcile two separate epistemic and cognitive universes - of traditional Islam and modern West - are here stretched to limit. Iqbal here offers a unique justification or apology for the modern project - for the modern man's great fall as the traditionalist perennialist authors would see it. Iqbal legitimizes by implication much of modern reductionist, rationalist, naturalist, secularist scientific project. The Prophet is made to relinquish his authority in so subtle a fashion in favour of the authority of Reason and inductive science that most orthodox critics of Iqbal miss the full import of Iqbal - the Iqbal of Reconstruction (not the poet Iqbal who advocated Love (of Prophet) as the supreme religion and wrote such great poem as "Zauq-o-Shauq" in praise of the Prophet. The Prophet abolishes in practice his own authority in favour of claims of inductive intellect or scientific Reason. The Prophet is made to crown the Reason (and Science of History, of Nature and Psyche) as the Sovereign arbiter of true and false knowledge after his departure. The post-prophetic age is the age of inductive intellect and the latter has the superiority over mystical experience as the latter must be subject to the critical scrutiny of reason. The Prophet of Islam didn't claim any supernatural authority. In his case "the finite center of life sunk into his own infinite depths only to spring up again, with fresh life"33 He only asked for cultivation of inductive intellect. That can be the only sense in which the spirit of his revelation belongs to the modern world. For him "The constant appeal to reason and experience in the Quran and the emphasis it lays on Nature and History as sources of human knowledge, are all different aspects of the same idea of finality."34 The idea of finality connotes absolute freedom of scientific endeavour in the pursuit of truth; of discovering the behaviour and habit of God. Scientist is like a mystic in the act of prayer. For this unique apology for modern science Iqbal had to reread history and to substantiate his rereading he takes the help of scrapes. He is fully cognizant of the fact that classical age of Islam was unaware of the significance of the idea of finality. He says: "Early Muslims emerging out of the spiritual slavery of pre-Islamic Asia were not in a position to realize the true significance of this basic idea"!35 He suggests very boldly, in a tone which is shocking to orthodox spirit, that hitherto the purpose of Islam was only partially revealed. Analogous reading of the New Testament by Altizer is a small step from this approach. Now modern science is quite competent to judge inner experience of a

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guarantee veracity of his claim. The Prophet's own attitude towards Ibn Sayyad's psychic experience is extrapolated by Iqbal to connote that mystic experience must now be regarded as perfectly natural experience, open to critical scrutiny like other aspects of human experience. This is precisely the point that mystics will challenge. There is nothing natural about mystic experience. The mystic experience by definition is Eternity exploding and dissolving the Realm of Time. It is the Superatural world irrupting on the natural. The essence or the core of mystic experience can't be approached and appropriated in naturalistic terms. It transcends the categories of reason, logic, time, space that define natural realm. Stace, in his Time and Eternity (1952) provides a classic explication of mystical experience as wholly different or even opposed to natural experience, the ordinary realm. The point is that religion doesn't recognize the traditional division between nature and supernature. The belief in the hierarchy of existence forms the important part of all traditional premodern religions and civilizations including Islam. It is the naturalism of modern science that has erected artificial barriers against the irruption of supernatural into the natural realm. Here is a continuum between the visible (Shuhud) and the invisible (Gayyib) or the natural and the supernatural worlds in the Quranic perspective. All authentic mysticism claims supernatural authority. Mystic experience continues to be a vital fact today as Iqbal himself concedes. And it continues be a call from heaven, summons from the otherworld, from God to the man living in time, in this world that isn't that world, the world of Eternity. The Realm of the Spirit isn't reducible to the Realm of the Psyche as all psychological approaches to religion would assume or practically imply. Religion concerns itself with the Realm of the Spirit, the realm of the Grace, the Realm of the Supernatural. Psychologizing religion is tantamount to explaining it away. Dichotomy of the natural and the supernatural is inadmissible and to use it for vetoing against mystic's supernatural claims is to negate the very raison d'etre of religion as Mystical Way or Tariqah. It is through psychology that religion has been mostly approached in modern times and this represents the most pernicious distortion of religion at the hands of modern science. It is Iqbal's appropriation of psychology to which we now turn to demonstrate how deep has penetrated the modern scientific spirit (that is so antitraditional in orientation) in him. There is no water tight distinction between nature and supernature; they fuse and interpenetrate in all traditional worldviews. There is nothing which is not supernatural when looked from a certain perspective. Dichotomy between the natural and the supernatural has been caused in the dark age of Enlightenment. Prophetic consciousness is a non-rational mode of consciousness and life in its own interest must inhibit it so that the inductive intellect takes over. It implies all other modes - rational and non-rational - of approaching Reality are now prohibited. Thousands forms of non- inductive and non-rational modes of consciousness, of which the mystics and psychics speak must be suppressed in the interests of science. Miracles, magic, occultism and theosophy be rejected as dangerous to the interests of life. The sixth sense must not be cultivated. What Huxley calls "Mind at Large" too must not be let loose lest it contaminate our ordinary waking state of consciousness which alone is relevant to induction. Mystics and 'mad' people must be consigned to psychiatric clinics; they must surrender their divine authority (that alone makes them mystics, to the authority of logical inductive intellect that by definition, on its own terms, excludes mystical approach). Sages and seers must

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must be subject to critical scrutiny of reason, to psychiatric examination. The Prophet too was a kind of psychiatrist. Everything that comes under the realm of Unreason must be suppressed in the interests of Reason. The intuitive, the mystical, the feminine - anything that smacks of Unreason should be brought under the critical scrutiny of reason which naturally finds them inimical to its own interests. Psychiatric wards should flourish if the sanctity and sovereignty of Reason be challenged. This is what has happened in the recent history of Europe as the Enlightenment Reason and inductive intellect struggled to rule the world. Foucault shows how these grim facts have come to stay. How in the name of science and reason, religion - the repository of unreason - was crushed and ruthless secularization set in. Psychiatric hospitals proliferated in Post-Enlightenment Europe. No longer could mystics and 'mad' people be assimilated in the Age of Reason. What Iqbal calls Farzana, Sahibi Junoon, and Aashaq are excluded from its dominion. Iqbal too mourns the heart's death in modern times. He is the great critic of the Age of Reason and pleads for returning of the kingdom of Heart. Iqbal - the prophet of inductive intellect or scientific reason - doesn't fully cognize implications of his own position. He doesn't show howjunoon, ishq and faith are reconcilable with basic assumptions of modern scientific Weltanschauung. He tries to move two separate boats that run in opposite directions. This passionate critic of modern Western civilization failed to perceive that it is a logical development of empiricist inductionist rationalist outlook that he himself advocates. If prophets keep men in leading strings and mystics claim supernatural authority and life in its own interest must inhibit non-rational modes of consciousness and cognition, man must be thrown back on his own resources as he has come of age, to use Bonhaufer's notorious phrase. Where is the place of heart andjunoon in the heartless scientific age? Iqbal has conceived intuition in intellect's (reason's) image. Although he disparaged aql, the discursive reason and privileged ishq over aql - in his verse, he came dangerously close to defending aql as modern rationalist science understands it. Although it can't be denied that the intellect or intuitive intellect constitutes most important faculty of man and all religion is based on this and this is what Iqbal meant by heart, yet he failed to perceive the inherent antagonism between two separate epistemic and cognitive universes viz, the epistemic universe of traditional Islamic science and mysticism and that of reason or inductive intellect (cultivated by modern science). He shared too much of the modern scientific rationalist spirit himself to notice the contradiction between these two separate cognitive universes. The traditional Islamic and modern scientific worldviews are as divergent as possible. Orthodox modern science and its philosophy are deadly against traditional spirit. The doubting agnostic and even materialist modern scientific mind had hardly anything common with the traditional religious spirit. Iqbal in his Reconstruction assumes science to be innocent enterprise, pure and unbiased search for truth, disinterested objective affair. The lofty view he takes of scientist shows this. He takes scientist to be mystic in the act of prayer. The scientist keeps track of the behaviour of God. "The scientific observations of Nature keeps us in close contact with the behaviour of Reality and thus sharpens our inner perception for a deeper vision of it."37 For him search for knowledge is essentially a form of prayer and doing science is thus an act of prayer par excellence. He thus assumes that science is search for knowledge, for truth or Reality. He is all praise for scientific venture although his poetic intuition could perceive the darker side of it.

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demand for a scientific form of religious knowledge. He isn't much concerned with the symbolist Islamic spirit that alone is capable of reading "upon the pages of God's creation, this primordial message which virgin nature still carries upon the face of her manifold manifestations."38 Nature or the world isn't treated as a fact but a symbol by traditional Islamic and traditional science. Nasr has rightly remarked that The highest function of the traditional sciences has always been to aid the intellect and the instrument of perception to see the world and in fact all levels of existence, not as facts or objects but as symbols, as mirrors in which is reflected the face of the Beloved from whom all originates and to whom everything returns.39

The primary concern of Islamic science is to give man the knowledge of hierarchy of being. Iqbal only grudgingly concedes the symbolic function of Nature. He writes: No doubt, the immediate purpose of the Quran in this reflective observation of Nature is to awaken in man the consciousness of that of which Nature is regarded a symbol. But the point to note is the general empirical attitude of the Quran which engendered in its followers a feeling of reverence for the actual and ultimately made them founders of modern science.40

Iqbal is more interested in control of Nature, almost in Baconian spirit, rather than contemplation of it and glorification of God in and through it. Traditionalist perennialist scholars such as Nasr, Guenon, Burckhardt and others have pointed out problems in this position that applaud empiricist inductionist approach of modern science and the historical "fact" that Islam is the founder of modern science. The supposedly innocent character of modern science, its Islamic credentials, its pretension of objectivity, neutrality and grandiose ambition to read the mind of God or unravel the character of Ultimate Reality and develop a Theory of Everything are subject to scathing critique by traditionalist approach. How bitterly is traditionalist spirit opposed to modern scientific spirit is revealed by its attack on the latter's supposed innocence and truth seeking function. I quote Gai Eaton who observed in King of the Castle that the scientist's claim to innocence is incredible in light of the fact that scientists had to struggle for several centuries against the unanimous opposition of the religious community who desperately maintained that science was dangerous, destructive and beguiling. He writes Ibn Arabi, perhaps the greatest of medieval Muslim philosophers compared scientific delving into the secrets of nature to incest, a prying under the mother's skirts; and this is one way of characterizing the desire of one facet of the natural world to know another in its most intimate contours.41

Yousuf Ahsan, summing up traditionalist position says, "The scientific venture is in every sense illegitimate. It carries with it the metaphysical seeds of ruin and to put the matter in plain old-fashioned language it was cursed from the outset and it can't be expected to yield anything but disintegration and destruction."42 Iqbal's response is not distinctly charecterizable in one or the other distinctive categories to which Paton refers. The various responses to this challenge are 'the way of the two components,' 'the way of archaism,' 'the way of absurdity,' 'the way of the kernel and the

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It may appear that Iqbal subscribes to the way of two compartments according to which the conflict between religion and science can't exist because they deal with two separate domains with no communicating door between them. This position has been advocated from various quarters, both religious and scientific. Sharp separation of domains avoids conflict. Iqbal's following observations might be interpreted as one form of 'the way of two components.' No doubt, religious beliefs and dogmas have a metaphysical significance; but it is obvious that they are not interpretations of those date of experience which are the subject of sciences of Nature. Religion is not physics or chemistry seeking an explanation of Nature in terms of causation; it really aims at interpreting a totally different region of human experience - religious experience - the data of which can't be reduced to the data of any other science.43

".... The conflict [between religion and science] is due to misapprehension that both interpret the same data of experience."44 However a closer examination of Iqbal's writings, especially his Madras lectures, reveals that he contradicts this position and also that his position may better be characterized by 'the way of religious experience.' The mutually interactive domains of religion and science are a presupposition of every reconstructionist endeavour. Advances in scientific thought can't have any effect on our theology if one consistently follows the way of two compartments. Iqbal assumes science's right to clarify religious experience and takes the challenge of modern science seriously and embarks on reconstruction of religious thought. We must be ever respectful (albeit critical) towards developments of human thought and accordingly reinterpret - nay reconstruct our religious thought. Thus Iqbal rejects the way of two compartments although he does ingeniously try to cash on it. His panentheistic orientation also implies this. He boldly faces scientific challenge and tries to ingeniously appropriate it. He uses modern developments in physics, biology and psychology to interpret religion in consonance with modern spirit. His attempt to trace modern and scientific elements in the Quran speaks of his rejection of separate domains theory. The way of two compartments has, not quite unjustly, been described as the way of the ostrich. Paton rightly remarks: "The policy of the two compartments may offer some sort of temporary practical solution, but if exalted into a theory it merely restates a problem which it has not solved. However comforting and even it belongs to religion which has a past rather than a future."45 There have been very naive attempts in the direction of the way to two compartments approach also. Iqbal recognizing absurdity of ostrich acting in this connection opts for some kind of reconciliatory approach. He tries to harmonize traditionally widely divergent worldviews of modern science and Islam. His experientalist approach to religion will be discussed later. He rejects what has been called as 'the way of archaism' that meets the problem of conflict between religion and science by going backwards into the past, to a moment when this crisis or challenge was non-existent. All fundamentalist apologetics falls in this category. Its commonest form is the appeal to authority - an appeal characteristic of most if not all religions at certain stages of their development. There is a sound intuition behind its appeal to tradition but the problem arises when incapable or unworthy persons usurp the role of sole interpreter of tradition and complacently approach very complex problems. Dogmatic approach is here seen with all its shortcomings. It declares authoratively that the natural

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thought; but once within the circle there is no further scope for independent thinking. There is hardly any room left for argument except in order to support conclusions already assumed to be true. As Paton says: "...the flight into the past, whatever form it may take, may be one way effacing the impediments of the present one way of carrying out the policy of two compartments; we transport ourselves in imagination to a period when our present difficulties had not arisen."46 The problem with this approach is that it refuses to recognize the problem of modern science. It imaginatively places itself in the past when there was no problem of Western knowledge. Mere archaism is either too complacent or too naive. Many modern ulema may be characterized as archaists and the conceptual and operational anomalies of their approach to modern science are too many to be dealt with here. Iqbal in his Reconstruction rejects 'the way of absurdity' but in his poetic moments he occasionally seems to concede it. He gives great importance to ishq andjunoon - irreason or unreason. He, in the tradition of Rumi, is a great critic of rationalist logic chopping.49 Kierkegaard celebrated unreason and certain modern theologians have argued for this 'way of absurdity.' The mystical philosophers have always defended religion against the attacks of reason and science by a similar approach. It implies abandoning thinking, welcoming paradox and glorifying contradictions. Iqbal has been accused of inconsistency. His was an essentially a mystical soul. He was at heart a Sufi although he criticized Sufism on various grounds also. However, in his philosophical writings, he seems to reject the way of absurdity in unambiguous terms. He thinks that reason by virtue of its non-discursive element can even catch the Infinite. He rejects Ghazalian critique of reason for its inability to grasp God. He hardly ever takes recourse to Tertullian's way of absurdity or Kerkegaardian suspension of reason in matters of religion. He admits the need of rational justification for religion and attempts to give one. It is reasonable enough to recognize the limits of human knowledge and to insist that in the religious life there must be a decision or commitment which is not the result of discursive reasoning. Iman isn't a passive consenting to one or more propositions but vital appropriation of the whole universe as Iqbal rightly notes.50 But once we enter on the path of absurdity with a whole heart, there is no limit to non-sense that may be talked as Paton rightly remarks.51 The way of absurdity is a mad way of pretending that obstacles don't exist. Once we take this path, we are free to do exactly as we like to accept any religion or no religion as the whim seizes us. The 'way of the kernel and the husk' has been another important response to the challenge of modern science. Paton puts the case for this way in the following words: ... if religion is to retain its sanity, it has to adjust itself to the new knowledge. One way in which men begin this adjustment is by attempting to separate the core of religion from its accretions of myth and dogma and legalism and indeed from all the aberrations. This may be called the way of the kernel and the husk. It means the giving up of something even of much, that was precious to our fathers; but perhaps obstacles can be most easily surmounted by those who are content to travel light.52

This approach may reduce religion to moralism and in the name of "letter killeth" religion may itself be killed. Many modern theologians, of diverse orientations and backgrounds, have subscribed to and propagated this view. The religionless religion of the post-modern man and

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a fact that we can't reject but must welcome. In the preface of Reconstruction he makes his stand very clear. For Iqbal, the perfect man is yet to come; modern man is a bridge to him. The perfect man belongs to future, not to past, unlike what traditional Islam believes. The modern man's religion of progressivism and time is sharp antithesis of traditional religion which is 'space'. Schuon writing about this says " like all traditional civilizations, Islam too is a 'space' rather than 'time.'53 There is no way of distinguishing between the kernel and the husk from the modernist perspective. There is no limit to which this pruning could be extended. Modern man is surrounded by an environment of 'piety without content' as Susan Sontag aptly put it. This has been achieved by ruthless application of the 'way of the kernel and the husk.' Secularization has been a result of this application. Rejection of the basic framework of traditional worldview is implied in the basic premises of modernist approach to religion. The 'way of the kernel and the husk' leads to and fuses with the 'the way of allegory.' The statements of what traditionally seem plain statements of fact are interpreted as myths or parables which reveal a higher truth. Those who adopt this course are commonly attacked and even despised both by the upholders of theological dogmatism and by those who wish to explain all religion away. Theodore of Mopsuestia assailed Origen long ago for teaching that Adam wasn't Adam and paradise wasn't paradise and the snake wasn't a snake. The way of allegory has been increasingly resorted to by modern philosophically oriented approach to religion in response to modern scientific challenge. Allegorizing and demythologizing has been a popular way of appropriating modern science's challenge to literal or factual interpretation of religious "propositions" and doctrines. It is harsh and unjustifiable to condemn as dishonest those who seek in this way to maintain continuity with the religion of their fathers or to recover the purity of a faith which they think has been corrupted; but there must be a limit to the possibility of preserving an ancient symbolism or ritual or doctrine while reading in it a different meaning. This is a transitional method and there may come a time which it can no longer be followed with an undivided mind and heart.53

These remarks of Paton are perfectly justifiable from Iqbalian perspective. Paton quotes Ghazali in this context: "whenever a man knows that the glass of his traditional faith is broken, that is a breaking that can't be mended and a separating that can't be united by any sewing or putting together; except it be melted in the fire and given another form"54 While no longer holding traditional framework, he didn't engage in sewing and patching business that many modernist religionists indulge in. although he too suffered occasionally from divided heart and mind, he could manage to provide rational foundations for faith. Iqbal is the greatest demythologizer in recent history of Indian subcontinent Muslim thought after Sir Syed. His scientific (evolutionist anthropological) approach to the legend of the Fall in his third lecture illustrates this. Adam of Iqbal isn't Adam of traditional religion, neither is the Jannat of Iqbal the Jannat of traditional religion. He interprets the fall of Adam as rise of consciousness. Adam isn't the first man,jannat is the primitive state of mind when pangs of self consciousness had not yet arisen. It is under the influence of modern psychology, anthropology and evolutionary hypotheses that he allegorized in a daringly unorthodox fashion

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'way of religious experience.' Iqbal tries to prove empirical basis of religion on this ground. Religion, like science, is based on indubitable experience and is as objective a cognitive enterprise as are physics or chemistry. God is experienced by the mystics in a way that doesn't leave an iota of doubt for the latter about His Reality. It passes all tests for knowledge. The philosophical and the scientific tests for religion's cognitivity, objectivity and its empirical basis and pragmatic truth are applied by Iqbal. He conceives mystic as scientist of the spiritual realm. The methods of mystics and scientists are analogous and both are equally verifiable. Iqbal's is a very bold experientialist approach to traditional religion. Prophets and mystics have the right to be respectively heard by modern man because their claims can be empirically validated or tested. Psychologists who claim to evaluate / analyze religious experiences are to be respectfully approached. Iqbal appropriates the challenge of modern science by modelling religion in analogous scientific framework. Religion is science of the soul. Mystics adopting experimentalist strategy make logical inferences from the "data" and science and philosophy could approach to it on independent grounds. Vivekananda's following statement is true of Iqbalian position: "Experience is the only source of knowledge in the world. Religion is the only science where there is no surety, because it is not taught as a science of experience. This shouldn't be. There is always however, a small group of men who teach religion from experience...."55 He provocatively asserts that religion "isn't only based upon experience of ancient times, but that no man can be religious until he has the same perceptions himself. If there is a God, we must see Him; if there is a soul we perceive it, Otherwise it is better not to believe."56 Vivekananda's open attitude to pragmatic and verificationist tests is shared by Iqbal. I again quote Vivekananda who puts this position succinctly to foreground Iqbalian experientialist position. Vivekananda says in a lecture on "Reason and Religion" delivered in England in 1896: "Is religion to justify itself by discovery of reason through which any other concrete science justifies itself? Are the same methods which we apply to science and knowledge outside to be applied to the science of religion?" He himself gives the answer: In my opinion, this must be so and I am also of the opinion that the sooner it is done, the better. If a religion is destroyed by such investigations it was all the time useless, unworthy superstition and the sooner it goes the better. I am thoroughly convinced that its destruction would be the best thing that could happen. All that is dross will be taken off, no doubt, but the essential parts of religion will emerge triumphant out of this investigation. Not only will it be made scientific, as scientific at least, as any of conclusions of physics or chemistry...."57

Whitehaed's plea for the same in his Science and the Modern World too is shared by Iqbal. He says (and Iqbal the reconstructionist would agree): During two centuries or more religious thinkers have failed to keep pace with unprecedented progress in the world. Hence they have been always attacking, defending and losing ground more or less ignominiously. When an old theory of science has given place to a new one, the occasion is considered not to be a defeat for science but its triumph. Not so is the case with religion. True, the fundamental principles of religion may be eternal. But in dynamic world of movement of ideas, the expression of these principles requires continual development. This can be done only by daring to disengage the

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The traditionalist scholars are not very comfortable with such a view on relation between religion and science. No (modern) scientific notion or discovery has the least effect on traditional metaphysics and psychology (and even cosmology) in their scheme. Religion needn't bother about advances in human thought. Independent metaphysical ground of religion (along with its "myths" and "legends") places it at a vantage point where it has no need to reckon with modern scientific theories and facts. There can be no test to judge religion. Religion is, in a sense, autonomous language game that isn't vulnerable to any critique from other language games such as science. A few remarks on experientialist position are in order. Non-prophetic mysticism interprets religious experience differently. Indian mysticism and Chinese mysticism have generally been interpreted in non-theistic or transtheistic framework. Transtheistic religions don't discover a personal God in religious experience. Theistic mysticism of Sufism which forms the immediate background of Iqbalian experimentalist position too doesn't reveal the personal God (God as the Supreme Ego) of the Iqbalian variety. The dark abyss of Godhead or Beyond-Being - the crucially important notion in Sufism (theistic mysticism of Islam) hardly figures anywhere in Iqbalian analysis of religious experience. What about religious experience of Rimbaud to which Zahner refers in his Mysticism: Sacred and Profane. It is so hard to prove cognitivity of religious experience. Wittgensteinian critique of experientalist position, developed by such critics as Norman Malcolm and others has to be reckoned with. Iqbalian style defence of religious experience and its cognitivity has been critiqued by various philosophers of religion in recent times. In the specific form in which Iqbal puts his defence of religious experience it is vulnerable to serious critique on not only positivist, psychoanalytical and other grounds but also on orthodox religious grounds. Orthodox esoteric Islam (as the perennialist traditionalist authors show) would reject Iqbalian position for its dualistic theology and individualistic metaphysics. Modern science's empiricist positivist framework can't be borrowed or used for approaching religion - without distorting the latter. Modern science is itself in need of truly scientific foundation. In its present form it is unable to defend itself on unproblematic rational or scientific grounds - its epistemic sovereignty stands seriously challenged to in our post modern age - so how can one expect it to clarify and evaluate religious experience? Science dealing with the material or natural world and the realm of the psyche can't pass judgments over what stands above the realm of the nature and the psyche. Religion pertains to the realm of the spirit and the domain of supraformal realities. The higher can't be appropriated in terms of the lower. The modern science's reductionist approach is simply incapable of appropriating religion, but Iqbal isn't able to fully pull himself out of this reductionist trap. Iqbal's experientialist position suffers from other important limitations from orthodox religion's point of view. One of the most important points is his failure to provide for special character of prophetic experience as distinguished from mystic experience. Traditional religion's conception of prophets is not subsumable under the head of mystic experience. There is a qualitative difference between his reception of revelation that originates a tradition and the mystic's experience of God. Iqbal doesn't explain why is the prophet's return creative as unlike the mystic's. Mystics, contrary to Iqbal's assertion, don't always just enjoy the unitary experience but they too return creatively, working with the masses and transferring the

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sharply distinguishes prophets and mystics. This boundary is blurred in eastern traditions to some extent. Modern approach to religion tries to bracket the revelation of prophets with the intuition of mystics and employs common methodology to evaluate both. This is especially true of modern psychology. This framework is shared by Iqbal and accounts for his unorthodox approach to the issue. Thus it is again modern science's influence on Iqbal that should be balanced for his problematic appropriation of prophetic experience in general category of mystical experience. The traditions of prophet more than the Quran, resist modern scientific appropriation. This is recognized even by Maurice Boucaile in his The Quran, the Bible and the Science. We need to stretch imagination to absurd limits to prove compatibility between the traditions and the modern science. Iqbal's ambivalent bordering on indifferent attitude towards prophetic traditions as evidenced in his Reconstruction may be partly inspired by modern science. The prophetic traditions use a language which modern science finds difficult to appropriate. The principle of hierarchy of existence is so difficult for modern science to accept and yet the traditional literature (especially the prophetic traditions) is deeply coloured by this principle. Iqbal implicitly surrenders the Quran's existence or knowledge claims when he asserts that physics, biology and psychology deals with all the three levels of experience. The independent knowledge claims from a superior source of knowledge called revelation couldn't be made if we accept the above mentioned position. Yet Iqbal, quite inconsistently, does refer to the Quranic knowledge or existence claims. Any conflict between the Quran and the modern science when the latter assert its right to be only reliable source of knowledge claims, (as E.O. Wilson, Dawkins, Russell and Freud, among others argue) is avoided completely by the former position that Iqbal seems to take. He seems to subsume the Quranic knowledge claims under the heads of physics, biology and psychology. The Quran's function is reduced to exhortation for cultivation of these sciences and knowledge is thus made a prerogative of modern science with Islam paving the way for the birth of inductive empirical sciences. Iqbal's novel interpretation of the finality of prophethood as legitimizing the reign of inductive intellect and abolishing of non-rational (non-scientific?) modes of consciousness solves the problem of conflict between religion and science ingeniously. However he is compelled to recognize Quranic (revelational) knowledge claims and tried to show how they are compatible with the claims of modern science e.g., he says that according to the Quran our universe is a growing universe, liable to further expansion and change and brings modern physics to support this Quranic claim.59 Now the question arises how could we avoid possible conflict between such and similar scientific claims of the Quran and any future discovery of science that may not be easily reconcilable with the former. Now there are many such claims of the Quran which do contradict with modern science as advocates of traditional or Islamic science and Islamizers of knowledge point out. Iqbal ignores all these unscientific claims of the Quran.60 The traditional cosmology of the Quran can't be reconciled with modern cosmology. The Quran's reference to supraformal domain too can't be appropriated within the modern science. Boccalian, Naikian,Yahaian and similar attempts to prove compatibility between the Quran and the modern science fail as has been argued by many scholars (e.g., some advocates of Islamisation of knowledge and traditional science and some secularist

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Quran (assuming the Quran does make knowledge scientific or claims) are problematic or questionable and easily doconstructible. Iqbal makes a very selective reading of the Quran to prove his thesis. I have elsewhere argued the case for incompatibility between the Quran and the modern science and pointed out conceptual confusions in the thesis of compatibility between the two as seen in modernist Muslim writings and the writings of such scholars as Maurice Boucaile, Harun Yahya, Zakir Naik and others.61 Iqbal agrees with Paton that there are intellectual elements in religion although he doesn't think that it creates intellectual impediments for it. He refuses to recognize the validity of the conflict thesis by reinterpreting the relevant Quranic verses indulging in questionable or heterodox exercise in the Quranic exegesis in the process) and even criticizes modern science's philosophical claims at certain places (e.g., Einstein's relativity for its alleged problematization of reality of time in which Quran believes). He pleads for bold reconstruction of theology for appropriating the possible challenges from modern science. His procedure to avoid conflict between the Quran and the science (or inductive intellect) is to reinterpret the former in conformity with the latter's claims. Rationalist reductionist demythologizing approach to religion such as that of Niaz Fatehpuri and Sir Syed can't be vetoed if we accept this Iqbalian approach to the problem of relation between science and religion. It is what Philip Frank refers to as illegitimate exercise of philosophical use of science that is at the back of much of science-inspired critique of religion in modern times. Orthodox scientific circles have made such a philosophical use of science that goes against religious interpretation of the world. Many philosophers of science have questioned the very legitimacy of any such enterprise e.g., Philip Frank doesn't allow science this role of philosophy building or fashioning Weltanschauung. Such diverse philosophers as Cruce, Lenin, S.Z. Hasn, Marcel, postmodernist philosophers and philosophers of science and even many positivists deny science the right to philosophize or to build an ideology or all comprehensive worldview. Iqbal adopts a diametrically opposite strategy. He is for the philosophical use of science and tries hard to cash it for the spiritual interpretation of universe. He considers it his duty to reject fashionable or orthodox philosophical interpretation or use of science (in the service of materialism or irreligion). However in the process he concedes implicitly the ambitious but unwarranted claims of science to have a say in both philosophy and religion - indeed to stand as judge over them (although he is also quite anxious to qualify this right of science in various ways so that sovereignty of religion isn't problematized).The philosophical appropriation of certain notions of modern physics - such as relativity and quanum physics - in which he indulges is easily deconstructable. It is the questionable stance on this crucial issue in philosophy of science that is at the back of his bid to reconstruct theology. Previously philosophy had tried to have religion in its own mould and it is only in the modern West that science has asserted its illegitimate right to dictate terms to religion, to have a religion that is respectful towards the claims of science, that reconstructs itself as science advances. Iqbal had too sanguine a view of scientific enterprise. He saw future (and present) through its spectacles. He surmised that "the religious and the scientific processes, though involving different methods, are identical in their final aim. Both aim at reaching the most real."62 The best illustration of philosophical appropriation or use of science that culminates in necessitating reconstruction of theology, is

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The extension of man's power over Nature has given him a new faith and a fresh sense of superiority over the forces that constitute his environment. New points of view have been suggested, old problems have been restated in the light of fresh experience and new problems have arisen. It seems as if the intellect of man is outgrowing its own most fundamental categories - time, space and causality. With the advance of scientific thought even our concept of intelligibility is undergoing a change. The theory of Einstein has brought a new vision of the universe and suggests new ways of looking at the problems common to both religion and philosophy. No wonder then that a younger generation of Islam in Asia and Africa demand a fresh orientation of their faith. With the reawakening of Islam, therefore it is necessary to examine; in an independent spirit, what Europe has thought and how far the conclusions reached by her can help us in the revison and if necessary, reconstruction of theological thought in Islam.63

Iqbal's ingenious but not fully warranted reading of physics and thus building certain philosophical theses from it is seen in his arguing that relativity implies non-eternity of the world or that it has been created and will be destroyed64 and that it implies unreality of time.65 These misconceptions of Iqbal have been noted by Raziudin Sidiqi also in his writings on Iqbal especially his "Iqbal ka Tasawwuri Zaman-o-Makan aur Doosray Mazameen" Iqbal is deeply committed to spiritual interpretation of universe and exploits modern physics for the purpose. Any such enterprise is dangerous and double edged. Lenin doesn't see any ground for science inspired spiritual interpretation of universe in his Empirico-Criticism and Materialism. Many physicist-philosophers will agree, most notably Weinberg and Hawking. Russell too saw religious appropriation of new physics as unwarranted. However crude materialistic mechanistic picture of universe of 19th century science has been discredited for good. But the moot point is that whether science has positively affected the thesis of personal God of theism. Modern physics and its usual philosophico-mystical appropriations (seen for instance in various writings of Fritijof Capra and in other writings on non-theistic or transtheistic mysticism) point towards the God of transtheistic mysticism and the God of Einstein rather than the God of monotheistic religions, in which Iqbal is finally interested. It is not easy to see how Nature as seen in modern physics reveals imprints of the Ultimate Ego. However, Iqbal does recognize the limitations of science in framing an all encompassing ideology or Weltanschauung, although he willn't leave any opportunity for spiritual interpretation of universe through science unexploited. His point is that since science isn't philosophy it can't provide a single systematic view of Reality and thus its appropriation for materialist interpretation of Reality is unwarranted. In answering the question "is natural science finally committed to materialism?" he writes: There is no doubt that the theories of science constitute trustworthy knowledge, because they are verifiable and enable us to predict and control the events of nature. But we must not forget that what is called science isn't a single systematic view of Reality. It is a mass of sectional views of Reality-fragments of a total experience which don't seem to fit together. Natural science deals with matter with life and with mind ; but the moment you ask the question how matter, life and mind are mutually related, you begin to see the sectional character of the various sciences that deal with them and inability of these sciences, taken singly to furnish a complete answer to your question,... Nature

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reality. °°

All this is quite correct but appears inconsistent with what Iqbal has to say elsewhere on the subject. If science is preying on the dead body of Nature like 'vulture preying on dead flesh,' how could it reveal the behaviour or character of living conscious God. If science is artificial affair (such philosophers of science as Feyerbend would take this point to its logical conclusions; arguing that science has nothing to do with Reality or Truth and that it isn't trustworthy enterprise dealing with facts but just a dogmatic intolerant exclusivist belief system that moves on with the force of propaganda and thus it isn't objective, neutral knowledge giving enterprise) how could scientist be compared to a sage and observation of Nature elevated to an act of prayer by a mystic? How could an incomplete and artificial way of dealing with the Reality be allowed to mould theology in its own image? What warrant is there for reinterpreting the scripture in the light of science? How could the edifice of spiritual interpretation of universe be built on such a sandy foundation? However Iqbal is trying to give the role of philosophy (as Russell understood it) to religion. It is philosophy's job to integrate or systematize sectional views of Reality, argues Russell in his Problems of Philosophy. However Iqbal seems to give this role to religion which demands the whole of Reality and for this reason must occupy a central place in any synthesis of all the data of human experience and thus has no reason to be afraid of any sectional view of Reality. This also avoids any supposed conflict between religion and science. Science's claims are here subsumed under the systematic Science of Religion. Any direct challenge from science's sectional views of Reality which religion sees as whole is thus nullified. This strategy for avoiding conflict is ingenious but very vague and would be dubbed by positivists as non-sensical. Russell doesn't accept legitimacy of the very notion of Universe or Whole. It doesn't explain how all the three domains of experience - cognitive, conative and aesthetic - are subsumed in religion. All the separate sciences such as that of psychology, biology and physics have contributed in problematizing traditional religious hypothesis as we saw earlier. Now all these sectional views have cumulatively made a case against religion stronger. This is no answer that religion gives a systematic synthesis of all sectional views as it is hard to understand how these sectional views could thus be made into a whole where conflict with the religion is somehow transcended. This question is better approached through perennialist approach to science which recognizes as first principle the hierarchy of existence and symbolist view of nature. Displacing of Ptolemic universe by Copernican one will not in the least affect symbolist vision of traditional religions. The higher realms are reflected in the lower ones; supraformal realities are reflected in the natural domain and it is symbolist outlook (which is the prerogative of traditional sciences) that shows how nature is God's sign. Synthesizing sectional views of various sciences that reject, a priori, the symbolist approach and the hierarchical view of universe that recognizes traditional five degrees of Divine Presence (Nasut, Jabarut, Malakut, Lahut, Hahuf) can never give us a picture which is congenial to religion. The whole basis of science must be changed. Inductive intellect and empiricism can't lead us to God through Nature. It is the contemplative approach to Nature (via contemplativd) that both modern science and Iqbalian approach marginalize in favour of action centred aggressive approach, with science controlling the environment (and ultimately leading to ecological crisis) that is

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of psyche. Modern science has destroyed the traditional hierarchical universe and thus the symbolist vision that is sine qua non of religion. It has excluded God from His creation. Both the separate or sectional views on Reality as well as the philosopher's synthesis of these views are in conflict with Religion. Religion does need to counter it and present its alternative view of things. Modern science has hardly any room for God and traditional picture of universe and man's relationship to it. The very basis of scientific enterprise and its methodology needs reorientation. Iqbal's frantic attempt to appropriate modern science in the service of religion doesn't succeed. He practically aggravates the conflict although he assumes that he has reconciled separate epistemic and cognitive universe of traditional Islam and modern science. The court of inductive intellect and empiricism (to which Iqbal appeals) has condemned religion as a worldview and is persecuting it in various ways. Modern science sees religion and its grand claims to real knowledge as inimical to its very existence and is fighting a bloody war against it from renaissance onwards. Modern science is necessarily at loggerheads with the traditional science (the ancient and the medieval sciences) and the traditional religious picture of man. It doesn't just demand a reconstruction of traditional religious thought but wants its complete overthrow or secularization. Islamisation or traditionalization of science is absolutely important for Islam. This isn't admissible in Iqbalian perspective. He identifies Islam with the birth of modern inductive and empiricist outlook. The institution of prophethood was abolished so that inductive intellect may smoothly take over. Now there are no leading strings to hoodwink modern man back on the rails of traditional religion. Iqbal simply didn't saw that he was sailing in two separate boats. Promethean and Faustian enterprise of modern science is irreconcilable with the traditional Islamic universe that pictures man as servant of God (and not His co-worker) and sees his raison d'etre to lie in contemplating God or cultivating God consciousness. Iqbal doesn't see any serious challenge to religion from physics although he is disturbed by relativity's alleged problematization of reality of time. He sees in modern physics a revolt against deterministic irreligious implications of Newtonian physics. Although it has been argued by various physicists and physicist-philosophers that modern physics can't be cashed for religious interpretation of universe it has certainly challenged the deterministic mechanistic picture of universe. However it is a moot point whether one can defend freedom of will through recourse to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. The following observations of Schrodinger will apply to Iqbalian approach to philosophy of physics also who comments on the position whether indeterminacy allows free will to step into the gap in the way that freewill (of God and man) determines these events which the laws of Nature leaves undetermined: In this crude form the attempt was made and idea to a certain extent, worked out by German physicist Pascal Jordan. I believe it to be both physically and morally an impossible solution. As regards the first: according to our present view the quantum laws though they leave the single event undermined, predict a quite definite statistics of events when the same situation occurs again and again, this agent violates the laws of quantum mechanics just as objectionably as if it interfered - in pre-quantum physics with a strictly causal mechanical laws .... The inference is that Jordan's assumption, the direct stepping in of free will to fill the gap of indeterminacy - does amount to an interference with the laws of Nature in the form accepted in quantum theory. But at that price we can have everything.

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Iqbal's panentheism, possibly influenced by modern science, too fails to make peace between the Quran and the modern science, as it makes many concessions to the latter. Panentheistic God isn't theistic God and it is the latter rather than the former that Iqbal seeks to justify in the face of modern science especially its evolutionism and its foregrounding of the problem of evil. Iqbal's God is actively involved in Nature and indeed the latter reveals His behaviour and character. Modern science has given us a very depressing picture of God's handiwork. Arguing from Design to Designer, as traditional theists have usually been doing, has been problematized by not only Hume and Kant but most forcefully by Darwin. Panentheism is a sophisticated way of seeing Designer in Design but in the process compromising traditional theistic character of God. Although speaking apologetically of purposes and ends when dealing with biology and psychology, he is led to reject traditional form of design arguments under the impact of evolutionary thought. However he does attempt a vitalist reading of modern biology and uses theistic terminology in such discussions. He doesn't subscribe to traditional proof from design This could be accounted for in terms of his peculiar philosophical background. In his philosophy of ego, the Ultimate Ego is presupposed; He needn't be proved. From the analysis of experience he arrives at his philosophy of ego which is grounded by Ultimate Ego. This way of arguing avoids some tricky problems in traditional theistic picture of the world but its primary demerit is that it doesn't pass the test of orthodoxy and also fails at certain important points which can't be discussed here, being outside the scope of the present study. Iqbal is also unique among the Muslim modernists in appropriating basic methodological and philosophical framework of modern science in Islam and not just reading certain specific discoveries of modern science in the Quran. Iqbal can't be charged with Boucailism that reads diverse branches of science from meteorology and geology to embryology and Big Bang cosmology in the Quran. In fact Iqbal refers to very few such facts discovered recently but already alluded to in the Quran. Through the absurd gimmicks of unwarranted exegesis, defenders of compatibility thesis read almost all major scientific discoveries in the Quran. This alleged precognizance of the Quran is invoked to prove the divine authorship of its text. Iqbal, a conscientious modern Muslim intellectual as he is, never indulges in such absurd exercises. Sardar in his Explorations in Islamic Science rightly condemns such an approach displayed by those who are only superficially acquainted with modern science, its philosophy and methodology as well the wellsprings of traditional sciences and religion. In his Reconstruction Iqbal has no intention of proving the Quran's divine authorship on the alleged grounds of its precognizance. Iqbalian appropriation of modern science may be sharply distinguished from the majority of naive and inconsistent appropriations of modern science. He knows what it means to be modern and what it means to appropriate modern science in Islam. He is not just half convert or hypocritical convert to modern scientific project or faith. He swallows the whole pill of modern science and assimilates it in his blood. He doesn't vomit such otherwise indigestible components of it as evolution and psychoanalysis. He shares modern man's commitment to inductionism and empiricism. He is a consistent defender of compatibility thesis. Modern science and evolutionism and naturalism (methodological naturalism at least) are indissolubly

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compatibility thesis and those who try to prove precognizance of the Author of the Quran and thus its divine authorship. He knows that science offers serious challenge to traditional religion - the fact usually ignored by such Boucailists as Fathellah Khan and Zakir Naik. He accordingly tries to reckon with the challenge and his reconstructionist project is an attempt in this direction. His rejection of Islamisation of science just another consistent move in the same direction. Another lamentable tendency seen in certain modernist writings (and even in certain ulema) is attempt to prove scientificity of certain Quranic allusions to the miracles or supernatural occurrences in the narrative of prophets, e.g., theory of relativity is used to prove rationality of the belief in the Prophet's ascension, and parthenogenesis is used to prove Jesus' virgin birth and so on. This enterprise is illegitimate because it totally misses the very raison d'etre of miracles. It is precisely their supernatural character that sacred scripture emphasizes. It is absurd to appropriate them in naturalist rationalist terms. It destroys their very purpose. Iqbal indulges in no such exercise although his attempts at demythologization may end in naturalist appropriation of supernatural element. Iqbal tries to read naturalism in the Quran. All this, almost written in Sir Syedian vein, implies Iqbal's incredulity towards traditional stories of miracles. However in his poetry and letters he has explicitly affirmed his belief in literal truth of miracles, but in Reconstruction that assumes a respectful attitude towards modern project he hardly alludes to them or seems to appropriate them in his modernist naturalistic framework). It is in consonance with orthodox official rationalist naturalist modern scientific spirit. He doesn't betray it unlike many modernist Muslim apologists. Evidence from his poetry shows that he could not adequately solve completely the problem of modern science; his danishi afrangi couldn't be fully reconciled with the danish-i-yazdani. He couldn't be converted whole heartedly to either of them. Aql and ishq or science and faith he perceived more or less as not easily reconcilable binary. He transcends this dualism, this binary only at rare moments of his great poetry. The conflict between two Iqbal's - Iqbal who wrote Reconstruction and Iqbal as poet, is evident to many critics of him. This isn't unique to him. Modern man's heart and mind are divided. He suffers from a kind of schizophrenia. Iqbal is unable to completely extricate himself from this modern predicament and modern man's schizophrenia although he can't be accused with qalb ou mumin wa dimagesh kafir ast (his brain disbelieved and his heart believed). This may be true of Nietzsche or Marx but not of Iqbal. On sum, he illustrates tragedy of sailing in two separate boats or cognitive universes - that of traditional Islam and the Western Modernity. He is highly critical of the latter in his poetry and of the former (seeing it from Western or modern spectacles) in his Reconstruction. The poetry of Iqbal reveals sensitive soul's reaction to heartless mechanical dehumanising secularist character of modern western scientific outlook. In his last lecture, appended later to his Reconstruction, "Is Religion Possible?" Iqbal deconstructs many of his own theses that he upheld in his earlier lectures. Here he, contrary to his usual 'the way of two compartments' thesis, tries to appropriate science and religion in terms of each other and he states the case in highly vulnerable terms (vulnerable to critique from both traditional religious as well as scientific quarters). He says: "The truth is that the religious and scientific processes though involving different methods, are identical in their

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only valid way to approach the most real will not admit science's claim to know Reality or Truth, especially that of modern science. Here Iqbal unambiguously asserts that both religion and science make knowledge or existence claims. What about the situation of conflict between these two? Should religion be given sovereignty? But inductionist outlook by definition rejects all sovereignties save its own (which it doesn't see as constituting a nonfalsifiable or non-empirical claim). There are many concrete instances of the conflict between religion's and modern science's cognitive claims or truth claims. The history of warfare of science with theology in the West demonstrates the truth of this statement. White's famous book The History of Warfare of Science with Theology puts this point so succinctly. Iqbal ignores this bloody conflict and hardly makes a reference to it in his Reconstruction. This conflict occurred not only in the West but sometimes also in traditional Islamic civilization as Pervez Hoodbouy illustrates in his Muslim and Science. This is neither to condone nor to condemn this history of bloody persecution. But to point out how seriously the question of the relation between religion and science was taken by both sides. Modern man declared God dead, on leave or absent primarily under the impact of modern science. No text book of modern science recognizes validity of truth claims or knowledge claims of religion. The religion is not allowed to interfere in the domain of the secular sciences. Modern man is hard put to make sense of religion's truth claims. One writer (a Christian theologian) goes as far as declaring that the Bible makes no truth claim and another admits only one truth claim in the Bible. This is primarily motivated by modern science's alleged problematization of religion's "propositional" truth claims. Iqbal seems to relinquish religion's cognitive content and reject its format of propositions about reality and demythologizes much of "extravagant mythological accretions and legends" associated with traditional religion. All this has science at its back and it is the culprit behind all these reductionist appropriations of religion. 'The way of allegory' may sometimes culminate in throwing away the whole edifice of traditional religion. As influential a Protestant theologian as Rudolph Bultman declares that the Christian doctrine of creation didn't refer to the origins of the physical world, but rather to the creation within the believer of an authentic stance towards his earthly predicament. Panentheistic solution to the problems of relationship between religious and scientific knowledge claims, which Iqbal seems to concede, is admittedly an ingenious one. Such process theologians as Charles Hartshorne, taking their inspiration from Whitehead, have made scientific knowledge, notably the concept of organic evolution germane to a religious vision in which God both participates in and is affected by events in the material world. Iqbal's overall approach isn't much different. However one must note that the question of relation between science and religion is quite complex. A really serious thinker tries to reckon with all the aspects of the issue and one may discover in him contradictions also. This is especially true about Iqbal - a great synthetic eclectic genius that he was. He seems to alternately hold all the broad patterns of response to the problem: isolation, integration and conflict. A gist of basic assumptions of contemporary philosophy of science, that are usually accepted (mostly adapted from Naquib al-Attas), is that science is the authentic knowledge; that this knowledge pertains only to phenomena, that this knowledge is peculiar to a particular age and may change in another age, that facts are neutral as far as truth and falsehood are

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concerned - they just are - that truth and falsehood are properties of belief dependent upon the relations of belief to facts. The primacy of logic is affirmed. Its methods are chiefly philosophic rationalism, which tends to depend on reason alone without the aid of sense perception or experience; secular rationalism, which while accepting reason tends to rely more on sense experience, and denies authority and intuition and rejects revelation and religion as sources of true knowledge and philosophic empiricism or logical empiricism which bases all knowledge on observable facts, logical constructions and linguistic analysis. It is officially agnostic towards traditional metaphysical claims, although it perceives religious metaphysical claims as potential rivals that threaten its independence or sovereignty. Inductionism and empiricism clash head on with traditional metaphysics that religion upholds. It claims to appropriate/ subsume metaphysics and religion. Postmodern philosophy of science challenges grand narrative of modern rationalistic inductionist science. It denies the claim that science has anything to do with truth, facts, knowledge. It reduces grand scientific claims to just a problem solving enterprise. Alternative or heterodox sciences have used postmodern theories to substantiate their claims. Important 20th century developments in the philosophy of science e.g., approaches of Kuhn, Popper, Feyerbend and postmodern approach in general have made additional post-Baconian and Cartesian account of science (in which Iqbal believes) highly problematic and almost unbelievable. Postmodern man hardly encounters modern science as a problem, as epistemologically sovereign metanarrative as something towards which we must be very respectful. Religion after postmodernism need not be too credulous and apologetic towards the claims of modern science. Iqbalian anxiety to somehow propitiate the modern scientific spirit is proved to be misfounded to a certain extent. However the orthodox priests of modern scientism (who preach Darwinism, Freudinism, Relativism, Determinism, Reductionism, Rationalism, Naturalism etc.) have not lost their power and authority. Science continues to be taught and indoctrinated with all its agnostic antimetaphysical naturalistic presumptions. Religion can't think of ignoring its grand claims - and its immense authority and power due to science's unholy alliance with what is officially recognized as knowledge. It is very dangerous move to appropriate modern science for religion's sake. Either modern science must relinquish its commitment to certain methodological and philosophical assumptions that run counter to the religious picture of the world (which seems least probable) or the religion must adopt alternative 'heterodox' and traditional sciences and attack modern science on methodological and philosophical or ideological assumptions that run counter to the religious picture of the world and clear the space for its own approach. This is what perennialist philosophy and philosophers of science (most notably Nasr from the Islamic world) are doing. There is no reconciliation possible as Iqbal would imagine between these two separate cognitive universes of modern science and traditional Islam. So far science has been dictating terms to religion and demanded the latter's demythologization and restriction to private non-cognitive space, or even naturalistic appropriation. Now thanks to certain important developments in philosophy (especially the philosophy of science) converse can now happen. Religion can demand demythologization of the great myth of modern science and restrict its space and not allow it to dictate terms and demand reconstruction. Iqbal is a thorough going inductionist at least in his Reconstruction. He was hopeful that science would be an arbiter in non-scientific realms (although he wouldn't consistently maintain this position). He deplores the absence of scientific method that could effectively deal with the non-rational modes of consciousness. This implicitly speaks of his belief that

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such a method could be developed. He writes, "Modern psychology has only recently begun to realize the importance of a careful study of the contents of mystic consciousness and we are not yet in possession of a really effective scientific method to analyze the contents of nonrational modes of consciousness."69 If we read this along with his interpretation of the finality of prophethood and his bold assertion that the birth of Islam is the birth of inductive intellect and his belief that scientific observation reveals the character of the Ultimate Reality, we get a picture that is not very different from modern scienticism. This threatens the autonomy and sovereignty of non-rational (mystical prophetic) modes of cognition. Both mysticism and religion are subtly thrown overboard. Approvingly quoting modern theory of subliminal selves (that gives a "naturalistic" account of mystical experience as Stace would differentiate 'natural' from 'supernatural' faculties), Iqbal traces it in Ibn Khuldun. The dangers of this approach are evident to any student of philosophy of religion developed in modern times. Psychological approach to religion has led to disastrous results for religion and there is hardly anyway to avoid them. Either we must reject modern psychology's right to interfere in the Realm of the Spirit, or we must be willing to accept its right at the great cost to religion, its sovereignty and its autonomy. Modern science's influence on Iqbal's thought could be traced in far subtler ways than the above. It is modern science that has contributed to the rejection of soul-body dualism and appropriation of the latter in terms of the former. Modern secular and radical theologies are especially illustrative in this regard. Modern literature has also been affected by modern science in this connection. Joyce, Lawrence, Sartre, Simone de Beavoir, Gide, Camus and many other representative authors reject traditional Christian dualism of soul and body. World centred or matter centred or body centred modern thought is largely a response to modern science. Iqbal's eulogization of the world of matter and body - his divinizing of it - seems to be informed by similar sensibility. His spiritual interpretation of universe appropriates this sensibility ingeniously and this converges with the secular theological interpretation of universe. However the basic difference between secular theology and all materialistic scientific philosophers and Iqbalian worldview remains and that is that the latter spiritualizes matter and the former materializes spirit. However practically it seems sometimes very difficult to differentiate between the two. These two orientations may sometimes overlap. In his attempt to Islamize or modernity he sometimes modernizes Islam. In order to provide a spiritual interpretation of universe, he sometimes gives some sort of materialistic interpretation of the spirit. He sacralizes the profane. He seems to reject the sacred-profane distinction, which is otherwise so fundamental to all sapiential perspectives. For him the body is the vehicle of the spirit. For the perennialists the world is removed or separate from the Good (Iqbal would hardly agree). Matter is evil as far as it is separate from God who alone is Good. The world of body and matter is separate from Being and Beyond-Being or the First Principle and by virtue of that evil or only partly good. Traditional metaphysics and emanationist view of creation subscribed to by the generality of traditional Muslim philosophers and mystics recognizes the veracity of Plotinus' conception regarding evil nature of the world of matter seen in itself only or separate from the divine Principle. Ghazali in his Ihya devotes a chapter to "Evils of the World" and this is typical orthodox Islamic conception. I quote Iqbalian views on the subject and then contrast them with those of Frithjof Schuon, a spokesperson of traditional perennialist Islamic orthodoxy.

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Iqbal conceives matter as 'Spirit in space time reference' and conceives of God's relation to the world on the analogy of soul's relation to body, in true panentheistic spirit.70 Panentheistic philosophy in modern times has been deeply affected by modern science and its great exponent Whitehead influenced Iqbal considerably. He says: The Ultimate Reality, according to the Quran, is spiritual and its life consists in its temporal activity. The spirit finds its opportunities in the natural, the material, the secular. All that is secular is, therefore, sacred in the roots of its being .... There is no such thing as a profane world. All this immensity of matter constitutes a scope for the self-realization of the spirit. All is holy ground.71

This world can't be profane or evil because it is the very life (body) of God. Space and time are our interpretations of the creative activity of God. History, Nature and Psyche all reveal God. The world of matter doesn't represent a cosmogenic Fall. It isn't cursed or afflicted because of its separation from God. The study of the universe will reveal the mind of God. He reproaches Plato for his negative attitude towards the world of matter. For Schuon all this is essentially correct but reveals only one face of the picture. He says, "The world taken as a whole is good because it manifests God" and also: The cosmos, including its material confine is the manifestation of the Sovereign Good and matter shows this by its quality of stability, the pureness or nobility of certain of its modes and its malleability as regards symbols, in short by its inviolable capacity to serve as a receptacle to the influences of Heaven. A distant reflection of universal Maya, matter is for this reason, like a prolongation of God's throne and this has been too easily disregarded by a spiritual viewpoint obsessed by the cursing of the earth, at the cost of prodigious impoverishment and dangerous loss of equilibrium.72

However Schuon qualifies all this unlike Iqbal. He says that the world also "involves a partial and contingent aspects of badness because, not being God despite its existence, it sets itself against God or is a would be God; as this is impossible all phenomena and ultimately the world itself- are touched by impermanence [and evil]."73 He also remarks, "In a certain sense the function of evil in the world is to serve as a reminder that "God alone is good."74 For him the Fall could also be interpreted as "symbolizing the entry into matter, namely the cosmogonic transition from the animic into the material state."75 Schuon defends Plato's views on the world of matter which isn't the idea, the Supreme Good. Schuon accuses Ash'arite theologians of being guilty of anthropomorphist confusion of Beyond-Being and Being and confusion of pure Being with the determinative and existence generating qualities which amounts a mixing of two universal subjectivities which are in fact different (however without prejudice to their essential unity). This applies equally to Iqbal whose philosophy of ego doesn't recognize the crucial significance of the notion of Beyond-Being, Maya or Hijab (as the Sufis call it) and seems to reject the traditional understanding of hierarchy of existence (five degrees of Divine presence). Modern science has tried to wipe out the traditional worldview by denying a priori the first principle of the latter i.e., belief in hierarchy of existence. What can't be verified tested, weighed, measured - everything that transcends the sensible world and lies beyond the gaze of telescopes and microscopes is not only ignored but usually denied the very existence by the guardians of modern scientific Weltanschauung. This positivist spirit, despite the fall of orthodox aggressive positivism, continues to be informing modern science - its methodology and philosophy. It is only with the rise of alternative/heterodox/marginalized

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sciences very recently that orthodox scientific establishment has been compelled to reckon with and recognize prima-facie validity of such "pseudosciences' as parapsychology although reductionist methodology continues to guide its approach towards them. Now postmodern science is resurrecting the semblance of the traditional hierarchical universe. It is reinstating the supernatural. Huston Smith's remarks are worth quoting. I was taught that supranaturalism is the ultimate 'no-no' in our profession for it would ostracize us from the academy. Science, though, which now seems to point beyond itself at every turn, has rehabilitated the word for me. Science flings open, not just windows in aggorniamento, but skylights onto orders of transcendence that are objectively there, while being infinitely awesome in outstripping everything else in both power and goodness.76

Traditional division of science into physics, chemistry, biology and psychology that are imagined to exhaust all the levels of experience - as Iqbal also believed, has now become problematic. Religion, as William James correctly noted, is a vision of hierarchical universe. For him "In its broadest terms, religion says that there is an unseen order and that our supreme good lies in rightful relation to it."77 Modern science rejects invisibles out of hand and we are still so under its sway that it is almost impossible to take seriously the prospect that there are things that don't need physical underpinnings. We don't see in Iqbal's Reconstruction any explicit reference to traditional received understanding of unseen order and hierarchical universe. He is concerned with the levels of Reality that physics, biology and psychology explore. And the suprasensible world that nurtures religion is hardly the concern of these sciences; they ignore or deny it on a priori grounds. Many problems that currently baffle scientists and are of fundamental importance can't be answered because their answers lie on the levels of reality that science can't access. The angelic realm, the supraformal world isn't an object of science but is religion's very soul. Arguing for the spiritual interpretation of universe in the framework of such physicist-philosophers as Eddington and Jeans won't approximate the traditional religious interpretation of universe. Iqbal's advocacy of religious worldview, using primarily the framework of modern science, is bound to be fraught with contradiction. There is hardly any scope for miracles and the magic in the framework of modern rationalist naturalistic science. Miracles will somehow be appropriated using reductionist logic. Psychoanalysis and evolutionism - the two great modern myths claim to supply that missing dimensions or causes that really higher levels of existence or vertical reference alone can supply. What consequences would follow on accepting such prejudices of modern science are hardly anticipated. I quote Schuon at length to show how fallacious are modern science's methodological and philosophical assumptions and the practical harmful results that have followed from its wide acceptance. Schoun says: In view of the fact that modern science is unaware of the degrees of reality, it is consequently null and inoperative as regards everything that can be explained only by them, whether it be a case of magic or of spirituality or indeed of any belief or practice of any people; it is in particular incapable of accounting for human or other phenomena of the historic or prehistoric past, the nature of which and the key to which are totally unknown to it as a matter of principle. There is scarcely a more desperately vain or naive illusion - far more naive than is Aristotelian astronomy! - than to believe that modern science, in its vertiginous course towards the 'infinitely small' and the 'infinitely great' will end up by re-joining religious and metaphysical truths and doctrines.78

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Scientistic philosophy is unaware, not only of the 'Divine Presences', but also of their rhythms or 'life'; it is ignorant not only of the degrees of reality and the fact of our imprisonment in the sensory world, but also of the cycles, the universal solve et coagula; that is to say it knows nothing either of the 'gushing forth' of our world from an invisible and effulgent Reality, or of its re-absorption into the 'dark' light of this same Reality. All the Real is in the Invisible; it is this above all that must be felt or understood before one can speak of knowledge and effectiveness. But this will not be understood, and the human world will continue inexorably on its course.79 It is a most pernicious abuse of language to call modern scientists 'sages': their intelligence - apart from their genius if they have it - is usually very ordinary, and they ignore everything that transcends the physical world and so everything that constitutes wisdom.80 To conclude we can say that Iqbal's appropriation of religion in modern science and vice versa is unprecedented, ingenious and very bold but problematic on both orthodox religiousmetaphysical as well as orthodox scientific-philosophical grounds. Notes and References 1. Paton, H.J., in The Modern Predicament: A Study in the Philosophy of Religion, Coolier Books, (New York, 1962), defines it to include "not only the natural science, but also the mental; and social sciences such as psychology and anthropology. It covers also the modern methods of historical and literary criticism" p. 103-4. 2. Iqbal, M., The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, ed. and annot. M Saeed Sheikh, Adam Publishers, New Delhi, 1997 (Editor's introduction) p. xiv. 3. Ibid., Preface, p. xxi. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., p. xxii. 8. Ibid., pp. 77-8. 9. Ibid., p. 2. 10. Ibid., p. 3. 11. Paton, H.J., op. cit, p. 104. 12.Ibid. 13.Ibid. 14.Ibid. 15.Ibid. 16. Quoted by Larry Witham in By Design: Science of God, Unistar Books Pvt. Ltd. Chandigrah, 2004, p. 157. 17. Quoted by Paton, in op. cit. 18. Quoted by Weinberg, op. cit., p. 194. 19. Ibid. 20. Weinberg, op. cit., p. 195. 21. Quoted by Weinberg, op. cit., p. 96. 22. Ibid. 23. Weinberg, op. cit., p. 200. 24. Quoted by Weinberg, op. cit., p. 200. 25. Ibid., p. 198.

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26. Wilfred, Sellers, Science, Perception and Reality, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1963, p. 173. 27. Simpson, George Gaylord, The Meaning of Evolution, Bantan Books, New York, 1971, p. 252. 28. Johnson, Phillip E., Defeating Darwinism, Downers Grove, III: Inter Varsity Press, 1997, p. 111. 29. Iqbal, M. op. cit. p. 2. 30. Ibid., p. 45. 31 Ibid., p. 45. 32. Briskman, "Rationality, Science and History," in Companion to the History of Modern Science, ed. by E.N. Cantor, J.R. Christie, M.J.S. Hodge, Routledge, 2000. 33. Iqbal, op. cit. p. 101. 34. Ibid., p. 101. 35. Ibid., p. 142. 36. Ibid., p. 78. 37. Ibid., p. 72. 38. Nasr, S.H., "The Role of Traditional Science in the Encounter of Religion and Science" in MAAS, Journal of Islamic Science, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1985, p. 10. 39. Ibid. 40. Iqbal, op. cit, p. 11. 41. Gai Eaton, King of the Castle, London, 1977, rpt. Lahore, Suhail Academy, 1981, p. 151. 42. Ahsan, M.Y., "Trash and Treasures" in Iqbal Review, Vol. 27, No. 1, 1986, p. 235. 43. Iqbal, M., op. cit, p. 20. 44. Ibid., p. 2. 45. Paton, op. cit, p. 119. 46. Ibid., p. 119-20. 47. This is evident from his overall psychological approach to religion; only a thoroughly modern spirit could write the following lines about Freud's contribution. "It is in the elimination of the satanic from the Divine that the followers of Freud have done inestimable service to religion" (p. 19.) However Iqbal is critical of Freud's many ideas but he respectfully approaches the basic premises of modern psychology and psychoanalysis. 48. Iqbal's condoning attitude towards Comte and basic positivist ideas is evident in his overall nonmetaphysical approach to religion. Iqbal approvingly quotes Zia Gokalp, the poet of modern Turkey. He traces positivist inspiration of his songs and doesn't criticize him for that matter. He quotes a passage from his poem "Religion and Science" and comments, "It is clear from these lines how beautifully the poet has adopted the Comtian idea of the three stages of man's intellectual development i.e., theological, metaphysical and scientific - to the religious outlook of Islam" (p. 127). Only a man with a profound sympathy for positivist outlook could thus comment on a positivist poet. The genius of Iqbal lies in distinguishing otherwise unpalatable ideas in beautiful dress. Although his heart - the poet in him mourns at soulless modern scientific enterprise (bayachasma — haiywan hay yah zulmat) yet his mind is essentially a modern one and almost converted to inductionist scientific project. 49. He, in some of his poetic moments, however seems to concede it. He gives great importance to ishq mdjunoon - irreason or unreason. He is a great critic of logic and logic chopping "I have solved the knots of reason/ O God, make me mad now (Sahibi-junoon)" he cried. 50. Iqbal, M., op. cit, p. 87. 51. Paton, op. cit, p. 122. 52. Ibid., p. 123. 53. Ibid. 54. Schuon, Frithjof, Understanding Islam, George Allen and Unwin, London, p. 30. 55. Vivekananda, Swami: The Complete Works, (llth Ed.) Advaita Ashram, 1972, Vol. 1, p. 185.

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56. Quoted by Swami Buddhanda in The Saving Challenge of Religion, Ramakrishna Math, Madras, 1980, p. 72. 57. Vivekananda, op. cit, Vol. 1, p. 367. 58. Quoted by Budhhanda, op. cit., p. 133. 59. Iqbal, M., op. cit, p. 8. 60. This doesn't mean untrue claims but only that these claims are to be understood only from the perspective of traditional science and traditional metaphysics. Their symbolism is incomprehensible to modern scientific tradition. 61. See my paper "Conceptual Confusions in the Thesis of Compatibility between the Quran and Modern Science" in MAAS Journal of Islamic Science, Vol. 18, No. 2, 2002. 62. Iqbal, M., op. cit, p. 155. 63. Ibid., p. 6. 64. Quoted by Faqir Vahidudin in his Rozgari Faqeer, Islamic Book Foundation, New Delhi, 1992, p. 336. 65. Reconstruction, p. 31. 66. Ibid., p. 34. 67. Schrodinger, Nature and Greeks and Science and Humanism, Cambridge University Press, Canto edition, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 165-6. 68. Iqbal, M., op. cit, p. 155. 69. Ibid., p. 14. 70. Ibid., p. 122. 71. Ibid., p. 123. 72. Schoun, Frithjof, Islam and the Perennial Philosophy, Suhail Academy, Lahore, 1999, p. 173-4. 73. Ibid., p. 166. 74. Ibid., p. 171. 75. Ibid., p. 195. 76. Smith, Huston, "Postmodernism's Impact on the Study of Religion," in Journal of the American Academy of Religion, LVIII/4 (1990). 77. Quoted by Smith op. cit. 78. Schuon, Frithjof, Dimensions of Islam, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London, 1970, p. 156. 79. Ibid., p. 158. 80. Ibid., p. 154.

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[9] BEYOND THE 'MODERN': SAC!D AL-NURSI'S VIEW OF SCIENCE Yamine Mermer and Redha Ameur The advancing tide of Western scientific thought, which began to spread in the Muslim world at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was one of the most pressing challenges faced by Muslim intellectuals of that time and it continues to have major implications for our own times. Many Muslim scholars of Ottoman Turkey, with its capital, Istanbul, lying halfway between Europe and the East, viewed this tide as a threat to the Islamic worldview and tried to form barriers to curtail this intellectual onslaught. However, by the time they realized its impact, the encroachment had already gone too far, leading to a confusion in knowledge which often weakened their responses and stances. This confusion was experienced first hand by Bedfuzzaman Sacld al-NursI (1873-1960), one of the most important Turkish scholars of the period whose intellectual journey and torments were not unlike those experienced by a great many Sufis of previous centuries, al-Ghazall (d. 1111) in particular. This article provides an overview of the historical and intellectual milieu in which al-NursI lived and experienced, worked and evolved. It explores some of his spiritual and intellectual struggles as well as ideas which bring into relief his general response to modern scientific thought. Keywords: Quranic view of science; Sacld al-NursI's view of science; Islamic science; secularization; cosmos; ay at; al-Ghazall; logic; Prophethood; revelation; harfi and ismi meanings; shirk; human philosophy of science; cosmic revelation; causation; universality.

Yamine Mermer, Indiana University, Bloomington USA; Email: [email protected]; Redha Ameur, University of Melbourne, Melbourne Australia; Email: [email protected]

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The Ottoman architects of the reforms, the tanzimdt (1839-76), were greatly impressed by the success achieved by the nations of Western Europe, particularly by their military and economic strength and by their advances in science and technology. Convinced that the very survival of the Ottoman state could only be secured by following the pattern of countries like France or England, they launched an unprecedented program of modernization and secularization. By the 1840's, Turkey—or at least its capital Istanbul—was a bustling laboratory for an experiment in Westernization on a scale not witnessed anywhere outside Europe, perhaps excluding Russia. The modernization that the early reformists hoped to achieve depended heavily on the upward participation of the citizens. For that participation to be effective, it was imperative for the state to ameliorate the education of its citizens in order to recruit from their midst cadres to fill executive positions in the administration and in the corps of the army. To this end, new institutions of learning, a new concept of education, that of education 'as a means for progress', and a new concept of knowledge, that of macarif as opposed to the traditional concept of cilm, began to emerge. This bifurcation marked the beginning of a gradual secularization of education that continued unabated until well after the tanzimdt period. Beginning from the early 1870's, an intensive publishing activity combined with a more accelerated translation movement contributed to an unprecedented popularization of modern science as well as modern Western philosophy. By the end of the 1890's, Turkish litterateurs and intelligentsia in the Ottoman capital were inclined to accept unquestioningly the premises of Western scientific thought en masse, leading to the emergence of a new class of intellectuals and new trends of thought that presented a serious challenge to Islamic culture and values. As opponents to the 'Westernist' reforms of the tanzimdt (New Regulations), both Young Ottomans and the regime of Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876-1909) were aware of the growing disdain for religion and made many attempts to counter the intellectual encroachments of the West. However, the secularization, particularly in the field of education, continued unabated during this period as neither saw any conflict between the principles of Islam and those of modern science. When Sacid al-NursI (1873-1960) first lived in Istanbul from 1907 to 1909, and later during the Young Turk rule,

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he was often in the midst of these apologetic debates. He named this early period of his life the 'Old Sacid'. After the fall of the caliphate, which was followed by the birth of the New Republic, the ongoing process of secularization that had commenced nearly a hundred years ago and which had transformed most aspects of religious life, was supported by a new zeal absent in the earlier period. The unprecedented fanaticism with which the Kemalist regime proceeded to implement its Western model of society had far-reaching consequences for education. The year 1924 saw the dissolution of the medreses and all other kinds of religious schools, as well as the proscription of the teaching of religion in all state schools. In 1925, laws were passed to officially close all Sufi orders; the scant religious education that remained at the higher level was effectively terminated with the closure of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Istanbul in 1933. In 1928, a prominent thinker of the Kemalist period wrote: The function of religion is not to provide men with knowledge but with the will and power to live... The more religion leaves explanation of the events of the universe and the search for the means of influencing them to science, the more it assumes this pragmatic and moral appearance.... Then, it is faith which manifests itself as an absolute subjugation to a moral ideal that can develop in harmony with the present-day conditions of civilization and science.

While this trend of secularism looked somewhat askance at the Islamic intellectual tradition, a peculiar kind of atheistic rationalism underpinned by the claims of modern science was about to launch a more aggressive onslaught on religion and its scripture through other intellectual quarters. The very essentials and springs of 1. M. Pacaci; Y. Aktay, "75 Years of Higher Religious Education in Modern Turkey" in The Muslim World, Vol. LCIX, No. 3-4 (JulOct 1999), 389. 2. Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (London: Hurst & Co, 1998), 497, quoting Mehmet Izzet, Yeni Igtimaiyat Derslen (2nd ed.; Istanbul, 1928), 278.

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religion, such as belief in the existence of God, in His power to create, in prophecy, and in the Day of Judgment were painted as mere superstitions in many intellectual circles and schools. Sacid alNursi's resistance to the Western intellectual infringement presented by positivism, materialism, or atheistic rationalism took place against the background of these important transformations in a polarized intellectual atmosphere. In what follows, his arguments against the premises of modern scientific thought, which formed the basis of those philosophies, are emphasized. Understanding the position of Sacid al-Nursi vis-a-vis modern science and philosophy is not a straightforward task and may elicit confusion. Confusion may arise from oversights related to al-Nursi's intellectual developments. Al-Nursi had divided his life into two distinct periods: the time of the 'Old Sacid', a person devoted to politics and speculative philosophy, and that of the 'New Sacid', who repudiated the 'Old Sacid', taking a new intellectual direction. 3. About fifty years ago, Old Sacid, who had been steeped too deeply in intellectual and philosophical sciences, tried to find the ultimate truth following the teachings of the great Sufis as well as that of the investigators of ultimate reality from among the philosophers (phi al-tariqah, ahl al-haqiqah). He could not be satisfied like most of the followers of tariqah with an impetus coming from the heart because he was already under the spell of the 'intellect of philosophy'. He was confused as to which path to follow and had to be cured.... The Imam al-Rabbani (Sirhindi) transmitted to him an encrypted message, urging him to 'unify his qiblah' and find a single master. The Old Sacld surmised, "the true master is the Qur"an."...Soon, his soul (alnafs al-ammarah) with its knack for refractoriness forced him to a spiritual and intellectual showdown. He confronted it not with his eyes closed; rather, he journeyed through his ordeal with his eyes open just as al Ghazall, Mawlana Jalaluddln, and the Imam al-Rabbani had journeyed with the eyes of their heart and intellect open in places where others had closed them. Praise be to God... he found an unfrequented path to truth through the guidance of the Qur'an. B. S. Al-Nursi, alMathnawi al-cArabi al-Nuri (Istanbul: Sozler Yayinevi, 1999), 29; henceforth Mathnawl. All translations from the Mathnawl are by the authors; other translations from al-Nursi's works based on

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Another source of confusion might be the Risale-i Nur (The Epistles of Light), al-Nursi's major work. Although the text of the Risale is replete with the poetry and terminology of the Sufi narrative, it boasts of myriads of proofs, arguments, and demonstrations. AlNursi warns us against rushing to judge his demonstrative proofs (al burhdn al-istidalali) as nazar (speculative thought). He says: A

Know that the issues you come across upon studying my work, although they present themselves in the forms of demonstration and proofs, can hardly be called speculation or 'nazar . No! They are but intuitive insights which were recorded, bound and then retained by the lights of certitude that overflow from the Generous Qur'an. The 'rational mood' of the Risale could easily lead one to label its author with a rationalism or for that matter a 'modernism' that is far from being accurate. Indeed, this confusion may very well arise existing translations but have been amended by the authors. 4. Risale-i NUT is the title Sacld al-Nursi has given to his Qur'anic commentary, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati (Istanbul: Nesil Basim Yayin, 1996); henceforth, Risale. S.Mathnawi, 318. 6. Professor Taha Abdel-Rahman argues that an erroneous differentiation is often made between al-hadath al-caqliyy (rational intuition) and al-hath al-mitafiziqiyy (metaphysical intuition), in that the latter could also be of a 'rational' nature, relying on peculiar forms of demonstration which he calls alistidldl al-matwiyy (a pregnant demonstration), the latter being a form of demonstration that does not lay out all the premises that are concomitant to that intuition. Intuition, he maintains, depends on the condition and intellectual ability of the interlocutors. While some might understand them without the mediation of premises and demonstrations, others would be in need of them, until these turn, in their case, into intuitions. Thus, he says: if someone asked what was intuition, my answer to him would be: it is an istidldl matwiyy (a pregnant demonstration), and if he then asked me: what is dhawq (fruitional taste), my answer would be caql matwiyy (pregnant intellect), and if he went on asking 'what is istidldl in this instance? I would say: al-istidldl hadth manshur (demonstrative

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from the modern understanding of caql (intellect) that has become preponderant in Muslim scholarship, which is generally alien to alNursi's particular type of intellection i.e. al-caql al-imdni. The Risale is an exegesis and elucidation of the message of the Qur'an written for an age in which 'disbelief and misguidance are advocated in the guise of science and knowledge' . The discourses of al-Nursi present arguments with the aim of showing the absurdity and 'illogicality' of the modern paradigm and the truth and universality of the Qur'anic worldview. From this point of view, alNursi is really addressing a crisis of meaning. Consequently, his critique of science could not confine itself to an 'offense' but had to serve as a means for 'collective salvation' . Hence, it had to go beyond 'offence' and attempt to 'redeem' this modern scientific proof is an unraveled or unpacked intuition), similarly, should he ask what is caql, I would retort: al-caql dhawq manshur (the intellect is intuition in the mode of unraveling). On this point see, Taha Abdel-Rahman, Hiwardt min ajli PMustaqbal (Casablanca: Matbacat al-Najah Al-Jadida, 2000), 107-09. 7. Al-Nursi, The Supreme Sign: The Observations of a Traveller Questioning the Universe Concerning his Maker, trans, by H. Algar (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 2002), 102-03; Risale, 711; 1683. 8. "As opposed to personal salvation only, it has become a question of collective salvation as misguidance is being spread in the name of science," al-Nursi writes. The Risale-i Nur is not only repairing some minor damage of some small house; it is repairing vast damage of the all-embracing citadel which contains Islam, the stones of which are the size of mountains. And it is not striving to reform only a private heart and an individual conscience; it is striving to cure with the medicines of the Qur'an and belief in the Qur'an's miraculousness the collective heart and generally-held ideas, which have been breached in awesome fashion by the tools of corruption prepared and stored up over a thousand years, and the general conscience, which is facing corruption through the destruction of the foundations, currents, and marks (shd'ir) of Islam which are the refuge of all and particularly of the common believers." al-Nursi, The Supreme Sign, 96. 9. Here, 'offense' refers to that 'offensive critique' in which something like science is attacked and nullified, but without

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mind. This semblance of 'rational discourse', al-Nursi argues, ought not be seen as 'acquiescence' to the demands of the modern mind, but rather as a 'mercy' and a 'cure' to the ills of the 'modern mind' caught in the webs of 'human' philosophy. al-Nursi says, "given that the issues [of the Risale], present themselves in the guise of demonstrative proofs, they could serve as 'rescue ladders', saving those who have erred in the path of thought and knowledge from slipping into the abyss of philosophy." Thus, when we read in the Risale statements like: "At the end of time, mankind will spill into 12 science and learning. It will obtain all its strength from science (cilm). Power and rule will pass to the hand of science (cilm)," we may be facing utterances that are more problematic than meet the eye. Likewise, frequently blurry difference between the 'offensive' and the 'redemptive' approaches of al-Nursi deserve more attention than we tend to give. The Crucial Role of the Universe in the Risale

In one of his early works, Muhakamdt, first published in 1911, alpresenting the student of science, or the age of science for that matter, with remedies and ways of 'picking up the pieces', as it were, resulting from the critique. As for 'redemptive', it is used in the sense that although al-NursI's conception of science is completely different from that of modern science, he still uses an intellectual discourse, strives for 'universality', and displays a demonstrative ability that can help modern science change its course. Redemptive, thus, purports to the intellectual task of addressing the problems modern science has failed to resolve, but in a language it can understand and adopt. 10. The authors have borrowed the term "Human Philosophy" from Prof. T. Abdel Rahman, who uses it to refer to the knowledge acquired by human beings without revelation and thus it is in contrast to what he calls "Qur'anic Philosophy". \\.Mathnawi, 226.

12. Risale, 107. It is important to highlight here a confusion that might arise as a result of relying solely on translation when dealing with al-Nursi. His use of the word cilm, which is usually understood as knowledge, is often translated as science, whereas al-Nursi himself would use the word fen for modern science.

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Nursi lays down the methodological principles for understanding the Qur'an. One important principle directly related to the issue of science is the role of the universe in confirming the veracity of revelation since imitation in matters of faith is regarded as unacceptable by many quarters in Islam. Al-Nursi asserts that the Qur'an and the cosmos cannot be understood separately; he describes the Qur'an as "the eternal interpreter of the various tongues reciting the verses of creation" and as "The revealer of the treasuries of the divine names hidden in the heavens and on the 14 earth; the key to the truth concealed beneath the lines of events." That is, the Qur'an recites the cosmic signs (dydt) , which pervade the world, in such a way that it creates a meaningful activity out of the constant flux, change, and renewal of the cosmic processes. For al-Nursi the cosmos is not just a metaphor for the Qur'an: it is the Qur'an in viva vox. The Risale spares no effort, through proofs and cogent arguments, to demonstrate that the meaningful activities in the cosmos are a kind of speech; each being an event, each change is like a word and their constant flux a never ending testimony to the glory of God. In short, just like the Qur'an is God's speech through word and discourse, the cosmos is His speech through deed and act. Al-Nursi says that the Creator makes the cosmos speak through the Qur'an, which is "the tongue of the unseen world in the manifest world." 13. Not necessarily modern ern science for as we will see al-Nursi has his own Quranic understanding of science beyond the modern. 14. Al-Nursi, The Words, trans. S. Vahide (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 2002), 376-77, 728; al-Nursi, Isharat al-icaz (Istanbul: Sozler Yayinevi, 1999), 22. 15. The Qur'an refers to its verses as well as to beings and events with the same word, ayah, which means sign. The word ayah and its plural (dydt} occur in the Qur^an 380 times, mostly referring to the creation, beings and events in it. 16. Al-Nursi, The Letters, trans. S. Vahide (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 2001), 339-340. There is a verse in the Qur'an that says, They will reply: God, who gives speech to all things, has given speech to us (as well). Fussilat: 21. 17. Al-Nursi, The Rays, trans. S. Vahide (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 1998), 146-49.

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Both have a common origin: the preserved tablet, which contains the heavenly Book, but whereas one proceeds from God's attribute of speech, the other proceeds from His attribute of 'will'. In other words, what He says is what He wills in kun.r (Be), and what He wills is what He says in Qul! (Say). Al-Nursi explains that 'in order to describe His act to both eye and ear, the Maker describes His act while performing it: as a true artist, He unravels His art as He works it, and as a true Bestower of bounties He displays His boons in the very act of bestowing. As such, His very word constitutes His very act and vice versa. The Creator speaks as He creates; and thus He unites word and act through the 'audible' Qur'an and the cosmic Qur'an in one revelation. Following this vision, it can be said that on the one hand the Qur'an interprets or rather translates the speech of the cosmos in its dydt al-takwlniyyah (cosmic signs, verses), while on the other, the cosmos witnesses to the truth of the dydt al-tadwmiyyah (Qur^anic verses) and reveals their import. Given the importance of the cosmos for al-Nursi, it is not difficult to understand that until the First World War, he was favourable to science through which he sought to mediate the revelation of the Qur'an in the hope that it would eventually help uncover the signs of God in the world. The Old Sacid and the Islamic Tradition of Knowledge The Qur'an speaks extensively of the cosmos and invites its readers to seek God's signs 'in the horizons? that is, in the outer world, 'and in themselves'. Annemarie Schimmel notes that this verse could legitimately be understood as encouraging Muslim scholars and scientists 'to look deeper and deeper into the marvel of nature, as well as the marvels which the human being contains in himself, and to invent ever new ways for a profounder understanding of the world." She also mentions al-Ghazali (1058-1111), who wrote in his Ihya? culum al-dln that the real muwahhid (monotheist) is the one who looks at the 18. Al-Nursi, Ishdrat al-icjdz in Risale, 1216. 19. Fussilat: 53. 20. Annemarie Schimmel, "Reason and Mystical Experience in Sufism" in Intellectual Traditions in Islam, ed. F. Daftary (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), 143.

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world because it is created by God, and because it gives him the possibility of seeing God in His signs and worshipping Him. Al-Ghazali, a representative of the Ashcari school ofkaldm, is well known for his critique of Greek metaphysics because it was incompatible with fundamentals of the Islamic beliefs. Osman Bakar contends that al-Ghazali disagreed with the Muslim philosophers on certain metaphysical issues: he argued against the use of the philosophical method of the faldsifah, which he found wanting particularly when it was brought to bear on issues of a metaphysical order. However, Bakar reminds us that al-Ghazali warned Muslims not to oppose science just because it had been associated with the philosophers. Al-Ghazali thought that the influence of the Muslim philosophers was due to their pragmatic success in natural sciences. In order to solve this problem, he excluded philosophy from his classification of the sciences. His approach was to put forward the a priori and a posteriori character of science and establish the speculative character of philosophy. From this standpoint, al-Ghazali maintained that the philosophers were right insofar as the mathematical and natural sciences were concerned but not in the field of speculative philosophy and metaphysics. In his al-Munqidh min al-daldl, alGhazali accepted science on the ground that it can be useful to mankind and referred to the services provided by medicine to underscore his point. Hence, in his classification, science fell under the category of fard al-kifdyah, that is, a knowledge that a section of the population was required to acquire. As opposed to philosophy, he viewed the pursuit of this knowledge as 'harmless', in that science was inherently relative (ictibdri) with no claim to ultimate knowledge of reality or haqiqah. What is noteworthy, though, is that al-Ghazali in spite of his criticism of the philosophers, accepted Aristotelian logic as universally valid and most of all neutral. This position casts a 21. Ibid. 22. Osman Bakar, History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman (London: Routledge, 1996), Vol. II, 938-39. 23. Al-Ghazali, The Book of Knowledge of Ihyd? 'Ulum al-Dln, trans. N.A. Paris (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1962), 36-37.

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different light on al-Ghazali's final stance on science particularly from the vantage point of the modern era. Al-Ghazali's position on logic continued to have a significant influence over the intellectual developments in the Muslim world, despite the important critique of Ibn Taymiyyah. Indeed, its epistemological traces can be gleaned in 24 al-Nursi's early works. The end of the First World War and that of the Ottoman Caliphate terminated the first part of al-Nursi's life , the period of the "Old Sacid", as he himself later calls it. For many reasons that exceed the scope of this paper, al-Nursi entered a completely new phase in his life; he was as he himself confessed, a 'New Sacid.' New Sacid admits that Old Sacid was not very aware of the philosophical underpinnings of modern science, and like al-Ghazali, had taken its logic prima facie. Unwittingly, he came to view science as a 'candid student' of the universe and hence as potentially helpful in uncovering the cosmic signs and verifying the veracity of the cosmic reality of tawhid. Like the Muslim philosophers, Old Sacid, too, took the principle of combining human philosophy with Qur^anic wisdom for granted. 24. Tacliqat, an early work of al-Nursi, is in fact a commentary on Aristotelian logic. 25. The years of destruction caused by the First World War, followed by the momentous demise of the Ottoman Caliphate pushed alNursi into an acute spiritual crisis that prompted the overall transformation of his intellectual outlook. The parallels between al-Nursi's intellectual journey and that of al-Ghazali are beyond the scope of this paper, but is worth noting here that both had undergone a long spiritual crisis as a result of their accepting some of the precepts of philosophy. In both, one takes notice of that spiritual struggle, that 'dark night of the soul', which ends in their case with the victory of the 'heart' over the 'soul' (nafs), culminating in a birth of a 'new' intellect, as it were, and a new Quranic Man. 26. In a treatise written sometime between 1928 and 1932, the New Sacld explains why his style differed from that of the Old Sacld as follows: "The Old Sacld and certain (Muslim) thinkers in part accepted the principles of man-made modern philosophy. For even when they argued against the proponents of this

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Al-Nursi describes one of his spiritual awakenings right after the First World War. He searched the Islamic sciences and also philosophy and the sciences he had learned up to that time for consolation and hope. He describes the sciences and Western philosophy as "in part misguidance and in part trivia or superfluous." He says: Quite erroneously, I had imagined those philosophical sciences to be the source of progress and means of illumination. However, they had sullied my spirit and been an obstacle for my spiritual development. Suddenly, through God's mercy and munificence, the sacred wisdom of the Qur'an came to my assistance. As is explained in many parts of the Risale-i NUT, it washed away and cleansed the dirt of those philosophical matters. The spiritual darkness arising from science had drowned my spirit in the universe. Whichever way I looked seeking a light, I could find not a gleam in those matters, I could not breathe. And so it continued until the instruction in divine unity (tawhid) given by the Qur'anic phrase 'There is no deity but He dispersed all those layers of darkness.

It is here that the New Sacid starts. Al-Nursi had by then "shed his old philosophical guise, and put on a new one, the robe of wisdom. Here we see the death of al-Nursl the philosopher and the birth of al-Nursl the sage". One of the radical changes New Sacid had undergone has a direct bearing on his views on modern science. He now felt the need to get deeper at the roots of the philosophy underpinning this philosophy they used their weapons, thus accepting those principles to a degree. They submitted to some of their principles in the form of the physical sciences, believing them to be unshakable and therefore could not demonstrate the true worth of Islam. It was quite simply as though they were grafting Islam to philosophy, the roots of which they supposed to be very deep; as though strengthening it." Risale, 560-61. W.Risale, 711. 28. T. Abdel Rahman, "The Separation of Human Philosophy from the Wisdom of the Qur'an" in Sacld al-NursI's Islam at the Crossroads, ed. I. M. Abu Rabi' (Albany: SUNY, 2003), 202.

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science. Al-Ghazali's stance on science coupled with his convictions about Aristotelian logic might have constituted a somewhat 'acceptable' position in an intellectual climate in which medieval science was at least searching for an anchor in religion. Eight centuries later, however, in an age where secular modern science had become the dominant paradigm, science, as it developed in the West, was in the main identified with 'truth and objective reality' and religion with 'superstitions and subjective faith'. Al-Ghazali's approach to logic and by extension to science needed, therefore, an overhaul. As for the approaches professed by such philosophers as al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd, they needed to be 'repudiated'. Although abstract rational inquiry allowed for the combination of philosophy and wisdom at some point in history, the social and political upheaval that shook history and undermined society with a shocking effect on humanity refuted the possibility of such combination. Al-Nursi was aware that this sociopolitical upheaval was but an effect of the impact on Western societies of the intellectual revolution carried out by modern philosophy against religion. Taha Abdel Rahman says that: Such strange contradiction between reason's permission for the combining of philosophy and wisdom and the refutation of this possibility by the lived reality preoccupied al-Nursi's thought for a long time, prompting him to review his philosophical position and, consequently, to reconsider the established view among Islamic philosophers that philosophy and wisdom are connected interpenetratively like sisters or associatively like friends.

One of the major merits of New Sacid's new intellectual journey is his rigorous refutation of the very logic of modern science and the cognitive claims of its philosophy. His critique of the theory of 29. Ibid., 201-2. 30. One of the salient features of al-Nursi's critique of science is that it does not confine itself to the destruction (and deconstruction) of modern science. As mentioned earlier, al-Nursi's 'offense'

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causation , which formed the ontological foundation of modern science, may be considered as one of the most important 32 achievements of modern kaldm. The Weight of Science in the Scales of New Sacid

Historically, the horizontal dimension of life refers to the point in time when Man has forsaken his vertical dimension, heaven, to realize his 'earthly' Utopia instead. The horizontal dimension, whose origin may be traced back to the renaissance, marks the time when human fulfillment was seen as no longer above the cosmos but 'down here' in time and space. The way nature has been studied and understood in the context of this 'horizontal' dimension typifies the modern mind whose main characteristics are "its going ahead in the world which is determined by time and space, causality and substance...indefinitely, without any termination", and its endless combines an attempt to 'redeem' science and cure what Paul Tillich called the 'schizophrenic split in our consciousnesses'. It strives to show that sound reasoning and logic and a more critical understanding of the very processes of creation themselves point to the Divine and uphold the truth of revelation as the ultimate expounder on the secrets and finality of creation. 31. The Ashacri tradition of refuting causation has been maintained not only by the scholars of kaldm but also by the great Sufis like Ibn cArabi and Rumi. The latter argued in his Mathnawi that the main mission of the prophets had always been their resistance against the worship of apparent causes, since this delusion opened the gates of polytheism and ungratefulness. 32. It should be made clear that a number of Muslim and nonMuslim scholars had been aware of the limits of the modern scientific mind and argued eloquently against a number of its claims. Aside from al-NursI, we are not aware, however, that the ontology of the modern scientific mind has ever been debunked on the basis of its very premises and on its own turf as concisely and as cogently. See, for example, al-NursI's treatise on 'Nature' and also Y. B. Mermer, "Induction, Science and Causation: Some Critical Reflections" in Islamic Studies, Vol. 35 (Autumn 1996) no. 3. and Y. B. Mermer, The Muslim World, Vol. LCIX (Jul-Oct 1999) no. 3-4, 270-96.

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attempt at "controlling nature...without ever asking about the purpose of this controlling." Also, typical of this mind are its obsession with "making everything into calculable objects which can be described in terms of numbers, [so that] they can be managed, divided, and put together again...it is a calculating reason...a tool [in the hand] of the business man, the technician, or of scientific analysis." Hence, for the modern mind nature is not to be contemplated, but coerced. Things that lie in this 'open Book of Nature' are truncated and cut off from their vertical connection, causing them disfiguration and loss of their 'symbolic' meaning. Al-NursI argued that the modern scientific formulation and vision of reality is anchored in a faulty understanding which delivers a distorted meaning of being. As early as 1926 the New Sacld took the hermeneutical dimension of science to task. Commenting on the verse, And he who has been given wisdom has been 34 given great good, he compared 'sacred Qur'anic wisdom' with the philosophy of science at an ontological level and used a parable to illustrate the great difference between the knowledge imparted by 'human' philosophy and the one diffused by revelation. A king, he relates, one day showed a heavenly book embellished with art and jewels to a philosopher and a sage and asked them both to write a paper about its value and wisdom. As the philosopher in the parable had little knowledge of the language in which the book was written, he confined his deliberations to the shapes of the letters, their numbers, and their inter-relationships, to the chemical composition 35 of the ink and paper and so on. The point of al-Nursi's parable is that, unlike the sage, the student of 'human' philosophy does not realize that words are symbols and views them as 'words' per se, or as essences pointing each to a unique self. In this way, it does not even dawn on him that he is before a Book whose words convey meanings beyond the shape, size and the form of their appearance. Having failed to be aware that 33. Paul Tillich, The Irrelevance and Relevance of the Christian Message,

ed. Durwood Foster (Ohio: The Pilgrim Press, 1996), 24-25.

34. alBaqarah: 269 35. Al-NursI, The Words, 143-45; Mathnawi, 456-57.

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words are symbols, let alone grasp their meaning, whatever advances human philosophy makes, it cannot be said that it has knowledge of the 'Book of Nature'. Hence, for al-Nursi Human philosophy, [be it natural philosophy, the philosophy of life, existentialism or modern science], looks at things from that aspect that pertains to their essences and their causes. It regards them as objects or concrete beings bearing meaning in themselves (macnd ismi). Wisdom [the knowledge revealed by God] on the other hand, perceives beings as bearing the meaning of another (macnd harft): they are collocations or 'letters' of a 'mighty Book'. Confined to its ismi method, modern science 'sunk into the 'decorations': the external and literal meaning of the cosmic text. Eventually, it veered away from the path 36 of the truth.

For al-Nursi, then, a philosophy that is not guided and 'reigned in' by Divine wisdom "is a sophistry divorced from reality and an 37 insult to the Universe." During that period which saw him fall into a deep existential and spiritual crisis, the Old Sacid had often revisited modern science and philosophy in search of a light or a cure. But, in the end he deplored what he perceived to be the utter poverty of these branches of learning, which hardly addressed the ultimate questions facing humanity. Whenever these branches of learning dealt with these questions, he found them wanting due to their tendency to fall into what he saw to be the "quagmire of doubt", making his struggles even more difficult. Astronomy, he says, is busy with 'learning what the rings around Saturn are like', while statistics frets over 'how many chickens there are in America', and other branches of knowledge according to al-Nursi are similarly engrossed in nonessential issues. However, to the primordial questions which arise from our existential predicament: 'What is the meaning of my being 36. Al-Nursi, The Words, 145, emphasis added. 37. Ibid. 38. For a detailed autobiographical account of these intellectual crises and spiritual struggles of Sacld al-Nursi, see his Mathnawl. SQ.Risale, 111.

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and of all beings which I am surrounded by? Where do I come from and where am I ultimately going? How can I save myself and break free from the mechanical chain of causes and their determinacy? For such questions, modern science and the philosophies that embrace it are utterly bankrupt, offering neither solace nor a path toward human perfection. Al-Nursi says that in times past, misguidance had come from ignorance and hence it was easy to eliminate. In modern times, misguidance is not easily eradicated because it arises from science and learning, and so he felt the need to expound the truths of belief with many comparisons "proceeding from the effulgence of the Qur'an". The Qur'an urges the intellect to investigate the signs in the universe and calls on the heart to testify to the divine messages they bear. The darkness and 'nihility' of 'human' philosophy is for al-Nursi often the most effective backdrop to bring into relief the light of the wisdom of revelation, therefore it is no surprise to find in the Risale numerous comparisons between those two avenues of knowledge. How each views and understands existence is often the main theme of this type of exposition. For example, the QurDan, he says, speaks of the sun as a revolving lamp; it does not speak of the sun for itself, but as the center of a system, that mirrors the Maker's attributes of 42 perfection. By declaring, And (We) set the sun as a lantern, the Qur'an depicts the world as a home prepared for humanity and other living beings. It infers that the sun is a subjugated servant, and thus reveals the mercy and bestowal of the Creator. As for the "foolish and prattling philosophy" and science, it speaks of the sun as "a vast burning liquid mass that storms through the universe, causing the planets which have been flung off from it to revolve around it. Its mass is such-and-such. It is this, it is that." Apart from terrible dread and bewilderment, al-Nursi wonders whether the human spirit can derive anything else from such 'delirious' 40. Risale, 96, 711. 41. Al-Nursi, The Supreme Sign, 102-03 and Risale, 1683.

42. Nuh: 16

43. Risale, 96, and The Words, 252.

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expositions. As we will see, al-Nursi does not so much object to the subject of science as he does to the way it deals with its subject. Modern science just misses the meaning of the world and that is why, despite all 'its pretentious claims, its inside is hollow'. For al-Nursi only revelation can impart knowledge of the reality of the world to man. Human reason is not a source of knowledge but only a tool. On the other hand, sound intellect, 'the intellect of faith', commands that revelation be followed because all that revelation says is 'reasonable', as all that revelation witnesses can be observed in the universe, and 45 attested by the heart. The Way of Prophethood Versus the Way of Human Philosophy For al-Nursi there have always been two main paths to knowledge, two main currents in the world, from the time of Adam up to the present. One path he calls the way of Prophethood and religion, the other the way of human philosophy in its various forms: Whenever those two ways have been united in agreement, that is to say, whenever philosophy sought refuge in religion and obeyed it, humanity has experienced happiness and a blissful social life. Whenever the gap between the two paths widened, and they reached a bifurcation, light and goodness rallied around the way of Prophethood, religion and wisdom on the right side, while evil and misconceptions rallied behind the way of 'human' philosophy on the i r 46 left. In al-Nursi's works, philosophy or science become wisdom when they serve the worldview of Prophethood, that is when they study the universe in accordance with the revealed purpose of creation. AlNursi contends that given the limitations of human reason, there is no other way to reach reality. The Prophetic teachings tell us that human ownership of life is only apparent and temporary. The continuance of existence depends on another Being beyond the human realm. When one accepts that the essence of one's existence 44. Ibid.

45.Risale, 171, 1963. 46. Risale, 242.

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has a harfi (symbolic) meaning, one understands that one's being does not pertain to one's self, but carries the meaning of another. Consequently, he realizes that all things have a harfi meaning; they are like mirrors to the attributes of the 'wholly-other'. As darkness is the mirror to light, likewise, created beings act in many respects as mirrors to the attributes of the Maker. Due to the contrast of opposites, all things reflect His power through their intrinsic powerlessness, and His perfection through their deficiency. When Man listens to the 'cosmic prayers of inherent powerlessness', he witnesses how these prayers are instantly and constantly answered with 'cosmic sustenance and mercy'. He himself 47. To the extent that words serve to convey a meaning they are symbols like characters in musical notation. Thus, what is meant by 'symbolic' in this paper does not relate to what is conveyed by 'token' nor is it in any way related to symbolic logic or symbolism. Al-NursI borrowed the term 'macnd harfi' from the glossary of Arabic grammar. There, a preposition such as a harf al-jarr, or an isolated letter, has no meaning in itself, but serves to point to a meaning beyond itself (Al-harfma dalla cald macnd fi ghayrihi) Mathnawi, 270. Al-NursI uses harfi to allude to both aspects of things, which looks to their Maker, as well as to the intellect, which as a result of its being cleansed of its ismi vision is made to witness their 'symbolic' activity. By contrast, 'ma'nd ismi, pertaining to 'ism (noun), bears a meaning in itself and points to itself (ma dalla cala macnd fi nafsihi). Mathnawi, 270. As in the English language the nominative T, for instance, is a pronoun denoting a case expressing the 'subject' of the verb, one may, in the figurative sense at least, propose 'nominative mood' as an English equivalent to macnd ismi. Al-NursI uses macnd ismi or 'nominative mood' to allude to the view that holds that Man actually does exert power over things and produces effects, a view which, according to al-NursI, leads Man to either ascribe some 'divinity' to himself or to the things in his horizon. Mathnawi, 221. Thus in al-NursI's usage ma'nd ismi is often used to convey 'ego-philosophy', speculative thought (nazar), Greek philosophy and the like, all of which cause Man to view beings as independent agents or 'essences' contained within concrete objects. 48. Al-NursI, The Letters, 286-87.

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is then beckoned to open up to 'the grace of the Divine Names', and begins to prepare himself to hand over all things to their real owner 19 and attain true affirmation of tawhid. Whoever is blessed with this 'living faith' understands the reality of divine unity in the cosmos and in the Qur'an because one then lives in constant witness to it. To be sure, the harfi meaning is no mere cogitation, nor is it a product of speculative thought, although the Risale often assumes the garb of demonstrative arguments and proofs. Harfi meaning is an outcome of 'fruitional tastes' (fuyuddt Qur^dniyyah) unbosomed from the Qur'an. Indeed, these 'tastes' and lights, as al-Nursi explains in many parts of his Mathnawi, shine only upon an impotent intellect of the one who accepts his or her intrinsic weakness (cajz wa faqr). It is an outcome of divine 'grace', rather than of 'genius', for the intellect that is witness to the truths of the harfi meaning is not the intellect that knows 'by and of itself, but the one that 'knows by and from God'. Not only is this intellect guided by revelation; it constantly experiences and witnesses its lights. The way of philosophy, which has not yielded to the way of Prophethood, represents the one who walks the path of heedlessness and forgets the wisdom behind his creation, and assumes his existence purports strictly to an ismi (nominative) meaning. Such a person claims that he owns his existence and his life and imagines himself to be the real master in his dubious sphere of volition. This second attitude echoes Heidegger's Dasein who is unable to stand the thought that he is not his 'own' creation. Richard Rorty explains that when Heidegger says that Dasein is guilty, he has in mind the fact that he speaks somebody else's language rather than his own, and lives in a world he never made, a world, which, for this reason, is not his home. Dasein knows he is only contingently there, 'thrown' in the universe as it were, where he does not mean what he says. Al-Nursi explains that when one does not surrender to the ultimate Reality and pretends that one's existence is independent of one's Sustainer, one is bound to compare everything to oneself, 49. Al-Nursi, The Words, 557-59. 50. R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 108-11.

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claiming that everything owns itself. Such a person assumes that beings have an isml (nominative) function only; they carry no meaning other than themselves. Daseins estrangement in the world stems from this self-understanding and essentialism. He fails to see their divine origin and vertical connection, he cannot but see them as objects 'thrown' in the world, left to their own devices, like orphans having to fight for their own survival This, for al-Nursi, is the typical predicament of the Man of shirk (i.e. the one who ascribes partners to God and divides His Sovereignty among created things), leading Man to fall into darkness, committing not only " Science • Vol. 2 (Winter 2004) No. 2

to the refutation of causation. Their reason is exactly the same as that of Ibn Rushd's who objected to al-Ghazali some eight centuries earlier under the alleged reason that knowledge was the necessary concomitant of causation. A contemporary Muslim scholar, Mehdi Golshani contends that the negation of causation, which he identifies as the corollary of determinism, implies that "nothing would be the requisite of another, and anything could be derived from anything, 68 so there would be no room for science." Golshani's view is that God creates through intermediary causes. But if the world operates on natural principles, and if causes are necessarily connected to the effects, where does God fit in except as prime mover or first cause? If causes produce the effects naturally, necessarily, and immutably, how then are things in the world to lead us to witness to the reality and 'Life' of their Creator? In other words, if things do not function as signs and symbols to the constant renewal of the divine reality, as in this ismi model of the world, how can we then turn and say that 'everything' is a sign of God as held by Golshani? If we simply reply: 'because the Qur'an says so', there is then some difficult reconciling to do. The harfi meaning of things is not an inherent feature of the ismi model, unless it is introduced ad hoc with no precise role to fulfill. Muslim proponents of the ismi approach recognize the 68. M. Golshani, "Philosophy of Science from the Qur'anic Perspective" in Toward Islamization of Disciplines (Herndon: International Islamic Publishing House, 1995), 88. 69. In relation to this point al-Nursi writes: "Know dear friend of mine! Sadly, the majority of mankind, it appears, has failed to give this great Visible book', the cosmos, and this highly venerable 'audible book', the Qur'an, their due esteem, largely, as a result of ill-conceived thoughts diffused by some of the philosophers and literati in our midst. Infatuated and absorbed by their 'I am ness', as is often the case, philosophers tend to accord 'the Necessary Being' only the thin husk of His entire creation. Then, following this 'wishful thinking' and absurd 'tokenism' they overreach themselves daring to stretch their hands to divide the remains of His Kingdom among imaginary, if not impossible causes, and contrived names and shares that refer back to no real nominee'. Mathnawi, 307.

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significance of causality in connection with knowledge, but they, too, like the faldsifah start, according to al-Nursi, with their preconceived notion of causation and interpret experience and the world accordingly. But al-Nursi believes that such interpretation is akin to putting the cart before the horse, since we cannot say anything about the status of causation before we observe the world. Observation however, does not appear to suggest that causation is true. That is why attempts to reconcile causation with the Qur'anic concept of divine unity and omnipotence involve great difficulties and remain conjectural and paradoxical. c Allamah Sayyid Tabataba'I writes that "whatever is caused by natural causes is really caused by Allah...The causes do have causality (which he defines as natural causation) because Allah has given it to them.. .Every cause has been given the power to create the relevant effect; but the real authority is yet in the hands of Allah." From al-Nursi's harfi perspective this last statement is paradoxical: if a cause has the power to create an effect, it has necessary properties with which it produces the effect. But if something is necessary, it exists of itself and from itself; it has not been given existence at any point in time. This means it is not contingent. However, all observed 71 causes are contingent. The harfi approach does not deny causality and the order in the world, which is one of the major designata of unity, but it refutes the fact that a cause could create anything as groundless. It does not dismiss causes but employs them as signs in attaining knowledge, in the way revelation teaches. It is concerned with showing how every cause and effect and particularly their relationships are signs 70. M. H. Tabataba\ Al-Mizan: An Exegesis of the Qur^an, Vol. I, trans. S. S. Akhtar Rizvi (Tehran: WOFIS, 1973), 112-13. 71. "Know O friend still under the spell of causes! The creation of a cause with its precise determinations as well as its constant supply with the necessary requisites that makes it fit to bring into being the effect, is not at all easier and worthier, nor is it more perfect and loftier than the creation of the effect within the cause in an instant by the order 'Be', from He who, before Whom stands as equal the atoms, as well as, the solar system." Mathnawi, 212.

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pointing to the knowledge of the divine attributes and to the laws of the manifestation of those divine names in this world. In other words it is by showing that causation is untrue because it is unfounded that al-Nursi's approach reveals the harfi nature of things and hence the truth of the teachings of the Qur'an. For al-Nursi, things are not signs (dydf) just because the Qur'an states so, rather the Qur'an says so because things actually function as signs as it can be verified through observation. Al-Nursi's Analysis oflsmi Science 72

Know that most of Man's 'earthly' cogitations, his incontrovertible and even self-evident truths are built on 'customariness' (ulfah), the source of compounded ignorance. A corruption of serious consequences therefore resides in the very foundations of his knowledge. It is owing to this almost perpetual state of affairs, that the Qur'an constantly directs the gaze of mankind towards the recurrent vicissitudes (cadiydt), beckoning them fervently to look closer at the veils of the 'ordinary'. For the recurrent, the ordinary, and the mundane conceal beneath that 'extra-ordinary' activity transiting the very vicissitudes (cadiydt) of life and the world. Indeed, it is through these that the lights of the Qur'anic stars pierce the dark vaults and tenebrous shrouds of the mind 73 succumbed to 'customariness' (ulfah). Know that due to 'customariness', many have ceased to 74 mull over the recurrent vicissitudes Cadiydt'} of the 72. Al-Nursi usually uses the term 'earthly' to refer to 'human' philosophy, which resists the 'heavenly knowledge' or revelation. 73. Mathnawi, 324. 74. This interesting passage reveals that the author was keen to take the challenge of the materialist philosophers of his time into their own grounds, explaining that the Qur'anic appraisals of matter were more conclusive and 'positive' than those of the positivists. Comparing the cognitive value of the wisdom of the Qur^an with that of the philosophy of science, al-Nursi holds that the Qur'an shatters the veil of customariness instigated by the ismi vision of modern science and makes us wonder at the

Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science Yamine Mermer and Redha Ameur • 147 world, although, these are but inroads of the miracles of Divine power. Having instead confined their gazes to the surface of these perpetually flowing manifestations, they have taken an attitude similar to those who upon perusing the surface of the ocean have failed to bring themselves to see in the ocean anything beyond the mere undulations brought about by the caressing of the air and the twinkling of the sunshine. How can they who rely only on these superficial observations reach to the conclusions about the depth of the ocean, the might of its Owner and Creator whose tremendum reigns the heavens and the earth 75 and all that lies between?

Understanding and interpretation of the world is for al-Nursi a mode of being. Isml science, that is the science that proceeds from the intellect of philosophy, is based on a flawed understanding of being, dictated by the whims of the soul and cannot lead to reality. Its so-called scientific knowledge is ignorance masquerading as knowledge. Scientific knowledge is based on causation, which is a corollary dogma of isml (the nominative) meaning. Causation is neither elicited by experience, nor logically justifiable. While dealing primarily with the 'ills' of his own soul, al-Nursi argues extensively against its intellectual claims, demonstrating in various contexts and from many perspectives that there are challenging difficulties in accepting both its claims to 'divinity' and its consequent teaching, namely, causation: knowledge presupposes universality, but there can be no universality if the horizontal line of causation is assumed. Causation is taken to mean that the existence of an effect is necessitated by its causes; it is more than just causality. The isml meaning takes it for granted that causes are efficient, that is, they produce the effect and sustain its existence. However, al-Nursi argues that the occurrence of one effect calls for the existence of the whole cosmos and not only its apparent causes, because things are inseparable and inter-related in the cosmos. divine names manifested in things and events. Al-Nursi, The Words, 150-54. Ib.Mathnawi, 323. 76. Al-Nursi, The Words, 576.

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Know that an atom may bear the sun and run with it while it could not, in essence, accommodate another atom as attested by evidence. Being similar to the rain drizzles blazing in the sun, atoms of these living beings and their compounds are fit to become vessels for the flashes of the manifestations of the luminous, pre-eternal, absolute, and encompassing power of His pre-eternal infinite knowledge and absolute will. Or else, how could an atom of one of the cells in your eye be the source and origin of the potency, the sensibility, and the volition enabling it to carry out its ever-increasing duties in the complex arenas of its operations? Particularly, as we bear in mind that atoms carry out numerous functions and duties. Indeed! Doesn't it travel in the sensing nerves of the eye, in the veins, and the arteries, and is involved in the operations of visualizing, and intercepting visuals, and many more bewildering activities like these? Seeing this wonderful and precise work, this orderly and adorned sculpting, this profound and far-reaching wisdom, one is left with the following question. Either every atom and every compound in creation are the origin and the source for these comprehensive and perfectly consummate attributes, or else they are the locus and mirrors to the rays of the manifestations of the 'Pre-eternal Sun' to whom appertain these Attributes. The first consideration entails difficulties by the number of atoms and their compounds in the world.

In other words, the production of the tiniest effect requires a knowledge, power, will, and so on that encompass the whole world, not only in space but also in time. "The One Who created the mosquito created both the sun and the Milky Way; and the One Who ordered the flea's internal organs clearly set in order the solar system." If it is not accepted that causes and effects are being made and cannot produce anything, then it has to be accepted that 77. Mathnawi, 226. 78. Al-NursI, The Words, 732. 79. The Qur^an states this very clearly: Those they invoke beside God cannot create anything, since they themselves are but being created, (alNahl: 20-21); Will they, then, ascribe divinity, side by side with Him,

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within each contingent cause there resides infinite creative power, knowledge, and will; this is nonsensical and contradictory because each cause being also an effect would have to be both dominant 80 under the domination of all other beings. From another point of view, al-Nursi refers to the countless events (creative acts) occurring in countless places all at the same time and without intermediaries, such as the advent of spring, hatching of the eggs, and so on. These events, these creative acts proceed from a law of creativity that encompasses all those events. That is, the one who gives life to an insect must be the one who creates and gives life to all insects and animals, and whoever spins particles must be the one who sets the celestial bodies in motion, for the law of creativity is a chain and creative acts are tied to it. Al-Nursi concludes that each thing ascribes every other thing to its own Maker, and each creative act attributes all acts to its author. In respect to the ismi meaning, beings in themselves are transitory and accidental. They do not possess in themselves anything that can perpetuate and sustain their existence. But in respect to the harfi meaning, the existence of every thing is directly connected to its Maker and through that connection it is related to all other things in space and in time. The particular gains universality through this vertical connection. Al-Nursi affirms that it is through its connection to the Creator that 'a fly did away with Nimrud, an ant destroyed Pharaoh's palace, and a fig seed bears the

unto that which does not create anything since they themselves are created? (al-Acrdf: 191); And yet, some choose to worship instead of Him, (imaginary) deities that cannot create anything but are themselves being created, and have it not within themselves to avert harm from, or bring benefit to, themselves, and have no power over death, nor over life, nor over resurrection! (al-Furqdn: 3).

80. Al-Nursi, The Words, 303. Al-Nursi presents this line of argument as a development of the logic of the Qur'anic verse, Which is more reasonable: belief in the existence of numerous divine lords, each of them different from the other, or (in) the One who holds absolute sway over all that exists? (Yusuf: 39). 81. Al-Nursi, The Letters, 392-93; Mathnawi, 240.

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load of a fig tree'. Within the context of the harfi approach, we may say that universality exists only in relation to the Creator. Were it not for that connection, things would all be like orphans, alien to all the rest of beings and they all would become 'estranged particulars' and 'logically nothings'. The so-called causes and effects would have been horizontally related to each other if they had been necessarily related i.e. if it had been possible to deduce the effect from its cause(s) through a purely rational process, without referring to past observation, which is obviously not possible. In science, universal statements are inferred from particular ones inductively, while from a logical point of view, universal statements cannot be inferred from particulars, no matter how numerous and ubiquitous. Inductive inferences could have been justified if an empirical relation between a cause and effect, i.e. a purely logical truth were necessary. Inductive logic conjectures that induction is valid, and then concludes that horizontal causation is true; whereas, induction can only be justified if causation i.e. a one to one relation between cause and effect is true. According to Karl Popper, the difficulties of inductive logic are insurmountable. To justify induction, inductive inferences should be employed, and then these will have to be justified by invoking a new principle of induction, and so on ad infinitum. The attempt to base the principle breaks down since it leads to infinite regress. This means that science has no valid method to move from the particular to the universal. A scientific law is the recurrence of particular events, but there is no reason why a collection of contingent particulars should result in a universal law. One of the most important results of the problem of induction is that the cognitive claims of inductive logic, in other words the scientific method, are unjustifiable. The point al-Nursi makes is simply that scientific laws are unjustifiable, but more broadly, that every single statement of the form 'A causes B' is also unjustifiable. This, nevertheless, neither 82 -

82. Al-Nursi, The Flashes (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 1995), 241. SS.Mathnawi, 107, 271. 84. K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1959), 37.

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leads him to deny 'causes' and 'effects', nor their relations. His concern and arguments are directed against the nature and interpretation of such relations: the uniformity and order in the universe is wrongly attributed to causation. What is observed is causality, the principle that nothing happened without being caused, and not causation i.e. cause produces an effect. For al-Nursi it is not evident at all how one can maintain that unconscious, conflicting, deaf and blind causes can be the agents of effects full of meaningful art and adornment, while maintaining le hazard and a theory of chaos at the same time. The wise benefits from effects dismiss causes from ability to create, and instead reveals them as the aqueducts of His mercy and will, handing them over to a Wise Maker Who wants to make Himself known and loved through His 'cosmic personal and intentional mercy'. Although causes seem adjacent to effects, they are far from reaching one another although they reach out to each other through His mediation. Effects have been tied to causes so that great numbers of Divine Names may be manifested along the distance that separates them, when it is 'realized' that causation is an illusion of the isml vision. Then, it becomes clear that infinite essential power, knowledge, will, compassion, and many other Divine Names are manifestly involved in those relations. Al-Nursi repeatedly states that causes and things are not efficient, and that to maintain the contrary amounts to attributing a kind of divinity to them. Moreover, horizontal causation is an impediment to the true knowledge, which is the knowledge of God and not the detailed knowledge of the things themselves. But as mentioned earlier, al-Nursi's harfi approach is not in favor of abandoning the search for causes. On the contrary, it is in uncovering the relations between causes and effects that one may be a witness to the Divine Names and obtain knowledge of God, which 85. When causation is removed whilst causal relations are maintained, what remains are aqueducts of mercy and will. 86. Al-Nursi, The Words, 172, 687, 712-13. W.Risak, 312-13, 191-92. 88. Risak, 121, 122, 320, 501, 570, 813; The Letters, 542.

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is, according to the Qur'an, the aim in the creation of humanity. AlNursi often quotes Read and ponder carefully the lines of this creation; 89 For they are sent to you as missives from the supreme heavenly realm. The isml meaning looks to things in their horizontal relations and thus ignores the many other levels of existence. The harfi meaning looks at the 'effects' of beings as windows to infinity, to the 90 Divine Names and Attributes of their Maker. The Qur'an does not bring out the conditions of the things in existence insofar as they point to their 'selves', but insofar as they point to the One who endows them with existence: what is essential in its eyes are those conditions in which they are looking up to their endower. Human philosophy and modern science, on the other hand, exploit them for their own dead end, and masquerade them as 'reals', objects and nomen agentis, so much, that what gains utmost importance in the eyes of the devotees ought to be devoted to the conditions in which they are pointing to their own essences. Thus, alNursi highlights that the two approaches are world apart. Qur'anic wisdom teaches that an atom or a bee or a flower are signs bearing the meaning of another and therefore they should be looked at on account of that 'wholly-other' according to the meaning of the Qur'anic verse: There is nothing but extols His limitless glory and 92 praise. The Qur'an Reveals the Meanings of the Cosmic Recitation Know that among the signs of His absolute universal divinity and mercy towards humanity are the inscriptions of a word, a locution, or even a whole book in the upper or lower case letters of this cosmos in order that they become a 'manifest' sign for the thoroughness and comprehensiveness of His knowledge and caring. Take for instance, His creating the fish in the large inscription of the ocean, and His creating the small ant in the lines of the trees, or His creating animals in this minute particle 89. Risale, 482. Mathnawi, 227. 90. Risale, 244; The Words, 565. 91. Mathnawi, 74. 92. al-Isrd": 44.

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that we call earth. See now without heedlessness all those insects you find in those seemingly lifeless, unattended, and totally abandoned places. Really, some of the Maker's creatures bring to mind the calligraphy of the letters 'Yd' and '5m' within which is inscribed in miniature the whole of the verse Ydsin.

According to al-Nursi, the Qur'an interprets the cosmic speech in a way that is congenial to its interlocutors. The Qur'anic verses not only refer to the meanings of the signs in the universe but they also teach how to uncover those meanings. For al-Nursi, the true meaning of the universe can only be understood through a universal view revealed by the Qur'anic verses. Reflection (tafakkur) for alNursi is not so much on the verses, but essentially by means of the 94 verses (tafakkur bfl-dydt). In his view the interpretation of the cosmic signs should proceed under the guidance of the very logic of Qur'anic verses, and is effected by the operations and effulgence of its cosmic signs. Man reaches self-understanding and that of the beings around him when his intellect is in the 'mode of listening' to the Qur3an's cosmic revelations. The Risale does not claim that God is the creator of beings 95 because the Qur'an says that He is the Creator of everything. To use the conclusions of the Qur'an to support one's views, which may or not be compatible with the messages of the Qur'an, is different from confirming the truth of the Qur'an. Although such claim refers to 93. Mathnawi, 323. It has been reported in many prophetic traditions that surah Ydsin is the heart of the Qur'an. Many calligraphers have put themselves to the task of writing the full content of this verse in miniature inside Arabic letters 'Yd9 and '5m'. Through this imagery, the author expresses the fact that as a small surah of the QurDan may comprehend the whole content of the Book; also a small particular creature from the cosmic Qur'an may contain the whole truth of the universe and be an ayah or a major sign of God. This is following the logic that the particulars are in al-NursI's tawhidi system 'particular universals' enjoying a value akin, and identical, to that of the universal.

94. Mathnawi, 257. 95. As found in al-Ancdm: 102; al-Racd: 16; al-Zumar: 62; al-Ghdfir: 62.

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the Qur'an, it does not follow a Qur'anic approach but Aristotelian logic. Similarly, to say that God creates 'all', without witnessing how 'every single' being is proclaiming to that reality, is no safeguard against the heedlessness (ghaflah) and the nonchalance of the soul. Man's primordial duty consists of "experiencing the meaning of the words concerning the Creator's Unity and Maker's Lordship uttered 97 by each of the beings in the world in its particular tongue." Al-Nursi insists that true affirmation of divine unity requires that one sees the seal of divine power and Lordship (rububiyyah) on every single thing, and opens up from every thing a window directly onto the light of the divine attributes of perfection or the divine names 98 and thus attain to perpetual awareness of the divine presence. Some of the salient arguments of this affirmation of tawhld as already 99 mentioned are: "Nothing can exist without everything else"', and "Without holding the universe in one's hand, one cannot create a single particle." Moreover, al-Nursi appeals that his teachings on the nature of tawhld are consistent not only with the spirit of the Qur'an, but with the path of waldyah inaugurated by the Prophet. Commenting on the mi raj, he says: There is within this particular journey a general one and 96. Al-Nursi believes that Greek philosophy springs from a mythological and speculative worldview, and for this reason it is essentially alien to the Qur'anic spirit of inquiry and the nature of tawhld (Divine Unity) that nurtures and enlightens that spirit. For al-Nursi, Greek thought has been an impediment to Islamic thought and "has opened a way from tahqiq (realisation) to taqlld (imitation)". He says that, "They (some Muslim thinkers) conjured up a resemblance and compatibility between the true logic of the Qur'an and the Hadlth, and this fictitious and false (Greek) philosophy and interpreted the Qur'an accordingly. However, the meaning of the Book of Miraculous Exposition is within it. So seek the meanings of the Qur'an in its luminous words, rather than those gimmicks and artifices you sneak in the back-pocket of your mmd"Risale, 1989. 97. Al-Nursi, The Words, 140-41 98. Al-Nursi, The Words, 731. 99. Al-Nursi, The Words, 733. 100. Al-Nursi, The Words, 584, emphasis added.

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universal ascent during which the prophet heard and saw the Dominical Signs and wonders of Divine Art that encountered his eyes and ears within the universal degrees 101 of the Divine Names...

He adds further that this was an invitation by way of which God "made [the prophet's] journey through both the external face of the 102 world of existence and the face that looks to its Creator." The world occupies a vital place in al-Nursi's hermeneutical approach to the Qur'an: the world is referred to, in the manner the Qur'an itself instructs and not according to one's own preconceptions, in order to understand the QurDan and confirm its truth. There are signs in every single thing, in every event in the universe; each thing glorifies God by reciting Say, he is God, the One, 103 the Besought. The whole world recites the Qur'anic verses and 104 express there is no deity but He. Therefore, to be a witness to the truth of tawhld is to be witnessing the reality of that truth in the cosmos. Let us reiterate, nonetheless, that al-Nursi urges his readers not to interpret this cosmic text as mere 'thinkers' but as 'witnesses' (shuhadff). He urges them to open with the 'keys' of faculties placed in their primordial nature the secrets of the Divine names, of consciously witnessing the tasbihdt and the takbirdt of the living beings to their Creator, as they transit in and out of existence respectively, and of observing their worship of the Bestower of life and joining them. Surely this joining is not without worship and humility of heart and intellect, nor is the reading of this cosmic Qur'an possible and accessible without the effulgence of the 'ideal reader \ the excellent Man of micrdj, to whom all beings send their 101. Ibid. 102. Al-Nursi, The Words, 304. 103. For more on this, see Risale, 121. 104. al-Tawbah: 31. Also see al-Baqarah: 163, 255; Al-'Imrdn: 2, 6, 18; al-Nisd": 87; Al-Ancdm: 102, 106; al-Tawbah: 129; Hud: 14; alRacd: 30; Ta Hd: 8, 98; al-Mu'minun: 116; al-Naml: 26; al-Qasas: 70, 88; al-Fdtir: 3; al-Zumar: 6; al-Ghdfir: 3, 62; al-Dukhdn: 8; alHashr: 22; al-Taghdbun: 13; al-Muzzammil: 9, as elaborated in alNursi, The Words, 728.

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blessings and greetings of peace. Ultimately, the tawhldi journey that alNursi wants to evince reaches its peak through this tazkiyah (purification) and awareness of the Prophet's cosmic reality. Only then the objects of observation are no longer the outward isml things, but the soul of the experimenter itself. Al-Nursi explains that through the insight of belief and one's union with all beings through the connection to the Eternal One, one experiences a i n r 9 , . 1 0 5 boundless existence apart from one s personal existence. Harfi Science: Towards a Science of the Future It is often argued that science explains how things occur in terms of causation but it cannot explain why they exist the way they do. Everything depends for its ultimate explanation on something outside the universe and that is God. Thus, the story goes that things are the way they are because God has so willed. To answer 'how' is the domain of science and 'why' is that of religion. Within the harfi attitude, we are part of the cosmos and hence we can learn only by asking 'how' questions. In order to answer a 'why' question that cannot be reduced to a 'how', we either have to go outside the universe to investigate it, which is impossible, or we have to accept that God has so willed, given that we know Him. Since the harfi approach seeks knowledge of God by means of His signs in the world, it is concerned with answering 'how' questions. It proceeds in agreement with the Qur'anic verses, which repeatedly bid the reader to consider how things are created. Do they never gaze at the clouds pregnant with water, (and observe) how they are created? And at the sky, how it is raised aloft? And the mountains, how

firmly they are reared? And the earth, how it is spread out? Do they not look at the sky above them, how We have built it and made it beautiful and 107 free of faults?

The harfi approach is concerned with how things are being made, for, as pointed out earlier, it is by establishing the relations between causes and effects that the Divine Names can be witnessed 105. Al-Nursi, The Rays, 72. 106. al-Ghdshiyah: 17-20. 107. Qaf: 6

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and knowledge of God can be reached. Belief in God, as taught by the Qur'an, is a confirmation of His attributes of perfection in every observed cause-effect relationship. The Qur^an does not restrict the realm of religion to the 'unseen' or 'hidden' so that belief in ghayb entails belief in the 'unknowable'. Ghayb does pertain in many ways to that which transcends human perception and the categories of speculative thought, but the Qur'an is not for blind faith, as other aspects of ghayb look to our condition, and there is a way 'from God to humans' (whether through the Qur'an, the cosmos or the prophets) called wajh Aldah. In this sense, there is no bar between this world and 'the transcendental world'. The Qur'anic speech is described by al-Nursi as lisdn al-ghayb fi c dlam al-shahddah i.e. 'the tongue of the world of the unseen in the manifest world'. It clearly shows that there are cosmic evidences for the 'matters of faith' such as belief in resurrection. For instance, the Qur'an says: Behold, then, the signs of God's grace, how He gives life to the earth after it had void of life! Verily, this Selfsame (God) is indeed the One that can bring the dead to life: for He has power to will anything! And He it is Who sends forth the winds as a glad tiding of His coming grace, so that, when they have brought heavy clouds, We may drive them towards dead land and cause thereby water to descend; and by such means do We cause all manner of fruit to come forth. Even thus shall We cause the dead to come forth: (and this) you ought to bear 109 in mind.

In the context of the harfi approach there is no distinction between physics and metaphysics as it is the case with the isml attitude. All attainments, all learning, all progress, and all sciences have for al-Nursi an eminent reality, which is based on at least one of the Divine Names, which are the 'weft and warp' of the tapestry of the cosmic text. Science finds its perfection and becomes reality when it serves the sacred aims of revelation and makes known the 108. al-Rum: 50 109. al-Acrdf: 57

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Divine Names that should constitute its roots matrix. For instance, medicine fulfils its reality and embodies wisdom when it is based on the name Healer, and Man becomes a student of this science when he is seeking the grace and the healing of that lofty Name. Al-Nursi says that "through observing that name's compassionate manifestations in the vast pharmacy of the earth, medicine finds its perfection and becomes reality." Al-Nursi emphasizes that 'without these perfections, science is transformed into superstition and trivia, or else it gives rise to misguidance like the one spread by naturalist philosophy.' Harfi science—whether it is physics, anthropology or religion—instigates wisdom and perfection; isml science in contrast, yields superstition and misconception. At this point, we can safely conclude that science is not a neutral phenomenon for New Sacid, nor is the cosmos. So what did al-Nursi mean with his response to high school students who complained to him that their teachers did not mention God, "The sciences you study speak of God and make Him known, each with its own 112 particular tongue. Do not listen to your teachers; listen to them." As is clear from all that he said, al-Nursi was actually inviting the students to forgo the isml interpretation of the cosmic signs which were often force-fed to them by the academy. Indeed, he went on to explain to them how to 'listen to science', he was initiating them to the harfi science; he wanted to show them how to look critically with the harfi logic at the so-called natural phenomena and see that they are signs pointing to their Maker and glorifying Him. Given his critique of the very foundations of modern science, al-Nursi cannot have thought that isml positive science speaks of God. He himself says, "Through the lights of belief, I have razed the sturdy bastions 113 they call positive sciences and Nature." Harfi science, as al-Nursi understands it, is an activity within the 110. Al-Nursi, The Words, 270-71. 111. Al-Nursi, The Words, 271. llZ.Risak, 954. 113. Ibid, 379.

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universal scope of religion. It is not an alternative to religion but an integral part of it. Al-Nursi suggests that the Qur'anic verse, And 115 He taught Adam the names, all of them indicates that the greatest miracle upon which the supreme vicegerency of mankind revolves is the gift of true knowledge that can be gained by means of the grace of the Names. Hence, humanity's most pressing duty is to rise to the heights of divine wisdom by means of spiritual progress and the harfi sciences. In his commentary, al-Nursi argues the above Qur'anic verse addresses our age in the most particular terms; it is as if it were urging us to renounce our ways of understanding knowledge and beckoning us to other worthier directions: Come on, step forward, adhere to all My Names and rise [it says]! Your forefather (i.e. Adam) was once deceived by Satan, and temporarily fell to the earth from a state akin to Paradise. Beware! In your progress, do not follow Satan and from the heaven of divine wisdom thus fall into the misguidance of 'Nature.' Continuously raising your head and studying carefully My beautiful names, make your sciences and your progress steps by which to ascend to those heavens. Then you may rise to My divine names, which are the realities and sources of your sciences and attainments, and you may look to your Sustainer with your hearts through the telescope of the Names.

Al-Nursi, it may be added, is inviting us to contemplate anew to reach a new understanding of 'being'. The progress, to which he now calls us, is none other than 'spiritual progress' that leads Man towards fulfilling his perfections and raison d'etre. The science which he finally proposes for us is that science which yields yaqln 114. The word for 'religion' in Arabic is 'din'; it means primarily "obedience, in particular, obedience to a law or to what is conceived as a system of established usages, i.e. something endowed with moral authority." In this sense everyone has a 'dm of moral law as the Qur'an states when it says, Unto you, your din and unto me my din! (al-Kdfirun: 6). Muhammad Asad, The Message of the Qwfdn (Gibraltar: Dar al-Andalus Ltd, 1980), 981.

\l5.al-Baqarah: 31

116. Al-Nursi, The Words, 270.

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(tranquility of the heart from certitude) and dispels doubt, leading Man to the presence of the Divine and His macrifah. The merit of Sacid al-Nursi in this task is his use of an intellectual discourse that is commensurate to our present predicament and cultural condition. This should not lead us in the end to see him as one who was mesmerized by the 'modern Mind', but as an intriguing 'modern' enigma, fittingly known by the sobriquet of Bedfuzzaman, "the nonpareil of his time".

[10] Science and Technology in the Discourse of Sayyid Qutb

Ahmed Bouzaid Centre for the study of Science in society Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA 24061, U.S.A.

This paper focuses on Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) and argues that the case provides a serious challenge to the view that portrays '[fundamentalism " as hostile to Science and Technology. Not only is one hard put to find anything in the writing of Sayyid Qutb that can be fairly described as anti-Science or anti-Technology, one instead, finds upon a careful reading of Sayyid Qutb's body of work that his disposition, towards Science and Technology is fundamentally positive and forms an integral part for his call for universal moral reform. In fact this positive disposition towards Science renders him a great challenge to the political order he wants to dismantle.

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I

The Islamic revival in its manifold manifestation, whether militant, political or cultural, has arguably come to be perceived by many not only as a threat to political and social stability around the world, but also as a atavistic call to repudiate all that is 'modern' and progressive'.' According to the late Algerian writer Rachid Mimouni, 'fundamentalism is the enemy of intellectuals and culture. Its discourse appeals to the passions rather than to reason, to instinct rather than to intelligence. '2 As'ad Abu Khalil, on his part, contrasting 'fundamentalists' with 'classical Islamic scholars', accuses 'the political literature of modern Islamic fundamentalists [of manifesting] a fear of reason'. 'The celebration of reason in the Islamic /Arab heritage', he complains, 'differs markedly from the denigration of reason that characterizes contemporary Islamic fundamentalist literature.'3 By the same token, Daryus Shayegane laments that 'what is happening today .with the fundamentalists of all sorts not only does not renew the spirit of Islam, but is in fact a funeral cortege of petrified dreams that will disappear in the desert sands. Fundamentalism lowers intelligence to the level of emotional, visceral reflexes. And any drop in intelligence /Vote/This paper firest appeared in Social Epistemology, 1996, Vol 10, NOS 3/4, 289-309 1. QURESHI, S. 'Political implications of fundamentalists Islam", in J.G. STEIN and D.E. DEWITT The Middle East at the Crossroads, Mosaic Press, Ontario, Canada (1983); HOODBHOY, P. Islam and Science Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, Zed Books, London (1991) 2 'Comme tons les mouvements polupistes, I'mtegnsme est ennemi des intellectuals er de la culture Son discours fait appel a la passion plutot qifa raison, al 'instinct plutot qu'a I'intelligence". MIMOUNI R Or la barbaric en general et de I'tntegrisme en particular, Belfond-Le Preaux Clercs (1992). P 5 1 3. ABU KHALIL, A 'The incoherence of Islamic fundamentalism: Arab Islamic thought at the end of the 20'" century'. Middle East Journal, 48(1994), pp.687-688

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4

bears within it the germ of decay. ' Another Algerian writer, Rachid Boudjedra, goes even further in his Le Fis de la haine and passionately declares that 'the West... .is by and large an entity that supports us, that rejects any form of fundamentalism, no matter where it may come from. Artists, thinkers, humanists, men and women of good will and of sound judgment are with us, against the [Islamists of the] FIS; they are with us who are also men of good will, who champion progress and modernization, who are open toward the world and towards the universe. '5 Little wonder, then, that science and technology, in the eyes of many still the symbols and legacies/?ar excellence of modern Western civilization, and therefore of the 'ultimately civilized' - are declared by the 'progressive' quarters within the Muslim world to be under the direct assault of Islamic 'obscurantism'. The argument is often advanced that should Islamists eventually come to have a say in shaping the course of society, science and technology, already in a disastrous state within the Muslim World, will be dealt their last fatal blow. According to Mohammad Abdul Salam, the only Muslim scientists Nobel laureate, Islamists are nothing more than 'men (without spiritual pretensions) who claim to interpret the Holy Qur 'an, issue excommunication fatwas and give their view on all subjects politics, economics, law.... in their Friday sermons'. If science and technology are to prosper in the Muslim world, he warns, the politization of Islam' should be stopped' .6 Less aggressively polemical, but in the final analysis still highly critical of the 'fundamental project', BassamTibi, a scholar trained in the Frankfurt School tradition, detects a classical case of schizophrenic split personality in the ideology of'fundamentalism' vis-a-vis modernity in general, and science and technology in particular. He notes: The dilemma of Muslim fundamentalists is that they simultaneously envisage adopting the instruments of modernity (military technology) and rejecting its cultural underpinning, i.e. 4. 5.

6

SHAYEGANE, in D 'La Dechirue\ Le Debat, reprinted in 'Islam et politique' (pecial issue) (1990), p.296, Quoted in MERNISSI, F. Islam and Democracy, Addison Wesley (1992) 'L Occident, c'est aussi, dana sa majeur partie, Line entite qui nous soutient qui refuse tout integrisme do'ou qiu'il vienne Artistes, savants, humanists, homes et femmes de boone volonte, de progress, de modernite, ouverts sur le moden et sur 1'univers, attemls de crette maladic rare mains rombien salutaire: la passion de Phomme' BOUDJEDRA. R Le fis de la haine. Editions Deneoel, Paris (1992), pp.95-96 The FIS (Front Islamic du Salut) is a popular Islamist political party in Algeria, now banned since 1992. HOODBHOY, P. Islam and Science- Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, Zed Books, New Jersey (1991), pp xi-xii.

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the cultural project of modernity .... They seek to adopt modern knowledge as an instrumentality, but reject its undergirding rationale: cultural modernity. They separate the achievement of modernity from the very knowledge that led to them and first made them possible.7 Stipulating a tight coupling between 'the logic' of the scientific enterprise and the host culture that allegedly gave birth to it, Tibi dismisses as incoherent and fundamentally misguided efforts of 'fundamentalists; to simultaneously embrace science and technology and reject a complete assimilation of the culture from which they putatively emerged. According to Tibi, 'modern science and technology are secular achievements culturally based on the tradition of the European Enlightenment' .8 If science and technology are to prosper in the land of Islam, the fundamentalist program must be abandoned, and in step with a re-orientation towards an instrumental and structural modernization, the cultural project of modernity should be embraced fully as well. In order to sustain his argument, Tibi resorts to two strategies often deployed by overtly anti-fundamentalist writers. First, he invokes, without further qualifications, a neo-Positivist/ naive-Popperian image of science, where the acquisition of knowledge is both ahistorical and purely intellectual. Science in Tibi's discourse is that open endeavour where all knowledge is potentially under suspicion and revision, and where pure reason alone is sufficient to produce facts about the world. Armed with this definition of science, Tibi then proceeds to accuse fundamentalists of both blind literalism and anti-rationalism whenever they present a critique of science and technology. For example, Tibi quotes a prominent fundamentalist as saying that: The pursuit of knowledge in Islam is not an end in itself; it is only a means of acquiring an understanding of God and of solving the problems of the Muslim community .... Reason and the pursuit of knowledge has a very important place in Islamic society, but it is subservient to Qur 'anic values and ethics. In this framework, reason and revelation go hand in hand. Modern science, on the other hand, considers reason to be supreme."9 7.

8. 9.

TIBI B., 'Culture and knowledge the politics of Islamization of knowledge as a postmodern project 9 The fundamentalist claim to de-Westernization', Theory, Culture & Society, Sage, London (1995), p 9 TIBI (1995), p.73 (see note 7). SADR, H 'Science and Islam: Is there a conflict 7 ', in Z SARDAR (ed.) The Touch of Midas- Science, Values and the Environment m Islam and the West^ Manchester University Press, Manchester (1984).

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From this rather measured statement, Tibi concludes that, 'the major target of Muslim fundamentalists is the idea that all knowledge is in principle revisible'. According to Tibi, the 'fundamentalist insistence upon the sacred stands as an antithesis to the Western idea of the project of modernity according to which all knowledge is revisible. To de-Westernize the sciences is to decouple them from this Western idea and from the Cartesian methodological principles of doubt and conjecture on which scientific knowledge rests'. Hence, in Ziauddin Sardar's denunciations of the epistemological imperialism' of the West and his call for an 'Islamic epistemology', Tibi reads an instance of the total rejection by fundamentalists of both rationalism and the methodological principle of doubt and conjecture.'I0 Another leap that Tibi makes is his accusation that fundamentalists are literalists who believe that all knowledge about the world is contained in the Qur 'an. The prominent and popular Islamic writer Al-Qaradawi, for instance, proposes the subordination of modern science to 'Islamic methodology'. By this, what Al-Qaradawi seems to have in mind is the infusion of the Muslim scientist with a self reflexive awareness of, and concern for, the potential conflict between the Muslim scientist's work and his commitment to Islamic values.! ' However, rather than challenge Al-Qaradawi on the interesting practical, and ultimately political, problem of how one is to strike a balance between ethical concerns, on the one hand, and the intellectual freedoms stipulated for the proper nurturing of the sciences, on the other, Tibi instead resorts to an inprinciple denunciation of Al-Qaradawi and accuses him of championing a methodology whose substance 'lies in accepting the text of the Qur 'ante verse, 'Allah brought you out of your mothers' womb devoid of all knowledge, and gave you ears and hearts so that you may give thanks' clearly illustrates the literalism of fundamentalists. For, Tibi alleges, according to this interpretation, 'because the cognitive capability of man's reason is limited, the knowledge obtained with the help of these instruments can be true or false. Knowledge is true only if it is in line with God's revelation, for only God is omniscient'. This, in Tibi's eyes is clear and sufficient proof that fundamentalists believe that 'Islamic sciences are .... composed of textual methods of studying God's revelation, as fixed in the Qur 'an and the transmitted tradition of the Prophet (Hadith), the messenger of God.'.'3 10. TIBI (1995), pp.11-13 (see note 7). 1 1 AL-QARADAWI, Y. Bay mat al-Hall al-fs/amt, Maktabat Wahaba, Cairo (1988). 12 TIBI. B. (1993) 'The worldvie\\ of Sunni Arab fundamentalists attitudes toward modern science and technology", in Appleby, p 75 13. TIBI (1993), pp.76-77 (see note 12)

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Tibi is guilty of another weakness characteristic of writers who articulate a hostility for 'Islamic fundamentalism'. In his writings, Tibi uses the term 'fundamentalists' to refer to a startingly heterogeneous group of scholars and intellectuals. The designation' fundamentalist' serves Tibi handily to refer to an far-flung array of writers and thinkers, including Sayed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Husein Al-Sadr, Adel Hussain, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Ismail Al-faruqi, Ziauddin Sardar, Munawar Ahmad Anees, Husain Sadr and Sayyid Qutb. Reading Tibi, one is left with the impression not only that a massive effort is underway to Islamise knowledge, but also that the various 'fundamentalists' fingered by Tibi are working in perfect unison to bring to life their common fundamentalist project. However, even a cursory glance at the literature on the Islamisation of knowledge will readily show that far from presenting a dogmatic, monolithic front, scholars treating of the question of Islamising knowledge have engaged, and continue to engage, each other in a vigorous debate over the relationship between the principles and values of Islam and the enterprise of scientific knowledge production.14 In this paper, my aim is to focus on the thoughts of the late Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb (1906-66) regarding the question of reforming Musim society within the scientific and technological context of the modern world. In my analysis I will attempt to aoid the pitfalls I detect in writers such as Tibi. First, instead of adopting a particular view on the 'nature of science' and unreflectively pit that view against the one allegedly advocated by fundametalists, I will restrict myself to an analysis of what science and technology meant to one particular fundametalist thinker. Moreover, rather than use the opaque (and hoplelessly charged) qualifier 'fundamentalist', I will restrict myself to one specific individual thinker who did advocate a greater reinvestment of Islam in the life of Muslims. Hence, rather than draw facile conclusions and inferences about the position of fundamentalists in general vis-a-vis science and technology, I will confine my conclusion to the views of one particular thinker. II

In the words of Yvonne Haddad, 'a great deal of what is being published [by Muslim revivalists] at present is either inspired by [Sayyid Qutb's] writings, plagiarized from his books, or is a commentary on his ideas'. Sayyid 14. See Furlow, Social Epistemology 1996, vol.10, Nos %, 289-304 15 HADDAD, Y.Y. Sayyid Qutb. Idelogue of Islamic revival', inJ.L.Esposrro (ed.) Ibices of Resurgent Islam, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford (1983), pp 67-98.

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Qutb stands today, on the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of his execution by the Egyptian Nasser government in August 1966, as a towering figure of mythical proportions in the world of Islamic activism. His writings and commentaries on Islam, and especially his last major book, Ma'aalim fi al-tarriq (Mislestones along the Path), have consistently enjoyed widespread popularity and readership since their original publication in the 1950s and early 1960s. Writing in a lucid and highly didactic style and an accessible idiom that sharply contrasted with the turgid language of ulama, Qutb continues to strike a swnsitive shord with a whole generation of young Muslims who have found in his message of immediate action and his upapologetic rejection of what he considers un-Islamic the desperately needed antidote against the failures of both centralized state socialist and market-oriented capitalist systems. The views of Sayyid Qutb cannot be fully appreciated without a careful onsideration of the broader reformative framework that he was proposing. To begin with, it is important to note that five of the eight works Qutb wrote between 1951 and 1966 were written in prison. A charting of his ideas from 1948 - the year he started writing exclusively on Islamic topics19 - to 1966, clearly displays a marked hardening in his views on Islamic reform from a position of gradualism and piecemeal negotiation with the prevalent order, to one that rejected any compromise with the prevailing status quo, political, social or otherwise.20 Muslim Brotherhood - the Islamist organization to which he belonged and whose Nasser regime, the meaning of modernization occupied center stage. What did it mean to modernize Egypt? What did modernization entail, and how was this modernization to be achieved? Needless to say, this answers proposed by Qutb and his followers diverged sharply from those of Nasser's agenda. The former protested that the modernization pro16. See, ABU RABI' I.M. Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Arab World, State University of New York Press, Albany (1996), ABU RABI', I.M. 'Discourse power and ideology in modern Islamic revivalist thought: the case of Sayyid Qutb', Islamic Culture, LXV:2-3 (1991), pp.84-102; TAYLOR, A R Islamic Question in Middle Eastern Politics, Westview Press, Boulder and London (1988); NETTLER, R. 'A modern Islamic confession of faith and conception of religion Sayyid Qutb's Introduction to the tafsir fi zilaal al-Qitr'an\ British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 21 1(1994), pp 102-114, MUSALLAM A.A. Sayyid Qutb and social justice- 19451948', Journal of Islamic Studies, 4 1 (1993), pp.52-70, SHEPARD, W.E. 'Islam as a "system" in the later writings of Sayyid Qutb', Middle Eastern Studies, 25 (1989), pp.31-50. 17. QUTB, S. Ma'aalim fi al-taniq, Daar al-Kitaab al-lslaami, Qum, Iran ([1964] 1983); QUTB S. Milestones, The Holy Koran Publishing House, Beirut, Damascus (1980a). 18. DIYAAB, M.H. Sayyid Qutb. al-Khitaab \va al-idiyulujiyyah, Dar al-taqafa al-jadida, Cairo (1987). 19. AL-KHALIDI, S.A A F (ed ) Amnka mm al-dakhil bi mmzar Sayyid Qutb, dar al-manarah, Jiddah (1986) 20 SIVAN, E Radical Islam Medieval Theology and Modern Politics. Yale Unviersity Press, New Haven and London (1985a). pp.40-48.

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posed by Nasser worked to marginalize and further enfeeble an already perilously weakened Islam,21 insisting that successful rehabilitation had to begin and end with the grounding of all society on Islamic principles.22 Nasser, on the other hand, denounced opposition to his program by Qutb and the Brotherhood as a rejection of the progressive and the modern, including science and technology. This jockeying between the two sides over who was to define the meaning of'progress9 and 'modernization' meant that the battle was ultimately about nothing less than the nature of Egypt's future. Science and Technology, their colonial affiliations notwithstanding, were taken from the start by both sides as desiderata, given the realities of nation building, and had therefore to be cast by each side in terms that not only conformed with, but also strengthened, their respective broader reformative agenda. The symbolic role that science and technology played in Nasser's modernist rhetoric is not hard to discern. While Nasser recognized full well the strong hold Islam still maintained on Egyptian society, and therefore fully understood that he could not risk waging a radical secularization of Egyptian society, such as the one undertaken in Turkey by Kemal Ataturk some 30 years earlier, at the same time Nasser unflaggingly pushed a modernization project squarely based on the model of scientific statism. Science in this scheme is deliberately and explicitly invoked in the name of rehabilitation and revolution, progress, and the dfive to better the common lot of the languishing masses. A striking example of state scientism is found in the 1958 Charter of the newly established United Arab Republic, where it is declared that: Revolutionary action should be scientific.... Science is the true weapon of revolutionary will. Here emerges the great role to be undertaken by the universities and educational centers on various levels Science is the weapon with which revolutionary triumph can be achieved. Science alone can guarantee that trial and error in the national action would lead to a development with guaranteed consequences. Without science, trial and error become haphazard 21

As Sivan Notes, 'the [Muslim Brotherhood of yore was quite preoccupied with "indigenous evils" such as the then called "Westernization" of schools and laws Yet, even this type of •challenge..". Underwent a quantitative and qualitative change on the 1950s and 1960s The doubling size of the school system during the first decade of the military regime meant that cohorts of youths. .. Were exposed to a modern curriculum, including Pan-Arab version of history Religious instruction shrank in scope and quality in elementary and high school, its place taken by civics and family planning education' SIVAN (19853), p.51 (see note 20) 22. MUSALLAM (1993), p.70 (see note 16), ABU-RABI' (1991), p. 85 (see note 16).

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tendencies that may succeed once but fail scores of time. In addition, in an obvious reference to political agitators, it adds: Without science popular authorities may inflame the enthusiasm of the people. With science alone, can they hope to realize the demands of the people.23 Science, then, as the ultimate and perfect embodiment of the rational, and technology, the concrete instantiation of that rationality and the salutary means by which justice and prosperity are to be attained, were symbolically mobilized by the Nasser propaganda machine to provide Nasserisni with a rationale and an alibi for its development policies, and a handy trope to invoke against those who opposed its programs. In the case of Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood, on the other hand, the role allotted to science and technology in their rhetoric, though no less central, is more subtle, and therefore more difficult to assess. I will take up the rest of the paper elaborating this assessment. Ill

The answers that Sayyid Qutb formulated to the problem of social reform distinctly set him apart from late nineteenth, early twentieth century Islamic reformers. The latter adopted a discourse that heavily emphasized the compatibility between Islam and the Scientific Technological worldview, as they understood them. They went to great lengths 'proving' that Islam was not only not inimical to science and technology, but that in fact it wholeheartedly embraced and encouraged them. In doing this, the early reformers were grappling with two forces they viewed as destructive of a weak and vulnerable Muslim world at the time: the static traditionalism of the 'Ulama- the orthodox clergy - and the infiltration of the colonial into Muslim lands.To rescue Islam from the' static backwardness' of the former and to check the spread of Western powers, early reformers such as Djamal Eddine Al-Afghani, Mohammad Abduh, and Rashid Ridha, directed their energies to the promotion of science and technology in the Muslim world. Without science and technology, and the power and strength that they bestowed upon their possessor, these reformers were convinced that Muslims were incurring what

23 United Arab Republic Charter, 1958, pp.88-89

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they perceived to be the imminent prospect of total annihilation - both cultural and physical - at the hands of the mighty colonial occupiers.24 Sayyid Qutb, writing some 40 years later, faced a fundamentally different set of circumstances. Britain the invader no longer represented the invincible behemoth of half a century ago, but a weakened villain whose pinnacle as a world dominator had passed.25 After the Free Officer's Coup of 1952 in Egypt and the overthrow of King Faruq's monarchy, Egypt found itself at a watershed moment in its history as a nation: which of the various identities was it to embrace: the Arab nationalism of the Nasserites, the branch of Islamism advanced by Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood, or some other alternative? In his books and writings, Sayyid Qutb relentlessly called for the adoption of Islam as the basis of the modern Egyptian state and formulated his program through a discourse that starkly contrasted with the defensive tone characteristic of early reformers. While the latter devoted a great part of their arguments to apologetics and to showing 'compatibility' between Islam and modernization (in effect, promoting science, rather than defending Islam, since it was science that needed defense at the time, rather than Islam26). Qutb made it a point to always place himself on the offensive.27 The fundamental difference between present-day Islamic activists and earlier reformers is most striking in how each side treats the question of science and technology. The early reformers viewed science and technology with awe and felt the necessity to apologize for the weakness of Muslims in scientific and technological fields in science and technology the centerpiece of their arguments. Sayyid Qutb, in contrast, insisted that the salvation of not only Muslims but also all of humanity lay first and foremost in moral and religious rejuvenation, giving science and technology an instrumental role, but subsuming both of them to the basic tenets that informed his broader reformative agenda. Indeed, in the very opening sentence of his last and most influential book, Milestones along the path, Sayyid Qutb pinpoints what he considers to be the essence of humanity's plight: 24. ZAKI BADAWI, M.A. The Reformers of Egypt, Croom Helm, London (1978), KEDOURIE, E. Afghani and Abduh: An Essay of Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam, Frank Cass, London (1966); KEDDIE, N.R. An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religous Writings of Sayyid Jamal and Ad-Din Al-Afgham, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles (1968). 25 SIVAN (1985a), pp. 81-82 (see note 20) 26. KEDDIE (1968) (see note 24); ZAKI BADAWI (1978), pp.11-17, 57, 65 (see note 24). 27. ZAKI BADAWI (1978), p.81 (see note 24).

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Mankind today is on the brink of a precipice, not because of the danger of complete annihilation which is hanging over its head - this being a symptom and not the real disease - but because humanity is devoid of those vital values which are necessary not only for its healthy development but also for its real progress.28 For Qutb, this spiritual crisis that is gripping humanity is manifest most vividly in what he calls the Western world. By the Western World Qutb has in mind not only Western European and Northern American capitalist countries, but also the communist and socialist blocks. This Western World Qutb argues, is no longer able to 'present any healthy values for the guidance of mankind' ,29 Preoccupied, as he has been, exclusively with improving his material well being, Western man has irresponsibly neglected to nurture the spiritual and moral in him. For man is not merely a beast, living to fulfill the basic needs of eating, drinking and reproducing. He is more than that, and his spiritual and moral needs are as primeval and as urgent as his material cravings. By reducing the human to the physical, Qutb continues, Western man has violated the integrity of human nature and in this way has defacto forfeited his claim to the leadership of mankind.30 Humanity, therefore, is in need of new leadership. This new leadership, if it is to succeed, must not reproduce the mistakes of the old leadership, the West. That is, it must not pursue one aspect of human nature to the detriment of the other: It is necessary for the new leadership to preserve and develop the material fruits of the creative genius of Europe, and also to provide mankind with such high ideals and values as have so far remained undiscovered by mankind, and which will also acquaint humanity with a way of life that is positive and constructive, practicable, and harmonious with human nature.31 For Qutb's 'Islam is the only system which possesses these values and this way of life'.32 28. 29. 30 31. 32.

QUTB (1980a), QUTB (1980a), QUTB (1980a), QUTB (1980a), QuTB(1980a)

p.7 (see note 17). p 7 (see note 17) pp 90-91, (see note 17) p.9 (see note 17) p 9 (see note 17)

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IV

Equally crucial to understanding Sayyid Qutb's position towards modernization of Muslim society within the modern scientific and technological context is his political philosophy on reform. To begin with, Sayyid Qutb dismisses as hopeless any attempt at reforming society that does not take an immediate first goal the radical and complete overthrow of the prevailing political order. Invoking the 'original method' of early Islam, Qutb argues that social rehabilitation must, if it is to succeed, replicate the Prophet Mohammed's civilizing mission. In executing his mission, the Prophet followed a two-phase process. First, he nurtured and consolidated in his followers the belief that there is only one God, and that He is the only one to fear and to worship.33 Only after this had been accomplished did the Prophet proceed to the second phase, where the details of regulating life - e.g. the social, political, juristic, systems - were spelled out.34 During the Meccan period, the Qur 'an explained to man the secret of his existence and the secret of the universe surrounding him. It told him who he is, where he has come from, for what purpose and where he will go in the end... and what his final disposition will be.... And thus the full thirteen years of the Meccan period were spent in explaining and expounding this fundamental question, that question from which all other questions and details pertaining to human life are derived.... These subsidiary topics were not mentioned until the All-Knowing God decided that matters pertaining to faith had been explained fully and had entered into the hearts of that select group of people who were to establish His religion and were to give it a practical form.35 In other words, a true Islamization is not possible before a society of 'true believers' has been actually established in a living, concrete community.36 Any effort to reform some aspect of society along Islamic lines, piecemeal or gradually, no matter how sincere and genuine the intentions, is therefore doomed to failure from the start, as long as a genuinely believing Muslim community has not first been founded.37 33 34 35. 36. 37.

QUTB QUTB QUTB QUTB QUTB

(1980a) (1980a) (1980a), (1980a), (1980a),

pp 37, 40, 43, pp.39, 53, 57, p.39 (see note pp.11, 16, 57, p.34 (see note

53, 58 (see note 17) 59 (see note 17). 17). 84 (see note 17). 17)

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A position that places Sayyid Qutb at the fringes of mainstream Islam and squarely within the camp of radicalism - is his belief that a 'truly' Muslim society has never existed in its full form after the time of the Prophet and the first Rightly Guided Companions.38 Today, in Qutb's opinion, the world is populated merely by nominal Muslims, living in nominally Muslim countries and headed by nominally Muslim rulers.39 Although there may have existed, and may still exist, sincere and able Muslims who have, throughout Islam's history, and including our time, struggled to resurrect Islam here on earth,40 these Muslims are qualified only to undertake the first leg of the struggle: the Meccan phase. They are qualified to exhort their fellow Muslims to rejuvenate their faith and to become true believers again. They are, however, not qualified (as yet) to undertake the challenges of the second phase, those of spelling the details of how to regulate life in all of its complexity and in accordance with the Islamic worldview.41 These challenges, Qutb insists, can be met only once the established order has been abolished, and a believing community has been concretely established here on earth.42 Therefore, those who genuinely wish to establish a 'truly' Islamic society ought not to hurry the process and try to install, say, Islamic Law, or an Islamic banking system, before first establishing a community of true believers.43

38. QUTB (1980a), pp.21-35 (see note 17); SWAN (1980a), p.65 (see note 20). 39. QUTB (1980a), pp.21-32 (see note 17), Even those who call themselves Muslims or their birth certificates register them as Muslims', are considered by Qutb to be nominal Muslims.40. 'Some sincere people who do not understand the real character of our religion are in a hurry. They have not understood that this is the way prescribed by the All-Knowing and All-wise God. They say that if people are taught Islam's fundamentals and the Islamic laws, then the way for inviting to Islam will become easy and people will automatically become sympathetic to Islam' QUTB (1980a), p.62 (see note 17). Note that Qurb uses the word 'character' (Tabii'a) and not 'message' or 'meaning'. 41. QUTB (1980a), pp 53, 61 (see note 17). 42. QUTB (1980a), p.69 (see note 17). A key concept in Qutb's discourse in the notion ofjihad struggle in the way of Allah. Qutb insists that the Islamic notion ofjihad against jaahiliyyah is neither ideologically imperialistic nor simply defensive. The first duty of the Muslim is to spread the Islamic message. Along the way, he will encounter resistance from jaahiliyyah, who will quickly realize that what Islam preaches is antithetical to the jaahili world-view. Hence, it is to be expected that Islam will come face to face with material resistance. When this happens, Qutb argues, the Muslim must fight back for the right to present his case to the people he is trying to convince Islam, Qutb argues, does not compel belief. In fact, he stipulates, in a 'truly' Islamic society, anyone may believe practically anything they wish to believe See especially pp. 173198. 43 'It is the duty of Muslims to expose these tactics and reduce them to dust, to reject this ridiculous proposal of the "reconstruction of Islamic law" for a society which is neither willing to submit to the law of God nor expresses any weariness with law emanating from sources other than God Such talk is a way of diverting attention from real and earnest work, and is a method through which the workers for Islam can be made to waste their time in building castles in the air'. QUTB (1980a), p.76 (see note 17). See also pp.68, 72.

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Three categories of constraint are advanced by Qutb to justify his pessimism about gradual reformative meliorism. The first is informed by his theory of human (as opposed to divine) epistemology, the second by his theory of society and culture, while th third draws from his views on the nature of political power and structure. On human epistemology, Qutb argues that, genuine in their motives as reformers may be, no Muslim can a priori conceptually construct a correct Islamic system or theory of life and society. Such a system can manifest itself only sui generis and dialectically emerge as a result of an interaction between the 'truly' believing community and the contingencies of located time. In Qutb's view, Islam is not a theory, but rather a worldvie w grounded on the fundamental monotheistic principle, 'There is no God but Allah', and elaborated through a dynamic method (manhaj haraki) of living and acting, where the lessons of the Qur 'an are revealed to the believer through action and not through reflection.44 Traditional, historical Islam of the orthodox schools, of the philosophers and the jurists, in Qutb's view, suffered from the same affliction: they had become abstract, theoretical, artificial - in short, remote from the life of the believer, and therefore bereft of the dynamic essence of Islam. Genuine Islam, Sayyid Qutb argued, is not a detached system that one studies first and then applies, but is rather an interactional conception of life that forbids the separation between thought and action. The success of the early Muslims that 'unique Muslim generation' who, in Qutb's eyes, accomplished what remains to this day unreplicated by all of humanity - he directly attributes to their faithful application of the dynamic Islamic method. Unlike the Medieval and modern Muslims, who spent great energies 'studying' the Qur 'an and theorizing about Islam, the early Muslim acted Islam and 'understood' its deep message through the praxis of life.45 Second, gradual reform will fail because societies are organically and 44. QUTB (1980a), pp 65-7, 70 (see note 17) Islamic theory, in as much as Qutb talks about one, was according to him revealed along its application '[Islam's] method is to grow through the agency of living persons and through a dynamic movement and an active organization such a way that its theory comes to fruition at the same time as its practical applications. It never remains an abstract theory but develops side-by-side with practice'. QUTB (1980a), p.70 (see note 17). But not only meaning and theory, but also belief, in Qutb's argument, grow and matures with action and struggle: '[Jaatiihyyah] wants to distort the very nature of this method - the method in which Islamic belief matures through the struggles of its movement, in which the details of the Islamic system develop through practical striving, and in which laws are promulgated to solve practical problems and actual difficulties' QUTB (1980a), pp.75-76 (see note 17). See pp 58-59 on how laws are revealed gradually, and as circumstances arise. 45. QUTB (1980a), p.27 (see note 17).

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concretely constituted. Any effort toward change that does not aim as a first step for a radical elimination of the essence of the established order is futile and will invariably end in frustration.46 One particular manifestation of this organic resistance by the non-believing society - what he calls ft&jaahiliyyah - in Qutb's view, is its tactic of asking the Islamic reformer for specific details concerning the proposed future Islamic order. Thejaahiliyyah which has surrounded us, and which weighs heavily on the minds of some sincere workers for Islam who become impatient and want to see all the stages of the Islamic system come into existence very rapidly, has raised a very delicate question indeed. It asks them: What are the details of the system to which you are calling? How much research have you done? How many articles have you prepared and how many subjects have you written about? Have you constituted the jurisprudence on new principles? - as if nothing was lacking for the enforcement of the Islamic Law except research in jurisprudence (fiqh) and its details This is a vulgar joke on Islam, and every person who has any respect for this religion should raise himself about it....By these tactics, jaahiliyyah desires to turn away the power of Muslims from the work of establishing the Divinely ordained way of lifeJn order that they may not go beyond the stage of belief to the stage of a dynamic movement - the method in which Islamic belief matures through the struggle of its movement, in which the details of the Islamic system develop through practical striving, and in which laws promulgated to solve practical problems and actual difficulties.47 Such questions Qutb dismisses as transparent rhetorical ploys to stall 'truly' Islamic reform by understandably resisting un-Islamic societies and cultures. Perhaps most crucial to Qub's argument for revolution is his complete 46. QUTB (I980a), pp.57, 69, 82-3, 98-99, 111 (see note 17). Note that Qutb does not advocate or call for a total communicational rupture with the jaahili society. On the contrary, he believes that preaching is an essential part of the strategy. It is through "preaching" beliefs and ideas are confronted, through "the movement" material obstacles are tackled'. QUTB (1980a).'p.l06 (see note 17). See also p . I I 8 . 47. QUTB (1980a), pp.74-76, (see note 17).

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pessimism about gradual political reform. Social reform, Qutb agues, will not be possible because holding resolutely fast against the establishment of a 'truly' Muslim community stand present Muslim governments. Islam's basic concept of governance, as Qutb understood it, denied any ruler the claim to absolute sovereignty or the right to speak for the people. The genuinely believing society is by definition based on a community of individuals who submit to no authority other than that of God: In this society the beliefs and ideas of individuals, their devotional acts and religious observances, and their social systems and their laws, are all based on submission to God alone. If the attitude is eliminated from any of these aspects, the whole of Islam is eliminated, as the first pillar of Islam.... becomes eliminated.48 Obviously, then, Qutb continues, it is only to be expected that those who are in hold of power in Muslim countries today should find any genuinely Islamic movement threatening to their immediate interests and will therefore invariably move to block any and all serious efforts they suspect might lead to the resuscitation of the 'truly' Muslim faith and the concomitant structures, habits and cultures that would embody it. Rejecting atemporal, a priori efforts, at reformation, and stipulating both cultural and political resistance against 'truly' Islamic reform by the status quo, Sayyid Qutb formulates his solution to the plight of Muslims in the language of violent revolution against the prevailing order, and locates the political as the strategic starting point to carry out this revolution. Through forceful seizing of government, the main obstacle faced by 'truly' Muslim reform is eliminated, so that the first primary mission in the Islamization of society may be taken: the bolstering in Muslims of the fundamental belief that governance belongs exclusively to God. V

Quttfs eventual conviction that concepts, systems, or ideologies, cannot be borrowed and selectively incorporated into an Islamic worldview, stems primarily from his tragic encounter with the Egyptian political order and his dashed hopes that the Free Officers regime would ultimately evolve towards what he conceived of as a 'truly' Islamic government. The negative experi48. QUTB (1980a), p. 145 (see note 17)

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ence with the revolution and his belief that Nasser was but the latest incarnation of previous dictatorships must be kept in mind when trying to understand why Qutb eventually came to believe that only radical revolution can effect real change. What is interesting about Qutb's argument, however, is that, notwithstanding his belief in the irreconcilability of essences, whether political or cultural, his objection to the alien and the 'other' does not seem to extend to the natural sciences.49 This is in itself is neither surprising nor particularly unusual, as the instrumentalities of science and technology have never been the sustained target or the main focus of fundamentalists.50 What is noteworthy in the case of Sayyid Qutb is that his favourable disposition towards the natural sciences seems to be expression of basic principles within his argument, rather than of strategic or tactical concerns. As I have said, the West, in Qutb's opinion, has miserably failed to build a morally viable social order.5 ] Its man-made theories have provided no relief to man's perpetual and eternal moral problems, and in fact have even heaped upon his old woes new and deeper anxieties.52 At the same time, Qutb displays no hesitation in congratulating the West for the 'material achievements' it has accomplished - and to the benefit of all mankind.53 Indeed, he observes: 'It is not easy to find fault with the inventors of such marvelous things, especially since what we call the "world of Islam" is completely devoid of all this beauty' ,54 However, instead of reading into this success of the West along the material sphere an overall superiority of European culture, Qutb makes the interesting move of co-opting the success story of Western science to further his own project. As I have already indicated, Qutb denounces as incompatible with the Islamic method any abstract or theoretical approach to elaborating the meaning of Islam's message. Islam can be 'understood' only when it is performed and acted. Again, invoking the ideal of the first and only 'truly' Muslim generation, Qutb notes that 'instruction to be translated into action was the method of the first group of Muslims.55 This stand in marked contrast to the method of later generations, who taught Islam and expounded on the Qur 'an 'for 49. QUTB (1980a), pp. 202-203 (see note 17). 50. AJAMI F. 'The summoning', Foreign Affairs, September/October (1993), pp.2-9, See also TIBI (1993) (see note 12) and TIBI (1995) (see note 17). 51. QUTB (1980a), pp.10, 15 (see note 17). 52. QUTB (1980a), p.7 (see note 17). 53. QUTB (I980a), pp.12, 206-207 (see note 17). 54. QUTB (1980a), p.12 (see note 17). 55. QUTB (1980a), p 30 (see note 17).

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56

academic discussion and enjoyment' ,

However, even less Islamic is speculation that aims at answering mankind's age-old questions outside of the Islamic framework, here, Qutb has in mind philosophy and the social sciences. In the first instance, these disciplines are to be avoided by the Muslims because they draw from sources other than the Qu, r 'an. There is only one spring from which Muslim should draw, according to Qutb: the Holy Qur 'an. The downfall of Muslim civilization Qutb retraces quite early on, in Islam's history, after the fourth Khalif,' Ali, to the infiltration in Muslims' thinking of such foreign sources as 'Greek philosophy and logic, ancient Persian legends and their ideas, Jewish scriptures and traditions, Christian theology' in addition to fragments of other religions and civilizations' ,57 Second—and as a direct consequence of their non-Islamic origin - philosophy and the social sciences should be rejected because they are premised on the supposition that complete knowledge is attainable by man and the essence of reality can be, at least in principle, totally grasped and fully articulated. However, Qutb believes that complete knowledge is not within the reach of human intellect. In the Qur 'an, time and again Allah repeats that man will never grasp me while truth: only God has access to complete knowledge. The closest that man can get to the essence of the truth is through the allusions to it present in the Qur 'an. Outside the Qur 'ante discourse - or, rather outside of the Qur 'anic imagery and conception - all that man constructs through his philosophies and social sciences are empty and senseless speculations that breed division and nurture the cult of arrogant intellectual elitism, with all of its attendant disastrous social and political consequences.58 Against this strongly antagonistic and rejectionist position vis-a-vis philosophy and the social sciences, Qutb's stance on natural science is at first rather striking. Here, it will be essential to briefly sketch a distinction between Qutb's view regarding natural science in his earlier writings and the one he held in his last book, Milestones. In Social Justice in Islam, the first explicitly Islamic book by Qutb, written in 1948 his position concerning the natural sciences can perhaps best be described as one informed mainly by pragmatic considerations. First, echoing 56. QUTB (1980a), p.31 (see note 17). 57. QUTB (1980a), p.26 (see note 17). 58. QUTB S. Islam, the Religion of the Future, Maktaba Islam, Delhi (1954), p.71.

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al-Afghani's view on the relationship between philosophy and the sciences.59 Qutb notes that: The experimental method rests on the basis of a definite philosophy which is neither intellectual nor spiritual; if this had never established itself in favour, science would never have followed the course which latterly it has taken. In the same way, science can never remain in isolation from philosophy, nor can it be content to be influenced by philosophy without in turn influencing it All this is over and above the fact that the applied results of science must influence all material life, methods of gaining a living, and the division of wealth. All this will in due time produce new forms of society of life which must be influenced by these developments in the course of life.60 However, he then goes on to say: But what must be must be. There is no possibility of living in isolation from science and its products, though the harm that it does may be greater than the good. There is no such thing as an unmixed blessing or an unalloyed evil.61 In Milestones, where his reformist program takes a turn for the radically rejectionist, Qutb can no longer retain his 'what must be must be' position: the whole idea behind Milestones is that what obtains in the here and now must be fundamentally altered to conform with the Islamic ideal. However, rather than sacrifice science in the interest of his larger plan, Qutb recasts his argument so that now the case of science is appropriated in the service of his overall scheme. First, Qutb by and large gives up the notion that science is a 'mixed blessing'. While in Social Justice he characterized the relationship between science, technology and culture in dialectical terms, in Milestones, science and technology are more or less conflated with one another, and their relationship with culture only vaguely and ambiguously hinted at. Science and 59. KEDDIE (1968) (see note 24). 60. QUTB, S. Social Justice in Islam, translated by J.B. HARDIE, Octagon Books, New York (1980b), p.252. 61. QUTB (1980b), p.252, (see note 60).

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technology are then lumped together under opaque expression such as 'material inventions',62 'material fruits'63 or 'material achievements',64 while Western civilization (i.e. the historical), rather than Western culture (i.e. the essential), is accredited almost unilaterally for having bestowed upon mankind the blessings of'material comfort'.65 If Qutb displays no hesitation in congratulating this Western civilization for its 'achievements', it is only because now, the relationship between culture and science has been vitiated to the point where science can no longer be claimed to be the product of Western culture,/>£r se. First, that science has emerged from Europe is a matter of pure historical accident, and not a testament that Western culture in its essence is superior to Islamic culture. Qutb goes to great lengths stressing the temporal in his explanation of history: history in Qutb's account is replete with the 'unfortunate' (:the most 'unfortunate' of history being Uthman's election to the khilafa instead of Ali).66 Moreover, this very science that Europeans now claim exclusive preserve over Qutb traces its origin to the Islamic heritage: both Bacons, Roger and Francis drew heavily from Islamic sources, and through them science took its first steps.67 In the final analysis, science is a historical product whose development and ownership are universal, and not cultural. Moreover, if since its adoption of science the West has achieved such universal success along the material sphere, it is only because scientists have concerned themselves with fulfilling the basic material needs shared by all mankind, needs that all dictated by human instinct (fitra) and that therefore do not change from one culture to the next. At the same time, in trying to solve these material problems, scientists have had as their unfailing guide the laws of nature. These laws have been laid down by God and are just like basic human instinct - unvaryingfromone context to another, orfromone generation to the next.68 Since God has supplied man with all the wit and reason he needs to uncover the mysteries of nature, anyone who applies himself to the task should 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

QUTB (1980a). p. 10, (see note 17). QUTB (1980a), p.9 (see not 17). QUTB (1980a), p. 12 (see note 17). QUTB (1980a), p. 13 (see note 17). QUTB (1980b), p.234 (see note 60). 'In fact, it was Islam, by virtue of its realistic system, that initiated the inductive or experimental school, which was started in Andalusia. The experimental or "scientific" method was then transferred to Europe where Roger and Francis Bacon, falsely alleged to be the fathers of this school, established the doctrine' QUTB (1954), p. 119. 68. QUTB (1954), p.81 (see note 58)

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be able to contribute to humanity's stock of scientific knowledge. At the same time, Qutb takes it as an equally given axiom that the West has miserably failed to establish a successful universal moral order. This failure he explains as having resulted precisely because Western philosophers and social scientists have neglected to do along the moral sphere what scientists did along the material sphere. First, they have neglected to address the moral counterpart of material instinctive needs: the spiritual basic needs.69 Second, in addressing the various moral and spiritual problems Western society faced, philosophers and social scientists have neglected to consult the counterpart of the laws of nature laid down by God: the moral divine laws.70 The fatal mistake that the West committed, according to Qutb, is its presumption that success along the material dimension would necessarily entail a moral success.71 However, man-made theories are - if that even - only temporally and geographically adequate, while man's spiritual and moral cravings are, like his material ones, instinctive and unchanging.72 What needs to be done, according to Qutb, is to address mankind's spiritual needs by turning to the laws laid down by God. In the case of the material world, the laws of God were given the form of the laws of nature, and man's instinctive intelligence and imagination lead him to a successful unraveling of those laws.73 On the other hand, moral and spiritual laws can be discovered only through a dialectical and subjective interaction with the message of God, where man is spoken to directly and intimately in the unique language of the Holy Qur 'an. Note in the following the discursive character Qutb gives to man's relationship with the divine word: During the Meccan period, the Qur 'an explained to man the secret of his existence and the secret of the universe surrounding him. It told him who he is, where he has come from, for what purpose and where he will go in the end It also informed him concerning the nature of the things which he can touch and see Similarly, it 'told him how to relate to the 69. QUTB (1954), pp 10-15 (see note 58) 70 QUTB (1954), p 81 (see note 58) 'Man cannot change the practice of God in the laws prevailing in the universe. It is therefore desirable that he should also follow Islam in those aspects of his life in which he is given a choice and should make the Divine Law the arbiter in all matters of life so that there may be harmony between man and the rest of the universe' 71. QUTB (1954), pp 9,14,87 (see note 58) 72. QUTB (1954), pp.64, 74, 136 (see note 58). 73. The notion of instinctive creativity is stressed time and again by Qutb's frequent reference to Western's 'genius' in dealing with material problems. Referring to 'material inventions' Qutb notes: 'Europe's creative mind is far ahead in this area, and at least for a few centuries to come we cannot expect to compete with Europe and attain supremacy over it in these fields', QUTB (1954), p 12 (see note58).

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Creator, to the physical world, and to other human beings. [emphases mine].

In short, Qutb believes that Islam can do (and in fact did for a short period of time) for mankind along the spiritual realm what the West has successfully achieved along the material dimension through modern science and technology.75 Conclusion A rather tight relationship can then be delineated between Qutb's political views, his theory of knowledge, and his religious cosmology. Toward the end of his life, embittered by long years of torture and imprisonment and completely abandoning his earlier project of gradually establishing the 'truly' Muslim society - as he defined it - Qutb championed an activist strategy whose first goal, in its long reformative road, persuasion that maintains as its primary priority the avoidance of confrontation at any cost - the hallmark of the 'ulama76 - occupied center stage in his argument. Characteristically, Qutb took the offensive and inverted the Orientalist characterization of Islam as a static tradition, defining Islam first and foremost as a dynamic method.77 Knowledge in this scheme no longer remained pure apprehension, but directed action and dynamic interaction with what is to be changed. This knowledge, whose aim is to transform rather than to denote from a distance, by definition can not transgress into the realm of essence, since only God, and never man, has access to ultimate truth. Revelation then needs no learned mediation from the 'ulama, and salvation no interference from the prince. Clearly, in Sayyid Qutb we have a case that weakens the characterization of fundamentalists as hostile to rationalism in general, and science and technology in particular. Qutb does not call for the banishment of the rational exploration and manipulation of the world. Rather, he challenges the notion that rationalism alone, bereft of a conscious concern for human values, is sufficient for the betterment of humanity's lot. Science and technology are embraced by Qutb as tools to be used to promote the material welfare of mankind, rather than endeavours that are ends in and of themselves. The production of scientific knowledge and technological 74. QUTB (1954), p.38 (see note 58). 75. QUTB (1954), p.36 (see note 58). 76. SIVAN E. Interpretation of Islam: Past and Present, The Darwin Press, Princeton (1985b) See especially chapter 4, 'Ulama and Power' pp 107-132. 77. SIVAN (1985b), p.67 (see note 76).77. SIVAN (1985b), p 67 (see note 76).

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artifacts are consciously subsumed by Qutb to the principles and values of Islam. As we saw earlier, the subsumption of science and technology to a system of Islamic values is decried on grounds of principle by many writers hostile to fundamentalism as a manifestation of an underlying hostility from fundamentalists towards the scientific method. Bassam Tibi, for example, while recognizing that 'Muslim fundamentalists adopt favourable attitude toward science and technology' even as they demand 'the de-Westernization of knowledge' ,78 nevertheless insists on accusing them in the final analysis of being antiscientific, and of promoting an Islamic science he deems hopelessly straddled by the constrictions ofQur 'ante exegesis and hermeneutics.79 In addition, Tibi argues that 'in recent decades Muslim fundamentalists have vehemently challenged [the] assumption [that Western science possesses a universal status]'80 In Tibi's opinion, what fundamentalists are seeking is to establish an Islamic science that is qualitatively different from, and stands in contrast to, Western science. Tibi seems to believe that all fundamentalists believe in the possibility of'alternative' sciences, one informed by Western, another by Islamic values. It is this defensive reading of Ziauddin Sardar's attack on the imperialism of Western epistemology that leads Tibi to the conclusion that what 'fundamentalists are seeking' is 'an alternative to Cartesianism'81. While Tibi may very well be on the mark regarding some fundamentalist positions, he is not altogether justified to extend his conclusions to cover the whole gamut of Islamist fundamentalist thinkers who have examined the question of Islam and science. As Qutb's case clearly shows, it is precisely on science's status as a universally valuable human achievement that Qutb bases part of his call for universal moral reform. Rather than deny science its universal status, Qutb in effect points to its universalism as proof of its validity. The scientific method - that 'instinctive' endeavour to seek knowledge about the world - has succeeded precisely because it is informed by fitra, the instinctive and universal faculty instilled in man by God to guide him in his life on earth. Given the enduring relevance of Qutb among the most vocal of fundamentalists (who continue to read Qutb's works much more extensively than they do the output of such luminaries of the Islam and science debate as Sardar o Nasr), Tibi's basic premise about the disposition of fundamentalists towrards science and 78 79. 80 81.

TIBJ TIBI TIBI TIBI

(1993), p. 74 (see note 12). (1993), pp.76-77 (see note 12). (1993), p.73 (see note 12). (1995), p. 11 (see note 7).

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technology that they seek to challenge the universality of science - seems to be rather dubious. Qutb's case also weakens the contention that a basic tenet of all fundamentalists is the belief that an Islamic science cannot go beyond an exe^etical study of the Qur 'an. However, as I propose in this paper, one of Qutb's most basic points is his rejection of any theoretical, abstract speculation that is detached from direction action and interaction with the contingencies of living and acting in the real, material world. While positing the Qur 'an as the ultimate source of all knowledge, Qutb at the same time never claims that man is able to attain that knowledge merely by studying the Qur 'an. On the contrary, the linchpin of Qutb's discourse rests precisely on the opposite contention that knowledge about the world and about man's condition in it can be attained (though never fully) only through a continuous dialectic with life in all of its complexity. This leads us directly to the accusation that, because a cornerstone of the scientific method is its alleged principle that all knowledge is revisible, fundamentalists are therefore naturally uncomfortable with the' scientific spirit'. However, at least in the case of one fundamentalist - and not a secondary one at that - this contention is at best tenuous. Sayyid Qutb, by locating final knowledge in God and by arguing that man will never be able to attain final knowledge - even through the Qur 'an - explicitly promotes a humbled disposition towards knowledge and the world that, at least theoretically, encourages, rather than detracts from, creativity and speculation. Dogmatisms of any. form, whether religious or rationalist, are viewed by Qutb as transgressions into the realm of Allah's sovereignty. The 'truly' Muslim scientist, in Qutb's view, just as the 'truly' Muslim jurist, should never claim to have reached the ultimate truth about the world, and should be open to possibilities that could refine, or even completely refute, his findings, all the while keeping in mind he is nothing more than one of God's many creations.

[ 1 1 ] THE SACRED VERSUS THE SECULAR: NASR ON SCIENCE Ibrahim Kalin

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asr's work on science is discomforting for many. His defense of traditional sciences is seen by his critics as a nostalgic appeal to tradition with no real consequences for the current problems surrounding modern science. His unflinching attack on the philosophical foundations of modern science makes the modernists uneasy both in the East and the West. Furthermore, the evolutionary historians of science consider his notion of Islamic science too religious and metaphysical. Part of this perturbed situation comes from Nasr's rigorous assertion of the religious view of the cosmos at a time when religion as a valid source of knowledge is no longer taken seriously even by its sincere adherents. Sailing against the grain, Nasr offers no apologies for his resolute stance and insists on questioning the received meaning of science. Consequently, Nasr's approach to science from a religious point of view suggests a new way of looking at the vexed question of religion and science. This essay, however, will confine itself to a critical analysis of Nasr's concept of science both in its traditional sense and modern form. A quick look at Nasr's wide-ranging works shows that the question of science occupies a central place in his thought. Following a twofold strategy, Nasr does not remain content with the critique of modern Western science, and presents his alternative view of science on the basis of traditional doctrines. The heavy emphasis put on the distinction between the traditional and the modern, or the sacred and the profane, runs through Nasr's work, and his work comprises many facets of traditional and modern sciences. A

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considerable number of his works are thus devoted to the exposition of traditional sciences, the metaphysical and cosmological principles on which they are based, and their meaning for a day and age that tends to see them as no more than superstitions and old wives' tales. The second part of Nasr's work is focused on modern science, its historical formation, its philosophical premises and claims, and the catastrophic events brought about by the unquestioned acceptance of modern science and technology. In both of these fields, Nasr stands out as a rigorous practitioner of the traditional school and presents a profound evaluation of the traditional and modern natural sciences from the point of view of traditional doctrines. This can best be seen in his insistence on the necessity ofscientia sacra and the revival of premodern cosmologies that the traditional civilizations have produced over the centuries. Being the application of a number of metaphysical principles expounded by the traditional school, and especially by Rene Guenon, Nasr's critique of modern science is accordingly motivated neither by a purely utilitarian impulse nor by a mere academic and historical interest. Rather, his uncompromising defense of traditional sciences on the one hand, and relentless attack on the philosophical claims of modern science on the other, is to be seen as an encounter between the traditional and the modern at the metaphysical level as it pertains to the domain of natural sciences. It is, therefore, important to note at the outset that Nasr's critique of modern science is marked off from the current criticisms leveled against modern Western science by its metaphysical and religious stance. According to Nasr, modern science is an anomaly not simply because we have to pay a high price by destroying the natural environment, but because modern science operates within a seriously misguided framework in which everything is reduced to pure quantity and by which modern man is made to think that all of his problems, from transportation to spiritual salvation, can ultimately be solved by further progress in science. The other cost of the scientistic fallacy is to make spiritual realities appear as unreal and redundant, or at least not relevant to the world-picture presented by modern science. In sharp contrast to this naive belief in science and progress which has come under severe attack especially after World War II, Nasr aims at analyzing and questioning the very foundations upon which modern science as the pseudo-religion of the modern age is based. In this regard, one may argue that Nasr's work is not so much concerned with the philosophy of science in the current sense of the term as with the metaphysics of science, namely, the metaphysical framework in which science, be it modern or premodern, is to be understood and given its due place in the hierarchy of knowledge. For Nasr, it is the availability or absence of such a metaphysics that makes science modern or traditional. Thus, Nasr's highly critical stance towards modern science can best be

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understood in the light of his notion of sacred science, which might be described very briefly as an application of the One and the Absolute to the plane of relative existence. In fact, Nasr's central claim is that the rise of modern Western science is not the result of some ground-breaking advancements in scientific measurement. Rather it is a direct consequence of the rise of a certain philosophy which underlies the formation of modern science from the seventeenth century onward. This claim can also be read as an extension of his view of sacred and traditional sciences which share a metaphysical outlook entirely different from that of modern science. To use a familiar distinction from the contemporary philosophy of science, Nasr concentrates his criticisms on the context of justification rather than on the context of experiment. In other words, Nasr's work on modern science is not so much concerned with the actual conditions of scientific experiment and measurement, a subject dear to many scientists and philosophers of science, as with the larger framework of meaning in which the findings and the philosophical foundations of modern natural sciences are to be examined. In what follows, I shall give first a brief description of Nasr's defense of what he calls sacred science. By focusing on the concept ofscientia sacra, we will be able to gain insight into the metaphysical framework in which traditional sciences, whether Hindu, Chinese or Islamic, were constructed and transmitted. The relevance of metaphysical doctrines of world religions for traditional sciences will thus form an important part of our discussion. The second part of the essay will focus on Nasr's criticism of modern Western science which, in the eyes of Nasr, is the primary cause of the secularization and desacralization of the order of nature. It is, however, extremely important not to lose sight of the fact that Nasr is not opposed to science itself but to its philosophical claims that apparently exceed its legitimate boundaries. Keeping this in mind, our analysis will also provide us with a chance to distinguish between the philosophy and the metaphysics of science with which Nasr's work is primarily concerned.

SCIENTIA SACRA DEFINED AND DEFENDED Nasr defines scientia sacra as "that sacred knowledge which lies at the heart of every revelation and is the center of that circle which encompasses and defines tradition."1 Scientia sacra, whose Latin form Nasr insists on keeping, denotes the supreme science of metaphysics which comprises the principial knowledge of things, whereas, "sacred science" refers to the application of sacred knowledge to various domains of reality, physical and spiritual. Any science, be it natural, mathematical, or intellectual, that places the sacred at the center of its structure is sacred to the extent that it is an application of the

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immutable principles of metaphysics to the world of change and relativity.2 In this regard, all sacred sciences are also traditional sciences in the sense that they apply the principles of traditional metaphysics to the scientific study of nature and thus can be called different versions of applied metaphysics.3 Grounded in this view, all sacred sciences from cosmology to medicine share a number of cardinal principles which Nasr outlines as follows: the sacred sciences construe the world through the prism of a hierarchy of being and knowledge. The physical world is not denied as an illusion, as maya, or as a shadow to be degraded in face of the Absolute. Nor is it taken to be an ultimate reality in and of itself. It is rather placed within a larger framework of meaning and significance that does not confine existence to any particular scientific construction. The traditional civilizations in which the sacred sciences were cultivated insist on the Divine origin of the world, and this view leads to a clear-cut relationship of hierarchy between the absolute and the relative, the eternal and the temporal, the necessary and the contingent. Since hierarchy implies, by definition, a multilayered structure, the traditional sciences are essentially anti-reductionist. This explains, to a large extent, the persistence of the idea of the "great chain of being" across the traditional civilizations which do not allow the reduction of reality into a pure idea or pure matter as these terms are currently understood.4 Instead of relegating reality to a lower plane of existence, namely to matter, the sacred sciences analyze each domain of reality in its own level, thus resting on a metaphysical framework within which it is possible to maintain the vision of the One and the many without confounding the two. In this view, nature, the very subject matter of science, is regarded as a sacred being, as vestigia Dei, or as ay at Allah (e.g., as the signs of God which point to the "symbolic significance" of the world of nature). In sharp contrast to the modern view of nature which reduces the order of nature to everlasting change and impermanence, the traditional sciences look upon nature as the abode of both change and permanence. Although commonsense experience tends to see nature as a perennially changing structure, the world of nature displays also a remarkable continuity, perseverance, and harmony, as we see in the preservation of the species and the endurance of natural forms. For Nasr, this double-aspect of nature proves beyond any doubt the Divine quality in nature: the world of nature has not been left to the infinite succession of haphazard and senseless changes which admit no telos in the cosmos. On the contrary, nature contains in itself the principles of change and permanence simultaneously and points to a "big picture" in which all of its parts are recognized as forming a meaningful unity and harmony. As Titus Burckhardt reminds us, "the Greek word cosmos means 'order', implying the ideas of unity and totality. Cosmology is thus the

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science of the world inasmuch as this reflects its unique cause, Being."5 Defined as such, the order of nature or the cosmos cannot be other than the reflection on the level of relative existence of a higher principle.6 Cosmos as a self-disclosure of the Divine can be grasped, according to Nasr, only by what Frithjof Schuon calls the "symbolist spirit" which has been lost in the modern world. The symbolist outlook shared by all the traditional sciences is based on the epistemological premise that the reality of things is more than how it appears to us.7 Just as the reality of God is not limited to His creation, the reality of the natural world is also not confined to the analysis and classification of natural sciences. In fact, the meaning of the cosmos can be made explicit only when one sees it as more than its quantitative sum. A crucial implication of this premise is obviously the rejection of modern empiricism: since reality is not exhausted by its experimental analysis, there has to be an "intellectual" principle that organizes and guides what is experienced by the five senses. Left unto itself, the sum total of experimental data, however "thick" and informative it might be, does not constitute a whole or unity by which we can understand and describe the world. In fact, pure empiricism as a way of dealing with the world of nature is not a possibility because there is always an element of intellectual knowledge involved in any scientific enterprise undertaken.8 In other words, the choice of the scientist to deal with a particular domain of reality by using certain scientific instruments is not a theory-free and valuefree endeavor. The context of experiment, despite its operational nature, is always the context of a number of choices, judgments, and evaluations that the scientist has in the background of his work. The task of the metaphysics of science, as we observe it in the work of Nasr, is precisely to provide and clarify these principal ideas and judgments through which all natural sciences, whether traditional or modern, function. As a result of the presence of such a metaphysics, the traditional notion of experiment in the natural sciences has a field of meaning completely different from and incommensurable with its modern counterpart. That is why the traditional sciences which Nasr, together with the other members of the traditional school, defends against modern science have never allowed the rise of reductionist empiricism despite the epoch-making achievements of traditional sciences in such experimental fields as medicine, astronomy, mechanics, and alchemy.9 Modern empiricism or what Guenon calls "Fexperimentalisme moderne" differs completely from the traditional notion of experiment since it is not only reductionist but also flawed in its most essential assumption that theory has to be checked against the backdrop of a number of experimental conditions. Guenon puts into question this very assumption and claims that to give priority to experiment detached from the theoretical setting in which it is constructed is to reverse the relation between theory and

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experiment. For Guenon, it is the illusion of modern experimentalism to believe that a theory can be proved by facts whereas in reality the same facts can always be explained equally well by a number of different theories, and it would not be possible, as some of the defenders of the experimental method like Claude Bernard have recognized, to interpret these facts without the help of some "preconceived ideas" without which these facts remain as "brute facts," devoid of any significance and scientific value.10 Set against this background, the traditional sciences that employ the experimental method always function within a framework of metaphysical principles the most important of which is, for Nasr and the traditional school, the hierarchy of being and knowledge.11 It is the recognition of this hierarchy that exists objectively and independently of the knowing subject that prevents the traditional sciences of nature from falling into the trap of reductionist empiricism. The traditional notion of scientific experiment brings us to another fundamental issue in the natural sciences, which is the question of scientific realism. Although neither Nasr nor the other exponents of the traditional school speak about realism in terms similar to the ongoing discussion in contemporary philosophy of science, it is possible to argue that Nasr takes a realist position on the meaning and function of natural sciences. The common-sense definition of realism as the acceptance of an objective world not dependent on our perceptions is, one may claim, uninteresting and even boring,12 and it would not be wrong to say that it does not yield any substantial knowledge about the structure of the world around us. Yet, this seemingly simple truism entails a far-reaching thesis concerning our consciousness of the world. Putting aside the conflicting views on the subject, we may characterize this assertion along the following lines. According to a fundamental axiom expounded by the traditional school, man is in principle capable of knowing God and the world through his intellect which is a God-given faculty. In sharp contrast to Kantianism and other forms of rationalism, the possibility of metaphysics as an all-inclusive science stems from the faculty of the intellect whose function is to integrate and know the higher levels of reality. Whereas reason by its nature analyzes and dissects the world around it into fragments in order to function properly, the intellect synthesizes and integrates what has been fragmented by the work of reason. The same principle applies, one may argue, to the natural sciences in the sense that the quantitative study of the cosmos is complemented by the qualitative and "symbolist" perception of the intellect.13 Nasr's realist position comes to the fore with his depiction of science as

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an organized body of knowledge that is in principle capable of describing the world to us as it is. Guided primarily by the supreme knowledge of metaphysics, science can and does investigate the reality of physical entities as they exist objectively in the extra-mental world. This suggests that scientific theories are not mere instruments of operation by which the scientist constructs a picture of the world without having an actual grasp of it.14 On the contrary, what science presents to us as a world-picture is in fact a true picture of the world, provided that it is substantiated by sound evidence and that it does not lose sight of the hierarchic vision of the universe. As in the case of scientific experimentalism, this minimal or common-sense view of scientific realism is supplemented by what one may call a "metaphysical realism" in that the scientific realism in question is gained not through the operation of the senses and reason alone but primarily through the intellect which is the locus of metaphysical knowledge for intellectual as well as natural sciences. The fact that science can present to us a true picture of the world is to be seen not as being due to an exclusive brilliance of scientific theories or experimental devices, but as a possibility of the intellect. It is through the intellect that we make sense of the world with which the sciences are concerned. Said differently, what makes the quantitative study of the universe possible is the intellect's ability to understand the reality of things as they are, to the extent possible within the confines of human ability, namely as the plane of relative existence in face of the Absolute.15 It is this metaphysical component that separates realism, as it is defined here, from both positivism and physicalism.16 Nasr's ground-breaking work on Islamic science can be taken as an example to illustrate the foregoing points.17 The Islamic natural sciences cultivated in Islamic civilization by Muslim scientists were based on a careful and analytic study of nature within the matrix of the Islamic revelation. The essence of this revelation is al-tawhid, the principle of unity professed by every member of the Islamic community, which underlies, as Nasr repeatedly states, the unity and interrelatedness of the world of nature. Although al-tawhld in its ordinary sense refers to the theological dictum that there is no divinity but God, its ontological and metaphysical meanings enter the picture as a corollary by construing the world of nature as issuing forth from a single source, that is, from the Divine. For Nasr, the primary goal of Islamic sciences, from medicine to geometry, is to disclose this underlying unity and to show "the unity and interrelatedness of all that exists."18 Seen from this point of view, reality presents itself to us as a well-knit unity in which the individual objects as the subject matter of science are located.19 A supposedly "pure" analysis of the natural world into its constituent parts does not help us understand these discrete parts because each analysis, whether scientific or philosophical, is carried out within a context in which

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the terms of the analysis are given. Furthermore, each part by definition requires a whole or unity in relation to which alone it can be called "part." The distinct characteristic of Islamic sciences, claims Nasr, is to admit this pre-conceptual and relational unity as a given fact and reveal the balance between the whole and the part, and between the one and the many. This is also one of the fundamental differences between the metaphysical framework of Islamic science and its modern counterpart.20 Following the same line of argument, it is possible to contend that the "facts" of science are not derivable from an analysis which is thought to be detached and isolated from the multi-layered contexts of meaning. In fact, as Nasr insists upon the necessity of an all-inclusive metaphysical matrix in which any scientific activity is to be conducted, science, be it traditional or modern, represents a prime example of what Gilbert Ryle calls "thick description," namely, the analysis of the layers of meaning within which an activity is carried out. Now, one of the merits of Islamic science is to unveil the persistence of such layers of meaning that run through the various levels of scientific activity while at the same time explicating the tacit unity and interrelatedness of natural phenomena. The "unifying perspective of Islam"21 in which the Islamic sciences are deeply rooted defines the "facts" of science not as atomistic quanta but as relational entities that tie the entire cosmos together.22 A crucial implication of this "metaphysics of relationality," if I may use such a term, is the denial of pure and simple ideas which the empiricists such as Hume have conceived of as the constitutive elements of human thought. The so-called pure and simple ideas of human mind always assume a "thick" setting in which they are formed and expressed. The same holds true for the sense-data and/or sense-perception which is always embedded in a context of intelligibility larger than mere sensation. In fact, according to the idea ofasalat al-wujud, the primacy of being over essence (mahiyyah), which Nasr expounds in many of his writings, Being is the standing condition of all knowledge. In other words, every act of knowing, whether based on the senses or the intellect, presumes a larger context of intelligibility provided by the all-inclusive reality of Being. It is on the basis of this "existential" ground, as opposed to some physical or ether-like element, that we can talk about the cosmos as an interrelated unity. This substantive unity, however, becomes comprehensible only through the aid of the intellect which integrates various domains of reality, distinct from quantitative analysis which remains at the steps of fragmentation and dissection. For Nasr, the remarkable achievements of Islamic sciences were made possible by the availability of such a comprehensive outlook, one that has determined both the context of experiment and justification of the traditional natural sciences.23 This is also the demarcation line between the sacred and modern science, the latter having adopted an entirely different perspective, to which we now turn.

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MODERN SCIENCE: THE TRIUMPH OF THE SECULAR It is now common wisdom that the rise of modern science was not a natural result of some technological advancements that took place in Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The formation of modern science was rather the end-result of a number of philosophical and metaphysical changes that have altered humanity's view of nature and science in an unprecedented way. In this sense, modern science represents a radical shift away from the traditional notion ofscientia—a shift from the sacred evaluation of nature to a secular and profane framework in which pure quantity is taken to be the reality. With this new outlook, nature is divested of its symbolic and sacred meaning, and the scientist becomes the sole arbiter of truth. For Nasr, the legitimation crisis of modern science stems from this new and "alien" perspective that has led, among other things, to such global calamities as the environmental crisis and the threat of nuclear warfare. Accordingly, Nasr's relentless attack on modern science is focused on the analysis and critique of the errors of this philosophical purview rather than being a "sentimental attack" on modern science itself, as is commonly and mistakenly assumed. In this regard, Nasr's encounter with the intellectual premises of secular Western science can be interpreted as an archeology of modern science whose roots go back to the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution. Five main traits of modern science come to the fore in Nasr's critical analysis. The first is the secular view of the universe that sees no traces of the Divine in the natural order. Nature is no longer the vestigia Dei of Christian cosmology but a self-subsistent entity that can be encapsulated exhaustively in the quantitative formulae of natural sciences.24 The second feature is the mechanization of the world-picture upon the model of machines and clocks. Once couched in terms of mechanistic relations, nature becomes something absolutely determinable and predictable—a much needed safety zone for the rise of modern industrial society and capitalism. The third aspect of modern science is rationalism and empiricism as we have alluded to before. The fourth trait is the legacy of Cartesian dualism that presupposes a complete separation between res cogitans and res extensa, that is, between the knowing subject and the object to be known. With this cleavage, the epistemological alienation of man from nature comes to completion by leaving behind a torrent of pseudo-problems in modern philosophy, the notorious mind-body problem being a special case in point.25 The last important aspect of modern science is in a sense a culmination of the foregoing features, and it is the exploitation of nature as a source of power and domination—a fact not unknown to modern capitalist society. Now we can see, in a brief manner, how these aspects of modern science figure in Nasr's critical analysis.

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What came into being with the Scientific Revolution was a new way of looking at the world in the deepest sense. Nature was no longer conceived as a being of sacred significance with its own life cycle and unity, something not to be destroyed by man's desire to establish a fake paradise here on earth. The humanist ideal of bringing down heaven to the terrestrial domain was deemed possible only by turning nature into a stage in which the destiny of mankind was to be decided in isolation from the Divine dictums of Christianity or any other religion. The historic break away from the religious view of the universe marks the incubation of a modern secularism that claims to account for all the dimensions of nature by reducing it to pure quantity and a soulless machine. For Nasr, this secular view of the universe underlies the most essential characteristics of modern science. Once translated into the language of pure quantities, nature becomes devoid of any intrinsic meaning and intelligibility. All the qualitative aspects associated with the natural phenomena, such as beauty, harmony, telos, and intelligibility turn into what Galileo called the "secondary qualities," namely, the subjective feelings of humans with no corresponding reality in the extramental world.26 Galileo's distinction between the primary and secondary qualities has also laid the foundations of modern empiricism: reality is what can be measured quantitatively, and it is only through the channel of empirical science that access to "reality" defined as such can be gained.27 Hence, science deals with a domain of reality with no meaning and value in and of itself. As Collingwood rightly points out, this view excludes God as well as man from the world of nature in that both God and man are seen as conferring meaning upon nature ex post facto, thus treating nature itself as inert matter.28 Consequently, this view leads to the glorification of the human mind as the sole locus of meaning and value, and thus slips into a gross subjectivism. Nasr rejects this subjectivism, insists on the intrinsic qualities of nature, and makes the bold epistemological claim that the world of nature, or the external world, displays certain qualities intrinsic to itself which cannot be confined to the feelings or the cognition of the knowing subject. Said differently, the qualities that we associate with the natural phenomena are not simply the results of some psychological states, but rather must be seen as constitutive of what we experience.29 Placed within this framework, the world of nature appears to be of sacred quality in and of itself and not necessarily dependent on our perceptions of it. This view has important implications for the so-called "bare facts," the temple of all the positivists, that supposedly replace the metaphysical and philosophical suppositions of premodern sciences with the "facts" of natural phenomena. As I have stated earlier, the myth of neutral fact, free from any context of meaning and value, has to be abandoned as inadequate. This, then, puts into question one of the fundamental premises of the secular view

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of nature that the "bare facts" of science leave no space for religious or artistic truth and that what is out there in the world of nature is no more than aggregates of chemical and biological elements upon which the human mind antecedently confers meaning. As Nasr repeatedly states, the projection of nature as pure materia is a reflection of the secular outlook of modern science in which a "suppositionless" encounter with the world is pushed to the limits of relegating nature to a structure of brute facts with no meaning and even practical use. It is not a difficult step to take from a nature conceived as inert and essentially devoid of meaning to a nature constructed upon the model of a machine and, later with Newton, a clock. The purpose of this analogy, as we all know, was to prove the precision of modern natural sciences and to substantiate man's claim for absolute domination over nature. The myth of the determinate and predictable state of things was a necessary assumption for the operation of the natural sciences—a myth shattered by the rise of quantum mechanics and sub-atomic studies.30 In any case, nature had to be construed as a machine in the full sense of the term so that the rise of industrial society could go ahead without any serious objection from religion or society, both of which were already made submissive to the undisputed authority of science. Interestingly enough, the very model through which the bare facts of nature were to be discovered proved to be a clear indication of the philosophical outlook adopted by modern science: "machine" or "clock" is certainly not a phenomenon to be found in nature but rather an invention of modern industrial society. Nasr sees the disastrous effects of the mechanistic view of the cosmos in this misconceived belief in science that has led to the eclipse of traditional ideas and values on the one hand, and to a number of modern disasters on the other. In addition to that, Nasr also insists that thinking about nature in terms of machines is not the best way to deal with natural phenomena. As the history of premodern sciences shows, it is possible to study and make use of nature without subscribing to a mechanistic worldview in which the intrinsic value of nature and everything in it is deemed inconsequential for the progress of human society. The third important trait of modern science is, for Nasr, rationalism and empiricism which, in spite of their historical rivalry, complement each other in a number of surprising ways. First of all, both rationalism and empiricism, as the two progeny of the Enlightenment, reject the "Great Chain of Being," namely, the hierarchic view of the universe which lies at the heart of traditional sciences. Instead, modern rationalism constructs a world-picture within the limits of reason alone while empiricism takes a similar position by reducing reality to the least common denominator, that is, sense experience. The philosophical roots of Enlightenment humanism can thus be traced back to this epistemological straitjacket imposed upon our perception

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of the world by rationalism and empiricism. Secondly, both of these schools take the knowing subject, the cogito of Descartes, to be the sole possessor of meaning and intelligibility, thus paving the way for a subjectivist epistemology. Although the cosmology of modern science, at the hands of Galileo, supposedly invalidated the Christian view of the universe that regarded the world as the center of the cosmos, modern epistemology put the modern man back at the center by assigning to him the role of being the Promethean "creator" of the world.31 Thirdly, both rationalism and empiricism adopt what Thomas Nagel calls the "view from nowhere" standpoint according to which man is disengaged from the world (in which he is ineluctably included) and able to see the world by himself from a God-like vantage point.32 As I have mentioned earlier, modern rationalism, according to Nasr and the traditional school, rests on a serious misunderstanding of the notion of "reason" when it relegates the intellect to calculation and analysis. Modern empiricism, for its part, falls into a similar predicament by repudiating any principle higher than sense perception. The fourth distinguishing characteristic of modern science is closely related to both rationalism and empiricism, and this is the legacy of Cartesian bifurcation which draws an ontological and epistemological abyss between the knowing subject and the object to be known. With this rupture, the knowing subject is veiled ontologically from the world surrounding it and bound to look at everything as an "other" including nature and "other minds." Historically, the epistemology of "othering," the inevitable offshoot of Cartesian dualism, has been one of the key factors in the alienation of man from nature and the destruction of the natural environment. It is not surprising to see that the decimation of natural resources coincides with the rise of colonialism and Orientalism, both of which are grounded in the creation of "others" as the unavoidable costs of Western domination. Nasr sees the roots of this modern predicament in the Cartesian heritage and argues very strongly for what we may call an "epistemology of unity," according to which the unity between the intellect and the intelligible is to be reasserted in order to have a genuine relationship with the world of nature as well as with other human beings.33 The last but by no means the least important aspect of modern science might be described as an ineluctable outcome of the preceding factors that we have just outlined. This pertains to the very context in which modern science is pursued and supported by governments, institutions and corporations. At this point, one of the most apparent leitmotifs of modern science is its connection with power and domination that has received a global prevalence with the consolidation of the world capitalist economy. Science as a way of gaining power and control over nature and other human beings is certainly a very strong impulse that lies at the heart of modern scientific

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enterprise. An important outcome of this new spirit has been the wedding between science and technology to such an extent that one can hardly speak of "pure science" anymore, a science that will not succumb to the demands and conditions of consumerist economy. Putting aside the extremely limited number of scientists who still see their vocation as a pursuit of truth and knowledge, nearly the entire body of modern science is driven by a will to power which manifests itself in the never-ending technological novelties financed by government funds and international corporations. Many critics of modern science have warned against the dangers of rapid technological change, a pace that creates a state of unbounded dependency on the one hand, and an irremediable sense of dislocation on the other.34 Nasr sees the roots of this predicament in the very assumptions of modern science and its stance towards nature. Accordingly, any plausible solution for the persisting problems caused by modern science and technology can be achieved not by better engineering or further progress but by reconsidering the entire perspective of the modern worldview regarding nature, human life, and its meaning.35 By way of conclusion, I would like to state two points on the implications of Nasr's view of science. Nasr's critique of modern secular science is based, as we have seen, on his conviction that the philosophical foundations of the modern physical sciences are marred in a serious way and that their misdeeds can be countered only by rediscovering the sacred view of the cosmos. Obviously, this inference has a number of interesting consequences for the current relationship between religion and science, into which we cannot go within the limits of this study. One important result, however, is that modern science, because of the secular framework it adopts, cannot be regarded as a continuation of traditional or premodern sciences, as is assumed by many historians of science.36 As I have pointed out earlier, the main difference between traditional and modern sciences is one of perspective and perception, not technical advancement. This being the case, the attempts to dovetail the findings of modern science with the spiritual teachings of traditional religions, as has become a widespread fashion in the recent decades, are destined to fail unless we set out to redefine the metaphysical underpinnings of science as a way of coming to terms with the world of nature. Without undertaking this colossal task, our efforts will do no more than to elevate science to a semi-religious truth or to turn religion into a scientific trope.37 Keeping this in mind, Nasr's critical work, although it may seem too radical and uncompromising to some, is likely to be a secure starting point for a more comprehensive and plausible discourse on the relation between religion and science. With his unyielding stance, Nasr also opens up a new avenue for facing up to the challenge of modern science without sacrificing the traditional

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ideas and values, and for rejecting the totalizing claims of the modern secular worldview which continue ever increasingly to dominate every facet of human life. Considering the current positions taken on science, which have been either total submission in the case of modernism or an inchoate rejection in the case of postmodernism and its associates, Nasr's critical approach offers a veritable alternative to both extremes, inviting us to a serious deliberation over the very terms of the problem. In this sense, the reassertion of the religious view of the universe and its meaning for natural sciences is indubitably of prime importance, not only for the followers of any particular religion but for the whole of humanity.

THE HUMAN SCIENCES PROGRAM THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY AUGUST 1999

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NOTES 1. Knowledge and the Sacred (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), p. 130. 2. The Need for a Sacred Science (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), pp. 1-2. 3. Not all traditional sciences are, however, sacred. There is always a human element attached to the formulation of traditional sciences which cannot be taken to be sacred in the strict sense of the term. For Nasr's distinction between the two, see The Need for a Sacred Science, p. 96. 4. The best historical account of the great chain of being is A. O. Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960). 5. Titus Burckhardt, The Mirror of the Intellect: Essays on Traditional Science and Sacred Art, tr. by William Stoddart (Cambridge: Quinta Essentia, 1987), p. 17. 6. Nasr gives a detailed analysis of this point in his works on Islamic science. Especially his Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1993) has been devoted to the concept of nature and the methods used for its study by Ikhwan al-Safa', al-BIrunl and Ibn SIna. 7. This epistemological claim has far-reaching consequences for our relationship with the world and with other human beings. Unfortunately, there is no space here to delve into this important subject. One may, however, refer to Huston Smith's concise discussion in his Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), pp. 96-117. 8. In contemporary philosophy of science, this issue has been discussed around the question of whether we can have observation without theory. As the

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realists and the instrumentalists alike agree, scientific observation is always theoryladen and this does not necessarily undermine the scientific validity of observation within a particular science. 9. For an illustration of this point, see Nasr's Islamic Science—An Illustrated Study (Kent: World of Islam Festival Publishing Company Ltd., 1976), and Science and Civilization in Islam (Chicago: ABC International, 2001). 10. Rene Guenon, La Crise du Monde Moderne, (Gallimard, 1946), pp. 76-77. 11. Although one may cite tens of classical books and treatises on the hierarchy of being and knowledge, two contemporary works are worth mentioning here: E. F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), especially, pp. 15-25; and Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition (cited above), especially, pp. 34-59. 12. Michael Devitt, Realism and Truth (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997), 2nd edition, pp. 13-14. 13. The distinction between reason and intellect on the one hand, and their unity at a higher level of consciousness on the other, are the two fundamental tenets of the traditional school. For Nasr's exposition of these terms, see his Knowledge and the Sacred, chapter 1. 14. For Nasr's critique of the type of scientific instrumentalism which is a version of anti-realism, see Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man (Chicago, 111.: ABC International Group, Inc., 1997), pp. 25-27. At this point, it should be mentioned that Glyn Ford's defense of Islamic science, which is based on his interpretation of Nasr, appears to rest on a misreading of Nasr. Ford defines science as a social construction of natural phenomena mediated by the scientific community and society with no claim to objectivity—a thesis promulgated, inter alia, by Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. In this sense, every scientific tradition, modern Western, Islamic, or Chinese, is entitled to be science notwithstanding their conflicting claims of truth and validity. It is not difficult to see the anti-realist component in this assertion: Islamic science is a valid science not because it is based on the scientific study of nature but because it is one among these social constructions that we collectively agree to call "science." As I have tried to show here, Nasr does not subscribe to such an anti-realist interpretation of science. For Ford's argument, see his "A Framework for a New View of Islamic Science" in 'Adiyat Halab: An Annual Devoted to the Study of Arabic Science and Civilization (Aleppo: The University of Aleppo, 1978-1979), vols. VI-V, pp. 68-74. 15. In a famous prayer, the Prophet of Islam asks God to "show him the reality of things as they are in themselves" (arini haqa'iq al-ashya' kama hiya). This prayer, which has been elaborated upon by many Muslim scholars and philosophers, suggests that the ultimate reality and meaning of things can be attained only through the aid of Divine guidance. Placed within a larger context, the same principle applies to the proper understanding of the order of nature. 16. There is no intrinsic or necessary connection between realism in science and belief in progress. Nevertheless, historically, the majority of those who take the realist position have allowed some kind of a belief in progress which accounts for the linear development of natural sciences. By contrast, most of the anti-realists and

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instrumentalists, notably Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Bas Van Fraassen, have rejected the idea of progress by replacing the idea of cumulative development in science with the concept of paradigm shifts that alter the very definition of science. Interestingly enough, both Guenon and Nasr reject the idea of progress as an intrinsic quality of natural sciences. In this regard, Guenon goes even further and describes the development of chemistry from alchemy and astronomy from astrology as "degeneration" rather than progress and evolution—degeneration in the principles that make alchemy, astrology, or the science of the soul ('ilm al-nafs) traditional sciences. The denial of "progress" in natural sciences, as this term is understood currently, is obviously the logical result of the metaphysical outlook that Nasr expounds and defends as a prominent member of the traditional school. For Guenon's remarks, see La Crise, op. cit., pp. 79-81. 17. Nasr has authored a number of important works on Islamic science. See: Islamic Science—An Illustrated Study (Kent: World of Islam Festival Publishing Company Ltd., 1976); An Annotated Bibliography of Islamic Science (Lahore: Suhail Academy, 1985) 3 vols; Science and Civilization in Islam', and An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines. Nasr has also written many articles on the meaning of Islamic science and its relation to modern Western science. 18. Science and Civilization in Islam, p. 22. 19. Ibid., p. 25. 20. In addition to Nasr's aforementioned works on Islamic science, see also his brief treatment in A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World (Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 1993), pp. 85-102. 21. Islamic Science, op. cit., p. 4. 22. Sadr al-DIn Shirazi, one of the greatest metaphysicians of post-Avicennan Islamic philosophy, on whom Nasr has written extensively, depicts the natural phenomena as "pure relations" (idafah mahdah) when seen in relation to the absolute (al-mutlaq) and the necessary Being (al-wajib), which is God. 23. A thorough survey of Islamic sciences ranging from geography and natural history to physics and astronomy is to be found in Science and Civilization in Islam. 24. In a famous anecdote of the history of science, Laplace, explaining his model of the universe to Napoleon, declares God to be a "redundant hypothesis." For Laplace's famous reply that "I had no need of that hypothesis" see, Roger Hahn, "Laplace and the Mechanistic Universe" in God and Nature, ed. David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986). 25. Rorty goes so far as to attribute the "invention of the mind" to Descartes and his cogito which has come to be the source of modern theories of knowledge and the ill-formulated mind-body problem. See his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 17ff. 26. The distinction between the primary and secondary qualities made by Galileo is one of the foundations of the Scientific Revolution. This issue was later taken up in philosophy by Hume and became one of the pillars of modern empiricism. For the importance of this distinction, one may refer, among others, to

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the following: R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945), pp. 102-5; Wolfgang Smith, Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier ofScientistic Belief (Illinois: Sherwood Sugden & Company, 1984), pp. 15-16; Alexandre Koyre, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957), pp. 88-109; S. H. Nasr, Religion and the Order of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 136-138; Ian Barbour, Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues (San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1997), pp. 9-17; E. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1932), pp. 83-91. 27. For an account of Galileo's distinction from this point of view, see Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science 1300-1800 (New York: The Free Press, 1968), pp. 99-102. 28. Collingwood, op. cit, p. 103. 29. On the traditional school's view of quality and quantity as two philosophical categories, see Rene Guenon, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Time, trans, by Lord Nortbourne (London: Luzac and Company Ltd., 1953), pp. 19-32. 30. The idea of determinism and prediction has been influential not only in the natural sciences but also, and more perniciously, in the social sciences. The best example of this is social Darwinism and behaviorism as evidenced in the work of Pavlov in the former Soviet Union and that of B. F. Skinner in the United States. Set against the background of their ideological assumptions, both the experiments of Pavlov and Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity present an interesting example of will to power and domination: both claim to have discovered the "technology of behavior"—a much-needed device for any oppressive political system. For William Barrett's analysis of this anomaly, see his The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in a Technological Civilization (New York: Anchor Books, 1979), pp. xi-xv. 31. The tragic consequences of Promethean humanism have been noticed by many philosophers of the West as well as the East. Nasr has written on the subject extensively, employing a rigorously critical language. Among others, Heidegger, in his celebrated attack on humanism in Letter on Humanism, offers a scathing criticism of Western humanism which has turned man, according to him, into a slave of his own inventions. 32. "The attempt is made to view the world not from a place within it, or from the vantage point of a special kind of life or awareness, but from nowhere in particular and no form of life in particular at all." Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions (London: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 208. 33. The idea of the unity of the intellect and the intelligible is one of the fundamental teachings of traditional philosophy and plays an important role in Nasr's writings on knowledge. For Nasr's treatment of the subject, see the first chapter of Knowledge and the Sacred, pp. 1-64. In the De Anima (430a), Aristotle refers to this idea by saying that "in the case of objects without matter, that which thinks and that which is being thought are the same, for theoretical knowledge and its knowable object are the same." See De Anima, translated by H. G. Apostle as

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Aristotle on the Soul (The Peripatetic Press, 1981), p. 51. The main inspiration of Islamic philosophy, however, comes from Enneads V where Plotinus gives a detailed explanation of the subject. Although Ibn Sina rejects, curiously enough, the unity of the intellect and the intelligible, later mystics and philosophers such as Suhrawardi, Ibn al-'Arabl and Sadr al-DIn ShirazI have continued to elaborate on the subject. Sadr al-DIn Shirazi has even written a treatise called Ittihad al~ (aqil wa'l-ma'qul ([On] the Unity of the Intellect and the Intelligible) published in Majmu'a-yi rasa'il-i falsafl-yi Sadr al-Muta'allihin, ed. by Hamid Naji Isfahan! (Tehran: Intisharat-i Hikmat, 1996), pp. 64-103. Some scholars have claimed that the idea of the unity of the intellect and the intelligible can be traced back to various passages in Phaedo, Timaeus and the Republic where a "solidarite d'existence" is established between the Ideas and the soul. For a well-informed essay on this subject see, J. Pepin, "Elements pour une histoire de la relation entre 1'intelligence et 1'intelligible chez Plato et dans le neoplatonisme," Revue Philosophique 81, (1956): 39-64. For a recent statement of the problem in a comparative way, see M. Hairi Yazdi, The Principles ofEpistemology in Islamic Philosophy: Knowledge by Presence (Albany, SUNY Press, 1992). 34. There is considerable literature on the consequences of living in a technology-bound society. Among others, one may refer to Philip Sherrard, The Rape of Man and Nature: An Enquiry into the Origins and Consequences of Modern Science (Ipswich, Suffolk: Golgoonoza Press, 1987); Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, tr. by John Wilkinson, (New York: Vintage Books, 1964); William Barrett, The Illusion of Technique (cited above). 35. Nasr has devoted two separate books to the analysis of this crucial subject. See his Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man and Religion and the Order of Nature, especially the last chapter. See also A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World, pp. 190-92, for the difference between science and technology. 36. Religion and the Order of Nature, p. 127ff; and A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World, pp. 181-82. 37. Darwinism is probably the best example to illustrate this point. Although Nasr gives credit to the scientific evidence against the theory of evolution, his main critique is metaphysical and philosophical throughout. See his Knowledge and the Sacred, chapter 7. For a similar line of argument, see Titus Burckhardt, The Mirror of the Intellect: Essays on Traditional Science and Sacred Art, trans, by William Stoddart (Cambridge: Quinta Essentia, 1987), pp. 32-^5; and Osman Bakar, ed., Critiques of the Theory of Evolution (Kuala Lumpur: The Islamic Academy of Science, 1987).

Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science

REPLY TO IBRAHIM KALIN

I

brahim Kalin is well acquainted with my works and thought and what he writes about my views on sacred versus secular science is by and large acceptable to me. I only need to make a number of clarifications to complement his presentation. Before doing so, however, it is necessary to make a general comment on the subject he has chosen in relation to my works in general. Since my early twenties, I have been concerned first of all with the question of modern science, its history and philosophy, secondly with the traditional sciences at the heart of which is to be found the sacred sciences, and finally with the differences and contrasts between the two types of sciences mentioned, namely the traditional and the modern. Questions dealing with these matters have occupied my attention ever since and a major part of my intellectual life, both in the form of teaching and writing, has been devoted to matters revolving around traditional and modern sciences as well as to the challenges which the modern sciences pose for the religious view of reality in general and the Islamic in particular. It is necessary, however, to clarify an important point here as I have done in my writings over the years. When I speak of "the religious view of the cosmos," to which Kalin refers at the beginning of his essay, this does not mean only the external understanding of religion prevalent today as a result of which this phrase means only the acceptance of God having created the world and the world finally returning to God. These truths are of course basic for understanding "the religious view of the cosmos," but they do not include all that this phrase implies. Rather, by "religion" in the term "religious view" here is meant religion in its vastest sense as tradition which includes not only a metaphysics dealing with the nature of the Supreme Reality or Source, but also cosmological sciences which see all that exists in the cosmos as manifestations of that Source, the cosmological sciences themselves being applications of metaphysical principles to the cosmic domain. The religious view of the cosmos relates not only the beginning and end of things in the external sense to God, but also studies all phenomena as signs and symbols of higher levels of reality leading finally to the Supreme

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Reality and all causes as being related ultimately to the Supreme Cause. I have dealt extensively with the traditional and cosmological sciences and need not go into that issue here again; but it is necessary to emphasize how vast and rich the very concept of "the religious view of the cosmos" is in contrast to the way it is usually employed today in English, reflecting the abdication in the West by religion since the seventeenth century of its right to know the cosmos from the religious point of view. Since Kalin uses both the terms "scientia sacra" and "sacred science" in his exposition, it is necessary for me to clarify once again how I distinguish between the two terms, although the second is simply the English equivalent of the first. But I have kept the Latin form of this phrase to denote the supreme science of Ultimate Reality or metaphysics as traditionally understood, while I use the English equivalent "sacred science" as science of a sacred nature of the manifested and cosmic order but rooted in that supreme science and deriving from it. The two are therefore closely associated with each other without being identical. All traditional civilizations possessed both a scientia sacra which is like the sun and sacred sciences which are like rays emanating from the sun, whether these sciences were articulated and formulated in writing or not. Now, I have called modern science an anomaly not only for the reasons mentioned by Kalin, but also because if one looks at the question from the point of view of the long history of science seen globally, modern science stands out as an anomaly. Other civilizations cultivated various sciences but in those cases the domain of nature was never severed from the rest of reality and considered as a completely independent order; nor was the knowing subject or "mind" cultivating the science in question separated from higher modes of consciousness and knowledge. The sciences of nature in traditional civilizations were always cultivated within an order which was dominated by hierarchy and integration. From this point of view modern science is certainly an anomaly, even if we disregard the devastating consequence its application has had upon the natural environment or the consequence its projection into a scientistic philosophy has had for the intellectual and spiritual life of those affected by such a philosophy. Kalin refers to my work as dealing not so much with the philosophy of science as with "the metaphysics of science." Now, it is true that what I deal with is not the same as what is treated in most modern works dealing with the philosophy of science. One would have to expand the understanding of this term to be able to include what I am saying under this heading. But the term "metaphysics of science" can also be misleading in its own way. When I speak of the traditional sciences, it is of course perfectly justifiable to refer to "the metaphysics of science" because these sciences are in fact based on metaphysical principles. But since modern science is based to a large extent

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on the negation of those principles, I am not in agreement with calling their theoretical basis "metaphysics" as was done by E. A. Burtt and others. I use the term "metaphysics" only in the traditional sense and believe that since Leibniz there has been little serious metaphysics within the mainstream of modern Western philosophy. Of course modern science, to the extent that it is concerned with some aspect of reality, has a metaphysical significance to which I have referred in my works, but I remain somewhat uncomfortable with the usage of the phrase "metaphysics of science," unless it be clarified as one would have to do with the philosophy of science when associated with my thought. Kalin writes that according to me "sacred science ... might be described very briefly as an application of the One and the Absolute to the plane of relative existence." There is an obvious error here which I need to rectify. The domain of relative existence is not the application of the One and the Absolute but a manifestation of that reality. Sacred science itself cannot therefore be the application of the One. Rather, as I have already mentioned, sacred science is the application of the supreme knowledge of the One and the Absolute to the plane of relative existence. Kalin also writes concerning my view of sacred science that, "the physical world is not denied as an illusion, as may a, or as a shadow to be degraded in face of the Absolute." This statement has to be modified in order to reflect my view of the matter correctly. First of all, since the physical world is but the manifestation of the Absolute on, in fact, the lowest level of reality, it stands "degraded" when compared to the Absolute; but in itself it is relatively real and of value because it reflects as a mirror realities of higher and even the highest order. Secondly, from the point of view of supreme knowledge, nothing is real but the Real. While emphasizing the importance of the cosmological sciences, I also accept fully and furthermore insist upon the central significance of that supreme knowledge which realizes that only the Principle is, as asserted so powerfully in so many Islamic sources with which Kalin is familiar as well as in Hinduism and elsewhere. The world at once veils and reveals. What I have tried to do in my works, and in following other expositors of traditional doctrines, is to point out the hierarchy of modes of knowing itself, at the apex of which stands the knowledge of the One before which all is reduced to nothingness. But then there is also the knowledge of the many in light of the knowledge of the One and acting as a ladder leading to the One. This second category concerns the sacred sciences which deal with different domains of cosmic reality, including the physical which scientists study in light of the reality of the One, and which are means of guiding those who are able to understand them to the Source of all knowledge and being—these sciences also reflecting and revealing what the monotheistic religions call the wisdom of the Creator in His

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creation. I do not deny the physical world as an illusion on its own level of reality, which is precious in itself precisely because it is the locus of the reflection of higher, or if one wishes to use another language, more inward realities of a spiritual order without which the physical world would cease to exist. But in the blinding light of the Divine Sun everything else disappears like a mirage and there remains only "The Face of Thy Lord, the possessor of majesty and glory" to quote the Quran. To summarize, in affirming the importance of the Lesser Mysteries, I do not wish to imply in any way that I am overlooking for one moment the supreme significance of the Greater Mysteries. As far as my realist position is concerned, I agree with Kalin that I am a realist, but when he writes, "Nasr's realist position comes to the fore with his depiction of sciences as an organized body of knowledge that is in principle capable of describing the world to us as it is," he is omitting an important point to which I need to turn. I do believe that science, to the extent that it corresponds to some aspect of physical reality, has an ontological content and cannot be reduced to a subjective or simply "mental" mathematical pattern imposed upon physical reality. In the early debate in the nineteenth century between E. Meyerson and H. Poincare I would take the side of Meyerson. Also I reject totally the Galilean and Cartesian idea that all qualities one observes in nature are subjective. But I do not accept that any human science of the relative order can provide complete and absolute knowledge of any part of that order. I have quoted in my Science and Civilization in Islam the famous prayer of the Prophet of Islam, "O Lord, show us things as they are," and have discussed the profound significance of this utterance for the understanding of the status of the sciences of the created order in Islam. In a sense, to know things "as they are," is to know them in divinis and no ordinary science can claim exhaustive and absolute knowledge of the relative order "of things as they are." From the metaphysical point of view, it can be said that only the Absolute can be known absolutely. The relative contains within itself always an element of ambiguity or maya, in the authentic Hindu sense, which prevents relative things from being totally intelligible. This basic point has to be kept in mind in reading Kalin's already quoted statement about my realism. Kalin's assertion that what science presents to us as a world-picture is in fact a true picture of the world must also be understood in light of what I have stated here. There is in fact more than one "true picture of the world" as the multiplicity of cosmological sciences pertaining to the same domain of physical reality exemplify, not only in different traditional civilizations, but even within a single tradition. Each of these pictures is true but not exclusively so. The only absolute science of the nature of things is that for whose attainment the Prophet prayed to God. In certain traditional civilizations such as that of Islam and Hinduism, there is in fact a hierarchy of

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modes of knowing the world of creation or manifestation, each mode being valid on its own level and providing a "true picture of the world" without there being contradictions, precisely because these modes do not all belong to the same level of reality and consciousness. I have had occasion to speak often of this matter in my writings, and in fact my major works on Islamic science such as Science and Civilization in Islam, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, and Islamic Science—An Illustrated Study are based on this hierarchy of knowledge of the domain of existence in general and of nature in particular, as well as knowledge of the Source of all existence. In the section on "Modern Science: The Triumph of the Secular," the author provides an analysis of my views and criticisms of modern science with which I agree fully. I only need to add a few comments. He mentions as the second feature of my criticism the mechanization of the world-picture. Now, many wonder why I harp on this point when modern physics and especially quantum mechanics rejects totally the seventeenth-century mechanistic concept of the physical world. I am certainly aware of this philosophical change, but the reason I continue to criticize the mechanistic point of view is that, although it has become abandoned by modern physicists, it is still avidly pursued by many in other sciences, even biology, and is, moreover, part and parcel of the general scientistic worldview that dominates so much of the culture of the modern world on the level of both the generally well educated classes and the populace at large. Also in this section, Kalin writes, "Once translated into the language of pure quantities, nature becomes devoid of any intrinsic meaning or intelligibility." Now, there is one major exception to this statement which needs to be mentioned here, and that is mathematical intelligibility. In fact, nature was reduced to pure quantity by Galileo and Descartes in order to be completely intelligible from the mathematical point of view. One of the great tragedies of modern science is that intelligibility as such was reduced to only mathematical intelligibility, and it is precisely this reductionism which I oppose strongly. Otherwise, I understand perfectly well why a nature reduced to pure quantity is mathematically intelligible and why the qualitative aspects of nature, ontologically so intelligible, are not intelligible mathematically, and were therefore banished from the world of modern science seeking only mathematical intelligibility—and a purely quantitative, and not the qualitative Pythagorean mathematics at that. Furthermore, having studied mathematics for many years I appreciate fully the elegance and beauty associated with mathematical intelligibility and only wish that this type of intelligibility had not become exclusive and not divorced in the modern West from intelligibility in its highest sense. Continuing in this section, Kalin mentions correctly my views about the consequences of reducing nature to pure quantity and then says that this

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reduces nature to "brute facts with no meaning or even practical use." For the sake of the natural environment, one wishes that this statement were correct. Alas, this reduction of nature to brute facts bereft of any innate qualities of spiritual value has had a very important "practical use." It has allowed for the creation of a science based on power and domination over nature without the least regard for nature's rights. Without this reduction of nature to brute facts and pure quantity, it would not have been possible for modern man to destroy his natural environment with such impunity that we are now facing the possibility of unprecedented environmental devastations. With the few clarifications that I have made in my response, Ibrahim Kalin's essay serves as a quite adequate exposition of my views on sacred and secular science as well as my criticisms of modern science. Of course, this issue has an extension which concerns the present-day Islamic world and there remains the question of the reception and criticism of my ideas in that world during the past several decades concerning both Islamic science and modern science. I feel that this is an important aspect of the consequence of my views but since Kalin chose not to deal with this subject, I have also refrained from making any comments concerning it here. Meanwhile, I am grateful to Kalin for presenting a clear exposition of a major aspect of my thought and issues which have occupied me since my student days at MIT in the early '50s and which continue to do so today. S. H. N.

[12] SOPHIA PERENNIS

AND

MODERN SCIENCE Wolfgang Smith

T

he relation of sophia perennis to natural science in the modern sense has been dealt with often and profoundly in the writings of Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr. The considerations of the present article will take Professor Nasr's Gifford Lectures as their starting point.

In 1981 a forty-seven-year-old Iranian arrived in Edinburgh charged with a mission to "promote and advance," in accordance with the last request of Adam Lord Gifford, "the true knowledge of Him Who is, in Whom we live and move and have our being, and in Whom all things consist, and of man's real relationship to Him Whom truly to know is life everlasting."1 The invited speaker had but recently escaped the ravages of revolution in his native land. He had suffered, among other things, the loss of his library, and of the notes he had compiled in preparation for the lectures. After spending most of his energies to reestablish a life for himself and his family in the United States, it was in the early part of 1981, while commuting between Boston and Philadelphia, that he wrote the complete text in a period of about three months, practically one chapter a week. Seyyed Hossein Nasr is, moreover, the first Muslim Gifford lecturer. But the most unusual thing about the Gifford Lectures delivered at Edinburgh in the spring of 1981 is the fact that they gave voice, not to the beliefs of some distinguished scholar, or a man of genius, even, but to the perennial traditions of mankind. The very first sentence presents what could well be termed their central thesis: "In the beginning Reality was at once being, knowledge, and bliss (the sat, chit, and ananda of the Hindu tradition or qudrah, hikmah, and rahmah which are among the Names of Allah in Islam), and in that 'now' which is the ever-present 'in the beginning,' knowledge continues to possess a profound relation with that principial and primordial Reality which is the Sacred, and the source of all that is sacred."2 An entire metaphysics, clearly,

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is alluded to and in a way implied by that opening statement; and that metaphysics, to be sure, is none other in essence than the sanatana dharma of the Hindus, or what in the Western tradition has been named philosophia priscorium or prisca theologia (Marsilio Ficino), vera philosophia (Gemisthus Plethon), and philosophia perennis (Agostino Steuco) by turns.3 However, given the anti-traditional bias of modern philosophy, not to mention the state of contemporary theology, the term sophia perennis will perhaps be the least misleading. The important thing to bear in mind is that this sophia or wisdom, when perceived from its own point of view, "is understood as the Sophia which has always been and will always be, and which is perpetuated by means of both transmission horizontally and renewal vertically through contact with that Reality that was 6in the beginning' and is here and now" (KS 71), as Nasr explains. It is a prime contention of the lectures that this perennial and universal wisdom is to be found in the dominant premodern traditions, from Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism in the East to the mystery religions of ancient Greece and the sapiental strains within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The modern West, on the other hand, is perceived in this optic as an aberration, a dangerous cultural and spiritual anomaly resulting from a major "fall." The content and purpose of the lectures can now be described: it is to unfold the main elements of the sophia perennis, to document their presence within the traditions, and trace the salient stages of the descent into modernity. But there is more; for it happens that our century has witnessed, not only an unprecedented alienation from the perennial wisdom, but also a no less singular rediscovery and articulation of that same sophia perennis. As Nasr points out: "The principle of cosmic compensation has brought to the fore the quest for the rediscovery of the sacred during the very period which the heralds of modernism had predicted to be the final phase of the depletion of human culture of its sacred content, the period whose dawn Nietzsche had declared a century ago when he spoke of 'the death of God'" (KS 93). And so, to complete the picture, the lectures contain a chapter devoted to this compensatory phenomenon, which chronicles the rediscovery and revival in the West of the sapiental tradition. However, what Nasr does not tell us, for reasons that can be surmised, is that these very Gifford Lectures constitute a major manifestation and prime example of that rediscovery, that same revival. For the first time in modern history, I would venture to say, the undistorted and unadulterated voice of the perennial and universal tradition could be heard within the prestigious halls of academe. It is a main point of the lectures that sophia perennis is intimately connected with "science" in a broad and distinctly premodern sense. "Sacred knowledge must also include a knowledge of the cosmos," Nasr maintains; and in fact, "one can speak of a cosmologia perennis which, in one sense,

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is the application, and in another, the complement of the sophia perennis which is concerned essentially with metaphysics" (KS 190). One can say that every science, traditionally conceived, is an application of the perennial metaphysical wisdom by virtue of the fact that "all laws are reflections of the Divine Principle" (KS 196), and a complement inasmuch as it constitutes de jure a support for the contemplation of the Principle itself. The traditional sciences, thus, are based upon the premise that the cosmos constitutes a theophany, and that, in the words of St. Paul, "the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood from the things that are made" (Romans 1:20). Science in the traditional sense is thus a matter of "reading the icon"—a far cry indeed from the Baconian vision! Science, as Bacon conceived of it, is concerned with the discovery of causal chains relating one phenomenon to another, an enterprise which can lead to prediction and control; traditional science, on the other hand, seeks to relate phenomena to the reality or principle of which they are a manifestation, an undertaking that leads ideally to enlightenment. In a word, the former is "horizontal" whereas the latter is "vertical" in its quest. However, we must also take care not to make too much of this disparity; for it is to be noted that contemporary science at its best is not quite as Baconian as one might imagine on the basis of textbook lore. Think of Albert Einstein, for example, and his occasional remarks relating to "the Old One," suggesting that he too may have been searching for vestigia of a kind. It is on the level of epistemological presuppositions, in any case, that the distinction between the traditional and the modern conceptions of science assumes its sharpest form. We may not know what actually transpires in the mind of a contemporary scientist, but it is nonetheless clear what ought to transpire, according to the accepted canons: the scientist is supposed to reason upon data or information supplied by sense perception. It is all that he is officially permitted to do, if one may put it thus. The sophia perennis, on the other hand, provides for an incomparably greater range of cognitive possibilities, inasmuch as it maintains that the human intellect derives its "light" directly from the Divine Intellect: it "participates" in the Divine Intellect, as the Platonists say. All human knowing without exception hinges upon this "participation," which of course admits of various modes and countless degrees, ranging from the humblest act of sense perception to ways and intensities of knowing of which as yet we have not the slightest idea. But the fact remains: What ultimately connects the human subject to its object in the act of knowing is indeed "the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (John 1:9). There is, however, a fundamental difference between the knowing of an ordinary man and the knowing of an enlightened sage. Both may perceive a rock or a tree; but the one perceives it as a "thing," a self-existent

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entity—which in truth it is not!—whereas the other perceives it as a theophany, an entity whose essence and very being derive from the metacosmic Reality. It is the first kind of knowing, moreover, to which the Vedantic term maya applies, for the world as perceived by the unenlightened is in a sense illusory: "For now we see through a glass, darkly" (1 Corinthians 13:12). It is, however, the contention of every sapiental tradition that this generic condition of nescience can be overcome, be it in full or in part, and that this rectification can indeed be effected in the present life through what Buddhists term "right doctrine" and "right method." These are the things which we need to bear in mind in order to understand what cosmologia perennis is about. The fact is that every bona fide premodern science is rooted in an integral sapiental tradition, replete with a metaphysical doctrine and operative means, and requires moreover an ambience of this kind if it is not to wither and die, and thus give rise to what may indeed be termed a superstition. An essential feature of the cosmologia perennis which will particularly concern us in the sequel is that it views the integral cosmos as a hierarchy of ontological degrees, what in Western tradition has sometimes been termed "the great chain of being,"4 what used to be represented in Ptolemaic days by the so-called planetary spheres. One knows of course that Western man has abandoned the notion of "higher worlds" along with the Ptolemaic cosmography—the referent along with the symbol—and has opted instead for a Weltanschauung which would reduce the cosmos in its totality to what in fact constitutes, from a traditional point of view, its lowest plane: the domain of ponderable matter. This, I believe, is the decisive step that takes us into the modern world. One needs, however, to recognize that the reductionist hypothesis does not stand alone, but is mandated by what Nasr terms "the inherent limitations of the original epistemological premises of modern science" (KS 206). These philosophic postulates, he maintains, plus the virtual disappearance in the West of the sapiental traditions, have prevented modern science "from becoming integrated into higher orders of knowledge, with tragic results for the human race" (KS 207). I consider this observation to be of capital importance, and singularly worthy of being pursued in depth. The object of the present article is to lay bare the offending epistemological premise and show how modern physics, freed from this impediment and duly reinterpreted, can indeed be "integrated into higher orders of knowledge" as Professor Nasr suggests. As is well known, it was Rene Descartes who provided the philosophical basis of "classical" or pre-quantum physics by enunciating the distinction between res cogitans and res extensa. One generally perceives this Cartesian dichotomy as nothing more than the mind/body duality, forgetting that

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Descartes has not only distinguished between matter and mind, but has, at the same time, imposed a very peculiar and indeed problematic conception of the former element. He supposes, namely, that a res extensa is bereft of all sensible qualities, which obviously implies that it is imperceptible. The red apple which we do perceive must consequently be relegated to res cogitans; it has become a private phantasm, a mental as distinguished from a real entity. This postulate, moreover, demands another: one is now forced—on pain of radical subjectivism—to assume that the red apple, which is unreal, is causally related to a real apple, which, however, is not perceptible. What from a pre-Cartesian point of view was one object has now become two; as Whitehead puts it: "One is the conjecture, and the other is the dream."5 This, in a nutshell, is the fateful "bifurcation" hypothesis which underlies and in a way determines the Weltanschauung of modern science. The first thing, perhaps, that needs to be pointed out is that this Cartesian assumption can neither be proven by philosophical argument nor corroborated by scientific means. Whether it is indeed "tenable" is more difficult to say; however, bifurcation is in any case incompatible with the teachings of the traditional philosophic schools, not one of which has subjectivized the perceptual object in the manner of Descartes. According to the perennial consensus, we do "look out upon the world" in the act of perception, as every non-philosopher likewise believes; it is only that the world and the Reality are not exactly the same thing, which is, however, another question. It is of interest to note that Whitehead attacks the idea of bifurcation on the ground that "Knowledge is ultimate."6 What he means by this assertion is that the act of knowing cannot in principle be explained by reducing it to some natural process. And this position is traditional: "knowing" does not reduce to "being"; the two poles chit and sat are irreducible (and so is the third, the Vedantic ananda, which, however, does not enter into our present considerations). Nonetheless, as Nasr points out: "In the beginning Reality was at once being, knowledge, and bliss...." Despite the irreducibility of "knowing" and "being" on the various planes of cosmic manifestation, the two are intimately related by virtue of the fact that in divinis "to know" and "to be" coincide. Here, in this principial identity, lies, I believe, the ultimate explanation of what may well be termed the miracle of perception: the fact, namely, that in this quotidian act a subject and an object meet and in a sense become one, as Aristotle keenly observed. What we need above all to realize is that the cognitive union cannot in truth be consummated within the confines of the universe, which is and remains external to the human subject. There are light waves and sound waves, and there is brain function, to be sure; and these external or objective processes do no doubt play a necessary role. But they

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do not—they cannot!—constitute the perceptual act; to affirm that they do would be, once again, to reduce "knowing" to "being." The act itself, therefore, transcends perforce the bounds of space, and must by the same token be conceived as instantaneous or atemporal as well. The perceptual act, thus, is literally "not of this world." Is it any wonder, therefore, that postmedieval philosophy should have succumbed to the lure of "bifurcation"? Having lost sight of the Divine Intellect and denied in effect the mystery of "participation," is it surprising that post-medieval man should have implicitly denied the miracle of perception as well? I will now take as my point of departure the following contention: What vitiates the customary interpretation of physics and prevents that science from being "integrated into higher orders of knowledge" is none other than the bifurcation postulate. This is the hidden premise one unfailingly assumes in the explication of scientific discovery. It is true that this postulate has been uncovered and attacked by some of the leading philosophers of our century—from Edmund Husserl to Alfred North Whitehead, Nicolai Hartmann, and Karl Jaspers, to mention but a few names—and yet that problematic tenet remains to this day unexamined and unopposed by men of science even in the sophisticated arena of the quantum debate, where just about everything else has been "put on the table." However, as I have shown elsewhere,7 the premise can indeed be jettisoned, which is to say that nothing prevents us from interpreting physics on a non-bifurcationist basis. Let us consider what this entails. It is clear, first of all, that to deny bifurcation is to give objective status once again to the perceptible things (red apples, for instance). Corporeal objects, let us call them. The first step, thus, in the proposed reinterpretation of physics may be characterized as the rediscovery of the corporeal world. This rediscovery or reaffirmation, however, does not constitute a return to a so-called "naive" realism, but demands a more refined and discerning ontology. We need in particular to take note of the following fundamental principle: "to be" is to be knowable. This is still realism, to be sure; clearly, it is the distinction between "knowable" and "known" that averts a lapse into idealism—the spurious reduction, that is, of "being" to "knowing." Evidently no such reduction is implied by the stated ontological principle. Every grain of sand in the universe is surely perceptible; but how many will ever be perceived? Now obviously the "naive" realist believes this as well, and one may ask why it should be necessary to abandon or to refine this common-sense position. What is the advantage, one might ask, of the proposed principle? What proves to be crucial is the following corollary: Different ways of knowing correspond to different kinds of being, or as we shall say, to different ontological domains. For example, corporeal being is the kind which can be known by way of sense perception. There are, however, other kinds of being

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which cannot be known by this particular means, and this is something a "naive" realism is ill equipped to comprehend. So much for the first step in the reinterpretation of physics; the second—as may now be surmised—is perforce the recognition of the physical as a separate ontological domain. Over the past centuries Western man has evolved a new and unprecedented way of knowing based upon measurement and artificial means of observation, which has brought to light a hitherto unrecognized category of objects: physical objects, we shall say. I have delineated the generic modus operandi of this cognitive enterprise in the previously mentioned monograph; suffice it to say that the observational process hinges upon an interaction between the physical object and a corporeal instrument, which then registers the result of the interaction by way of a perceptible state. The process thus renders "visible" in a sense what in fact is not, and thereby reveals a previously unknown ontological stratum. Our knowledge of this stratum has, moreover, progressed from the more or less crude approximations of classical physics to the incomparably more refined conceptions of quantum theory, which has revealed the physical to be in reality none other than the quantum world. There are thus two ontological domains to be reckoned with: the corporeal and the physical; but the quantum theorist reckons only with one! On the strength of the bifurcation postulate he denies the corporeal, and thus in effect reduces the corporeal to the physical. The prevailing interpretation of physics has thus been vitiated from the start by a systematic confusion resulting from a failure to distinguish, in theory, between corporeal and physical objects. I say "in theory," because in practice everyone does evidently know the difference between a tangible scientific instrument, for example, or any other corporeal entity, and a cloud of quantum particles; and that is of course the reason why physics has survived the confusion and is able to function. But the philosophy of physics does not fare as well. As Whitehead pointed out long ago in reference to the bifurcationist bias: "The result is a complete muddle in scientific thought, in philosophic cosmology, and in epistemology"; to which he adds: "But any doctrine which does not implicitly presuppose this point of view is assailed as unintelligible."8 Let us hope that after seventy years of quantum debate there will now be a greater willingness on the part of scientists to consider a non-bifurcationist view of physics. The non-bifurcationist interpretation has the immediate advantage of eliminating at one stroke what is generally called "quantum paradox."9 There is no need any longer for this or that ad hoc hypothesis to make things fit; no need for "parallel universes" or new laws of logic! The one thing needful to avoid the semblance of paradox is to jettison bifurcation once and for all.

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What presently concerns us, however, is something else, which I consider to be more important still: the fact, namely, that physics, thus reinterpreted, can be "integrated into higher orders of knowledge," to avail ourselves once more of Professor Nasr's significant phrase. Let us consider how this integration comes about. Modern physics, as I have said, has brought to light a hitherto unknown ontological stratum: the physical, namely, which in fact coincides with the quantum world. To be sure, this newly-discovered realm is nowhere referred to by the traditional schools, and it is open to question whether any ancient master could have divined the presence of such a domain. But though the physical stratum does not appear on the traditional ontological charts, it can be added: its position on the map can be ascertained. As I have shown elsewhere,10 the physical domain is situated between two traditionally defined levels: below the corporeal, namely, but above the so-called materia secunda that underlies the corporeal world. Why, first of all, does the physical stand "below" the corporeal? The key idea has been supplied by Heisenberg—in his Gifford Lectures, no less!—when he pointed out that state vectors or so-called wave functions constitute "a quantitative version of the old concept of 'potentia' in Aristotelian philosophy," and referred to quantum objects as "a strange kind of physical entity just in the middle between possibility and reality."11 In a word, the quantum level (and thus, in our view, the physical) stands to the corporeal as potency to act. But it happens that the principle of order in the hierarchy of ontological degrees may be conceived in the same Aristotelian terms: it is the vector from potency to act, if you will, that defines the ascending gradation. To say that the physical is in potency relative to the corporeal is therefore to situate the physical domain below the corporeal. To proceed further, we need to remind ourselves that every traditional cosmology envisages one or more subcorporeal ontological strata. Among the twenty-five tattvas of the Samkhya, for example, it is avyakta, "the unmanifested," also termed mulaprakriti or "root nature," that underlies the rest and thus constitutes the lowest stratum. It is evident, moreover, that the physical domain, made up as it is of things that can be discerned, is in act relative to avyakta, and is consequently situated "above" avyakta, above the absolute zero, so to speak, of the ontological scale. However, a less universal and thus a sharper and more enlightening "lower bound" to the physical can be found in the Scholastic tradition, which speaks of a materia secunda underlying the corporeal world.12 We say "less universal," because this material substrate is not without determination, and is therefore distinguished from prima materia, the Scholastic equivalent of avyakta. What, then, is the nature of this determination? The answer to this literally most basic question concerning the corporeal domain has been given by St.

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Thomas Aquinas: the protomatter or material substrate of our world is said to be signata quantitate. Here is the key, I contend, to what physics is about. There is no better way of explaining this connection than by the example of Euclidean geometry. Let us take the Euclidean plane and conceive of it in a pre-Cartesian manner, that is to say, not as a point set, but as a substrate or potency, in which neither points nor lines have yet been defined. One can say that points, lines, and indeed, all constructive figures, subsist potentially in that plane—until, that is, they have been actualized by way of geometric construction. One sees, however, that this plane also "carries" something else: a mathematical structure, namely, which we term "Euclidean" to distinguish it from other possible structures, such as the projective, the Lobachevskian, and so forth. Now this structure manifests itself in certain geometric properties exhibited by constructed figures made up of points, lines, and circles.13 Let us observe, moreover, that whereas geometric figures are legion—there is an infinite number of them, as mathematicians are wont to say—the Euclidean properties are few, and fit together, so to speak, to constitute a coherent geometry, a single intelligible form; and that geometry or form, of course, is none other than the mathematical structure "carried" by the Euclidean plane. We are now in a position to understand the rationale of physics from a traditional point of view. Replace the Euclidean plane by the aforesaid materia secunda, constructed geometric figures by physical objects, and the Euclidean geometry by the "quantitative signature" of the materia secunda, conceived, once again, as a mathematical structure, and we have at hand the essential elements. What is particularly to be noted is that the objects of physics—its actual objects, that is, the kind that can affect a corporeal instrument or leave a track in a bubble chamber—are indeed "constructed," which is to say that they are defined or specified by a certain experimental intervention. This is the aspect of physics which led Eddington to stipulate that all fundamental laws can in principle be deduced on an a priori basis: look at the "net," he said, and you will know the "fish." Yes, up to a point. It is true, as Eddington has astutely observed, that the modus operandi of the experimental physicist affects the form of the physical laws or fundamental equations at which one arrives; but these laws or equations have also a content which does not derive from that modus operandi, even as the Euclidean properties of a constructed figure do not result from the process of geometric construction. The strategies of the geometer do of course affect the manifested geometric properties in the sense that a triangle and a circle, for example, exhibit the underlying Euclidean structure in different ways; and this exemplifies, once again, the subjective aspect of the scientific enterprise, which Eddington had his eye upon. But whereas the manifested geometric properties are indeed dependent upon the contingencies of

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geometric construction, they are nonetheless expressive of an objective mathematical structure, a given intelligible form in the Platonist sense. My point is that the laws of physics likewise manifest the mathematical structure of the materia secunda underlying the physical, and thus a fortiori, the corporeal domain. I have conceived of the signata quantitate, in light of contemporary physics as a mathematical structure; but is this exactly what St. Thomas Aquinas had in mind? Whatever the Angelic Doctor may have been thinking, it could hardly have been the Hilbert spaces and Lie groups of Hermitian operators with which contemporary physics is concerned. We must not, however, judge too hastily. What could be more strange, for example, than Plato's idea that "atoms" of earth, air, fire, and water correspond respectively to the cube, the octahedron, the tetrahedron, and the icosahedron? What indeed could be further removed from our contemporary scientific notions? And yet, as Heisenberg has brilliantly observed,14 it turns out that Plato came as close to the quantum-theoretic conception of "elementary particles" as was possible in terms of mathematical structures available in premodern times. The point is, first of all, that the regular solids are "made of polyhedra, and thus of entities which have no corporeal existence. One could say that Plato's "atoms" are mathematical as opposed to corporeal entities; and as such, they resemble the elementary particles of contemporary physics15 and not the atoms of Democritus, or indeed, of prequantum physics. But why the regular solids of Euclidean geometry? What is special about these? What is special is that they are representations of a symmetry group; and so are the elementary particles of contemporary physics! It is only that the respective groups are different. This is not to suggest, of course, that Plato arrived at his conclusions by way of some rudimentary quantum field theory. He was doubtless looking at "atoms" from a very different point of view; and yet it could hardly have been an accident that he arrived at conceptions so strikingly similar in certain respects to our own. The relevance of this example to the question of the signata quantitate is evident. Obviously St. Thomas, once again, is not looking at the problem from a point of view inspired by modern physics, and certainly one must be careful not to read such things as Hilbert spaces and Lie groups into an ancient text, the Summa no less than the Timaeus. But the crucial question is whether these mathematical structures are yet "quantitative" in an appropriate sense; and if that be the case, then the signata quantitate admits—by transposition, if need be—the interpretation which I have given above. As in the case of Plato's so-called atoms, it is at times necessary to look beneath the surface meaning of an ancient text to discern its contemporary relevance.

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What, then, is the requisite conception of "quantity"? The answer, it appears, has been supplied by Rene Guenon when he observed that "quantity itself, to which they [the moderns] strive to reduce everything, when considered from their own special point of view, is no more than the 'residue' of an existence emptied of everything that constituted its essence."16 Here we have it: Quantity is "the 'residue' of an existence emptied of everything that constituted its essence." It is clear, first of all, that cardinal number is quantity in the stipulated sense; after all, if we consider five apples, let us say, and take away their essence, what is left is no longer "five this" or "five that," but simply "five," the pure number. But it is to be noted that the notion of quantity, thus conceived, includes much else besides, and is more than broad enough to encompass the contemporary idea of mathematical structure. There is, however, something else that needs likewise to be pointed out: the tenet that the materia secunda of our world is indeed signata quantitate follows now from the very definition of "quantity" at which we have arrived. One could put it this way: What remains when all "content" has been evacuated from the universe must belong to the "container"; but that residue, by definition, is quantity. We need to ask ourselves what it is that differentiates the physical universe from the material substrate; could it be "essences"? That position proves not to be tenable. We must remember that physical objects without exception are in a sense "constructed," which is to say that they are defined through a complex intentional process involving perforce an empirical intervention of some kind. Nothing is a physical object unless it has somehow interacted, directly or indirectly, with a corporeal entity. Physical objects, thus, are in a sense relational: they mediate between the material substrate and the corporeal plane. They have the "esse" if you will, of a potency waiting to be actualized in a corporeal entity; and thus, strictly speaking, they have no "essence," because they are not, in truth, a "thing." As Heisenberg has put it, they are "just in the middle between possibility and reality"; but only what is real partakes of essence. It emerges that physics is basic but inessential; that is the crucial fact. It is basic because it descends to the material substrate, the mulaprakriti or matrix of our world; but for that very reason it is inessential. The essence of a plant, after all, derives from the seed, and not from the ground in which the seed is planted. It may seem paradoxical that a science whose ultimate object is the materia secunda should prove to be the most "exact" of all. Has not the subcorporeal been conceived traditionally as a primordial chaos from which the cosmos is brought forth by a determinative act, a divine command or fiat lux! Does not Genesis refer to this tenebrous realm as a tohu-wa-bohu, as

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"without form and void," and does not Proverbs speak of it as the abyssos upon which the divine Geometer "set His compass" to construct the world? We need, however, to recall that physics is concerned, not with prima materia, but with materia secunda, which is signata quantitate. The fact is that physics derives its exactitudes from "the white spot in the black field," to put it in yin-yang terms. We may rest assured that the mathematical structure of the material substrate has been inscribed by the great Geometer Himself; Dirac was not mistaken after all when he said that "God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world."17 One must not forget, however, that God used many other "beautiful things" besides mathematical structures, the point being that above the level of protomatter and of physical objects there are "essences" which likewise derive from the Divine Intellect. And these, to be sure, physics knows nothing about; the knowledge to which physics gives access is "basic but inessential," as I have said. Meanwhile the black field surrounding the white spot has likewise come into scientific view; on the fundamental level of quantum theory the physical domain has revealed itself as a partial chaos—to the consternation and chagrin of the "classical" physicist. The fact is that physical systems, quantum mechanically conceived, are in a superposition of states corresponding to the various possible values of their observables, even as the tone of a musical instrument is a superposition or composite of pure tones, each with its proper frequency. What is superposed in the quantum system, however, are not actual waves of some kind, but mere possibilities or potentiae, as Heisenberg says, which moreover are for the most part mutually incompatible. The quantum-mechanical description of a physical system depicts an ensemble of warring quasi-existences synthetically united; one wonders whether a more perfect characterization of semi-chaos could be conceived! I say "semi-chaos," because physical objects are evidently determined to some degree, on pain of having no objective existence at all; but this determination does not cancel the aforesaid superpositional indeterminacy, which remains as a witness, so to speak, to the primordial chaos that underlies our world. It appears that quantum mechanics has penetrated beneath the plane of terra firma to a depth approaching the level of the "waters" alluded to in Genesis, which remain in place even after "the Spirit of God" has moved over them. I find it remarkable how many major truths pertaining to the perennial cosmology have been unwittingly uncovered by twentieth-century physics while scientists, for the most part, continue to view the traditional teachings as "prescientific superstitions." Getting back to the quantum world, we should note that the measurement of a dynamic variable turns out—once again to the dismay of the classical physicist—to be an act of determination. Let us suppose that we are measuring the position of an electron. Prior to this measurement, this

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empirical intervention, the electron had presumably no position at all; it was most likely in a superposition of states corresponding to an infinite number of positions, continuously distributed over some appreciable and possibly vast region of space. And so it is until instruments put in place by the physicist interact with the electron so as to impose certain spatial bounds. The particle becomes thus confined, for a shorter or longer period of time, to a region of space small enough to count as a definite position. Now this scenario is disturbing, as I have said, to physicists accustomed to the prequantum outlook, which assumes that the physical object has a well-defined position, a well-defined momentum, and so forth, whether these quantitative attributes have been measured or not. But here again quantum theory stands on the side of the cosmologia perennis, which from time immemorial has viewed measurement as a determination, a creative act, like that of the geometer who constructs with the aid of his instruments. Let us not fail to note that on a cosmic plane creative activity of whatever kind requires a preexistent potency. If the divine Geometer had determined everything at one stroke, there would be nothing left for the human geometer to actualize; and as a matter of fact, the world as such could not exist. As every theologian knows, God alone is "fully in act"; which is to say that all other beings partake of potency in varying degrees. On every level, moreover, this potency or indetermination plays a most necessary and indeed beneficent role. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, even the human intellect is able to perform its cognitive function only by virtue of its radical potency, whereby it becomes receptive to whatever object presents itself, even as the emptiness of a container makes it receptive to all manner of concrete things. It must not be thought, therefore, that indetermination exists only in the quantum world; for indeed, it exists everywhere, on every ontological plane of the integral cosmos; and not, moreover, as a foreign element, a kind of blemish, if you will, but precisely as the natural complement of act. This is what the well-known figure of the yin-yang depicts with such grace, and that is doubtless the reason why Niels Bohr adopted this Taoist icon as his heraldic emblem. The notion of a cosmos made ofyang (the "white" element) alone turns out to be unfounded and unrealistic in the extreme, and one wonders how this chimerical conception could have attained its strangle-hold upon the West; in any case, it was an insufficient physics that has for centuries confirmed us in this misbegotten notion, and it is a corrected and deepened physics which now apprises us of our longstanding blunder. Here again, on this fundamental cosmological issue, quantum theory sides with the traditional doctrine. The decisive step in the restitution of the cosmologia perennis is without question the rediscovery of "forms" as an ontological and causal principle. Ever since Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes declared substantial forms to

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be a figment of the Scholastic imagination, Western science has labored to explain the whole in terms of its recognizable parts, or as one can also say: the greater in terms of the lesser. And not without success! As we know, the quest has led to the discovery of the physical realm, with its marvelous mathematical structures and undreamed of possibilities. It has not, however, led towards the realization of the reductionist goal. On the contrary, it turns out that the very discoveries of science point now in the opposite direction, as is evident if only one has eyes to see.18 Meanwhile the reductionist philosophy appears also to have outlived its erstwhile usefulness as a heuristic principle. The scientist of the late twentieth century need hardly be motivated to investigate physical structures; instead, what he needs to realize, if further fundamental progress is to be achieved, is that there exist formal principles of a non-mathematical kind which also play a causal role, to say the least. These non-mathematical principles, to be sure, are none other than the aforesaid substantial forms, which prove moreover to be "essential" in a strict ontological sense. One should add that these forms or "essences" are mutually related and constitutive of a hierarchic order. What I have termed "the rediscovery of the corporeal" needs thus to be followed by the realization that this domain is itself stratified ontologically under the aegis of substantial forms. The most obvious and important line of demarcation is given by the distinction between the organic and the inorganic, or better said, between living and non-living substances. One knows today that the distinction between the two realms is revealed with unprecedented clarity on the molecular level, where the difference between substances becomes in a sense quantified. In light of these findings it can now be said that the "distance" between the inorganic and the organic is of a magnitude that de facto rules out "accidental" transitions from the first to the second domain. At the present stage of scientific progress it is only on the basis of an unbending reductionist bias that this conclusion can still be denied. A few words relating to the genetic code may be in order. Whether this magnificent discovery will serve to enlighten or further blind us depends, I believe, on the philosophical presuppositions which we bring to bear upon the issue. What we find in the DNA, clearly, is coded information, a coded message of incredible complexity; and this raises two questions. We need to ask ourselves, in the first place, what it is that has thus been encoded, thus expressed in a kind of molecular language; and we need to ask further by what means or agency this encoding has been effected? The reductionist, of course, assumes from the start that there is neither content nor agency beyond the molecular; but not everyone today agrees with this hypothesis. Robert Sokolowski, for example, has proposed that "it is the plant or animal form that encodes itself into the DNA," and that "the form is what the DNA serves to communicate."19 There has been a growing recognition in recent

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years to the effect that the notions of substantial form and formal causation need once again to be taken seriously, not just by philosophers, but in the theory and practice of science as well. Among the benefits to science that can reasonably be expected from a sound ontology, the least, it would seem, is the reduction of fUtile research. To be more specific, such an ontology could dissuade scientists from searching for things that cannot possibly exist, such as, for example, the so-called "missing links" sought after by Darwinistically oriented anthropologists. By the same token, moreover, it could doubtless inspire life scientists to search for things that do exist but are out of range for a reductionist: "things in heaven and earth," namely, which are indeed not dreamed of in his philosophy. Most importantly, however, it should be clear from the outset that a living organism cannot be understood in depth without reference to the formal principle which constitutes its essence. Explanations "from below" have of course a certain validity and use; but their explanatory value is limited by the fact that they pertain, not to the living organism as such, but to mechanisms by which the organism fulfills its vital functions, which is not the same thing at all. Once again, one looks at the DNA but fails to recognize the plant or animal form which "encodes itself in the DNA," and which the DNA "serves to communicate." We have alluded to the fact that the corporeal domain is stratified ontologically under the aegis of substantial forms; we should also remind ourselves, however, that according to the perennial doctrine the corporeal domain in its totality constitutes but the first and lowest tier of a larger cosmic hierarchy, consisting of three fundamental degrees.20 What particularly concerns us is the fact that each level in this hierarchy comprises in a way all that exists below;21 as Professor Nasr has put it: "Each higher world contains the principles of that which lies below it and lacks nothing of the lower reality" (KS 199). This is a fact of immense importance; we need, however, to interpret the tenet with care, the point being that each higher level contains the essential principles of what lies below, and lacks nothing essential of the lower reality. What is, however, added in the passage from higher to lower states are certain conditions or bounds extraneous to essence, which in the case of the corporeal domain may be referred to summarily as quantitative, in conformity with our previous considerations. To put it as succinctly as possible: these constitutive factors of a quantitative kind are rooted in the materia secunda, revealed aspotentiae on the physical level, and actualized on the corporeal. One finds thus that the mathematical structures displayed in the physical domain extend in a sense to the corporeal level,22 but not beyond. What the physicist has his eye upon plays obviously a major role on the level of the perceptible world, but has no bearing whatsoever upon realities of a higher order; and even here below it perforce leaves out of account all that is essential, for the essence of corporeal things, as we have seen, is inexplicable in quantitative terms. To tell the truth, not

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even a perceptible grain of sand can be understood or explained in terms of physics alone—not to speak of living organisms, or the phenomenon of man. It remains to be said that there is nothing arbitrary or haphazard in the integration of physics "into higher orders of knowledge," nothing that hinges upon the private beliefs or idiosyncrasies of the person executing this task. There may be more than one way of telling the story, but there is only one story to be told. And it can be told, because the requisite conceptions of the perennial philosophy have already been reintroduced in the West and are now at hand. This brings us back to the monumental accomplishments of Professor Nasr. Foremost among the academic exponents of the sophiaperennis, he has won for the venerable doctrine an enhanced recognition and a measure of academic respect. It appears that he has in fact transformed the status of the perennial philosophy from an object of historical curiosity to a subject deemed worthy of serious consideration. Professor Nasr has succeeded magnificently in accomplishing the stated purpose of his Gifford Lectures: "to aid in the resuscitation of the sacred quality of knowledge and the revival of the veritable intellectual tradition of the West with the help of the still living traditions of the Orient" (KS viii).

WOLFGANG SMITH DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY MARCH 1998 NOTES 1. Stanley L. Jaki, Lord Gifford and His Lectures (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1986), p. 75. 2. The lectures have been published under the title Knowledge and the Sacred (New York: Crossroad, 1981). The page numbers in the sequel are based upon this edition and will be noted parenthetically hereafter as (KS p.#). 3. Ibid., pp. 69-71. 4. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964). 5. Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), p. 30. 6. Ibid., p. 32.

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7. Wolfgang Smith, The Quantum Enigma (Peru, 111.: Sherwood Sugden,

8. A. H. Whitehead, Nature and Life (New York: Greenwood, 1968), p. 6. 9. Wolfgang Smith, The Quantum Enigma, chapter 3. 10. Ibid., chapter 4. 11. Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 41. It needs to be pointed out that whereas Heisenberg relegates individual atoms and "small" atomic aggregates to the domain ofpotentia, he nonetheless regards "macroscopic" aggregates as actual entities, in keeping with the reductionist outlook. In light of non-bifurcation, on the other hand, one needs to distinguish ontologically between a corporeal entity X and the underlying atomic aggregate SX. The two are literally "worlds apart." 12. See especially Rene Guenon, The Reign of Quantity (London: Luzac, 1953), chapter 2. The fact that the materia secunda underlies the physical domain as well will appear from the sequel. 13. These geometric properties are given in Euclid's axioms. 14. Encounters with Einstein (Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 83. 15. As Heisenberg has put it: "The 'thing-in-itself is for the atomic physicist, if he uses this concept at all, finally a mathematical structure." (W. Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, op. cit., p. 91) 16. Guenon, op. cit., p. 13. 17. Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code (New York: Bantam, 1984), p. 262. 18. Note that quantum mechanics, by its very formalism, puts an end to this reduction. A physical system, quantum mechanically conceived, is definitely not "the sum of its parts." 19. Robert Sokolowski, "Formal and material causality in science," Proceedings of American Catholic Philosophical Association 69 (1995): 64. 20. The three degrees correspond to the tribhuvana or "three worlds" of the Vedic tradition, to Beriah, letsirah, and Asiah of the Kabbala, and microcosmically to the better-known triad corpus-anima-spiritus. 21. This ontological truth is symbolized in the Ptolemaic cosmography by the fact that the higher planetary spheres enclose the lower. 22. As I have explained in my monograph, there exists "a presentationinduced isomorphism between corporeal and sub-corporeal quantities" of which physicists make constant use. See W. Smith, op. cit., p. 80.

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rofessor Wolfgang Smith is one of the very few scientists who have devoted their lives to the pursuit of science and are at the same time rooted in the teachings of the perennial philosophy. Therefore his essay "Sophia Perennis and Modern Science" is very pertinent and reveals the essential truth that the tenets of perennial philosophy are not only significant in the domains of religious studies, traditional art, psychology, and the like. Perennial philosophy is also of the greatest importance for a revaluation of the philosophy of the modern sciences and for providing a meaningful framework for the understanding of these sciences and especially what constitutes their basis, namely, quantum mechanics. This latter point has been already treated in Smith's remarkable opus, The Quantum Enigma, and in fact much of his discussion in this essay is related to the theses of that work, although the present essay is an exceptional synthesis of Smith's thought on the subject of the relation between the perennial philosophy or sophia perennis and modern science and not simply a summary of The Quantum Enigma. I am in such deep agreement with nearly everything written in this essay that there is hardly a point which I would wish to criticize. My response on most issues will be in fact simple confirmations. Nevertheless, there are a number of points upon which I wish to expand in order to clarify further my own views on the subject. Smith writes that "science in the traditional sense is thus a matter of 'reading the icon'—a far cry indeed from the Baconian vision!" This is a very apt manner of speaking of the traditional cosmological sciences. These sciences depict a cosmos which revealed a meaning beyond itself and can be contemplated as an icon. One could in fact go a step further and say that, using the language of Christianity, the cosmos is an icon and can only be understood in depth as an icon, which reveals a divine reality beyond itself. The traditional cosmological sciences brought out this iconic reality and permitted those who studied and understood them to see the cosmos as an icon and to be able to contemplate it rather than knowing it

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only discursively. The modern sciences, issuing from what Smith calls "the Baconian vision," also know nature but no longer as an icon. They are able to tell us about the size, weight, and shape of the icon and even the composition of the various colors of paint used in painting it, but they can tell us nothing of its meaning in reference to a reality beyond itself. What they tell us about the size, composition of the paints, and so on of the icon are not false on their own level, but they do not exhaust knowledge of the icon and it would be both ignorance and hubris to claim that this type of knowledge is the only knowledge possible of the icon. The consequences of this ignorance parading as totalitarian science combined with hubris, made even more dangerous by being denied, are lethal for man's spiritual life. This ignorance, hubris, and denial have dire consequences even more outwardly in man's relation to the world of nature, divorced in the modern world from ultimate meaning as a result of the exclusive claims of Baconian science. Smith qualifies his comments about Baconian science by saying that contemporary science at its best is not completely Baconian as Einstein's occasional comment about the "Old One" suggesting that he too may have been searching for "vestigia of a kind" shows. I agree that there are a number of individual scientists, even in the contemporary period, who, like the English botanist John Ray, cultivated science with the goal of discovering the vestigia Dei in creation. But they were and are functioning within a scientific framework in which such concerns by an individual scientist could not in any way affect the science they have produced. One can study and accept the theory of relativity with or without references to the "Old One," which means that the result of Einsteinian science is not the search for the vestigia Dei and the depiction of the cosmos as an icon, whatever may have been Einstein's personal views and attitudes. The distinction that Smith makes between what ought to transpire in the mind of a modern scientist, which is reasoning upon data provided by the senses, and the meaning of knowledge according to the sophia perennis is of crucial importance. The epistemology provided by the sophia perennis covers "an incomparably greater range of cognitive possibilities" to quote the author, since it relates all acts of knowing to participation of the human intellect in the light of the Divine Intellect. In much of the discussion going on today in the domain of epistemology, both scientific and otherwise, this issue is forgotten or at least not emphasized, including the works of many contemporary Muslim thinkers writing on the subject. This participation is not confined to "moments of illumination" but involves all knowledge which relates the human subject to the object that is known. Smith quotes the Gospel of John and states, "what ultimately connects the human subject to its object in the act of knowing is indeed 'the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world'"(l:9). Since the sophia perennis is both

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perennial .and universal, one needs to add here how central this thesis is in other traditions. Being better acquainted with the Islamic tradition than with others, I can turn to that tradition and add that there are numerous verses of the Quran and Hadlth about the relation of knowledge (al- 'Urn) to light which constitutes a vast hierarchy issuing from God. In fact according to the Quran (XXIV:35) God is the light of not only the heavens but also the earth. On the basis of these traditional sources and certain elements of Greek philosophy, Islamic philosophers, going back to al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, spoke of the illumination of the human intellect by the Active Intellect in the act of intellection. The symbolism of light was particularly central to the teachings of Suhrawardi, the founder of the School of Illumination (alishraq) and what Professor Smith has written on participation in the Light of the Divine Intellect is practically identical with the views of Suhrawardi, except that the latter identifies this light in its various degrees with the different angelic substances. Again I need to emphasize how important this issue is for an in-depth study of the epistemology of modern science in light of traditional teachings, and as far as Islamic thinkers now writing on the subject of epistemology are concerned, how crucial it is first to understand the tenets of traditional Islamic philosophy in this domain before embarking upon often puerile and moreover fruitless comparisons of traditional epistemologies and modern scientific epistemology. Smith points quite correctly to the need for a living sapiental tradition within which cosmological sciences are cultivated and without which they wither and die "thus giv[ing] rise to what may indeed be termed a superstition." This is a very correct assessment upon which I must elaborate. A superstition is literally something whose ground has been removed. The metaphysical teachings of the sophia perennis constitute precisely the ground upon which the traditional cosmological sciences stood. Therefore, with the destruction of that ground these sciences could not but be reduced to superstition, although they still carried residues of truths no longer understood. The whole phenomenon of occultism in the West is quite interesting from this point of view. In other civilizations where the metaphysical ground has not been destroyed, there are certainly forms of popular superstition which are also very much present in the modern world, albeit in other guises, but in those civilizations one does not encounter the phenomenon of occultism as it developed in the salons of France and elsewhere in Europe from the eighteenth century onward. Many modern people, especially those of a scientific bent, immediately dismiss the traditional sciences such as alchemy as being simply superstition. But they do not realize that such sciences are like jewels which glow in the presence of the light of a living sapiental tradition and become opaque once that light disappears. Paradoxically enough, by claiming to relegate the traditional cosmological sciences simply to the category of superstition, the modern

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scientific enterprise has not only been helpless before the mushrooming of interest in these traditional sciences even in their residual form known in occultist circles, but it has been instrumental in the rise of new forms of superstition, such as the idea of progress, which are much more dangerous for the future of humanity than the practice of predictive astrology. Returning to the question of perception, Smith emphasizes that light waves, sound waves, brain function, and the like are of course necessary and play a role in the act of perception but that "they do not—they cannot! —constitute the perceptual act" which is "literally not of this world." He also lays the error of belief in bifurcation and the lure of it at the feet of the state of forgetfulness of "participation" by post-medieval European man. I have restated these lines to emphasize their central importance and my full agreement with it. Modern philosophy, psychology, or science are simply not able to explain perception which they always reduce to one of its parts or something else because the participation of the human intellect in the Light of the Divine Intellect is simply beyond the truncated worldview within which all modern thought, whether it be philosophical, psychological, or scientific operates. The rediscovery of the real significance of perception is only possible in light of the sophia perennis and is itself a key for the discovery of the metaphysical universe depicted by the perennial philosophy in its vastness and wholeness. And I agree with Smith that the greatest obstacle to the integration of modern science into the higher orders of knowledge and the rediscovery of how the miracle of perception works is Cartesian dualism or the theory of bifurcation. I believe that the ingenious distinction made by Smith between the corporeal and physical worlds and the confining of quantum mechanics to the physical rather than the corporeal world, as well as the relation between the two of which he speaks, are major steps in the formulation of a more meaningful philosophy of physics in accordance with the sophia perennis. Like Smith, I also wish to emphasize that the corporeal and the physical worlds, as defined by him, are not only different but constitute two ontologically distinct domains. There is an ontological hiatus between the two and one cannot say that this physical stratum contains simply the "building blocks" for the corporeal world. The whole idea of fundamental particles from which we can build up the corporeal world with its forms and qualities is therefore false; and form and quality associated with the corporeal world—not to speak of psychological and spiritual realities—can never be reduced to the quantitative elements of the physical world which alone can be studied through the "modern scientific method" and be made to constitute the subject of quantum mechanics. Naturally, without mathematics there is no possibility of study of that physical world, as defined by Smith. To understand the ontological status of the corporeal and physical

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worlds would also solve the status of quantum physics not only in its relation to the world of classical physics but also to the corporeal, or what is ordinarily called the "physical world" (contrary to Smith's terminology), and the traditional sciences which deal with the qualitative and formal aspects of that world. This ontological awareness would also make clear the basic point I have mentioned in so many of my writings, namely, that the traditional cosmological sciences are not simply crude attempts to understand nature and primitive stages of the modern quantitative sciences, but contain profound knowledge of the formal and qualitative aspects of the corporeal world not reducible to quantity nor of lower significance than quantity a la Galileo. On the contrary they refer to realities with a higher ontological status than the quantitative. The analogy made by Smith between the materia secunda and the Euclidean plane from which geometric forms emerge and in which they become actualized is also a brilliant one with which I could not but agree. It is so important to remember that the objects of modern physics are not like tables and chairs except smaller, but that they are "constructed" to quote Smith; that is, "they are defined or specified by a certain experimental intervention." And yet, although experimental means affect the form of the physical laws, the content of the mathematical equations which contain the laws do not derive from the particular experimental methods used. Here again the analogy between the materia secunda of physics and the geometric plane of Euclidean geometry becomes useful, because in the case of geometry also, while the manner of operation of a geometer affects the geometric properties of what is constructed, whether the geometer draws a square or a circle, the mathematical structures of the geometric forms are not determined by the geometer. They belong ultimately to the intelligible world which Smith quite rightly associates with the Platonic understanding of this term. This whole analysis is very much in accord with my views and opens the door for those who are able to understand the tenets of the sophia perennis as well as modern physics, for the integration of quantum mechanics into the traditional hierarchy of knowledge. It invites the integration of the world with which quantum mechanics deals into the ontological hierarchy of the perennial philosophy. To achieve this end, it is of crucial importance to realize that the physical objects of quantum mechanics are not "things" in the ordinary sense but of much smaller dimension. Rather, they are relational and do not possess an esse. The main lesson to learn from this truth is that the essential attributes of things, therefore, come not from the quantum objects but from elsewhere or more precisely from above. Smith offers a wonderful metaphor by saying, "the essence of a plant, after all, derives from the seed, and not from the ground in which the seed is planted." One might say that the seed

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in this metaphor refers ultimately to the archetypal reality or Platonic Idea which the particular plant in question reflects and manifests on the corporeal plane. It is a valuable contribution by Smith to assert that modern physics does not deal with essence, that it is "inessential" because the realization of this truth provides an opportunity for those reductionists who are looking for the sun in the bottom of the well to cast their eyes above in order to see the origin of the essences which one observes and experiences in the corporeal world. From my perspective, Professor Smith is completely right when he asserts that "the decisive step in the restitution of the cosmologia perennis is without question the rediscovery of'forms' as an ontological and causal principle," and in fact on several occasions in my writings I have expressed the same idea. And it is also completely true that the destruction of the significance of forms based on incomprehension of their real significance by Bacon and Descartes opened the door for the reductionism of modern science and the constant attempt by scientists to explain things by their parts, asserting that the whole is no more than the sum of its parts. When Smith states, however, that this destruction of forms "has n o t . . . led towards the realization of the reductionist goal" and that "the reductionist philosophy appears also to have outlived its established usefulness as a heuristic principle," it seems to me that he is looking only at a few scientists like himself and not at the impact of reductionism associated with science on the general cultural scene of today. It is enough to look at the current mainstream view of the physical world, of medicine and the body, of the approach to the solution of social, economic, and ecological problems to see how entrenched the reductionist view really is. The philosophy of wholeness still remains in the margin of modern and postmodern man's worldview thanks mostly to mainstream modern science. Furthermore, Smith makes the crucial statement that there exist in the world non-mathematical formal principles which are "none other than the aforementioned substantial forms, which prove moreover to be 'essential' in a strict ontological sense." He adds further that these forms constitute an ontological order. If this central statement of Smith's, with which I agree whole-heartedly, were to be accepted fully by modern science, a new scientific view would be born that would cease to be that of modern science as it is known today and become transformed into a further extension of the traditional sciences as I have already proposed. Then and only then could one say that reductionism has ceased to be operative and has outlived its "usefulness." Until then, unfortunately reductionism continues to level things to their lowest common denominator, to destroy quality in the name of quantity and to impoverish the spiritual vision and the minds of those affected by its siren call.

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The essay of Wolfgang Smith, to which I have only added a few commentaries, is a seminal essay and should be studied carefully by all interested in the reintegration of science into the metaphysics contained in the heart of the sophia perennis and the traditional cosmological sciences associated with it. It should also be necessary reading for all searching for a new and richer philosophy for science, for those who often end with superficial adaptations of Taoism or Hinduism which are then related to the findings of modern science. Smith takes us much farther in this quest and shows the role that the sophia perennis can play in the veritable understanding of the significance of quantum mechanics and the integration of scientific knowledge into the universal hierarchy of knowledge. For some forty years I have been writing on traditional science in relation to modern science, on Islamic science, and the hierarchy of knowledge as well as on traditional metaphysics and the perennial philosophy. It is an exhilarating experience for me to see here almost a synthesis of my own thought with many new insights on the subject presented by an active scientist also well versed in traditional doctrines. In writing these lines I feel as if I am expanding some of my thoughts in the direction of a new horizon opened by Smith. There is practically nothing in this important text to which I would need to respond in a critical manner in order to clarify differences with my own thought. On the contrary to understand my thought on the subject of the relation between the sophia perennis and modern science, it is important to pay attention to my confirmation of the main theses of Smith's essay which do full justice on the one hand to traditional doctrines and the tenets of the sophia perennis, to quote his terminology, and on the other to the discoveries of quantum mechanics and the nature of the whole venture of modern physics. I am happy that the occasion to write for this volume made it possible for Professor Smith to produce this exceptionally important essay in the field of the relation between the perennial philosophy and modern science, a field which has preoccupied me since my student days. S. H. N.

[13] SPECIAL FEATURE ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE OF SYED MUHAMMAD NAQUIB AL-ATTAS

AL-ATTAS' PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AN EXTENDED OUTLINE y4 dl Setia

C

c

Adi Setia is Research Fellow (History and Philosophy of Science), International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Email: [email protected].

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Born on September 5, 1931, in Bogor,Java, Syed Muhammad Naquib bin All bin Abdullah bin Muhsin al-Attas has spent a lifetime in the pursuit of knowledge rooted in the traditional Islamic sciences. He is competent in diverse academic fields such as philosophy, metaphysics, Kaldm, history and literature. He has developed a goal-oriented philosophy and methodology of education, to "Islamize the mind, body and soul" of the student. He extends this focus to its effects on the personal and collective lives of Muslims as well as others, including the spiritual and physical non-human environment. He has authored twenty-seven authoritative works on various aspects of Islamic thought and civilization, particularly on Sufism, cosmology, metaphysics, philosophy and Malay language and literature. Al-Attas' family includes a long line of illustrious scholars and he received a thorough immersion in the traditional Islamic sciences. He also received a comprehensive education in Malay language, literature and culture. His formal primary education began at age five in Johor, Malaysia, but during the Japanese occupation of Malaysia, he went to a madrassah, al-^Urwatu*l-Wuthqa, in Java where he learned Arabic. After World War II, he returned to Johor in 1946 to complete his secondary education. He was exposed to Malay literature, history, religion, and western English classics, and developed a keen aesthetic sensibility in a cultured social atmosphere. He developed an exquisite style and precise vocabulary that are unique to his Malay writings and language. After finishing secondary school in 1951, he entered the Malay Regiment as a cadet officer. Thereafter he was selected to study at Eton Hall, Chester, Wales and later at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, England (1952-55). Here he gained insight into the spirit and style of British society. During this time he was drawn to the metaphysics of the Sufis, especially works of Nur al-Dln cAbd al-Rahmdn ibn Ahmad al-Jdml (1414-92), commonly called the last great classical poet of Persia, the celebrated saint and mystic whose works include Salaman and Absal and Lawa'ih and al-Durrah al-Fakhirah. Al-Attas traveled widely. He was drawn especially to Spain and North Africa where Islamic heritage had a profound influence on him. Al-Attas felt the need to study, and voluntarily resigned from the Kings Commission to serve in the Royal Malay Regiment, in order to pursue studies at the University of Malaya in Singapore 1957-59. While an undergraduate at University of Malaya, he wrote Rangkaian Rubaclyat, a literary work, and Some Aspects of Sufism as Understood and Practised among the Malays. He was awarded the Canada Council Fellowship for three years of study at the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal. He received an M.A. degree with distinction in Islamic philosophy in 1962; his thesis was entitled "Raniri and the Wujudiyyah of 17th Century Acheh". Al-Attas went on to the School of Oriental and African

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Studies, University of London, where he worked with Professor A. J. Arberry of Cambridge and Dr. Martin Lings. His doctoral thesis (1962) was a two-volume work on the mysticism ofHamzah Fansuri. In 1965, Dr. Al-Attas returned to Malaysia and became Head of the Division of Literature in the Department of Malay Studies at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. He was Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1968-70. Thereafter he moved to the new National University of Malaysia as Head of the Department of Malay Language and Literature, and then Dean of the Faculty of Arts. He strongly advocated the use of Malay as the language of instruction at the university level, and proposed an integrated method of studying Malay language, literature and culture so that the role and influence of Islam and its relationship with other languages and cultures would be studied with clarity. He founded and directed the Institute of Malay Language, Literature and Culture (IBKKM) at the National University of Malaysia in 1973 to carry out his vision. In 1987, Al-Attas became the University Professor of Islamic Thought and Civilization at the International Islamic University of Malaysia (HUM). He is the Founder-Director of the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC), Kuala Lumpur. Al-Attas envisioned the plan and design of every aspect of ISTAC, to the extent of incorporating Islamic artistic and architectural principles throughout the campus and grounds. For details of his personal, academic and professional background, as well as his intellectual vision and achievements, see Wan Mohr Nor Wan Daud (1991), The Beacon on the Crest of a Hill: A Brief History and Philosophy of the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur; The Educational Philosophy and Practice of Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas: An Exposition of the Original Concept of Islamization, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur, pp. 1-31; and "Introduction" to (1994) Commemorative Volume on the Conferment of the Al-Ghazali Chair of Islamic Thought, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur, pp. 1-14.

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Selected Publications by Al-Attas

(1963), Some Aspects of Sufism as Practiced among the Malays, Malaysian Sociological Research Institute, Singapore. (1966), Rdniriand the Wujudiyyah of 17th Century Acheh, Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, no. 3, MBRAS, Singapore. (1970), The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri, University of Malaya Press, Kuala Lumpur. (1978), Islam and Secularism, ABIM, Petaling Jaya; 2nd impression (1993), ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur. (1981), The Positive Aspects of Tasawwuf: Preliminary Thoughts on an Islamic Philosophy of Science, Islamic Academy of Science, Kuala Lumpur. (1985), Islam, Secularism and the Philosophy of the Future, Mansell, London & New York. (1986), A Commentary on the Hujjat al-Siddiq ofNur al-Din al-Rdnm: being an exposition of the salient points of distinction between the positions of the theologians, the philosophers, the Sufis and the pseudo-Sufis on the ontological relationship between God and the world and related questions, Ministry of Culture, Kuala Lumpur. (1989), Islam and the Philosophy of Science, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur. (1990), The Intuition of Existence: A Fundamental Basis of Islamic Metaphysics, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur. (1990), The Nature of Man and the Psychology of the Human Soul: A Brief Outline and a Framework for an Islamic Psychology and Epistemology, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur. (1991), The Concept of Education in Islam: A Framework for an Islamic Philosophy of Education, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur. (1994), On Quiddity and Essence: An Outline of the Basic Structure of Reality in Islamic Metaphysics, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur. (1995, 2002), Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam: An Exposition of the Fundamental Elements of the Worldview of Islam, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur. (2001), Risalah Untuk Kaum Muslimin (Message to the Muslims), ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur.

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This article presents an outline of Muhammad Naquib al-Attas' ontological, cosmological and epistemological premises underlying his philosophy of science, and goes on to aspects of methodology and axiology those premises entail. Frequent references are made to particular (mostly revisionist) western philosophies of science to further inform the discourse and draw attention to wider connections. Keywords: Islamization of knowledge; scientific probity of tasawwuf, reason, intellect, and rationalism; empiricism; trans-empirical awareness; Unity of Existence; metaphysical vision of Truth and Reality; atomism; perpetual recurrence of creation; causality; divine self-disclosure; challenge of Western science; tafsir-tcfwil methodology; scientism. Introduction Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas' philosophy of science is expressed most systematically in his The Positive Aspects of Tasawwuf: Preliminary Thoughts on an Islamic Philosophy of Science,1 and Islam and the Philosophy of Science.2 These two monographs fit within the larger intellectual context of his exposition on the 'Islamic Worldview' in his Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam: An Exposition of the Fundamental Elements of the Worldview of Islam? His conception of the 'Islamization of present-day knowledge' in Islam and

1

2

3

Henceforth PAT. This concise treatise of 13 pages was originally presented to the Festival of Zarruq (Mihrajan Zarruq) in commemoration of the great North African Sufi Ahmad Zarruq (1442-93), Misratah, Libya, 16-20 June, 1980; ibid., footnote 13. The word "positive" in the title serves to emphasize that tasawwufas such is a completely positive intellectual and spiritual discipline since it is based on direct experience of ultimate reality (ibid., 1-2). Henceforth IPS. Originally a keynote address presented to The International Seminar on Islamic Philosophy and Science, University of Science, Penang, Malaysia, 29 May-2 June, 1989. This concise treatise of 36 pages is an elaboration of PAT, in which some salient conceptual and methodological features of modern western science are also critically surveyed. Henceforth Prolegomena, reference to 2nd edition. In this work, IPS constitutes chapter III of seven chapters with no substantial revision.

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Secularism^ provides a general analytical framework for contrasting the Islamic philosophy of science with various modern philosophies of science. The continuity between al-Attas' philosophy of science and the classical Islamic intellectual tradition lies in his critical adoption of Ghazallan—Ibn al-cArab!an ontology, cosmology, psychology and epistemology.6 4. Henceforth IS; reference to 2nd impression. See also, respectively, ibid., xi, 45, and also idem, The Concept of Education in Islam: A Framework for an Islamic Philosophy of Education (1991) 1STAC, Kuala Lumpur, pp. 8, 43, henceforth CEI, for the alternative phrases "islamization of contemporary knowledge", "islamization of thought and reason", "islamization of the mind and of the vision of reality and truth as perceived by the mind" and "islamization of knowledge." Another version of the IS, incorporating two extra chapters on "The Positive Aspects of Tasawwuf and "The Concept of Education in Islam," was published as Islam, Secularism and the Philosophy of the Future (1985), Mansell, London & New York; henceforth ISPF. The ideas expressed by al-Attas in PAT, IPS, IS, CEI, ISPF and Prolegomena were already largely prefigured in a typed Malay manuscript, Risalah Untuk Kaum Muslimin (Message to the Muslims), dictated to his secretary in 1973, but only recently edited and published (2001), ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur, vii, henceforth Risalah; see also "Author's Note to the First Edition," in IS, ix. 5. A note about the name of Muhyl al-Dm Muhammad ibn cAli ibn alc Arabi: he is referred to as Ibn cArabi by some scholars, perhaps to distinguish him from the author of Ahkdm al-Qur*an. This is also the spelling used by the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, but Shaikh alAkbar refers to himself as Ibn al-cArabI. We have retained the "al" except for direct quotes. 6. PAT, pp. 10-11; Prolegomena, pp. 214-5; (1986), A Commentary on the Hujjat al-Siddiq ofNur al-Dln al-Rdniri: being an exposition of the salient points of distinction between the positions of the theologians, the philosophers, the Sufis and the pseudo-Sufis on the ontological relationship between God and the world and related questions, Ministry of Culture, Kuala Lumpur, especially pp. 29-46 and 455-65 and henceforth Hujjat; idem (1970), The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri University of Malaya Press, Kuala Lumpur, especially pp. 66-110 and henceforth Mysticism; idem (1966), Raniri and the Wujudiyyah of 17th Century Acheh, Monographs of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, no. 3 MBRAS, Singapore, especially pp. 18-56, henceforth Raniri; idem (1963), Some Aspects of Sufism as Practiced among the Malays, Malaysian Sociological Research Institute, Singapore, especially pp. 10-20, henceforth SAS; idem (1990), The Nature of Man and the Psychology of the Human Soul: A

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Al-Attas makes clear that his philosophy of science is constitutive of an integral network of interrelated intellectual preliminaries which have to be fully grasped in order to gain insight into the true nature of the challenge of modern western systems of knowledge to Islamic thought and civilization in the contemporary world.7 Islamic science and philosophy (i.e. hikmah as contrasted with falsafah) have always found coherent expression within a basic metaphysical structure formulated according to the tradition of Sufism and founded upon the authority of revelation, Tradition, sound reason, experience and intuition. Since the divergence between this Islamic metaphysics and modern science and philosophy is rooted in their respective positions concerning the sources and methods of knowledge and the epistemological process, we cannot afford to allow ourselves to submit to the dictates of the statements and general Brief Outline and a Framework for an Islamic Psychology and Epistemology, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur, henceforth Psychology, idem (1990) The Intuition of Existence: A Fundamental Basis of Islamic Metaphysics, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur; (1994), On Quiddity and Essence: An Outline of the Basic Structure of Reality in Islamic Metaphysics ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur; idem, The Degrees of Existence, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur. The last four monographs are incorporated respectively as Chapters IV-VII of the Prolegomena, pp. 143-319. For a concise and accessible exposition of the metaphysical worldview of al-Attas and its sources, see also Wan Mohd Nor Wan Baud (1998), The Educational Philosophy and Practise of Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas: An Exposition of the Original Concept of Islamization, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur, pp. 33-67 passim, in the context of this paper especially pp. 39-48, 49-54, 59-67, 377, 393, 413-4. 7. "Preface" to ISPF, pp. x-xii; Prolegomena, pp. 15-16; IS, Chapter IV on "The Muslim Dilemma," pp. 97-132, where on page 105, he said that the historical "confrontation" between Islam and the West "has now moved on to the intellectual level." See also Risalah, § 1:4-5, § 5051:126-32; and al-Attas' important keynote address "The Worldview of Islam: An Outline" in (1996), Islam and the Challenge of Modernity: Historical and Contemporary Contexts, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur, proceedings of the Inaugural Symposium organized and hosted by ISTAC in Kuala Lumpur, August 1-5, 1994, especially pp. 36-7 and 68-71, henceforth ICM; where he speaks about the need to break the intellectual spell of the secularizing process of Western philosophy, science, technology and ideology.

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Thus one fundamental requirement for approaching and understanding al-Attas' philosophy of science is a rejection or at least suspension of any demarcationism which a priorily excludes 'revelation' or any 'religious' truth-claims from coming within the ambit of valid rational and empirical inquiry.9 It is implicit in al-Attas' conception of science as "definition of reality"10 that 'science' is to be understood in the wide sense of the term as any objective systematic inquiry, including the intellectual, psychological, natural, social and historical disciplines. This understanding accords well with the traditional Islamic classification of knowledge (cilm), and has its analogue in the Erlangen school of philosophy of science, which (as in the traditional Islamic discipline of kaldm) critically analyses the structures and presuppositions of scientific systems of thought.11 From this perspective, it shall then be clear that alAttas' philosophy of science is basically a concise systematic explication of the "scientific probity" oftasawwufor Sufism as the discipline of mind and spirit through which experience of ultimate reality is gained. As Peter Coates states it, "There is a strong sense of what could well be described as scientific probity running throughout the Fusus al-Hikam and the Futuhat 8. Hujjat, pp. 464-5. 9. For an account of the "demise of the demarcationist argument" see Meyer, Stephen C. "The Methodological Equivalence of Design & Descent" in J. P. Moreland (ed., 1994), The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer, InterVarsity Press, Downer's Grove, Illinois, pp. 113-38; henceforth Creation Hypothesis. 10. See below, note 24. 11. For the constituent parts of Islamic Science and the divisions of the scientific disciplines, see CEI pp. 42-44, and the detailed study of Bakar, Osman (1992), Classification of Knowledge in Islam, Institute for Policy Research, Kuala Lumpur, which discusses the classification systems of al-Farabl (258-339/870-950), al-Ghazall (450-505/10581111) and Qutb al-Din al-ShirazI (634-710/1236-1311). For the Erlangen school, see Mautner, Thomas (ed., 1996), A Dictionary of Philosophy, Blackwell, Oxford, s.v. 'Erlangen School', p. 135.

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al-Makkiyah", and "Scientific probity or verification has, therefore, its analogue in mystical experience."12 This article presents an outline of al-Attas' ontological, cosmological and epistemological premises underlying his philosophy of science, and goes on to aspects of methodology and axiology those premises entail. Where relevant, I refer also to some of his other earlier works in which allusions to his philosophy of science are to be found. In the main, my approach is straightforward presentation; occasionally I have been tempted to elaborate at length or to refer to particular (mostly revisionist) western philosophies of science to further inform the discourse and draw attention to wider connections. For instance, W. T. Stace's Mysticism and Philosophy,1^ E. F. Schumacher's A Guide for the Perplexed14' and Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge1^ are, in their respective ways, among the most strikingly corroborative of al-Attas' approach to philosophy of science. One may find much of al-Attas' extreme tautness of expression thankfully amplified (indirectly) through the detached critical appraisal of Stace, the involved commonsensical insight of Schumacher and the sensitive committed inquiry of Polanyi.

12. Coates, Peter (2002), Ibn "Arabi and Modern Thought: The History of Taking Metaphysics Seriously, Anqa, Oxford, p. 67; henceforth Ibn c Arabi, where he noted that this was also the conclusion of Corbin, H., in Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn cArabi (1969), trans, by Manheim, R., Princeton University Press, Princeton, p. 46. A similar view is also in Keller, Nuh Ha Mini (1999), Evolution Theory & Islam, Muslim Academic Trust, Cambridge, p. 11. 13. (1960, reprinted 1989), Macmillan Press, London. With clear, straightforward logical arguments, Stace shows that there are sufficient philosophical and rational reasons to believe that mystical claims do contain objective cognitive content. 14. Harper Colophon edition (1978), Harper & Row, New York. By appealing to our common sense, Schumacher argues for the existence of levels of being higher than the physical and the quantitative, and thus for a holistic rather than a reductionist scientific methodology. 15. Polanyi, Michael (1998), Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, reprinted Routledge, London. Polanyi's thoughtful, erudite eloquence compels our recognition of the significance of passionate personal commitment in all scientific inquiry, a commitment that does not at all diminish the objectivity of the cognitive goal of that inquiry.

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Ontology It is in the Positive Aspects of Tasawwuf that al-Attas first began to outline systematically a philosophical aspect of Sufism which "pertains to what can be developed into an Islamic conceptualization and formulation of the philosophy of science."16 He grounds his philosophy of science in an ontology or a metaphysical vision of ultimate being and reality that is derived from divine revelation, i.e., the Qur'an, and affirmed in the direct intuitive experience of the Sufis.17 He explains that this ontology is not a mere speculative abstraction but a truth/reality (haqq/haqiqah) directly experienced at the state of 'trans-empirical' awareness. It is at this state— which is the state of ihsdn—that the rational merges with the empirical, and knowledge means unification (tawhid).18 In this ontology, the view of the structure of reality and of human cognition at the sensible level of experience finds validity within the context of the greater validity of the higher levels of reality intuitively experienced by the Sufis.19 In other words, the metaphysical vision of reality and truth as experienced and conveyed by the authentic Sufis through the intellecto-spiritual discipline of tasawwuf—which he defines as "the practice of the sharl'ah at the station of ihsdn"20—is to form the basis for an authentic Islamic philosophy of science.21 While the ultimate reality can be inferred discursively through the mediation of sensible experience and discursive reason, as has been the case mfalsafah and kaldm^ it is the direct unmediated experience of the Sufis that brings full clarity, conviction and certainty concerning that reality into the heart.23 Since the Sufis' description of ultimate reality is an 16. PAT, p. 2.

17. Ibid., pp. 9-10, 12-13. al-Attas' affirmation of Sufi ontology is already discernible in SAS, an early work. 18. Ibid., p. 8; IS, p. 162. 19. Ibid., pp. 12-13. 20. IS, p. 162. 21. Ibid., p. 13. 22. Sabra, A. I. (1994), "Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islamic Theology: The Evidence of the Fourteenth Century" in Zeitschrift fur Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften, Band 9, Institut fur Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften, Frankfurt am Main, p. 23; Hujjat, pp. 208-13; Craig, William Lane (2000), The Kaldm Cosmological Argument, Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, OR. 23. Hujjat, pp. 295-300.

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outcome of direct vision, not indirect abstraction, it is hence the most authentic and accurate of descriptions, and thereby the most convincing, authoritative and believable: When the Sufis speak of the 'truth', they refer to the knowledge whose real content is truth of the highest degree of certainty (Haqq al-yaqin), because it is gained by direct experience. This direct experience alludes to a trans-empirical state of awareness such as we have already mentioned in which they 'see' the reality of the Multiplicity of phenomena in the Unity of the One Real Being, and the Unity of the One Real Being in the Multiplicity of phenomena. It is certain knowledge of this Reality and Truth gained by means of such an experience that made it possible for them not to deny existence to the world together with all its parts and regard them all as sheer illusion, but to affirm instead both the Existence of God Who, as the Absolute Reality underlying all creation is appropriately called the Truth (al-Haqq), and the existence of the creatures, not as independent, separate, self-subsisting entities, but as so many particularized forms of the determinations (ta'ayyundt) and self-manifestations (tajalliydt) of the Truth in the context of the Unity of Existence (wahdat al-wujud). The separate things in creation are on the one hand real when considered in relation to their metaphysical Source; and on the other hand not real when they are considered in themselves. This is the true (Haqq) metaphysical vision of Reality. In this vision some form of subject-object relation between man and God is maintained; the dichotomy between Creator and creature, between Lord and slave is still intact....The false (bdtil) metaphysical vision of Reality, on the other hand, either denied existence to the world together with its parts, or affirmed its existence as independent, self-subsistent entities, leading in either case to pantheism with its extreme immanence; or to a type of theism tending towards extreme transcendence; or to monism and the obliteration of the real distinction between God and His creatures;

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Thus al-Attas expounds what can be called a realist philosophy of science25 in which relative reality is ascribed to the sensible world and ultimate reality to the Absolute Being (God). Since the sensible world is only relatively real (i.e., contingent, hddith), experience of it alone cannot serve as the basis for an authentic philosophy of science. Such a basis must be gained from direct intuitive vision of higher supra-sensible realities under which the phenomenal physical world is subsumed. This vision of the transcendent unity of existence or being (wahdat al-wujud) is a 'positive' one because it is "not merely a subjective affair, but conveys also a cognitive, objective content."26 Hence, this vision is accessible in principle to anyone who is willing to tread the Sufi path of intellectospiritual discipline, just as rigorous mathematical and technical training in the discipline of physics, for instance, is required for an effective understanding of relativity, quantum mechanics and superstring theory.27 In contrast to many Muslim scholars and intellectuals, al-Attas, therefore, wholeheartedly defends and expounds in rational terms "the scientific legitimacy of Sufism as a valid method of arriving at the ultimate nature of reality."28 24. PAT, pp. 9-10. All italics original, here and elsewhere, unless otherwise indicated. 25. As a matter of fact, in CEI, p. 2, al-Attas states that "science is definition—both in the sense of hadd...and in the sense ofrasm...—of reality." Definition by hadd (delimiting) delimits or specifies the "distinctive characteristic of a thing," whereas definition by rasm (outlining) outlines the "nature of a thing" (ibid., p. 16). 26. Hujjat, p. 458; cf. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, where he deals at length with the problem of objective reference in mystical experience. 27. So we can agree with Auguste Comte's positivism and the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle insofar as authentic knowledge must be one based on experience, but they are being less than positivist when they a priorily and hence quite arbitrarily restrict experience to only the sensible experience of phenomena. As Coates puts it (Ibn 'Arabi, p. 67), "But what is really at issue is the narrowness of their [logical positivists'] conception of verification in terms of sense-data; there is nothing intrinsically amiss with the notion of verification itself." 28. Hujjat, p. 457.

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For al-Attas, "wahdat al-wujud represents the true metaphysical system encompassing the ontological, cosmological and psychological domains in the Islamic vision of reality and truth."29 Among the definitions of wahdat al-wujud preferred by al-Attas is the concise one by al-Maha'iml, namely, "the unity of existence is that whereby things are actualized (tahaqquq), and this is one."30 In his Iddh al-Maqsud min Wahdat al-Wujud (Clarifying What is Meant by the Unity of Being] cAbd al-Ghani al-Nabuls! (d. 1143/1733) explains (as paraphrased by Keller) that "by the 'unity of being' Sufis do not mean that the created universe is God, for God's being is necessary (wajib al-wujud) while the universe's being is merely possible (ja'iz al-wujud), i.e. subject to non-being, beginning, and ending, and it is impossible that one of these two orders of being could in any sense be the other, but rather the created universe's act of being is derived and subsumed by the divine act of creation, from which it has no ontic independence, and hence is only through the being of its Creator, the one true Being."31 For al-Attas, the Ashcarite conceptualization of this ontic dependence of nature on the Creator in terms of the cosmological atomistic/occasionalistic theory of the "perpetual recurrence of creation" already implies wahdat al-wujud.^ In this rational-intuitive conceptualization of the ontic relation between God and the world, al-Attas follows Ibn al-cArabI who has rearticulated in systematic terms the direct intuitive experience of the Sufis. Ibn al-cArabi conceives of this relation in terms of the ontological 'descent' (tanazzul) of Absolute being in five non-temporal and non-spatial stages, of which the last is the world of empirical, tangible things:33 29. PAT, p. 2 n. 3 30. Hujjat, p. 405. 31. Keller, Nuri Ha Mlm (1994), Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, Amana Publications, Beltsville, Maryland, p. 1020 n. x5. 32. Hujjat, p. 295; see also below, note 65. 33. For an extended elaboration on the non-spatiotemporal nature of the stages of ontological descent see PAT, pp. 10-11; Prolegomena, pp. 260, 267-319, esp. 274-80; Raniri, pp. 50-54 passim, Mysticism, pp. 67, 69-73, 76-77, 77 n.44, 79, 106; Hujjat, pp. 155-76. Al-Attas cautions that this Sufi conception of the ontological degrees of divine self-manifestation is not to be confused with Neoplatonic emanationism in which the role of the divine will is diminished and the 'lower' degrees of being gradually 'deteriorates' from the source and finally acquires a kind of ontic autonomy (Mysticism, 72-3).

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1. The 2. The 3. The 4. The 5. The

Divine Oneness (al-wahidiyyah) Names and Attributes (al-asma wal-sifdt) Permanent Archtypes (al-acydn al-thdbitah) Exterior Archtypes (al-acydn al-khdrijiyyah) World of Sense and Sensible Experience (calam al-shahddah)

"The reverse of this ontological descent is the 'ascent' (taraqqt) of the things of the empirical world back to their source of existence. There is, to be sure, no time sequence involved in the dynamic process; it is an eternal process describing the order of the Absolute Being and Existence."34 Thus al-Attas cautions that the words 'ascent' and 'descent' here are to be taken in the metaphorical sense as referring to the "various ways in which He [God] manifests Himself to us in the course of our knowledge of Him "^ This ontological scheme implies that the cultivation of true scientific learning in Islam is not merely a matter of the senses and the discursive mind whose operational scope is restricted (as in modern science) to the "world of sense and sensible experience." The learning and practice of true science also involves an integrated discipline of spirit, intellect and conduct by which one self-consciously affects an ascent to higher transempirical realities through the intuitive faculty of the soul. For it is only within the greater context of these higher realities that the true nature and significance of the phenomenal world can be understood.36 Accordingly, in Islamic science, the horizontal pragmatic (descriptive, predictive and manipulative) knowledge about the 'workings' of nature is

34. PAT, p. 11. This means that time and space are not 'external', extramental objective and universal absolutes conditioning this dynamic process, but are themselves relative, contingent constituents of this process and hence products of divine creativity. 35. Rdniri, p. 52; Mysticism, p. 73. Italics mine. For further, detailed philosophical elaboration of this ontology, see Prolegomena, pp. 177331. 36. In a recent personal communication, Associate Professor Shahidan Radiman, Head of the Nuclear Science Programme of the National University of Malaysia, comments: "This is to say that the physical world (calam al-ajsdm) is embedded in the non-physical world (calam al-ghayb), [and moreover] it is just a drop in the ocean of the Unseen."

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aligned to and subsumed under the vertical, contemplative appreciation of the 'meaning' of nature. In this way, growth of knowledge about the world leads to growth in knowledge about what transcends the world, and that is the ultimate aim of science. Axiologically, this means that science in Islam is always science in the 'service of Islam.'37 Cosmology Al-Attas' cosmology or vision of the structures and processes of phenomenal reality, from galaxies to atoms, flows from his Sufi ontology. In this cosmology, the world of nature is viewed as the analogous but created counterpart to the uncreated, revealed Qur'an. The basis of this analogy is that both are essentially self-consistent integrated systems of signs (dydf) that tell man about their Creator/Author. Therefore the external world of nature and the internal world of the human psyche provide an "autonomous" experiential avenue by which any rational human being can be brought to affirm the truth of the message of the Revelation. In other words, the truth of Revelation is verifiable in experience, whose meaning in turn is informed by the former. The world is a "Great Open Book" and so "every detail therein, encompassing the farthest horizons and our very selves, is like a word in that Book that speaks to man about its Author,"38 as alluded to in the Qur'anic verse: We shall show them Our portents on the horizons and within themselves until it will be manifest unto them that it [the Qur'an] is the Truth?9 Al-Attas elaborates at some length on the conceptual significance of the metaphor of the word for our understanding of the true nature of things in the world and their proper status as objects of scientific inquiry. 37. King, David A. (1993), Astronomy in the Service of Islam, Variorum, Aldershot, Hampshire. More generally, Bakar, Osman (1999), The History and Philosophy of Islamic Science, Islamic Texts Society Cambridge, esp. pp. 1-11; and Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (1976), Islamic Science: An Illustrated Study, World of Islam Festival Publishing Company, London. An excellent work of contemporary technical science in the service of Islamic sacred law (fiqh) is Keller, Nuh Ha Mini (2001), Port in a Storm: A Fiqh Solution to the Qibla of North America, Wakeel Books, Amman. 38. PAT, p. 6; CEI, p. 17. 39. Q. 41:53; CEI, p. 17. This verse applies to modern science as well, for modern scientists, despite themselves, are increasingly faced with empirical prospects of the transcendent; see "Science of the Sacred", special feature in Newsweek (Nov. 28, 1994).

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science 180 • Islam & Science • Vol. 1 (December 2003) No. 2 Now the word as it really is, is a sign, a symbol; and to know it as it really is, is to know what it stands for, what it symbolizes, what it means. To study the word as a word, regarding it as if it had an independent reality of its own, is to miss the real point of studying it.40

Just as the letters, words and sentences constituting a book are never studied solely for the sake of unraveling their formal syntactic and morphological structures (grammatical rules of language), but also and more importantly for the sake of gaining appreciation of the metagrammatical network of semantic content borne through those structures, so similarly, the things, structures, events and processes constituting the world ought not to be studied merely for uncovering their formal governing 'physical laws of nature', but also and more importantly for discerning the metaphysical significance underpinning those laws: "...the world of nature consists of signs of God revealing to man its symbolic significance and allowing man to observe and involve himself in knowing this aspect of Reality in order to apprehend its ultimate nature."41 Since the order and system of things in created nature are analogous to the order and system of words in the revealed Book, then "the things of the empirical world are to be treated as words', as signs and symbols operating in a network of conceptual relations that altogether describe an organic unity reflecting the Qur'an itself."42 In this sense, the physical organic unity of the world is the external existential reflection of the conceptual organic unity of the QurDan. Thus, in this cosmological vision nature is studied not for its own sake but in virtue of a meaning or a truth that transcends it and yet is reflected or instantiated in it, and in virtue of which it is created. In other words, a thing like a word exists by virtue of the transcendent meaning it bears, it does not exist by virtue of its own self, for it has no 'self apart from the meaning. Like words in a book, things in nature have no independent reality whether essentially or existentially, and hence—in Nursl's terms— they have no nominal, self-referential meaning (macnd ismi) but only

40. Ibid., p. 6. 4l.Hujjat, p. 460. 42. PAT, pp. 7-8.

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relational, other-referential meaning (macnd harfi).4?> They refer to other than themselves, and that 'other' is the truth they mean.44 Therefore the modern scientific study of things, of 'laws of nature', as if they were "ultimate and subsistent," is a study "devoid of real purpose," and such a study becomes a "deviation from the truth" and its validity questionable.45 By the very act of seeing nature as ultimate and subsistent, modern science in fact forgets and overlooks the ultimate for the proximate, the real for the apparent, and thereby misses the whole point of its study. This conception of the true nature of phenomenal reality has, in turn, logical consequences for al-Attas' conception of the nature of causality or the nature of the relations obtaining between things and events in time and space. Coming back to the analogue of the word, the real connection between the discrete individual words constituting a book or a speech is conceptual (i.e., by virtue of their semantic content and syntactic form), and not physical (i.e., not by virtue of their visible script and audible sounds). These words project a coherent system of meanings that inhere not in the words themselves but in the mind of the writer or speaker objectively expressing his creative thought. Just as words merely partake of symbolic reality manifesting the speaker's creative thought at the level of verbal reality, so, similarly, nature is ultimately only a symbolic form 43. Here Badfuzzaman Sacid Nursi (1877-1960) draws from the Arabic grammatical categories of 'ism (noun) and charf (letter or particle), for in Arabic grammar the noun is defined as a word indicating a meaning inherent in the word itself (kalimatun dallat cald macna fi nafsihd), whereas the particle indicates a meaning inherent in another word (kalimatun dallat cald macnan fi ghayriha) thus pointing to that which transcends it; see his Mesnevi-i Nuriye, 46, cited in Siikran Vahide (2000), "The Book of the Universe: Its Place and Development in Bediuzzaman's Thought" in A Contemporary Approach to Understanding the Qur'dn: The Example of the Risale-i Nur, proceedings of International Symposium, Istanbul 20-22 September 1998, Sozler Nesriyet, Istanbul, pp. 466-83 on page 471. A fuller discussion of ma'nd harfi and ma'nd ismi in relation to causation and causality and the synthetic interpretation of nature is Mermer, Yamine B. "The Hermeneutical Dimension of Science: A Critical Analysis Based on Said Nursi's Risale-i Nur," in The Muslim World Review, Special Issue: Said Nursi and the Turkish Experience, LXXXIX: 3-4 (July-Oct, 1999), pp. 270-96 passim. 44. IPS, p. 28; PAT, p. 6; Prolegomena, p. 134. 45. IPS, pp. 27-8; PAT, p. 6; Prolegomena, pp. 133-34.

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manifesting divine creativity at the level of phenomenal sensible reality.46 Instead of a "word—>word" or "event—>event" causality giving rise to meaning and order, there is rather at every instant a self-expressing "intelligent speaker—>word" or "intelligent agent—> event" causality. Thus for al-Attas, "cause here should not be understood in the Philosopher's sense of the term, rather in al-Ghazzali's sense of the term—as a cause in the special sense—that is as brought about by a willing agent."47 Just as a book or sentence consists of discrete words and letters, so similarly in this conception of causality, nature consists of discrete, discontinous events, processes and relations which in reality are but perpetually renewed manifestations of an underlying, abiding spiritual reality of existence that both includes and excludes them.48 The multiple and diverse natural forms "partake of symbolic existence by virtue of being continually articulated by the creative word of God,"49 as alluded to in the verses, His command, when He intended a thing, is only that He says unto it: Be! and it is',50 As We began the first creation, We repeat it',51 and Each day He is upon some task.52 In sum, nature is a symbol through which is manifested a reality higher and more enduring than it, or in ibn al-cArabian terms, the phenomenal world is the theatre of manifestation (mazhar) of the One Unique Being.53 Consequently, things in the world are not independent, self-subsisting, self-organizing essences having persistence in absolute time and space,54 but rather they perish upon coming into existence and are continually being recreated by the Creator,55 hence "the absence of a necessary

46. IPS, p. 27; Prolegomena, pp. 113, 133; PAT, pp. 6-8, 11-2. 47. Rdnirl, p. 47; Mysticism, pp. 101-2. 48. IPS, pp. 21, 28, 33; Prolegomena, pp. 128, 134, 140. 49. IPS, p. 27; Prolegomena, p. 133. 50. Q. 36:82. 51. Q. 21:104; cf. Q.29:19, 20 See they not how Allah originates creation, then repeats it?...Travel in the land and see how he did originate creation, then Allah do bring forth the later production... Most Qur'anic translations are based on Pickthall, Muhammad Marmaduke (1977), The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'an: Text and Explanatory Translation, Muslim World League, Mecca. 52. Q. 55:29. 53. Hujjat, p. 296; Coates, Ibn 'Arabi, pp. 20-3. 54. IPS, p. 28; Prolegomena, p. 134. 55. IPS, p. 33; Prolegomena, p. 139; PAT, p. I I .

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relation between cause and effect."56 Everything, from the tiniest particular part to the greatest universal whole, is both proximately and ultimately caused by Allah alone, continuously and at every instant,57 for everyday He exercises power,58 and there is not a thing but hymns His praise.59 As NursI explains, "When attributed to the Single Maker, all beings become as easy as a single being."60 The implications of such a cosmology are that causes and effects are created together and correlated within an order or integral system in which the causes are but conditions for the effects. This order or integral system is perceived through scientific inquiry as natural patterns and regularities, as laws of nature', which in reality only reflect God's "manner of creation" or His sunnah (sunnatuLlah). This order has a certain stability, uniformity and continuity because God does not change the manner of His creation: La tabdila li khalqiLldh/There is no altering (the laws of) Allah's creation.61 In short, God creates both causes and effects and connects them together within a dynamic, "unified network of events and 56. IPS, p. 35; Prolegomena, p. 142; Hujjat, p. 256. 57. NursI (tr.,1993), by Hamid Algar as The Supreme Sign, Sozler Nesriyat, Istanbul, pp. 115-21 passim. 58. Q. 55:29; Mysticism, pp. 80-1. 59. Q. 17:44. It can be said that in philosophico-scientific terms this verse and other verses of similar import allude to the logico-empirical fact that given any integral system, if the ultimate efficient cause for the whole system exists, then this same ultimate cause has also, of necessity, to be the proximate efficient cause of each and every part of the system. Among the empirical bases of this proposition is the biochemical phenomena of 'irreducible complexity' and 'specified complexity', and the cosmo-biospheric phenomena of 'fine-tuning' described, respectively, in Behe, Michael J. (1996), Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Free Press, New York, pp. 39-40, 42-45; in Bradley, Walter L. and Thaxton, Charles B. "Information and the Origin of Life" in Creation Hypothesis, pp. 173210, and in Ross, Hugh "Astronomical Evidences for a Personal Transcendent God" in Creation Hypothesis, pp. 141-72. For the conceptual fit between 'fine-tuning' and the Qur'anic concept of taskhir, see Setia, Adi (2001), "The Qur'anic Concept of Taskhir in Fakhr al-Dln al-RazI and Badfuzzaman Sacld NursI" in al-Hikmah, no. 18 and 19, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur. 60. Nursi (tr., 1997) by Sukran Vahide as Nature; Cause or Effect?, Sozler Nesriyat, Istanbul, p. 47. 61. Q. 30:30. See also, 33:62; 35:43; 48:23, for verses of like import.

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relations."62 Scientists perceive and describe an aspect of this integral system in terms of a certain linear spatio-temporal order of priority and posteriority governing things and events in nature, some of which they posit as antecedent 'causes' for others, the consequent 'effects', whereas in reality causal efficacy lies with God alone.63 As stated by Guiderdoni, "the regularities observed in the world are not due to causal connection, but to a constant conjunction between the phenomena, which is a custom 6 1 established by God." Al-Attas points out that it is in the light of these Qur'anic verses bearing on the true nature of causality that the original philosophical contribution and significance of kaldm atomism or occasionalism has to be appreciated:65 namely as essentially an attempt to demonstrate rationally the absolute poverty of any ontic autonomy on the part of nature and all natural processes, and hence the impossibility of real or efficacious linear or multilinear horizontal naturalistic causality as envisaged in the original Darwinian and various neo-Darwinian theories of evolution. His stand against evolutionary theories is clearly borne out in his respectful criticism of Muhammad Iqbal's Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam for "...his 62. Grof, Stanislav "East and West: Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science," in idem, (ed., 1984), Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science, State University of New York Press, Albany, NY, pp. 3-23 on page 10. 63. Paraphrase of Mermer, Yamine Bouguenaya (1997), "Cause and Effect in the Risale-i Nur" in proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Bediuzzaman Said Nursi: The Reconstruction of Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century and Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, tr. Siikran Vahide, vol. I: Sozler Nesriyet, Istanbul, pp. 40-52 on page 45. 64. Guiderdoni, Bruno, "How Did the Universe Begin? Cosmology & Metaphysics for the 21st Century," pp. 1-9 on page 6, conference papers, Conference Manual, International Conference on Religion and Science in the Post-Colonial World, organized by the Center for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies, Gadja Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia and The Templeton Foundation, USA, January 2-5, 2003. See also idem, "The Islamic Worldview and Modern Cosmology" in Richardson, W. M., Russell, R. J., et al. (eds., 2002), Science and the Spiritual Quest: New Essays by Leading Scientists, Routledge, London and New York. 65. Mysticism, pp. 190, n. 31; Hujjat, pp. 210-3; Bakar, Osman "The Atomistic Conception of Nature in Ashcarite Theology" in History and Philosophy of Islamic Science, Islamic Texts Society, Cambridge, pp. 77101; Wan Mohd Nor, Educational Philosophy, p. 322, n. 83, pp. 323-30 passim.

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reduction of Sufism such that it becomes confused with the science and philosophy of organic or biological and non-organic evolution."66 About this "grave mistake" of Iqbal67, al-Attas has this to say: Neither the creative evolution of Bergson, nor the theory of evolution of Nietzsche about the inexplicable, new mutation of the human species bringing into existence the superman is congenial to Sufism or to Islam. Indeed the evolutionary concept of nature in modern science and philosophy already implies a sort of contempt for past human achievement—a character trait prevalent among the so-called Muslim 'modernists'. As to Darwin's theory of biological evolution which caused the emergence of the concept of evolution in modern science and philosophy, this is alien to Sufism and to Islam. It is true that in the writings of the Ikhwan al-Safa, of ibn Miskawayh, of Sufis such as ibn cArabi and Rural, and later again repeated in the work of ibn Khaldun, a scientific form of a theory of evolution is found which bears a striking resemblance to the Darwinian theory of evolution. But the resemblance is superficial, for the Muslim thinkers and Sufis were referring to the gradation in nature involving the spiritual evolution of man, not to the evolutionary concept of nature that Darwin inaugurated in modern science and philosophy.68 66. Hujjat, p. 460. For Iqbal's Reconstruction, see the 2nd annotated edition by Sheikh, M. Saeed (1989), Iqbal Academy & Institute of Islamic Culture, Lahore, which provides useful references to the many authors and works cited by Iqbal. 67. Hujjat, p. 460. 68. Hujjat, pp. 460-61. Modern evolutionary theory, especially in the neoDarwinian formulations of Gould, Stephen Jay (1980), The Panda's Thumb, W. W. Norton & Co., New York and London; Dawkins, Richard (1976), The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, Oxford; idem, The Blind Watchmaker (1985), W. W. Norton, London; Ruse, Michael (1986), Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy, Basil Blackwell, Oxford; Dennet, Daniel (1995), Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Simon & Schuster, New York; Sober, Elliot (1993), Philosophy of Biology, Oxford University Press, Oxford:, et al., is essentially a sophisticated re-articulation in scientific/biological terms

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Al-Attas' conception of causality necessarily impinges on notions of time and space. Since things and events partake only of symbolic existence, the distinction between them is ultimately ideal and logical, not substantial and spatio-temporal. This means that time and space are not the two independent, objective and absolute self-subsistent realities against the background of which the cosmological drama is acted out, but rather they partake of the relativity of physical things and events. Or as Paul Davies puts it: ...space and time are not merely the arena in which the drama of the universe is acted out but part of the cast. That is, space-time is as much a part of the physical universe as matter; in fact the two are intimately interwoven.69

In reality, time and space are but conceptual categories by which the things and events of the phenomenal world are experienced and ordered meaningfully in the mind of the perceiver. Hence, time and space are just as created as the things and events themselves. This interrelativity of time and space to entities and events and to perception is indicated in of the philosophical notion of progress which affirms the autodevelopment of what is latent in eternal matter. Some recent religious, philosophical and scientific critiques of biological evolution are Moreland, J. P., (ed., 1994), The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer, InterVarsity Press, Downer's Grove, Illinois, esp. the articles in pt. II, pp. 139-269; Behe, Michael (1996), Darwin's Black Box, Simon & Shuster, New York; Denton, Michael (1996), Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1st paperback ed. Adler & Adler, Chevy Chase, MD; Yahya, Harun (tr. 2000) by Mustapha Ahmad as The Evolution Deceit: The Scientific Collapse of Darwinism and Its Ideological Background, Ta Ha, London; Janabi, T. H. (1990), Clinging to a Myth: The Story Behind Evolution, American Trust Publications, Indianapolis, IN; Johnson, Phillip E. (1994), Darwin on Trial, Monarch, Crowborough, East Sussex; Lunn, Arnold (ed. 1947), Is Evolution Proved: A Debate between Douglas Dewar and H. S. Shelton, Hollis and Carter, London; Bakar, Osman (ed., 1988), Critique of Evolutionary Theory: A Collection of Essays, ASASI & Nurin Enterprise, Kuala Lumpur; Dewar, Douglas (1957), The Transformist Illusion, Dehoff Publications, Murfreesboro, Tennessee; and Keller (1999), Evolutionary Theory and Islam. 69. "Introduction" to Heisenberg (reprn., 1990), Physics and Philosophy, Penguin Books, London, p. 3.

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numerous Qur'anic verses such as Your creation and your raising (from the dead) are only as (the creation and raising of) a single soul',70 and Our commandment is a single act, as a twinkling of the eye.71 As al-Attas explains it: ...we see, from the point of view of human cognition, and when we consider the act of creation and the creative process that follows in terms of the 'descent' of ultimate Reality from the degree of pure absoluteness and utter concealment to those of manifestation and determination in the lower degrees of the ontological levels, that it is the human mind that posits (i.e. ictibdr) a temporal sequence, a distance measureable in terms of time, from the highest to the lower degree; whereas in reality the act of creation and the whole creative process involved in the varying degrees occurs all at once...72 In other words, time and space, including spatio-temporal causality are categories applicable to human perception, cognition and action; they are not applicable to God's knowledge and His creative act. Hence there is no necessary horizontal relation between one thing or event with another in the sensible, physical world. Any apparent horizontal relations obtaining between things and events are only just that, apparent, and only by virtue of their necessary, direct relation to their common vertical ontological source, God; thus there is not a thing but hymns His praise.73 The conclusion from this is that cosmological laws and regularities are not inherent, necessary properties of the cosmos, but are properties designed for and imposed on it (taskhir) by a Unique, Transcendent Intelligent Being of Will and Power—properties which are somehow perceived by the human mind through its committed involvement in the scientific study of nature. Epistemology Al-Attas' epistemology is essentially a theory of rational psychology or human cognition. He affirms the traditional view that it is the rational faculty of human beings that marks them off from other creatures, and, 70. Q. 31:28. 71. Q. 54:50. 72. Prolegomena, p. 321, and also in this context, p. 331 ff for al-Attas' interpretation of the 'Six Days of Creation'. 73. Q. 17:44.

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hence, what most defines humanity. Therefore the study of human psychology is essentially the study of the nature and scope of the human intellect by means of which human beings apprehend their relation to God and to the world. From this psycho-epistemological perspective, Islamic science involves the application of the 'sound senses' to the experience of reality, and of'sound reason' to the apprehension of truth.74 In line with Islamic faculty psychology as articulated by ibn Slna, alGhazall and ibn al-cArabI, al-Attas espouses what has been called a "psychological framework of epistemology."75 Since the philosophy about the nature of things in the world of sense and sensible experience (calam alshahddah) is conceived and formulated by man's intellect (caql), we shall have at least to know even a little about the intellect by which man is defined and, through which he visualizes reality and truth.76

Following al-Nasafl (d. 537/1142), whom he has studied closely,77 alAttas affirms that knowledge comes from God Who is the ultimate source. This knowledge from God is acquired or accessed by human beings through the channels of the sound senses, authoritative true reports, sound reason and intuition. This epistemology is summarized in outline

74. IPS, p. 2; Prolegomena, p. 112. 75. Mohd Zaidi bin Ismail (2002), The Sources of Knowledge in al-Ghazdli's Thought: A Psychological Framework of Epistemology, 1STAC Master's Theses Series no. 2, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur. For al-Attas' psychology, see CEI, pp. 13-6, and his (\990)The Nature of Man and the Psychology of the Human Soul: A Brief Outline and a Framework for an Islamic Psychology and Epistemology, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur, which also constitutes Chapter IV of the Prolegomena, pp. 143-76. 76. PAT, p. 3. 77. "Abu Hafs c Umar Najm al-Din al-Nasafi (d. 537/1142) was one of the greatest Sunni and Hanafi juriconsults and theologians belonging to the school of al-Maturldl (d. 333/944) who wrote an abridgement of the creed of Islam known as the cAqd'id...., which is the first statement in concise form and well-knit phrasing of the creed to appear among the Muslims...."; see al-Attas' 1988 study of the cAqd'id in his The Oldest Known Malay Manuscript: A 16th Century Malay Translation of the 'Aqd'id of Al-Nasafi, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, pp. 6-7, henceforth Nasafi.

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below, in which the latter two channels are subsumed under a single common category, the intellect:78 SOURCES AND METHODS OF KNOWLEDGE IN ISLAM Knowledge comes from God, and is acquired through the channels of: I. Sound senses (hawass): (i) five external senses: touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing (ii) five internal senses: common sense, representation, estimation, retention, recollection, imagination II. True report (khabar sddiq) based on authority (naql):7g (i) absolute authority80 (a) divine authority, i.e., the Qur'an (b) prophetic authority, i.e., the Messenger (ii) relative authority,81 (a) consensus of learned scholars (tawdtur)82 (b) report of trustworthy people in general III. Intellect (c^/)83 (i) sound reason (ratio) (ii) intuition (hods, wijddn)84

78. My summary of IPS, pp. 9-13; Prolegomena, pp. 118-21. 79. True report is ultimately grounded in intuitive experience of sensible or transcendental reality as the case may be; IPS, p. 12; Prolegomena, p. 121; further discussion in Hujjat, pp. 292-4. 80. i.e., unquestionable authority; IPS, pp. 12-3 and Prolegomena, p. 121, where al-Attas says that the Qur'an and the Prophet "represent authority not only in the sense that they communicate the truth, but in the sense also that they constitute the truth." 81. i.e., competent, not supreme, authority who can be questioned by reason and experience; IPS, p. 12; Prolegomena, p. 121. See Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 164, on the difference between 'competent' and 'supreme' authority in science. 82. IPS, p. 12; Prolegomena, p. 12; Hujjat, pp. 292-93. 83. The intellect is a spiritual substance by which the rational soul recognizes truth and distinguishes it from falsehood, and this recognition is expressed through the articulation of linguistic symbols into meaningful patterns; its cognitive function pertains both to sensible and transcendental reality; see Prolegomena, pp. 121-3; IPS, pp. 13-5. 84. Understood as "sagacity" and "illuminative experience" respectively; see IPS, p. 16; Prolegomena, p. 124.

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The knowledge from God through these channels is grasped by the intellect (caql), a spiritual (i.e., non-material) substance inhering in the heart, which is the spiritual organ of cognition "by which the rational soul (al-nafs al-ndtiqah) recognizes and distinguishes truth from falsehood."85 Reason is not opposed to intuition but is intimately connected to it through the "mediacy of the intellect."86 The intellect thus subsumes both discursive reason and immediate intuition within its purview and, in this sense, caql is "an organic unity of both ratio and intellectus"87 Al-Attas argues that the operational scope of reason and intuition is not restricted to the interpretation and experience of matters of the world of sense and sensible experience. Rather, the scope of the intuitive faculty extends also to the "direct and immediate apprehension of religious truths, of the existence and reality of God, of the reality of existences as opposed to essences...indeed...[it extends to] the intuition of existence itself."88 Through the medium of the intellect, the scope of reason extends also to the reflection on, and systematic articulation of, these intuitive truths.89 It is through intuitive insight that the "integrated system of reality"90 is revealed, partially to scientists but wholly to Sufis.91 The difference between these two intuitive insights—one partial, the other whole—is due to the fact that while the scientists are led to intuitive discoveries through the disciplining of their capacities to experience and reason at the normal sensible level of consciousness, the Sufis cultivate, in addition, the disciplining of their inner ethico-spiritual faculties by which the ultimate Truth is directly experienced and apprehended.92 For as 85. al-Attas, CEI, p. 14; ISPF, p. 174. 86. IPS, p. 10; Prolegomena, p. 119. 87. PAT, p. 3. 88. IPS, p. 10-11; Prolegomena, p. 119, 177-215 passim. 89. IPS, p. 10; Prolegomena, p. 119. 90. IPS, p. 11; Prolegomena, p. 120. 91. IPS, p. 12; Prolegomena, p. 120 92. IPS, p. 12; Prolegomena, p. 120. See also Hujjat, p. 464, where al-Attas says: "But whereas the levels of intuition to which rational and empirical methods might lead refer only to specific aspects of the nature of reality, and not to the whole of it, the levels of intuition at the higher levels of human consciousness to which prophets and saints attain give direct insight into the nature of reality as a whole." Cf. the role of intuition in modern scientific inquiry in Medawar, Peter Brian (1969, reprn. 1980), Induction and Intuition in Scientific

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c

Abd al-Karim al-jill (d. 1408) said, "Man is the link between God and Nature. Every man is a copy of God in His perfection; none is without the power to become a perfect man."93 Hence, trans-empirical experience of ultimate reality is accessible, in principle, to every human being. The caql or intellect is then the nexus or isthmus, as it were, by which the ontologically lower phenomenal world of sense and sensible experience is organically connected to its ontologically higher noumenal metaphysical source, and by which the latter is rendered accessible to human experience and understanding. From this unitary, ontological perspective, al-Attas articulates his definition of knowledge, or rather the process of knowing thus: Since all knowledge conies from God, and is interpreted by the soul through its physical and spiritual or intelligential faculties, it follows that the epistemological definition would be that knowledge, with reference to God as being its source of origin, is the arrival of meaning in the soul; and with reference to the soul as being its active recipient and interpreter, knowledge is the arrival of the soul at meaning.94

Al-Attas makes clear that epistemology reflects ontology, for the "very essence" of man as the "epitome of Creation" is his "rationality which is the connecting link between him and Reality,"95 and hence the noumenon can be known, in contrast to Kant, for whom knowledge can only be of phenomena.96 In short, "the operational powers and capacities of the cognitive faculties and senses" extend to both the domains of physical and of metaphysical realities.97 Accordingly, al-Attas considers human Thought, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. Medawar speaks about the "intuitive element" in deductive, inductive and analogical reasoning, and in the process of experimentation (pp. 567). For him, intuitive insight—as the source of hypotheses—is "nonlogical, i.e. outside logic" instead of "illogical" (p. 46). Cf. Polanyi, Michael (reprinted 1998), Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, Routledge, London, pp. 130-1. 93. Cited in Mysticism, p. 92. 94. IPS, p. 27; Prolegomena, p. 133. 95. Mysticism, pp. 194-95, also p. 92 n. 157. 96. IS, pp. 11, 37; Mysticism, pp. 103-10; ISPF, pp. 10, 35. 97. Hujjat, pp. 461-62.

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existence "as having different levels corresponding to the various spheres of operation of the external and internal senses." These levels of human existence encompass the ontological, cosmological and psychological domains, and are as follows: 98 a. Real (haqiqi) existence, i.e., objective reality/external world b. Sensible (hissi) existence c. Imaginary (khaydll) existence d. Intellectual (caqli) existence e. Analogous (shibhi) existence f. Suprarational/transcendental existence or holy existence The "innate faculty of knowing"99 or caql, which pertains to the psychological domain of human existence, is most clearly manifested in our use of language, for it is through language that the contents of knowledge are most richly and objectively expressed. Al-Attas notes the significance of the traditional definition of the human being as al-hayawdn al-ndtiq, the 'rational animal', which also means the thinking/speaking animal. Knowing and speaking are intricately bound in such a way that "the articulation of linguistic symbols into meaningful patterns is no other than the outward, visible and audible expression of the inner, unseen reality which we call the intellect (ca^/)."100 And so, it is through objective language that the subjective mind is known, a view whose implications find many interesting, profound parallels in the Chomskyan cognitive psychology of Ray Jackendoff.101 98. IPS, pp. 16-17; Prolegomena, pp. 124-25. 99. IPS, pp. 13, 24; Prolegomena, pp. 122, 131. 100. IPS, p. 14; Prolegomena, p. 122. 101. There are broad structural similarities between al-Attas' conception of the mind as a spiritual organ of cognition and Noam Chomsky's conception of it as an abstract mental organ which leads to common empirical possibilities as both attempt at defining, to some extent, the innate unseen mind by its "outward, visible and audible manifestation," namely language; see al-Attas, CEI, pp. 14-15; PAT, p. 3; IPS, p. 14; Prolegomena, p. 122; ISPF, pp. 174-5. Cf. Chomsky, Noam (1989), Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 1-34 passim, as well as some of his many other works; and Jackendoff, Ray (1993), Patterns in the Mind: Language and Human Nature, Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York, pp. 3-35 passim, which works out the implications of the Chomskyan

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Since the intellect reflects reality, and language reflects the intellect, it follows therefore that language too reflects reality, or at least, it expresses the reality that is perceived by the senses, intuited by the heart and conceptualized in the mind. In other words, the way a man uses language tells much about the way in which he conceives of reality. Specifically, the way language is used in science to form the semantic network of key-terms by which the sensible world is described and organized tells much about the ontological status of this world in a particular scientific worldview.102 It then follows that the scientific description of the world is not neutral, for this description already involves, at least tacitly, some form of subjective conceptual judgment about the true nature of the world. If that is so, then by what objective criteria does one knows that a particular conceptual judgment accurately reflects/represents and thus 'conforms to' and is 'true of the nature of external, extramental reality, and, by extension, of the totality of being and existence? For al-Attas, it is in the answer to this question that ultimately lies the demarcation between Islamic science and Western science. Despite the apparent similarities in the understanding of the nature of phenomenal reality and in the methods of inquiry pertaining to it, the underlying "profound differences" between Islamic and Western philosophies of science is due ultimately to "our affirmation of Revelation—and the Tradition derived from it—as the source of true knowledge of ultimate

linguistic-cognitive approach for human cognitive capacities other than language, such as the cognitive capacities for vision, musical appreciation and culture (social organization). 102. In CEI, pp. 1-13, al-Attas elaborates at length on the scientific nature of the Arabic language of the Qur'an, "which is the language of Islam, and upon which the Islamic sciences are based, and by which its vision of reality and truth is projected" (p. 2). Cf. for instance the discussion in Heisenberg, Werner (1972), Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations, Harper Torchbooks, New York, pp. 12540, 188-90; and idem (1990), Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science, Penguin, London, pp. 155-74, where he talks of the relation between the concepts of natural language and scientific concepts, and their connection with experience of reality. Cf. also the discussion in Griinfeld, Joseph (1973), Science and Values, B. R. Griiner Publishing, Amsterdam, pp. 76-106, on "Language, Culture and Philosophy" and "Logic, Language and Metaphysics." Cf. also, Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, pp. 80-1, 94-5, 112, 286-8.

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reality."103 In other words, the noumenon exists and it can be discursively inferred to through the study of phenomena, and this discursive knowledge is in turn both confirmable subjectively through direct personal intuition and objectively through authoritative Revelation and Tradition, and the shared experience of the Sufis. In line with the idea that the intellect reflects reality, al-Attas says that the divine revelation is addressed to the human soul and coheres within a system of conceptual relations already imprinted upon the soul or "intelligential spirit."104 The speculative conception of external reality is true if it is confirmed by Revelation and if it coheres within an integrated system of interrelated truths as apprehended by the soul. In other words, any discursive conception of the world is true insofar as it is in accord with the internal intuitive apprehension of the soul and with the external divine revelation, and insofar as it is in harmony with the "true order of reality,"105 or alfitrah,106 which obviously includes the natural orders of both the external macrocosmos and the internal microcosmos of the human psyche.107 This assumption of a given unacquired intuitive and revelatory source of true judgments transcending discursive reason is both a logical and an empirical imperative. Already, relentless modern scientific inquiry into the nature of the physical world has led to the conclusion that it is contingent and thus not self-explanatory, and thereby to the postulation of its real, efficacious metaphysical source. For without this assumption of a metaphysical explanation, discursive scientific argumentation would, in the final analysis, only be tautological or circular or infinitely regressive. Methodology Given al-Attas' ontology, cosmology and epistemology as outlined above, what then would be the appropriate principal scientific method or conceptual tool for inferring the meaning (wider interrelations and 103. IPS, pp. 8-9, 34; Prolegomena, pp. 117-8, 140-1. 104. IPS, p. 34; Prolegomena, p. 141. 105. IPS, pp. 24-25; Prolegomena, pp. 130-1. 106. Prolegomena, pp. 41, 51-2, 144; Psychology, p. 2; al-Attas (1976), Islam: The Concept of Religion and the Foundations of Ethics and Morality, I STAC Kuala Lumpur, pp. 12; IS, pp. 45, 61-2, 139, 163, 163 n. 124. 107. Among other things, it may be said here that this holistic epistemology is pregnant with positive, universal implications for overcoming the ecological crisis both at the conceptual and political levels, but this would not be the place to elaborate.

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ultimate significance) of physical phenomena (things, events and processes constituting the world) Al-Attas proposes the method of tafslr and ta'wil for "just as the Qur'an contains apparent (established) and hidden (ambiguous) meanings, so does the book of nature contain meanings that are established and those that are ambiguous."108 Thus he draws a methodological analogy between studying the book (language) of revelation and studying the book (language) of creation.109 For this methodology to be scientific and for the analogy to be valid, a degree of objective semantic permanence and precision is presupposed for the conceptual structural network of Qur'anic vocabulary110—a degree of permanence and precision which is somehow reflected in the order, regularity and harmony of natural phenomena. Just as there are permanence and order in the meanings of the words of the Book, so too there are permanence and order in the meanings of the things of Nature.111 Just as there is no "crookedness" (ciwaj)lu in the Arabic language of the Qur'an (book of signs of Revelation), so correspondingly there is no "rift" (tafdwut)n?> in the physical structure of Nature (book of signs of Creation); otherwise signs (ayat) will cease to be signs, they will point to nothing, and science will not be possible.114 The understanding of the established or apparent signs (dydt muhkamdt)—whose meanings are more or less transparent or evident to 108. Hujjat, p. 456. 109. CEI, p. 7 ff. See also Bakar, Osman "The Question of Methodology in Islamic Science," in his book History and Philosophy of Islamic Science, pp. 13-38, especially pages 33-38, where he discusses al-Attas on tafslr and ta'wil. Cf. (1992), Reading the Book of Nature: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 5-7, where Peter Kosso too draws interesting and insightful analogies between the scientific study of nature and reading and understanding a book, but he does not explain why "in particular" his "methodological analogy is not meant to suggest nature has an author," and so, unfortunately, the analogy is not explored further to its ultimate logical consequence. Wan Mohd Nor in Educational Philosophy, pp. 343-54 passim, takes care to caution that the tafsirtawll method is not to be confused with hermeneutics. 110. C£7, p. 2ff. 111. Paraphrase of CEI, pp. 15-6. 112. Q. 39:28; CEI, p. 2. 113. Q. 67:3. 114. Paraphrase of CEI, pp. 15-16.

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the mind or senses—is acquired through the method of tapir, while the understanding of the ambiguous or subtler signs (dydt mutashdbihdt) is through ta'wil (allegorical interpretation). "Ta'wil basically means getting to the ultimate, primordial meaning of something through a process of intellection."115 This means that the "apparent meanings as arrived at by way of common sense" through the process of tafslr are neither to be considered as final nor exhaustive, but as subsumable under a higher and more general meaning, which, by its very nature, is more abstract (i.e., removed from normal, commonsensical experience) but which is nonetheless more real and fundamental. As applied to both the physical and spiritual spheres of reality, the apparent significance that is arrived at through tafsir is to be reinterpreted through ta'wil so as to arrive at a deeper or more general significance under which the apparent significance is subsumable. Hence ta'wil is an intensive extension of tafsir, and as such, the two can never be in conflict, because the former must proceed from, and be understood against, the background of the latter. In short, tafsir is a necessary condition of ta'wil, and without responsible tafsir there can be no responsible ta'wil. In both cases—in scientific as well as in religious matters—the recourse to ta'wil is not arbitrary, but arises out of two main considerations: (1) the need to capture subtler aspects of meaning and reality that are somehow perceived but cannot be accounted for, or accomodated within, the normal, commonsensical (tafsiri) interpretative framework; and (2) the need to reconcile between anomalous sets of apparent meanings acquired through tafsir by reference to a higher, more real and more integrative category within which the anomalies can either be resolved or transcended. By this principal tafsir-ta^wil methodology, al-Attas alludes to the fact that there are hierarchical degrees of significance in physical phenomena, from the self-evident meanings of immediate sensible experience to abstract meanings farther and farther removed from sensible experience, meanings which ultimately can only be intuited by the intellect. However, there are cognitive limits to the human intellect, including limits to scientific cognition,116 and therefore: 115. IPS, p. 31; Prolegomena, p. 138. 116. A detailed exploration of scientific limits is in Faust, David (1984), The Limits of Scientific Reasoning, University of Minnessota Press, Minneapolis, and Barrow, John D. (1998), Impossibility: The Limits of

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...there are things whose ultimate meanings cannot be grasped by the intellect; and those deeply rooted in knowledge accept them as they are through true belief which we call imdn. This is the position of truth: in that there are limits to the meanings of things, and their places are profoundly bound up with the limits of their significance.117 For al-Attas, as for Schumacher and Coates, the problem of methodology (or verification procedure) in Western science stems from its tacit dogmatic, a priori adherence to a speculative metascientific vision that arbitrarily restricts reality to the natural world as the only level of reality118—a vision which in turn prematurely "narrows the conception of verification in terms of sense-data."119 This gives rise to a science that is characterized by what Schumacher refers to as "a methodical aversion to the recognition of higher levels or grades of significance"120—an aversion which he traces to Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Descartes (1596-1650), Christian Huygens (1629-1695), Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Charles Darwin (1809-1882), Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) and Sir Arthur Eddington (1882-1944).121 Mainstream mechanistic science sees the world as "a self-subsistent system evolving according to its own laws,"122 thus the denial or irrelevancy of God, and the conceptual and methodological reduction of all aspects of reality to the physical as the only level of reality, and the corresponding restriction of the operational scope of human cognitive powers to this level of reality whose valid object and purpose is only to describe and systemize the relations therein.123 Accordingly, the methods of modern science involve various forms of empirico-rationalism (i.e., Science and the Science of Limits, Oxford University Press, Oxford. For the personal views of prominent scientists on the question of "the end of science" see Horgan, John (1996), The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age, Addison-Wesley New York. 117. IPS, pp. 31-2; Prolegomena, p. 138. 118. IPS, p. 5; Prolegomena, p. 115. 119. Coates, Ibn cArabi and Modern Thought, p. 67. 120. Schumacher, E. F. (1978), A Guide for the Perplexed, Harper & Row, New York, p. 43. 121. Ibid., pp. 8-12, 51-4, 100-2, 111-6. 122. IPS, p. 5; Prolegomena, p. 115. 123. IPS, pp. 5-6; Prolegomena, p. 115.

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conceptual systemization of the factual, informative input of sensible experience), which, in keeping with horizontal causalism, serves to abstract general patterns from sensible particulars or to reduce holistic experience to sensible parts or quantitative processes seen as somehow causally prior to yet constitutive of that experience. This is despite the fact that in the course of diligently implementing this reductionist methodological procedure, scientists often find themselves generating ideas pertaining to domains of reality that obviously transcend the strictly empirical spheres of experience and thus may not be reducible to "sensational elements,"124 and in the process "materialism transcends itself."125 Ironically, the inexorable internal logic of the empirico-rational method itself renders such transcendental ideas not easily dismissable as irrational or unscientific, or even non-scientific. Modern physics, despite its self-limiting cognitive goals, leads to various considerations of metaphysics, and biology to considerations of teleology, and thus to rational considerations of the very possibility of a real, effective transcendental source of being and knowledge, and, by extension, to the very possibility of an objective 'mystical' experience of that source.126 Therefore it seems cognitively and intellectually inevitable that honest, reflective scientists like Werner Heisenberg should have expressed their reservations about the Darwinian idea of evolution,127 and posed to themselves and to their colleagues questions such as these: "Was it utterly absurd to seek behind the ordering structures of this world a "consciousness" whose "intentions" were these very structures?";128 and 124. IPS, p. 4; Prolegomena, p. 114. 125. Popper, Karl R. "Materialism Transcends Itself," in idem and Eccles, John C. (1983), The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism, 2nd ed., Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, pp. 3-35 passim. 126. For a sampling, see Behe, Darwin's Black Box, pp. 187-231 passim; Capra, Fritjof (1983), The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism, revised ed. Bantam Books, Toronto & New York; Grof, Stanislav (ed., 1984), Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science, State University of New York Press Albany, NY; Swinburne, Richard (1990), "Argument from the FineTuning of the Universe" in John Leslie, ed., Physical Cosmology and Philosophy, Macmillan, New York and Collier Macmillan, London, pp. 154-73. 127. Physics and Beyond, p. 213. 128. Ibid., pp. 113-4.

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"Can you, or anyone else, reach the central order of things and events, whose existence seems beyond doubt, as directly as you can reach the soul of another human being?"129 While Islamic science similarly combines rationalism and empiricism in its methodology, and so does not subscribe to a methodological cleavage between the two,130 it also affirms Revelation as a source of knowledge about matters beyond the empirico-rational methods of verification and comprehension. While the truth of Revelation is, on the one hand, independent of empirico-rational reasoning, the former is yet accessible to the latter and does not contradict it, but rather it informs, confirms and even "corrects" it. This is because reason "functions in conformity" with the intellect, which intuits the truths of Revelation.131 Moreover, on the other hand, the inherent limit of the empirico-rational method itself leads the mind inexorably to transcend its own bounds and thence to the affirmation of Revelation and direct, unmediated intuitive knowledge. In this sense belief in Revelation is a scientific belief not a leap of blind faith, for there is no logical or cognitive gap or inconsistency between belief in reason and experience on the one hand and belief in Revelation and intuition on the other. This is so because if the empiricorational method can infer in a logical self-consistent manner to an ultimate Reality, then it can also infer further to the very possibility of this Reality being either directly or indirectly self-revealing and enabling relative, contingent beings to comprehend to a certain extent that divine self-revelation. Thus it seems that for many respectable, prominent scientists, Heisenberg's "central order" can be reachable through a combination of discursive intellectual reflection and direct spiritual experience.132 For al-Attas, there is no particular a priori method of discovery and justification that is uniform for all problems, for problems vary in degree of complexity and may not all be of one class but of different classes not mutually reducible to one another in a horizontal manner, and nor do they have to be so reducible in the first place. Al-Attas recognizes that 129. Ibid., p. 215. 130. PAT, p. 8. 131. IPS, p. 10; Prolegomena, p. 119. 132. Richardson, W. M., Russell, R. J. et al. (eds., 2002), Science and the Spiritual Quest: New Essays by Leading Scientists, Routledge, London and New York.

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Islamic science affirms the existence of hierarchic orders of reality and encompasses them all within its scope of valid, "legitimate scientific" inquiry. Even within the sensible horizontal realm of things, there exist four interrelated yet fundamentally distinctive hierarchic "kingdoms" of nature: the mineral, vegetal, animal and human, in ascending order. And even within the same natural kingdom, the relations between the entities therein are essentially systemic, typological, analogous, hierarchic and discontinous, rather than overlapping, homologous, lineal, sequential and continous. It may be added that this multi-level structural organization is an undeniable, self-evident feature of non-living systems as well. As Fritjof Capra summarizes it: Living systems are organized in such a way that they form multi-level structures, each level consisting of subsystems which are wholes in regard to their parts, and parts with respect to the larger wholes.133

At the apex of the order of nature as a whole is humankind, which is a kingdom apart, since in it alone are combined all the salient characteristics of the three preceding natural kingdoms (constituting its "body") and the spiritual kingdom (constituting its "mind/soul"). Hence every human being uniquely partakes of both the natural and the spiritual as the nexus by which the physical is consciously connected to the metaphysical. Any coherent system of knowledge and its resultant methodology, to be adequate,134 will have to take into unified consideration the ontological and epistemological relation between the human being as the knowing subject who is both body and soul, and

133. Cited in Baker, Ilyas (1998), "The Flight of Time, Ecology and Islam" in Islam and the Environment edited by Harfiyah Abdel Haleem, Ta Ha Publishers, London, p. 76. For a detailed, scientific discussion on the hierarchical and "typological perception of nature" and "the failure of homology" see Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, pp. 93-156. For a candid commonsensical reflection on the self-evident hierarchic structure of the natural world, and what this hierarchy indicates of transcendent realms of being, see Schumacher (1978), A Guide for the Perplexed, pp. 15-39. 134. See Guide for the Perplexed, pp. 40-61, for Schumacher's elaboration of the concept of adaequatio, i.e., the principle that the cognitive powers of the knowing subject are to be adequate for accessing the object to be known.

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Reality, the object of this knowing which is experienced yet transcends experience. Therefore, the study of nature by science ought not to be reduced to the methods of empiricism and rationalism that operate solely on the world of objects or events in space and time and their relations. The statements and general conclusions derived from these methods must be reformulated, and the methods themselves modified, such that they can be integrated into a unified system that discloses the ultimate Reality in positive terms.135

It follows then that problems conceived in relation to a particular aspect or order of reality may not be solvable in the same way as those conceived in relation to a subtler aspect or a higher and more indeterminate order of reality. Even wthin the same natural kingdom, the mineral for instance, the problems conceived in relation to it may be solvable not by any single method in isolation, but by a combination of historical (retroductive), observational, experimental and mathematical methods. Obviously, the problem of methodological adequacy will become more intricate the higher up or lower down the 'ladder' of reality we go,136 for then the method existentially involves, to a significant extent, not only the object to be known but the knowing subject as well. As Schumacher sees it, problems are mainly either "convergent" that can be solved because they pertain to the physical, quantitative relations among 135. Hujjat, p. 465. 136. Or even further horizontally along the same 'physical' level of reality. Heisenberg, in Physics and Philosophy, p. 187, warns of the methodological danger of "the somewhat forced application of scientific concepts in domains where they did not belong"; and Michael Redhead in his (1995), From Physics to Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 84 warns of the "real danger in scientism, trying to apply the methods of science to unsuitable areas of experience, such perhaps as the subjective content of human thought." An important, specific case in point is the pseudo-scientific method of vivisection in mainstream modern medical research which invalidly extrapolates from the results of drug-testing on animals and applies them to human beings; see the eye-opening book by Croce, Pietro (1999), trans, by Turtle, Henry as Vivisection or Science? An Investigation into Testing Drugs and Safeguarding Health, Zed Books, London.

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things, or are "divergent" that are to be "transcended" rather than solved because they pertain to non-physical, higher order qualitative relations obtaining in the complex richness of actual, lived experience outside the rarified, isolated and artificial experience of modern scientific laboratories.137 Thus the conscious choice and formulation of any specific method or conceptual tool will have to be a posteriority decided on a case by case basis in due awareness and recognition of the "multivalent nature" of reality, of which the knower himself is an intrinsic, existential part.138 It further follows then that one cannot simply dismiss out of hand or charge with obscurantism the reflexive, holistic Sufi method of intellectospiritual and ethico-moral discipline by means of which experience and knowledge of transcendent reality is truely gained. The only requirement here it seems would be that the Sufi method should be adequate for its task, and open to anyone willing and motivated enough to undergo the necessary discipline it entails. Al-Attas is in effect claiming that the Sufi method is, in principle and in practice, so open and adequate, and hence that it is a positive scientific method. His description of how the Sufis attain to experience of ultimate reality serves to support this claim: With reference to intuition at the higher levels of truth, intuition does not just come to anyone, but to one who has lived his life in the experience of religious truth by sincere, practical devotion to God, who has by means of intellectual attainment understood the nature of the oneness of God and what this oneness implies in an integrated metaphysical system, who has constantly meditated upon the nature of this reality, and who then, during 137. Guide for the Perplexed, pp. 120-8. 138. Coates, Peter (2002), Ibn cArabi and Modern Thought: The History of

Taking Metaphysics Seriously, Anqa, Oxford, pp. 76-7. Cf. Feyerabend, Paul (1987), Science in a Free Society, Verso, London, p. 98ff, where he says that "there is no single procedure, or set of rules that underlies every piece of research and guarantees that it is 'scientific' and, therefore, trustworthy. Every project, every theory, every procedure has to be judged on its own merits and by standards adapted to the processes with which it deals...Scientists revise their standards, their procedures, their criteria of rationality as they move along and enter new domains of research just as they revise and perhaps entirely replace their theories and their instruments as they move along and enter new domains of research."

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deep contemplation and by God's will, is made to pass away from consciousness of his self and his subjective states and to enter into the state of higher selfhood, subsisting in God. When he returns to his human, subjective condition, he loses what he has found, but the knowledge of it remains with him. It is in the duration of subsistence in God, when he gains his higher selfhood, that the direct and immediate apprehension takes place. He has been given a glimpse of the nature of reality in that duration of coincidence with the Truth. In his case the cognitive content of his intuition reveals to him the integrated system of reality as a whole.139

Normally, most informed but otherwise ordinary people are unwilling, unmotivated or unable for some reasons or others to undergo the discipline required of the Sufi path, and thus they are cut off from the experiential appreciation of transcendental truths accessible through it. Consequently they either have to accept the authority of the Sufis (just as most informed people who are not directly conversant with the truthclaims of modern physics accept them anyway), or they may reject it outright. But such a rejection would clearly be arbitrary if they fail to show that the methods of the Sufis are incoherent, inadequate and inaccessible in principle or in practice to anyone having the aptitude to undergo them. However, this acceptance of the authority of the Sufis does not at all mean that scientists have themselves to be practicing Sufis, but rather that they need to recognize on the intellectual if not experiential level that the Sufi vision of ultimate reality does have objective cognitive content and then to proceed to build a philosophy and methodology of science that are in accord with a critical and systematic articulation of that vision. Al-Attas' philosophy of science is then in effect a systematic argument for what he calls the 'scientific legitimacy' oftasawwuf, or what Corbin and Coates recognize as its 'scientific probity', or what is implied by Keller as its 'methodological adequacy',140 or cadaequatio.'141 It is at the same time a 139. IPS, p. 11; Prolegomena, pp. 119-20; cf. the broadly corrobative "sympathetic" philosophical investigation into mystical experience in general in Stace's Mysticism and Philosophy. 140. al-Attas, Hujjat, p. 457; Corbin, Creative Imagination, p. 46; Coates, Ibn c Arabi, p. 67; Keller, Evolution Theory and Islam, pp. 9-11 passim. 141. See above, note 134.

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systematic rejection of the arbitrary ontic, cognitive, methodological and symbolic self-restriction of modern science. Axiology Al-Attas' axiological system is most systematically set out—in his usual taut style—in his Islam: The Concept of Religion and the Foundations of Ethics and Morality,1^ and The Meaning and Experience of Happiness in Islam.143 Within the specific context of al-Attas' philosophy of science, his religious axiology naturally bears upon issues such as: What ontological status does this world have in the eyes of the Muslim working as a professional scientist? What are the cognitive and contextual (social) values of the scientific endeavor itself which render it interesting and worthy of being undertaken in the first place? And once the scientific inquiry is undertaken, can the observational descriptions, inferential procedures and interpretative frameworks underpinning the conclusions be articulated in neutral terms that do not express the a priori commitments, background assumptions and cultural values of the scientist? And if science does express the moral values and belief-systems of the scientist and of the social community in which his or her work finds ideological, material and emotive support (as is the consensus among many scientists, historians and philosophers of science lately),144 what is or what should be the source 142. (1976), ABIM, Kuala Lumpur, henceforth Islam. This book constitutes Chapter 1 of the Prolegomena. 143. (1993), ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur. This book constitutes Chapter II of the Prolegomena. 144. For some examples, see Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, pp. 175194; Kuhn, Thomas (1962), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed., with postcript, 1970, University of Chicago Press, Chicago; Griinfeld, Science and Values; Curd, Martin and Cover, J. A. (eds., 1998), Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues, W. W. Norton & Co., New York & London, section 2 on Rationality, Objectivity, and Values in Science, pp. 83-253, esp. the excerpt by Helen E. Longino, "Values and Objectivity," pp. 170-91, and the editors' excellent, detailed commentary on it and the section as a whole, pp. 210-53. Longino's excerpt is from her book (1990), Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, pp. 62-82; Lewontin, R. C. (1992), Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine Of DNA, Harper Collins, New York; Resnik, David B. (1998), The Ethics of Science: An Introduction, Routledge, London & New York; Sorell, Tom (1991), Scientism: Philosophy and the Infatuation with Science, Routledge, London & New

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or final reference of those values and belief systems? At a fundamental cognitive and evaluative level, how should the nature of facts (or factuality) be conceived and evaluated in relation to truth and falsehood, to reality and falsity,145 to natural (fitri) and artificial order, to knowledge and action? In sum, what is or what should be the ultimate purpose of the scientific endeavor that makes it valuable and meaningful and that justifies it being undertaken to begin with? All these are tough questions, the full, detailed implications of which have yet to be worked out and tackled systematically in contemporary terms from within the Islamic perspective, and this extended outline is certainly not extensive enough to harbor any pretensions of doing so. However, we may proceed. Although al-Attas does not deal with these and similar axiological issues pertaining to science in detail, a value-system of Islamic science can easily be derived from his exposition of the worldview or belief-system of Islam and the epistemology derived from it. Especially, in his Islam and Secularism1^, he has shown quite forcefully that the modern knowledge systems pervading the world today are not value free despite being undeniably sociogeographically ubiquitous. And from within the context of the Islamic metaphysical worldview, he has also shown how progressive, open-ended naturalistic science is ultimately purposeless and useless, and hence bereft of any significant existential and eschatological or salvational value to the concrete human individual given the brute, very personal inevitability of his mortality.147 His standpoint is that metascientific York; and also Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, pp. 203-45, on "conviviality" in science. 145. In a recent personal communication, al-Attas reminded me of the important difference between falsity (bdtil=non-reality as opposed to reality, haqq) and falsehood (kidhb=untruth, lie as opposed to sidq-truth, pertaining to statements). In relation to statements, the opposite of haqq as truth is kidhb, falsehood, untruth; in relation to "actions, feelings, beliefs, judgments, and the things and events in existence," the opposite of haqq as reality is bdtil, falsity, non-reality or illusion. Thus "the word haqq stands for both reality and truth," and so the proper English equivalent of haqq is the compound 'truthreality'. See Prolegomena, p. 126. 146. Especially Chapter V on "The Dewesternization of Knowledge," pp. 133-67. 147. Islam, pp. 36-7; IPS, p. 29; IS, pp. 82-5, 146-7; Prolegomena, pp. 37-9; al-Attas, "The Worldview of Islam: An Outline," keynote address in /CM, pp. 68-71; Wan Mohd Nor, Educational Philosophy, pp. 157-8;

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assumptions, while distinct from the scientific inquiry itself, serve to justify, direct and guide that inquiry, and provide interpretative frameworks making sense and relevant its factual, informative discoveries; and therefore values are inevitably intertwined with scientific inquiry, even embodied in its conceptual and tangible results. ...not all of western science and technology are necessarily objectionable to religion; but this does not mean that we have to uncritically accept the scientific and philosophical theories that go along with the science and technology, and the science and technology themselves, without first understanding their implications and testing the validity of the values that accompany the theories....no science is free of value; and to accept its presuppositions and general conclusions without being guided by genuine knowledge of our worldview—which entails knowledge also of our history, our thought and civilization, our identity—which will enable us to render correct judgments as to their validity and relevance or otherwise to our life, the change that would result in our way of life would simply be a change congenial to what is alien to our worldview and we would neither call such a change a 'development' nor a 'progress'.148

However, the interplay of evaluative commitment and demonstrative inquiry is not presented here as a cognitive defect, but rather it is seen as a cognitive reality pervading all human inquiry, even the most 'positive', 'hard' and 'exact'.149 As a matter of historical fact, "Some of the principal laws of science arose originally out of industrial experience. For instance, the Second Law of Thermodynamics resulted from efforts to improve the

For the eschatological or salvational significance of Islamic Science, see Guiderdoni, Bruno, previously cited in footnote 63. This eschatological dimension is intimately linked to true science or "true knowledge" which "fulfills man's purpose for knowing"; see below, note 155. 148. IS, p. 38. 149. Cf. Polanyi, Michael (1998 reprn.), Personal Knowledge; Towards a PostCritical Philosophy, Routledge, London.

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working of the steam engine with a view to advancing industry."150 And, indeed, even modern mathematics, as Michael Polyanyi (1891-1976) has pointed out, is "kept alive" and meaningful by an intellectual community passionately committed to the value of its "intellectual beauty, which betokens the reality of its conceptions and the truth of its assertions."151 What al-Attas is stressing is that all inquirers, Muslims included, need to be honest to themselves and to others by putting their assumptions upfront so that these can be self-examined and also examined in turn by others, and their true sources uncovered. He criticizes the contemporary obsession in the Muslim world with the depersonalised and disembodied tangible results of scientific inquiry in the form of factual information, conceptual constructs (laws, theories, formulas), experimental and observational techniques, and manipulative technologies. These decontextualised results are simply taken to be universally relevant and applicable while the metascientiflc notions underpinning them are either overlooked, belittled or disregarded altogether—notions that, if brought to the fore and critically examined, would actually turn out to be socioculturally and geo-historically specific, and not at all grounded in any universal natural or pragmatic imperatives.152 Since science is value150. Alvares, Claude (1999), "Science" in The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power ed. by Wolfgang Sachs, 7th impression Zed Books, London & New York, pp. 219-32 on page 222. 151. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, pp. 184-93 on page 192. A reflective reading of the intricate history of the solution to Fermat's Last Theorem will bear out the import of Polanyi's point remarkably well; see, for instance, the popular account by Singh, Simon (1998), Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem, Anchor Books, New York. As Feyerabend puts it (Science in a Free Society, p. 19), "In the sciences and especially in pure mathematics one often pursues a particular line of research not because it is regarded as intrinsically perfect, but because one wants to see where it leads." Thus, there is no purely formal logic, rule or method; they are all both formal and pragmatic. 152. This culture-neutrality view of modern science is evident in Hoodbhoy, Pervez Amirali (1991), Muslims and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Struggle for Rationality, foreword by Mohammed Abdus Salam, Vanguard Books, Lahore. Though his immediate intellectual motivation is warranted (as a heartfelt reaction against the irrational aberrancy of the literal-fundamentalist science of Zia ul Haq's Pakistan), his solution in the notion of modern science as

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laden, then obviously certain facts, certain techniques and even certain inquiries, questions and problems would acquire saliency and validity only within the conceptual, historical and cultural limitations of these metascientific notions. Therefore: ...the knowledge that is now systematically disseminated throughout the world is not necessarily true knowledge, but that which is imbued with the character and personality of Western culture and civilization, and charged with its spirit and geared to its purpose.153

While saying this al-Attas already anticipates the counter-argument that his program of 'Islamization' which entails 'dewesternization'154 would only amount to formulating an alternative system of knowledge aligned to another purpose reflecting another worldview, thus dangerously smacking of an irrational relativism that renders his very concept of 'true knowledge' farcical. But this objection is invalid because there is a universal test of true knowledge, and this test ...is in man himself, in that if, through an alternative interpretation of knowledge man knows himself and his ultimate destiny, and in thus knowing he achieves happiness, then that knowledge, in spite of it being imbued with certain elements that determine the characteristic form in which it is conceived and evaluated and interpreted in accordance with the purpose aligned to a particular worldview, is true knowledge; for such knowledge has fulfilled man's purpose for knowing.155

value-neutral is not, but is, indeed, an extreme inversion of the shortsighted fundamentalism he so abhors. 153. IS, p. 137. 154. IS, pp. 44-46, for 'islamization' defined; and ibid., pp. 133-8, for 'dewesternization' clarified. 155. IS, p. 138. On the intimate link between the ultimate purpose of science and the eschatological destiny of man, see above, note 147. See also Prolegomena, pp. 134-5, where al-Attas defines 'true knowledge' as "knowledge that recognizes the limit of truth in its every object," and ties this limit to the identity, salvation and destiny of the individual knower. In IS, p. 163 n. 124, al-Attas also says that "True knowledge conforms withfitrah" See also ibid., pp. 45, 61-62,

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Certainly a system of knowledge that has become neglectful of and disembodied from the reality of its human subject, and destructive of the very environment inspiring and sustaining it, and whose factual discoveries and inferential conclusions repeatedly contradict its speculative premises and their logical implications, can only be a selfinterested system of rationalized incoherence masquerading as objective, universal knowledge. How can a system of knowledge that is not true and sincere to itself claim to be altruistic and thereby demand the intellectual allegiance of others, to the exclusion and demise of all alternative systems of knowing and doing? It is this knowledge which has: ...lost its true purpose due to being unjustly conceived, and has thus brought about chaos in man's life instead of, and rather than, peace and justice; knowledge which pretends to be real but which is productive of confusion and scepticism,...knowledge which has, for the first time in history, brought chaos to the Three Kingdoms of Nature; the animal, vegetal and mineral.156 139-40 and 162-3 for his elaboration of'fitrah' in relation to 'religion' ('dm) and 'true knowledge'. 156. IS, p. 133. The chaotic, destructive consequences of secular, humanistic yet paradoxically dehumanized modern western science and technology have been quite recently exposed in great factual detail in the works of many honest, courageous and responsible critics. For a small sampling of this corresponding powerful, informative and well-documented socio-cultural, political-economic and techno-environmental insider critique of "worldwide westernization," see Latouche, Serge (1996), tr. by Rosemary Morris as The Westernization of the World: The Significance, Scope and Limits of the Drive towards Global Uniformity, Polity Press, Oxford; Rist, Gilbert (2000), tr. by Patrick Camiller as The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith, 3rd impression, Zed Books, London & New York and UCT Press, Cape Town; Smith, Linda Tuhiwai (2001), Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3rd impression, Zed Books, London & New York and University of Otago Press, Dunedin, New Zealand; Sachs, Wolfgang (ed. 1999), The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, 7th impression, Zed Books, London & New York and Witwatersrand, University Press Johannesburg; Mander, Jerry (1992), In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco and (1977), Four Arguments for the Elimination of

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Or as Claude Alvares has put it in his incisive criticism of modern science as an "intimate, congenital" facet of the development worldview: It is an illusion to think that modern science expanded possibilities for real knowledege. In actual fact, it made knowledge scarce. It over-extended certain frontiers, eliminated or blocked others. Thus it actually narrowed down the possibilities for enriching knowledge available to human experience. It did appear to generate a phenomenal information explosion. But information is information, not knowledge. The most that can be said of information is that it is but knowledge in degraded, distorted form. Science should have been critically understood not as an instrument for expanding knowledge, but for colonizing and controlling the direction of knowledge, and consequently human behaviour, within a straight and narrow path conducive to the design of the project.157 Television, William Morrow/Quill, New York; Roszak, Theodore (1972), Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society, Garden City, NY., reprn. Celestial Arts, Berkeley, CA, 1989; Rahnema, Majid and Bawtree, Victoria (eds., 2001), The Post-Development Reader, Zed Books, London; Clairmont, Frederic F. (1996), The Rise and Fall of Economic Liberalism: The Making of the Economic Gulag, republished Southbound and Third World Network, Penang; Shiva, Vandana (1995), Monocultures of the Mind: Biodiversity, Biotechnology and the Third World, Third World Network, Penang; idem (1997), The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics, Third World Network, Penang; Comeliau, Christian (2002), tr. by Patrick Camiller as The Impasse of Modernity: Debating the Future of the Global Market Economy, Zed Books London; Tokar, Brian (ed. 2001), Redesigning Life: The Worldwide Challenge to Genetic Engineering, Zed Books, London & New York; and O'Sullivan, Edmund (2001), Transformative Learning: Educational Vision for the 21st Century, Zed Books, London & New York. 157. "Science," in Sachs, The Development Dictionary, pp. 219-332 on pages 230-31. In Farewell to Reason (1987), Verso, London, Paul Feyerabend argues rigorously with impeccable documentation for the replacement of the dehumanized, aloof and narrow rationalism of Western science with a truly humane, participatory science that subordinates itself to the authentic needs of citizens and communities. Along the way he vigorously challenges Western

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"Since values inevitably enter into all inquiry,"158 the Weberian159 and logical positivist notion and ideal of the value-neutrality of modern science is not tenable, neither in practice nor in principle, and so, as Noam Chomsky,160 Werner Heisenberg,161 Nicholas Rescher162 and others have also pointed out, scientists, despite themselves, cannot avoid being morally and ethically responsible for the formulation, direction, methodologies, results and consequences of their work. Conclusion: Islam and the Challenge of Western Science Al-Attas sees the challenge of western science as fundamentally the challenge of a rival, ostensibly universal interpretative framework for organizing meaningfully the informative facts of complex, multidimensional experience. He is not against the rival interpretation as such, but rather against its tacit (and at times explicit and aggressive) claims to objectivity, universality, probity and thereby to altruism— claims which he finds logically invalid and moreover historically and experientially false. Although this claim of eurocentric cultural hubris also finds powerful internal critiques in the West from amongst many prominent, reflective practitioners and observers of modern science, it is still very much mainstream in both academic and popular circles.163 notions of 'progress' and 'development' whose destructive socioecological consequences have facilitated the creation of a "brave new [global bio-cultural] monotony". He sees his 'anarchism' as a muchneeded "excellent medicine" for purging Western science of its colossal conceit and smug self-satisfaction that masquerade as Reason, Progress and Development (Science in a Free Society, pp. 32-3 and pp. 127-8). The phrase "brave new monotony" is from Farewell to Reason, p. 273. 158. Mautner, Thomas (ed., 1996), A Dictionary of Philosophy, Blackwell, Oxford, p. 443, s.v. 'value-freedom'. 159. Ibid. 160. Ibid. 161. Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond, pp. 192-204. 162. Rescher, Nicholas (1965), "The Ethical Dimension of Scientific Research" in Colodny, Robert G., Beyond the Edge of Certainty: Essays in Contemporary Science and Philosophy, vol. 2 in the University of Pittsburg Series in the Philosophy of Science, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, pp. 261-76. 163. A recent undisguised eurocentric attempt is Huff, Toby E. (1995), The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, which, in outdated Weberian terms,

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Al-Attas' argument is that however far modern science advances, and however wide it spins its web of influence, it can never transcends the fact that it is the historically conditioned product of a specific cognitive and pragmatic interplay between relative man and relative nature, and thus it is in itself quite incapable of providing any transcendental neutral perspective. For always its findings shall be preconditioned on and predetermined by the inherent cognitive and pragmatic limitations of the logico-empirical method it employs,164 and its validity constrained by the complexity and diversity of the observable universe it studies, and its form characterized by its particular socio-cultural and political-economic settings. Hence scientific findings shall always be limited findings about particular aspects of nature, and never about the ultimate essence of any specific phenomenon, much less about any ultimate theory of everything.165 It is in virtue of this general realization that al-Attas calls Muslims toward a powerful comprehensive review of Western natural and social sciences: Modern philosophy has become the interpreter of science, and organizes the results of the natural and social sciences into a worldview. The interpretation in turn determines the direction in which science is to take in its study of nature. It is this interpretation of the statements and general conclusions of science and the direction of science along the lines suggested by the interpretation that must be subjected to critical evaluation, as they pose for us today the most profound problems that have confronted us generally in the course of our religious and intellectual history. Our evaluation must entail a critical examination of the methods of modern science; its concepts, presuppositions, and symbols; its empirical and rational aspects, and those impinging upon values argues for unique, privileged medieval European institutional, cultural and legal structures founding the creation of intellectual "neutral spaces" conducive to the rise of modern science. His thesis is that somehow the rest of the world had missed and is still missing this objectively good structural boat, and so they should better catch up and clamber in. 164. Faust, David (1984)^ The Limits of Scientific Reasoning, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. 165. Redhead, From Physics to Metaphysics, pp. 63-87.

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and ethics; its interpretation of origins; its theory of knowledge; its presuppositions on the existence of an external world, of the uniformity of nature, and of the rationality of natural processes; its theory of the universe; its classification of the sciences; its limitations and inter-relations with one another of the sciences, and its social relations.166

Since the objective, factual results of science do express the passionate commitments, cultural values and belief-systems of the scientist and of the society in which his or her work finds support, then, for the Muslim scientist, the source and final reference of these values and belief systems will have to be a philosophy of science grounded conceptually in the Qur'anic metaphysical vision of reality and aligned pragmatically to the five fundamental objectives of the Sharfah or Sacred Law: the preservation of religious faith and practice, of mind and life, progeny and wealth. This in turn demands that Muslims' reception of Western science must be done creatively through dynamic critical analyses of its interpretative frameworks (presuppositions, inferential procedures, concepts, laws, theories, hypotheses) through which it establishes the Tacts' of the world, including analyses of the pragmatic purposes it tacitly or explicitly serves. It is to this profound intellectual responsibility of the true Muslim scientist that al-Attas alludes to when he says that "Islamic science must interpret the facts of existence in correspondence with...the Qur'anic system of conceptual interrelations and its methods of interpretation...and not interpret that system in accordance with the facts."167 This creativity, by its very nature, goes hand in hand with historical knowledge and contextual appreciation of the authoritative works of the intellectual and moral giants of the Islamic tradition who have articulated in great detail and with exhaustive argumentative rigor their intuitive experience, rational understanding and existential affirmation of ultimate reality and its relation to the phenomenal world. The way ahead toward a "rebirth" of Islamic science will then have to "begin from within the heart" of its authentic traditon. Al-Attas' philosophy of science is an affirmative yet critical recapitulation of the intellectual and scientific achievements of that tradition in contemporary terms—a firm, lofty intellectual plateau upon which an authentic Islamic science as a 166. Hujjat, pp. 460-1. 167. IPS, p. 35; Prolegomena, p. 141; Mysticism, p. 190 n. 31.

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meaningfully relevant, long term research program can be re-erected in the contemporary world, in full dynamic and unapologetic engagement with modern science. What we need, then, is not a reconstruction, but a restatement of the statements and general conclusions of Islamic metaphysics in accordance with the intellectual perspective of our times and the developments in the domain of knowledge; and this entails a realignment, where relevant and necessary, of the direction of developments in the various sciences such that they become integrated with it.168

168. Hujjat, p. 465. As indicated by Maulana Ashraf Ali al-Thanvi (18631934) in his (1992) al-Intibahat al-Mufeedah, tr. by Muhammad Hassan Askari and Karrar Husain as Answer to Modernism, 2nd ed. Maktaba Darul-Uloom, Karachi, pp. 1-5, this intellectual engagement would require an elaborative reapplication of the "sufficient and comprehensive" principles of traditional cilm kaldm (dialectical theology) to answering the challenge of modern science and philosophy.

Part III Islamic Cosmology

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[14] IN THE BEGINNING: ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVES ON COSMOLOGICAL ORIGINS Muzaffar Iqbal How did the cosmos come into existence? When? Is there an end to this beginning? Cosmology, the science which studies the creation of the cosmos, can be divided into several categories. Philosophical reflection on the origins created a tradition of philosophical cosmology. Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and a host of other philosophers have left detailed accounts of their opinions about the creation of the cosmos. Most of this philosophical cosmology was translated into Arabic, leading to the emergence of an Islamic philosophical cosmology which started to move away from the Greek tradition in the eleventh century; this move achieved a definitive character in the form of Hikmah (Wisdom tradition) in the thirteenth century. This tradition remains alive in contemporary Islamic thought. Before the emergence of the Islamic philosophical cosmology, however, there existed another cosmological tradition, the "Sacred Cosmology", based on the Quranic descriptions of creation and on the sayings of the Prophet. Based on the earliest sources, this paper, the first installment from a chapter of a work in progress, explores three aspects of this Sacred Cosmology: those dealing with the Guarded Tablet and the Pen; the Throne and the Footstool; and the Heavens and the Earth. Keywords: Cosmology; sacred cosmology; the Beginning and the End; the Guarded Tablet and the Pen; the Throne and Footstool; creation theme in the Qur^an.

"In the Beginning" is the first chapter of a work in progress, In the Beginning: Islamic Perspectives on Origins. The first part of this book explores various aspects of cosmological origins, the second that of biological origins. Muzaffar Iqbal is the President of Center for Islam and Science, Canada; Email: [email protected].

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To speak of the Beginning at such a late hour, when the signs of the End are so rapidly manifesting, may seem pointless, but this would only be the case if we were to forget that we have been advised to plant the tree in hand even if we see the Hour coming. This Prophetic counsel does not merely indicate the limits of a believer's deeds in a legislative sense, it also points toward one of the two qualities of Imdn (faith) which are its adornments—rajff (hope) and khawf (fear). Yet, to speak of the Beginning at this time of the temporal cycle, when the cosmos has become so old and humanity so forgetful of the true meaning of existence, has its own peculiar dictates—especially in the presence of the reigning scientism which will not admit any truth unless it can be tested in a laboratory, even though most of what now passes as cosmology is mere speculation. These speculations have, of late, gained currency to such an extent that one only need say words like "Big Bang" and every half-literate person would respond with we believe and we obey (sami'nd wa atana), without asking for proof; such is the power of the scientism that has permeated every sphere of public and private life. It is this approach to all things—even things which fall outside the purview of science—that makes it difficult for anything else to gain audience, even though this "something" be rooted in the most sacred sources. The Beginning is beyond the purview of science—at least the science of our day—yet it is a "moment" (if one can call it that) which has received a great deal of attention recently not only by the scientific community but also from the general public, as scores of books being published on the subject indicate. These works attempt to construct a scientific scenario for the Beginning—the time beyond the reach of science, when nothing had yet come into existence, not even time. When nothing had yet come into existence, there was the One, the First (al-Awwal), whose transcendence can only be defined via negativa, by erasing from the mind any impurity foreign to the idea of pure divinity (uluhiya). It is through an intense and systematic weeding out of every description, adjective (siffah), and image (sura) suspected of directing our understanding (marifa) or imagination (wahm) to a created object (shay^) other than God that we can arrive at the Qur'anic conception of the Creator: He is not like anything,1 neither engendering nor engendered.2 All that 1. ash-Shura: 11: Laysa kamithlihi shay^un (Nothing is like unto Him). 2. Sura of Sincerity (Ikhlds) of the Qur'an contains, in a highly condensed form, this definition via negativa: Say: He is Allah, the One; Allah—the

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God has us know positively about Himself is His singular Uniqueness, His extreme remoteness from everything else. As He is The First (al-Awwal), He created everything that exists, that has ever existed; as He is the Last (al-Akhir), everything perishes except Him.3 When He desired to create, He simply said, "Be" (kun), and it was.4 This, and many other Qur'anic verses on the origins, are not only a natural point of departure for Islamic perspectives on cosmology, they also provide a methodology to construct a coherent view of Islamic perspecitves on cosmology. This exploration begins with the Qur'anic data, especailly the so-called "cosmic verses" of the Qur'an. It then examines how these were understood by the Prophet and his Companions. This leads us to the exploration of early tradition of sacred cosmology which came into existence through reflection on these Qur'anic verses and the sayings of the Prophet and his Companions. This is followed by an account of the subsequent developments in Islamic tradition which produced many philosophical cosmological schemes. Some of these were conceived under the influence of Greek thought, which was translated into Arabic between the eighth and the eleventh centuries. In later centuries, as Islamic philosophy moved away from Greek thought toward a more spiritual, illuminating Hikmah (Wisdom) tradition, a different kind of cosmology came into existence. This tradition looked at existence as so many manifestations Everlasting (al-samad); neither endgendering nor engendered; and none is His equal. 3. ar-Rahmdn: Everyone perishes except the face of Thy Lord. Another path to understanding the meanings of Allah's being the First and the Last is provided by the Prophetic supplication: "O Allah, Sustainer of the seven heavens, the Lord of the Great Throne, Our Sustainer and Sustainer of everything, the Sender of Tawrah and Injll, the Splitter of seeds and pits, there is no deity except Thee, I seek refuge in Thee from the evil of everything, for in Thy hand is their forelock, Thou art the First, for there was nothing before You; Thou art the Last, for there is nothing after You; And Thou art the Manifest, for there is nothing above You; and Thou art the Hidden, for there is nothing behind You; free us from our debts and deliver us from poverty". Quoted from Ibn Kathlr, Tafsir al-Qur^dn al-cAzim, tahqiq SamI bin Muhammad Salama, 8 vols. (Riyad: Dar Tayyaba li'l nashr wa3! tawzf, 3rd edition, 1425/2004), vol. 8, 6-7 (hereafter Tafsir Ibn Kathlr), who cites from Muslim 2713; also in Musnad of Abu Yacla (Vol. 8, 210) on the authority of cAisha, who notes that the Prophet used to say this supplication before sleeping. 4. Yd Sin: 82.

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of Divine Names. Though differentiable from one another, all of these cosmologies retain a central core derived from the basic Qur'anic data on the Beginning and the End. Thus, a systematic exposition of Islamic cosmology can be conceived as consisting of four distinct parts: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Sacred Cosmology Philosophical Cosmologies Illuminationist Cosmology Islamic perspectives on modern cosmology

Sacred Cosmology

The Qur'an refers to God as the Creator (al-khdliq) in the absolute sense. That is to say He brings into existence what was non-existent. In addition to al-Khdliq, the Qur'an contains several other Most Beautiful Names (alasmof al-Husna) directly referring to Allah's creative power. Some of these Names (asmff) are al-Edri (the One Who differentiates), al-Musawwir (the Giver of Form), al-Mubdf (The Beginner), al-Badf (The Originator), and al-Fdtir (the Splitter). Reflected in verbal forms, the act of creation is often described in the Qur'an through certain key verbs which are full of movement. These include khalaqa (to create), fatara (to split asunder), anshaa (to originate), abdaa (to produced first), jaala (to bring forth), and wadaa (to put). The creation theme of the Qur'an, let us note, is not limited to the creation of the physical world. In fact, the physical world exists below worlds upon worlds of cosmic orders of another. Populated by angels, who traverse the vast realms of the cosmos in times not measurable in human terms, this unknowable cosmos has Allah's Throne (carsh) and His footstool (kursi). In addition, there are other non-physical things such as time (which is of many kinds) which were also created by the Creator. Then there is light and darkness; there creation is sometimes mentioned in the same manner as the creation of the heavnes and the earth: Praise and thanks be to the One who created the heavens and the earth and [who] created light and darkness.5 The act of creation is often described by the Qur'an with verbs such 5. al-Ancam: 1.

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as band (to built), rafaa (to raise), dahdhd (to spread out), awsaa (to make wide); fataqa (to tear apart), and sawwd (to perfectly finish something). The first thing to note is that these verbs are not static or immobile; they are pregnant with force and movement. Second, this rather incomplete list of verbs yields different meaning mental associations and conceptual frameworks—all to assist us to ponder the unfathomable reality of creation, which lies beyond the realm of human conceptions. To raise (rafad) already implies the presence of something to be raised, as does the verb fatara—which Ibn cAbbas said he did not understand until he heard two Bedouins disputing the ownership of a well and one of them said "it belongs to me, because I was the one who tore it apart (fatartuhd), I began it (badtftuhd)" Likewise, Ibn GAbbas said, Fdtirfs-Samdwdti wal-Ard means Badffs-Samdwdti wal-Ard^ All Qur'anic descriptions, it must be noted, remain within the framework of Qur^an's own specific teachings about creation: that the creation is for a purpose and for a fixed duration (al-ajal al-musammd), the precise knowledge of the end of this duration remains unknwown to all save the One who has appointed this term for existence and its termination. The end of existence is to take place at this pre-determined Hour (assdcah), which no one can hasten or delay; no one has knoweldge about it, not even Prophets: And they ask you about the sdcah, when will it come, the Qur'an states regarding the insistance of certain leaders of the Quraysh who wanted this information as a "proof" for the Prophethood of Prophet Muhammad, say: its knowledge is with my Lord? And when the limit would have been reached, no one will be able to delay the Hour.8 With regard to creation, we are told that there are signs (dydt) in creation. These signs direct our attention to something beyond themselves. It is this "beyond-the-signs" Being, to Whom everything belongs,9 Who remains the constant point of reference in the Qur'an. The Qur'anic cre6. See Tafslr Ibn Kathir, Vol. 6, 532. He cites al-Bayhaqi, Fl Shucab al-Iman, number 1682. 7. al-Acrdf. 187. 8. Yunus: 49; an-Nahl: 61. 9. To Allah belongs all that is in the heavens and the earth (Lilldhi mdffs-samawdti wa^l-ard...) is a phrase that is repeated in the Qur'an several times. This refrain serves to constantly remind an attentive reader of the Qur'an that, ultimately, the Owner of all that exists is the One who created it in the first place. See at-Tawbah: 116; Yunus: 66; al-Md^idah: 18; and numerous other references.

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ation theme encompasses everything—from a soaring eagle flying over the Himalayas to the tiniest ant crawling on a barren mountain in the burning plains of Arabia, and from numerous creatures living under tons of snow in the Arctic ocean to various species of bees constructing their hexagonal beehives in diverse climes and regions. But before the Himalayas and the plains of Arabia and the Arctic Ocean can be differentiated into nameable places, we must return to the initial act of creation, which customarily begins with an account of the Throne (carsh) and the Footstool (kursi), before describing the creation of the heavens and the earth. The Throne and the Footstool Sacred cosmology has paid a great deal of attention to the Throne (carsh) of Allah, mentioned twenty-six times in the Qur'an,10 and to His Footstool (kursi), mentioned only once in the "greatest ayah of the Qur'an",11 dyatulkursl—the verse of the Footstool:12 Allah—there is no deity save Him, the Ever-Living, the Self-Subsistent, the Self-Existing; neither slumber overtakes Him, nor sleep. His is all that is in the heavens and earth. Who is there to intercede with Him, save by His leave'? He knows all that is before them and that is behind them, whereas they cannot know anything of His knowledge, save what 10. Out of some thirty-one instances of its occurence in the Qur^an, the word carsh refers specifically to Allah's carsh twenty-six times; once it is used for the throne of Prophet Yusuf (Yusuf: 100); the other four instances mention the throne of the Queen of Sheba in an-Naml: 23, 38, 41, and 42. 11. "The Greatest ayah of the QurDan", afdaFl ayah fi kitdb Allah: Ahmad bin Hanbal narrates in his musnad: "cAbd al-Razzaq narrated to us, Sufyan narrated to us, from Sacid al-Jarlri, from Abi al-Saalil, from c Abd Allah bin Riyah, from his father—who is Ibn Kacb—verily the Messenger of Allah, upon whom be peace, asked: 'which ayah of the Qur'an is the greatest?' [Ibn Kacb] said: 'Allah and His Messenger know best.' The Prophet asked this again, and yet again, and then said: 'dyatu'l-kursi, [and the Prophet added]: 'may Allah bless your knowledge, O Aba al-Mandhir, by the One in Whose Hand is my soul, it has tongue and lips, it praises the King, near the foot of the Throne.' Musnad Ahmad, Vol. 5, 141; also in Sahih al-Muslim, 810, where it is reported from another chain of narrators without the last oath. 12. al-Baqarah: 255. Specifically referring to Allah's kursi, this word appears only once in the Qur'an; a second usage (Sad: 34) refers to the kursi of Sulayman.

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He wills. His Footstool (kursi) overspreads the heavens and the earth, and their protection wearies Him not. And He alone is truly exalted.,13

The Qur'an does not mention anything about the creation of the Throne or the Footstool; rather, they are already present when the creation theme appears. We are told that Allah created the heavens and the earth in six days and His Throne was on water....14 Other verses referring to the Throne, tell us that Allah is seated on His Throne in Majesty (7:54, 10:3, 13:2, 20:5, 25:59, 32:4); that He is the Lord of the Great Throne, Rabb ul-carshW-cazim (9:29, 21:22, 23:86, 27:26, 43:82). In addition to "Great" (Azim), the Qur'an uses two other descriptors (siffdt) for the Throne: Noble (al-Karlm) and Glorious (al-Majid). These descriptors are also two of the ninety-nine Beautiful Names of Allah, and they have been used for the Qur'an itself. The first occurrence of the Noble Throne is in a verse of surpassing beauty, overflowing with majesty and grandeur: Allah is sublimely Exalted, [He is] the Sovereign, the Truth, there is no deity save Him, the Lord of the Noble Throne'^ the second occurs in the flow of a context relevant to our discussion here and is preceded by two of Allah's Most Beautiful Names (al-Ghafur, al-Wadud): He is the One Who creates in the first instance and to Whom is the return. He is All-Forgiving, Full of love [for His creation], the [owner] of the Glorious Throne.1^ In another verse, we are given a closer description of the Throne. This verse occurs in a beautiful passage which graphically depicts the journey of the God-conscious toward Paradise: Those who remained conscious of their Lord will be taken toward Jannah in groups (zumara) until they will arrive in its proximity, when its gates will be opened and its guardians will say to them, 'peace be upon you, well have you done; enter, then, herein to abide forever'. And they will say: 'All 13. The two Most Beautiful Names of Allah appearing in this verse, al-Hayy, al-Qayyum, render a translator's job impossible. There are simply no equivalents in English. For the sake of brevity, most translators use superlatives with descriptive nouns (Ever-Living, the Self-Existing), yet such translations fail to convey the meaning of the original. AlQayyum, sometimes translated as Self-Existing, sometimes as SelfSubsisting, is the One who needs no other being for existing in any sense whatsoever; al-Hayy, translated here as the Ever-Living, denotes the One Who knows of no state comparable to "not living". 14. Hud: 7. 15. al-Mu^minun: 116. 16. al-Buruj: 13-15.

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This is the nearest we are taken to the Throne in the Qur'an. Jalal al-Din as-Suyuti (849/1445-911/1505) quotes a hadlth on the authority of ash-Shacbi that the Messenger of Allah, upon whom be Allah's peace and blessings, said: "The Throne is of a red hyacinth (yaqutah Hamara"). One of the angels looked at it and its magnitude. Then Allah revealed to him: 'Verily, I have placed in you the power of seventy thousand angels, each having seventy thousand winds, so fly!'—And the angel flew with the power given to him and the wings, just as Allah wanted him to fly. He stopped, looked at his place, and he had not budged at all".19

The early cosmographical tradition seems to understand both the Throne and the Footstool being located in the farthest reaches of the cosmos and enveloped by light (Nur). "Below Allah," we are told in a hadith, on the authority of Sahl bin Sacd, "there are 70,000 veils of light and darkness. No one has heard anything about the beauty of those veils 17. az-Zumar: 73. 18. Ibid. 19. As-Suyuti, Jalal al-Dln, Kitdb al-Hay^a as-Saniyya f?l-Hay^a as-Sunniyya (The Radiant Cosmography in the Cosmography of Tradition). A critical Arabic edition with translation and commentary by Anton M. Heinen (Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 1982), 2; hereafter al-Hay^a as-Saniyya. This edition is based on nine of approximately sixty extant manuscripts—an indication of the popularity of the work through several centuries. As-Suyutl's book is a concise summary of the sacred cosmology as handed down to him through generations of narrators. "This is a book on cosmography (fi^l cilm al-hayty" he informs us in a short introduction, "which I have compiled from the traditions (mitfldthdr) and old narrations. It was my goal that those with intelligence might rejoice and those with eyes may take heed. I gave it the title: "The Radiant Cosmography (al-Hay^a as-Saniyya) in cosmography of tradition (fi*l-hay^a as-sunniyya), see al-Hay^a as-Saniyya, 1.

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but that his soul departed.20 In another tradition it is said that "between the Throne and the angels are seventy thousand veils of light."21 Abu alShaykh 22 relates a hadith, on the authority of Zurara b. Abi Aufi, that the Prophet asked Jibril whether he had seen his Lord. Jibril shuddered and said, "as it is, between me and Him there are seventy veils of light. If I ever came close to the one nearest to me, I would get burnt."23 Ibn GAbbas is reported to have said: "The heavens and the earth, in relation to the abysses beyond them—where there is no heaven and no earth—are like a tent in relation to a desert. What would that tent amount to for someone on this earth?"24 The Footstool is said to be under Allah's Throne.25 The Prophet is reported to have said to Abu Dharr,"O Aba Dharr, the seven heavens in comparison to the Footstool are like a little circle drawn in an expansive desert. And the excess (fadl) of the Throne over the Footstool is like the excess of the expansive desert over that little circle".26 "The Footstool is the place for two feet," another Hadith tells us, "and the Throne is such that no one can fathom its measure."27 Based on the Qur'anic descriptions and the sayings of the Prophet, the cosmos was conceived by the early Muslim scholars as a hierarchical structure with the Throne at the highest limit and the Footstool below it. The Guarded Tablet (al-lawh al-mahfuz) and the Pen (al-Qalam)

Sacred cosmology conceived the Guarded Tablet (al-lawh al-mahfuz) and the Pen (al-Qalam) as integral parts of the creation theme. The Qur'an refers to itself as being recorded and preserved on the Guarded Tablet.28 20. al-Hay^a as-Saniyya, 5 21. Ibid. 22. Abu al-Shaykh is the immediate source of As-Suyutl's work. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibn Abi Hatim and Abu al-Shaykh, through the intermediary of asSuddl, quotes the saying of Abu Malik that the Footstool is under the Throne. al-Hay^a as-Saniyya, 2. 26. al-Hay*a as-Saniyya, 3. 27. Reported by al-Firyabl, Ibn Abi Hatim, Ibn al-Mundir, al-Tabaranl, and al-Hakim (in his al-Mustadrak), authenticated in accordance with the criteria set by the two shaykhs [al-Bukharl and al-Muslim], from Ibn cAbbas. al-Hay^a as-Saniyya, 4. 28. Nay, but this is the Glorious Qur^dn, [preserved] in the Guarded Tablet,

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The Pen has been mentioned in the very first revelation which began the descent of the Qur'an: Read in the name of Thy Sustainer, who has created, created Man out of a germ-cell. Read, for thy Sustainer is the Most Bountiful, who taught with Pen; taught insdn what he knew not.29

It has been narrated on the authority of Anas, who said that the Messenger of Allah said, "Allah has a Tablet, its one side is made of red hyacinth (ydqutah hamarff), the other of green smaragd (dhumurrdah khadrff). His Pen is light; with it He creates; with it He provides provisions [to creation], with it He gives life; with it He [causes creation to] die, with it He honors and with it He debases; and with it He does what He wishes—every day and night."30 In another tradition, we are told on the authority of Ibn Abbas that "Allah's Messenger said: "God created a Tablet from a white pearl (durra baydc?), the two sides of which are made of a green chrysolite (zubar jadda khadra'), and the writing on it is of light. Every day He looks at it 360 times. And He gives life and takes it, He creates and gives the means of subsistence, and He does whatever He desires."31 These condensed formulations were to become the focus of successive generations of Muslims who attempted to understand mystical, legal, moral, and physical dimensions of the traditions about the Tablet and the Pen. In fact, the Islamic tradition conceives the Tablet and the Pen as being the ultimate records of all that was to come to pass by way of existence, may that be of beings or events. The number of a hadith which mention the Tablet and the Pen are not numerous, but their transmission through some of the closest Companions of the Prophet have granted al-Buruj: 22. That the Qur D an has been preserved and cannot be corrupted is a central doctrine of Islam. This has been confirmed as there has been no corruption of the text of the Qur'an over the last fourteen hundred years. Speaking in the first person, Allah states in the Qur'an: Behold, it is We Ourselves who have sent down from on high this remembrance, and behold, it is We who shall truly guard it (al-Hijr: 9). In al-Wdqicah: 8 the Qur'an speaks of itself as being the Noble Qur*dn, [preserved] in a well-guarded Book (kitdbim-maknun). 29. al-cAlaq: 1-5. If the Arabic word insdn is accepted as an English word derived from Arabic to the extent that, like so many other words of Arabic origin which do not need italicizing anymore, it will resolve the issue of gender equality while referring to human beings, for insdn is neither masculine nor feminine. 30. Reported by Abu al-Shaykh, from Malik bin Dinar, from Anas, al-Hay^a as-Saniyya, 6. 31. The chain of this hadith includes al-Dahhak, al-Hay^a as-Saniyya, 7.

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them the foundational position in the making of Sacred Cosmology. A hadith mentioned by Abi al-Dunya in his Makdrim al-Akhldq, Abu al-Shaykh in his Kitdb al-cAzama, and al-Bayhaqi in his Kitdb Shu^ab al-Imdn tell us on the authority of Anas that "the Messenger of Allah said: "Allah has a Tablet made of a green chrysolite under His Throne. On it He has written: Verily, I am Allah; there is no deity save Me. I am Merciful, and I am asked for Mercy. I brought into existence creatures [numbering] some 300 and a few tens (bidca cashra wa thalathmiya\ who so ever from the creation comes witnessing that there is no god except Allah, will enter Jannah.'"32 In fact, the Pen was the first thing created by God, for Abu Yacla cites a sound tradition from Ibn Abbas stating that "the Messenger of Allah said: 'the first thing which Allah the Most High created was the Pen. And He commanded it to write everything.'"33 A variation of this hadith, cited by al-Tabarani with a sound chain states, on the authority of Ibn cAbbas, states, "Allah's Messenger said: 'When Allah created the Pen, He said to it: 'Write!'—And it kept moving with [this command, recording] whatever was to come into existence until the Last Day.'"34 Yet another tradition, this time on the authority of Ibn cUmr, tells us that "the Messenger of Allah said: 'Indeed, as the first thing Allah—the Most High—created, He created the Pen. It is of light, extending over a distance of 500 years. Then He gave it His Command, and it kept moving with whatever comes into being until the Day of Resurrection. So, accept as true whatever comes to you from Allah through His power.'"35 Another hadith going back to Abu Sacid al-Khudri, one of theAshdb asSuffa (the people of the Bench), found in both the Kitdb az-cZama of Abu alShaykh and Kitdb Shuab al-Imdn of al-Bayhaqi, states that "the Messenger of Allah said, 'there is a Tablet in front of Allah; on it are 315 codes of Law (sharfah). The Most Merciful (ar-Rahmdri) says: 'By My Might and Glory, none of My servants will come to Me, denying neither of these, that I shall not enter him into Paradise'".36 These traditions not only situate the entire scheme of creation in the Divine realm, they also provide us a means to reflect on numerous questions arising out of our limited human conceptions of time and destiny, 32. al-Hay^a as-Saniyya, 6.

33. Another similar hadith, once again cited on sound authority. al-Hay^a as-Saniyya, 7. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid.

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for we are told in another tradition that "pens have been lifted", implying that events have a different temporal order when we are contemplating cosmological origins. We will have more to say on these when we discuss creation of time. Qur'anic Description of the Creation of the Heavens and the Earth

As-Samd\ the Arabic for the sky, and its derivatives are one of the most common Qur'anic words. Generally translated as "heavens", as-Samff refers to the unfathomable vast space "above" the Earth—that is above when viewed from the Planet itself. With the advancements in technology, space travel has rendered much of the directional aspect of the spatial structure of the cosmos rather difficult for common understanding; what appears to be the "sky" to us on earth, may not be so when viewed from another planet. Yet, from the perspective of the residents of Earth, spatial coordinates remain firmly established. And the statement that the heaven is vaulted over the earth like a dome makes perfect sense, as far as the view from below is concerned. As regard the view from above, the heavens and the Earth are said to be encompassed by the Footstool. Since the Qur'an addresses humanity and its claim is that it guides humanity toward a Straight Path, it has a spatial frame of reference, which is both physical as well as non-physical. Some things are above others; there is a crooked path and there is a Straight Path. There are layers upon layers of light and darkness, both physical as well as spiritual. Allah Himself is said to be the Light of the heavens and the Earth, in the celebrated Verse of Light, upon which scores of Muslim scholars wrote commentaries, as we shall see later. We are also told that Allah is the Protector of those who believe, taking them out of darkness into the light—whereas those who are bent upon denying the Truth, their helpers are the evil forces which take them out of light into the darkness?1 The Qur'an describes the creation of the heavens and the Earth in its own characteristic manner—sometimes in specific terms, sometimes generally, sometimes merely in a passing manner, at others in detail. One of more detailed descriptions is as follows: Verily, your Sustainer is Allah, who has created the heavens and the earth in six days, who then mounted His Throne. He covers the day with the night, which is in swift pursuit. And [He created] the sun and the moon and the stars subservient to His command. Hallowed is Allah, the 37. al-Baqarah: 257.

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Sustainer of the worlds.53

In the order of the Qur'an, the first reference to the creation of the heavens occurs in al-Baqarah, just before the first mention of the creation of the first man, Adam:39 O humankind, worship your Sustainer, Who has created you and those who lived before you, so that you might remain conscious of Him, Who has made the earth a resting place for you and the sky a canopy, and has sent down water from the sky and thereby brought forth fruits for you sustenance; do not, then, claim others as His rivals, when you know [that He is One].40 Seven verses later, we are told that He is the One Who has created for you all that is on earth, He then turned His attention toward the sky and fashioned it into seven heavens; and He has full knowledge of everything.^1

This fashioning of the sky into seven heavens, which is sometimes claimed to be a later feature of Islamic cosmology a la Ptolemy, is, in fact, deeply embedded in the Qur'an and the sacred cosmology based on the traditions of the Prophet. These seven heavens are layered, one upon another, all in perfect harmony, in synchronization with each other, and the rest of the cosmos; there is no flaw in this. [Hallowed] be He who has created seven heavens, layer upon layer; no fault will thou see in the creation of the Most Merciful. Turn thy vision [upon it]; canst thou see any flaw1? Yet, turn thy vision [upon it] once again and yet again; [and every time] thy vision will fall back upon thee, dazzled and truly defeated.4"2

In another verse, the Qur'an asks rhetorically: Have you not seen how 38. al-Acrdf: 54. 39. It is important to keep in mind that the order of the Qur'anic revelation is different from the order in which the "Book between two covers" has been presented to humanity. It is generally agreed that the mushaf(\it. a collection of sheets, here meaning sheets of parchment containing the Qur'an, that is, a compiled copy of the Qur'an) was arranged in its present order by the command of its Sender during the life of the Prophet. For a detailed study of this, and many other primary aspects of the Qur'anic text, see al-Azami, M. M., The History of the Quranic Text; from Revelation to Compilation (Leicester: UK Islamic Academy, 2003). 4Q.al-Baqarah: 21-22. 41. al-Baqarah: 29. 42. al-Mulk: 3-4.

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What is meant by this layering of the heavens, with the lowest of the seven heavens having been adorned by stars?44 This layered space definitely refers to the physical structure of the cosmos, but is not limited to it, for there are unfathomable worlds in these seven heavens which were made from steam or smoke (dukhdri).45 Each of these heavens is separated from each other by a distance of 500 years, we are informed in a sound tradition. "We were with the Prophet," al-Abbas bin cAbd al-Muttalib narrates, when he asked: 'Do you know what is the distance between heaven and earth?' We answered: 'Allah and His Messenger know best." He said: 'Between them there is a distance of 500 years; and from every heaven to another heaven there is a distance of 500 years. The diameter of every heaven is 500 years. Above the seventh heaven there is a sea, the distance from its surface to its greatest depth is as much as the [distance] between the heaven and the earth. Then, above that, there are eight mountain goats (awcdl); the distance between their knees (rukba-hunna) and their hoofs (azldfa-hunna) is like the distance between the heaven and the earth. Still above this, there is the Throne; the distance between its lowest and uppermost part is like the distance between the heavens and the earth. Above that, there is Allah, the Praised and Exalted.46

Of course, modern readers would ask what it all means. What units are being used for the measurements? And what does it mean to have eight mountain goats (awcdl) in the heavens? Such folklore! These questions are natural at such a late hour in the history of humanity, when the traditional understanding of the cosmos has become obscure; even the vocabulary used in these traditions is difficult for the contemporary reader, so much 43. Nuh', 15. 44. And, indeed, We have adorned the skies nearest to the earth with lamps... (alMulk: 5); also as-Saffdt: 6: Behold, We have adorned the skies nearest the earth with the beauty of stars. 45.Fussilat: 11. 46. Reported by Ahmad b. Hanbal in his Musnad, Abu Dawud, alTirmidhl—who declared it to be hasan—Ibn Majah, Ibn Abl cAsamm in his Sunna, Abu Yacla, Ibn Khuzayma, al-Tabaranl, al-Hakim—who classified it as sahlh—and Abu al-Shaykh. al-Hay^a as-Saniyya, 8.

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so that words such as awcdl (translated here as "mountain goats") seem to have lost their comprehensiveness. The mountain goats mentioned in this tradition are, of course, not the goats grazing on a certain mountain. It is well known that Capricorn, the zodiacal constellation between Sagittarius and Aquarius, is identical with the Arabian mountain goat. The constellation of Capricorn, with two stars of Aquarius before it, resembles a throne with a footstool in front of it.47 The distances mentioned in the tradition should likewise be understood within the context of the tradition. The cosmic distances mentioned in the tradition give an indication of the enormous distances between the heavens but are, however, not arbitrary numbers. They belong to a cosmic system in which the physical cosmos is seamlessly linked to the spiritual; the latter being the mother engendering the physical cosmos. Under the influence of modern science, it is generally assumed that the "primitive people of the past", having no tools to measure such enormous distances, invented numbers, but this view assumes that there is only one way of acquisition of knowledge—the way of modern science. Further, it assumes that all human beings, including the Prophets of God, gain their knowledge from the ordinary sense data. Both of these assumptions are untenable in view of the special nature of Prophetic function. The Prophets of God were human beings, but they were human beings of a different order. Their sources of knowledge were not limited to what other human beings have been granted. For us, the cosmic dimensions mentioned in the above tradition may remain obscure, yet there can be little doubt that they describe the features of the cosmos in which the Sun and the Moon—indeed all planets, stars, and constellations—traverse their appointed course, in perfect harmony and balance with each other, displaying a cosmos filled with immense beauty and order. The number "500 years" mentioned in the tradition is connected with an entire system of reckoning time according to the movement of the celestial objects. The stations or mansions (manzila, pi. mandzil)48 of the Moon, numbering 28, are distinguishable even by the naked eye. There are 28 mandzil 47. For this connection see Heinen's commentary on al-Hafa as-Saniyya, 91-2. 48. The word manzil from the root n-z-l, expresses the idea of halting, a temporary stay. It has different usages in different contexts. In astronomy, it may refer to the mansions of the Moon; in Sufi literature, it is the stage in the spiritual journey; in everyday language, it is a place noun.

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(halting places) of the Moon, each corresponding to one night during its 28-day revolution in a lunar cycle. On each of these 28 nights, the Moon halts near a star or group of stars. Each of these mansions was known in Arabic with its own name.49 The Qur'an specifies that Allah has determined the manazil of the Moon so that humanity might compute time: He is the One Who has made the sun a radiant (diya?) and the Moon a light (nur), and has determined for it halting places (manazil) so that you might know how to compute the years and measure [time]. None of this has Allah created without truth.50

Of course, in addition to the purely physical stations of the Moon, the course of the planets and stars is full of signs: And they have a sign in the night; We withdraw from it the day, and lo! They are in darkness. And the sun traverses [its course] to the point of its rest—that is laid down by the decree of the Almighty, the AllKnowing. And the moon—-for which We have determined stations (manazil) till it becomes like an old date-stalk, dried up and curved (al-curjun); neither the sun can overtake the moon, nor can the night can overtake the day; each float in their own orbit.51

Yet, speaking of the purely physical aspect of the movement of the Moon, its 28 stations were used to divide the solar zodiac into 28 equal parts of approximately 12° 50'; thus the 28 anwcf (identified with the 28 manazil of the moon) are determined by 28 stars or constellations constituting 14 pairs. The twenty-second manzil is called sad al-dhdbih (later latinized as Capricorni, identified with the mountain goat, the tenth sign of the modern zodiac). These details may provide clues to the discerning readers about the cosmic dimensions determined by 28 steps of 500 years. In common usage, the seven heavens have retained a certain degree of acceptability, but the concept of seven earths has become totally foreign to the earth-bound dwellers of our planet. Yet, even a cursory understanding of the cosmic symmetry is enough to realize that the seven heavens 49. "A complete list of the 28 mansions is reported by cAbd al-Malik b. Habib (d. 238/852), on the authority of Malik b. Anas (d. 179/795)." Kunitzsch, P., "Al-Manazil" in Bosworth, C.E. et al, The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1991), 374-6. 50. Yunus: 5. 51. Yd Sin: 37-40. cUrjun: the raceme of the date-palm, when it becomes old and dry, it curves like the crescent.

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would have seven corresponding earths. The Qur'anic reference to the creation of seven earths has always remained a central aspect of sacred cosmology. Allah is He who has created seven heavens and, like them, of the earth. Through all of them flows down His command, so that you might come to know that Allah has power over everything and that Allah encompasses all things with His knowledge.5**

Commenting on this verse, Ibn Kathir (700/1300-774/1372) quotes a hadith on the authority of cA'isha, "found in the compilations of the two Shaykhs", in his Tafsir: "Whoever oppressed another on earth, even to the measure of a [single] forearm, will be shackled by the measure of seven earths". Bukhari has a variant of this hadith, on the authority of Ibn C Umar, in which the Prophet is reported to have said that this oppressor will be "buried under" (khusifa) the seven earths.53 Ibn Kathir also quotes these, with full chains of narration, etymology of words, and their meaning in the chapter on the creation of earth in his celebrated history, Biddya wa nihdya.54 It is noteworthy that Ibn Kathir felt the need to refute those who "have taken this [number] to mean the seven aqdltm", for "they have spent their energies in meaningless pursuit, have drowned in the disputation, and gone against the Qur'an and the hadith."55

So far, we have explored three facets of the Sacred Cosmology: the Guarded Tablet and the Pen; the Throne and the Footstool; and the Heavens and the Earth. The Qur^anic creation theme contains several other elements. These include the creation of mountains, oceans, heavenly objects (such as the Sun and the Moon, and the stars), the night and the 52. at-Taldq: 12.

53. "The two Shaykhs" is an honorific reference to al-Bukharl and alMuslim. Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Vol. 8, 156, who cites Bukhari 2453 and Muslim 1612. The variant is to be found in Bukhari 5454. 54. See Ibn Kathir, Biddya wa nihdya, Vol. 1, 16, "What has been said regarding the seven earths". 55. Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Vol. 8, 156.

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day, time, water, winds, clouds, rain, and oceans. Furthermore there are descriptions of certain physical phenomena such as floods, thunder, and lightening. All of these became themes for the Sacred Cosmology, which had its own peculiar way of ordering material. Invariably it began with Qur'anic data, then approached the Prophetic traditions, then reflections by the Companions and by those who followed them. The close affinity of this methodology to that used in other branches of early Islamic tradition such as Hadith, tdrlkh (history), cilm al-rijdl (science of biography), is noteworthy.

(To be continued)

[15] IN THE BEGINNING: ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVES ON COSMOLOGICAL ORIGINS—II Muzaffar

Iqbal How did the cosmos come into existence? When? With what? How did the material for its creation come into existence? Is there an end to this beginning? These questions about the origin of the universe and its composition are foundational; they create worldviews. In Islamic tradition there are four distinct and often intertwined approaches to these questions: (i) sacred cosmology, based on the Qur^an and the sayings of the Prophet; (ii) philosophical cosmologies; (iii) illuminationist and mystical cosmologies; and (iv) contemporary perspectives on scientific cosmology. This second part of the article continues description of Islamic sacred cosmology and focuses on elements of the cosmos.

Keywords: Sacred cosmology; Islamic perspectives on origins; history of cosmology; creation theme in the Qur'an; constituent elements of the cosmos.

A systematic exploration of Islamic cosmology can be conceived as consisting of four distinct and mutually interacting perspectives, spanning fourteen hundred years of Islamic tradition. The first to appear was the "Sacred Cosmology", which came into existence as a result of intense reflection on the creation theme of the Qur'an by the Companions of the Prophet, their successors (tdbflri) and their successors (tabac tdbflri). This was followed by various philosophical cosmologies, This is the first chapter of a work in progress, In the Beginning: Islamic Perspectives on Origins. The first part of this book explores various aspects of cosmological origins, the second that of biological origins. The first part of this chapter was published in the summer 2006 issue of Islam & Science. Muzaffar Iqbal is the President of Center for Islam and Science, Canada; Email: [email protected].

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which were generally influenced by Greek philosophy. The third strand of cosmological writings in Islamic tradition emerged as a result of the appropriation and transformation of philosophical cosmologies through a long process of reformulation which attempted to remove elements of these cosmologies which were foreign to Islamic worldview. The fourth strand consists of contemporary Islamic perspectives on modern scientific cosmological theories, which only deal with the physical cosmos. In the previous installment of this article1 we explored various aspects of the Sacred Cosmology regarding the creation of the Throne and the Footstool, the Guarded Tablet and the Pen, and the Heavens and the Earth. Traditional formulations of the hierarchical cosmology of the Qur'an then describe creation and the attributes of entities which fill the cosmos: the sun and the moon; stars and planets; the night and the day; clouds, water, winds, rain, and oceans; thunder, lightening, and thunderbolts; mountains and rivers. In addition there are non-physical entities such as time and beings of other realms, for instance, the angels and the jinn. It should be kept in mind that these descriptions often depict the creation and elements of the cosmos from a perspective much higher than the physical plane and, therefore, the vocabulary used here should not be confused with that used in physical descriptions.

CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS OF THE COSMOS The Qur'anic Data Before we proceed with the theme of the creation of the various elements that fill the cosmos, it is important to note that the Qur'anic descriptions of the cosmos—and indeed of everything created by God—are replete with an embedded teleology to which the Qur'an constantly draws the attention of its faithful readers. This teleological orientation of the entire created order makes every existing thing a sign and a pointer, an ayah, to the One Who created it; all elements in the Qur'anic cosmos have been created for a reason and each and every thing has a purpose and role: Indeed in the heavens and the earth there are signs for the believers; and in your own creation and in [the creation of] animals which have been scattered [on earth], there are signs for people who wish to believe; and in the alternation of the day and the night, and in the means of provision which Allah sends down from the sky—with which He brings the earth back to life after it has been dead—and 1. Islam & Science, Vol. 4 (Summer 2006) No. 1, 61-78.

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in the blowing of the winds, there are many signs for people of understanding.2 These and other verses of the Qur^an which describe the creation and function of various cosmic entities and processes were received and understood by its first bearers (that is, the Prophet and his Companions), not so much for their scientific content but for the three fundamental aspects of the message of the Qur'an for which the elements of the cosmos were signs: (i) tawhid: that there is only one Creator Who has created the universe and all that it contains for a fixed duration and for a purpose; (ii) risdlah: that this Creator has sent guidance for humanity from time to time through His prophets, Prophet Muhammad being the last such messenger and the Qur'an being the last revelation; and (iii) macdd: that there is a return to the Creator for all who have come into this world. Thus situated within the matrix of the Qur'an, the elements of the cosmos as well as meteorological phenomena are not merely physical objects and processes in a vast and splendid cosmos; rather, they are pointers toward an ultimate reality which transcends the cosmos and everything that exists within it. In addition to their sign-function, a second important aspect of the Qur'anic description of the elements of the cosmos is the sheer ontological dependence of the elements on the Creator for their existence, movement, and stillness; they have been made subservient (musakhkhardt). This subservience of the elements of the cosmos extends to the human domain, so that the sun and the moon traverse their cosmic distances for the benefit of humanity, the winds move and the rain-bearing clouds carry their life-giving water to barren valleys—all for the benefit of humankind. In their function as elements of a vast system which creates, nurtures, and sustains life on earth, the cosmic entities are in the service of humanity, but by the Will and Decree of their Creator. The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars The Qur'an does not tell us how and when the sun, the moon, and the stars were created or with what, but it describes them as signs of the Creator (Q. 41:37); subservient to His will and Command (Q. 35:13); as entities created for a fixed duration, li-ajalil musammd (Q. 39:5). The sun and the moon move, we are told with the characteristic Qur'anic brevity, in fixed orbits (Q. 21:33; 31:29; 35:13; 36:38; 55:5). Neither the sun can take over Z.Al-Jdthiyah: 3-5.

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the moon, nor the night the day—all float within their own orbits (Q. 36:40).3 Light plays an important role in the Qur'anic imagery. Have you not seen how Allah has created the seven heavens, layer upon layer; and He has set the moon therein as a light [nur] and the sun as a lamp [siraj].4 The light of the sun and moon produces shadows, to which the Qur'an also draws our attention (Q. 25:45). Two Qur'anic surahs are given the name "The Sun" (ashShams) and "The Moon" (al-Qamar); one is called "The Star" (an-Najm); yet another, at-Tdriq—"that which comes in the night" (an-najmuth-thdqib). Throughout the Qur'an, one finds numerous references to the sun, the moon, the stars, and phenomena associated with their movements (the light of the day, the lengthening of shadows, the coming of the evening, the stillness of the night, the function of stars as guides to the travelers). Oaths in the Qur'an include those sworn by the sun, the moon, and the stars: By the sun and its rising to radiant brightness; by the moon and its following [the sun]; and by the Day when it has become resplendent.^ These oaths, it should be noted, serve several functions in the Qur'an. They use visible objects and processes of the cosmos to remind humanity that the entire cosmic order is utterly subservient to the Creator; they are used as witnesses testifying to the Oneness of the Creator and the purposefulness of their creation; and, most of all, their function is to draw convincing arguments and proofs (dalll) for the message of the Qur'an.6 Imbued with life and movement, the sun, the moon, and the stars appear in the Qur'an as dynamic entities, following the commands of their Creator—entities, moreover, which will one day cease to exist: And when the sun is wrapped up; and when the stars fall, dispersing (Q. 81:12). Thus the sun, the moon, and the stars—indeed, the entire cosmic order—become a powerful reminder of the Day7 when nothing save the face of Allah will remain (Q. 55:27). On 3. It should be noted here that the QurDanic description of the sun as an object moving in its orbit may produce a dissonant chord in those who take it as a fixed star a la Galileo, but motion and rest, as Einstein's theory of relativity has amply demonstrated, are relative to the observer. The sun may appear to be stationary to the inhabitants of the Earth, but not so when viewed from another point in the cosmos. 4.Nuh: 15-16. 5. Ash-Shams: 1-3. 6. For an insightful discussion on Qur'anic oaths see 'Abdu'l-Hamld al-Farahl, Amcdn fi Aqsdmil-Qufdn (Damascus: Dar al-Qalam, 1415/1994). 7. Day with a capital "D" refers to the Day of Qiydmah, when the entire

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that Day, the Qur'an states categorically, the sun and the moon will be joined together (Q. 75:9). And a tradition, on the authority of Abu Hurayrah, tells us that on the Day of Qiydmah, both the sun and the moon will lose their light.8 Time; the Night and the Day Nothing precedes Allah, the Qur'an tells us; He is the First (al-Awwal), and nothing will outlast Him, for He is the Last (al-Akhir).g "Time"—a concept which ultimately remains beyond human understanding—is therefore, Allah's creation; it did not exist, then He brought it into existence. From a purely human perspective, one can understand time as having begun with the mysterious kun (cf. Q. 36:40) which initiated the creation of the cosmos. This initiation brought into existence a differentiated entity, "ad-dahr"—"a time encompassing the entire duration from the beginning to the end of creation".10 This time is intrinsically linked to the movement of the moon, rather than that of the sun; hence the use of the lunar calendar in revealed religions as the primary mode of determining time for religious rites. This original linkage was tempered by the Quraysh and the Jews11 by introducing intercalary month, a practice condemned by the Qur3an: The intercalation [an-nasi] is but an increase in kufr, [a means] by which those who deny the Truth are led astray. They declare this [intercalation] to be permissible in one year and forbidden in [another] year cosmic order will be destroyed at the sound of the first trumpet . This, according to the Qur^an, will be followed by resurrection. 8. Bukharl: 3200 9.Al-Hadid: 3. 10. This is the definition given by Imam ash-Shafici (150-204/767-820), cf. "ad-dahr" in Ibn Manzur al-afriqi al-misrl, Lisdnu?l-cAmb, vol. 4 (Beirut: Bar Sadar, 1417/1997), 292-295, on 293. 11. The "modern" Jewish calendar is a rule-based luni-solar calendar, like the Chinese calendar, measuring months defined in lunar cycles as well as years measured in solar cycles, as opposed to the purely lunar Islamic calendar and the almost entirely solar Gregorian calendar. Because of the roughly 11 day difference between twelve lunar months and one solar year, the calendar repeats in a Metonic 19-year cycle of 235 lunar months, with an extra lunar month added once every two or three years, for a total of seven times every nineteen years. Because solar years cannot be evenly divided into lunar months, an extra embolismic or intercalary month must be added to prevent the starting date of the lunar cycles from "drifting" away from the spring season. There is no direct mention of this in the Bible.

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in order to conform [outwardly] to the number of months which Allah has made sacrosanct; and thus they make allowable what Allah has forbidden; and beautiful seems to them the evil of their own doings; indeed, Allah does not guide people who refuse to acknowledge Truth.12 The Qur'an restored the measure of time to its pristine state.13 One of the most important cosmological aspects of time is its uneven pace; it is now hastening toward its own end. This dissolution, bringing forth the Hour of Doom with ever-increasing speed, is akin to a centripetal folding of the center which drags the periphery into an ever-hastening whirlpool, making each stage more rapid, and shorter, than the previous.14 This is why the message of the Qur'an is urgent and dire. It is not just that the Hour of Doom is near in time, but time itself is hastening. Temporal conditions are changing. Moments are getting shorter. The downward curve is not an even slope.15

Blackhirst points out that this characteristic of time is present in the Qur'an at the structural level: its longer suwar are placed at the beginning and the shorter to the end, and this structural correspondence extends to the very letters of the text.16 Further, and more importantly, U.At-Tawbah: 37. 13. At-Tawbah: 36: Indeed, the number of months in the sight of Allah is twelve, [laid down] in Allah's decree on the day when He created the heavens and the earth; out of these, four are sacred; this is the ever-true law; do not, then, sin against yourselves with regard to these; and fight together against those who associate others with Allah—just as they fight together against you—and know that Allah is with those who are conscious of Him. 14. This imagery comes from an article by Rodney Blackhirst in response to the profane ideas centered around a mysterious "nineteen code" in the Qur3an, propounded by Rashad Khalifah in his Quran: The Final Scripture—the Authorized English Version (Tucson: Islamic Publications, 1981). See Rodney Blackhirst, "Numbers and Letters: Modern and Traditional Perspectives on some Mysteries in the Qur'an" in Sacred Web 16, 167-174. 15. Ibid, 172. 16. "This dimension of the Qur'an—it is true also of the Torah in Hebrew but not of the Christian Bible—extends to the very letters of the text [of the Qur^an], This is the key to understanding the so-called Abbreviated Letters. The pertinent fact to take into account is that there are 14 such letters given privilege by being uttered in preface to certain surat, which is to say 14 letters from an alphabet of 28. The symbolism is lunar. Each letter corresponds to a day of the lunar

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the Islamic calendar allows the slip of time. The Metonic cycle of 19 solar years...a calculation of when the occurrence of eclipses returns to the same days of the solar year—is but a near approximation; in fact it is slightly short of the true conjunction of solar and lunar cycles. The Qur'an alludes to this... this, we might say, is exactly why the surat [sic. suwar] of the Qur'an are not all of equal length, because although each letter is a lunar day, there is an inexorable and unavoidable diminishing and decline as time moves on.

In addition to the shortening of moments and the rushing of time as it unfolds, the quality of time also deteriorates with its passing. This concept is squarely opposed to the modern notion of progress and the entire range of concepts associated with biological evolution. Within the general flow of time, each Prophetic cycle restores time to a pristine stage, and hence the best time is that when a Prophet is physically present on Earth. "The best of times is my time," Prophet Muhammad is reported to have told his Companion cAbd Allah bin Mascud, "then that which comes after it; then that which follows that."17 One can also have a glimpse of this degeneration of time—and consequently all things existing in time—from the powerful description of the Day of Doom, Resurrection, and the graphic details of Hell and Paradise found in al-Wdqfah—a surah which is reported to have aged the Prophet:18 When that which must come, comes—that in whose coming there is no doubt—abasing [some], exalting [others]; when the earth will be shaken with a severe shaking; and when the mountains will be shattered into [countless] shards scattered like [fine] dust; then shall you be [divided] into groups.™ In this three-fold division of humanity, the people of the highest station, al-muqarrabun, are mostly from older times. cycle of 28 days. In 14 of these days the moon waxes and in 14 it wanes, light and dark, revealed and concealed... Every letter of the Holy Qur'an represents a day of a lunar phase, and the entire text represents the complete duration of time, the exhaustion of all lunar cycles." Ibid, 172-73. 17. "Khayr al-qaruni qarni, thummcfl-ladhina yalawnahum, thummcfl-ladhina yalawnahum", Bukhari: 3651, on the authority of cAbd Allah bin Mascud. 18. Ibn Abbas reported that once Abu Bakr as-Siddlq said to the Prophet, "O Messenger of Allah, you have aged!" The Prophet replied, "I have been hastened in age by [the suwar] Hud, al-Wdqicah, al-Mursaldt, c Amma yatasd^alun and ash-Shamsu kuwwirat. TirmidhI, Sunan, 3298. l9.Al-Wdqicah: 1-7.

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The Qur'an condemns the practice, prevalent among pre-Islamic Arabs, of ascribing to time what happens to man, good or bad, thereby giving time something of a divine nature: They say our life is only the life of this world; we die and we live and nothing kills us except dahr—and they have no knowledge of this; it is but their conjuncture.^ Differentiated into day (nahdr) and night (layl), time assumes a distinct order and numerous specific characteristics. Often mentioning them together, the Qur'an presents the day and the night to humanity as two signs (dyatayri), of which the sign of night has been dimmed while that of day has been made resplendent so that ye may strive for your Sustainer's bounties and count and reckon years.21 Early Muslim reflections on the order of creation of day and night include a saying of Ibn Abbas in which he responded to the question as to which of the two were created first by reciting have not those who disbelieve seen that the heavens and the earth were sewn together and we ripped them apart (Q. 21:30), and then asked: "Was there anything but darkness between the two? And this so that you know that the night was there before the day."22 The priority of the night is signifi20. Al-Jathiah: 24. Commenting on this verse, Imam Bukhari quotes the hadlth in which God commands the believers not to blame dahr "for I am dahr"; many scholars have noted that this hadlth does not actually identify Allah with dahr; rather, it is emphasizing that He is the real cause (al-fdcil) as opposed to 'time'; for a detailed discussion see Lisdnu^l-'Arab, op. cit. In later centuries, dahr (and dahriyya) will assume many different meanings, including "materialism", a connotation of the original "long duration of time"; this semantic link as explained by al-BaydawI arises from the concept that dahr is a space of time in which this world is living, overcoming the course of time (see "Dahriyya" in El2}. In philosophical discourse dahrl will come to denote "a man who believes in the eternity of the world whether past or in the future, denying, as a result of this opinion, resurrection and a future life in another world; secondly, the mulhid, the man who deviates from the true faith". In Kaldm, the term denotes eternity of the world (meaning a denial of creation in time), a concept most mutakallimun reject, affirming the beginning in time of bodies and the world created by God, Who alone can be said to be Eternal. AlGhazall in his Munqidh min al-Daldl considers the dahriyya a sect of the ancients who denied the Creator Who governs the world and the existence of a future world, professing that the world has always been what it is, of itself, and that it will be so eternally. (For this and other details on the subsequent use of the term, see El2). Zl.Al-Isrtf: 12. 22. As-SuyutI, Jalal al-Dm, Kitdb al-Hay^ah as-Saniyyah f?l-Hay^ah as-

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cant, because a day in the Islamic calendar begins at sunset. Certain times are more blessed than others, just as certain places are more blessed than others. This feature of time (and space) is in perfect harmony with the overall Islamic cosmological scheme of which orientation is a distinct characteristic: the entire cosmos displays an orientation ingrained in its creation. The Qur'an explicitly states that everything existent in the heavens and the earth extols its Creator, willingly or under compulsion.^ Those created beings which have been granted a certain degree of freedom exercise this legislative freedom within a specific field by aligning themselves with or against their fitrah, the original Divine pattern on which they have been created. This preference is a permanent quality, something integral to their beings, and not an acquired disposition. In reference to time and space, the exalted nature of certain times and certain places is a direct result of their hallowing by the Creator. Thus most classical commentators of the Qur D an maintain that the ten nights mentioned in al-Fajr (Q. 89:2) are the first ten nights of Dhu'l Hijjah, which have been exalted over other nights.24 Likewise, the Qur'an and Prophetic traditions mention other times: the four sacrosanct months,25 the Day of c Arafah, the night of qadr (laylatu*l-qadr)—the blessed night26 during which the Qur'an was first sent down from the heavens27—a night that is better than one thousand months.28 The night is a veil29 and a sign (ayah) darkened by the Creator that people might take repose therein. Say: See ye, had Allah made the night perSunniyyah (The Radiant Cosmography in the Cosmography of Tradition). A critical Arabic edition with translation and commentary, based on nine of approximately sixty extant manuscripts, by Anton M. Heinen (Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 1982), 22; hereafter al-Hay^a as-Saniyya. 23. Ali clmrdn: 83; ar-Rcfd: 15. 24. "Ibn Abbas said that Allah's Messenger said: 'among [all] the righteous deeds there is none that is loved by Allah more than those performed during these [ten nights of Dhu3! Hijjah]'. People asked: 'Not even jihad in the path of Allah?' [He said]: 'Not even jihad in the path of Allah, except by the one who went out with his life and possessions and did not return with anything' [that is, he was martyred]." Sahih al-Bukhdri, 969. 25. Rajab, Dmf 1 Qacdah, Dhu'l Hijjah, Muharram. ZQ.Ad-Dukhdn: 3.

n.Al-Qadr. 1. 28.Al-Qadr: 3. 29. al-Furqdn: 62; al-Nabd": 10.

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petual until the Day of Qiydmah, the Qur'an asks disbelievers rhetorically, who other than Allah could have brought to you a ray of light? Do ye not hear? Say: See ye, had Allah made the day perpetual until the Day of Qiydmah, who other than Allah could have brought night for you that you may rest therein'? Do ye not see'? It is but His Mercy that He made the day and the night [alternating] so that you may rest [during the night] and seek His bounties [during the day], that you might be grateful.^ The night is for repose. It is also a felicitous time for the recitation of the Qur'an,31 when the heart and the tongue are in consonance, and for supererogatory prayers.32 In the overall scheme of Islamic cosmology, the alternation of the day and the night is not merely a physical phenomenon produced by the revolution of the earth; it is a potent sign33 testifying to the Wisdom, Power, and Might of the Creator, Who brings out the day from the night and night from the dayM and Who covers the night with the day and day with the night.^ Water and Winds Hydrogen and oxygen, two elements which exist in a gaseous state in the atmosphere, combine at a precise angle (104.5°) to form liquid water, without which life is impossible.36 Water occupies a central position in the 30. Al-Qasas: 71-73; al-Furqan: 62; also an-Naba3: 11 wherein the day is mentioned as a time for seeking sustenance. 31. Al-Muzzammil: 6. 32. Al-hrtf: 79. 33. Al-Baqamh: 164; Ali-'Imrdn: 190; Yunus: 6. 34. Ali-clmrdn: 27; Luqmdn: 29; al-Fatir: 13. 35.Al-Zumar: 5. 36. Represented chemically as H2O, the water molecule has remained the focus of scientists for centuries. In the eleventh century, Ibn Sma and al-Biruni corresponded about the intriguing properties of this molecule; water expands upon freezing, because ice is less dense than water [see Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Mehdi Mohaghegh (eds.), al-As^ilah wa^l-Ajwibah (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1995); an English translation is being serialized in Islam & Science]. This singular property allows ice to float over vast reservoirs of water in oceans which would otherwise freeze solid, killing all marine life in winter and making the life cycle impossible. Since the advent of modern science, chemists and physicists have been engaged in studying water as a chemical substance which displays numerous unique qualities. These studies have led to the discovery of a hydrogen bonding: weak chemical bonds which produce attractive forces between oxygen and hydrogen atoms, raising the boiling point of water. The use of advanced technological tools have helped scientists to study the

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QurDanic account of the elements that fill the cosmos. Taken as a whole, the Qur'anic descriptions of water are far more numerous than mentions of any other material substance of the cosmos. It was water which had the singular honor of having Allah's Throne upon it.37 This small molecule is that from which every living thing has been created (Q. 30:21); it is the purifier used for ritual ablution and bathing; without it, earth becomes barren; it is essential for humanity, yet it is impossible for humanity to collect all the water it needs as it must be regenerated through an intricate water cycle, which process remains fundamentally beyond human control. The Qur'an draws attention to the process of regeneration of water as a sign of Allah's Mercy and Generosity, for He makes life possible through this process.38 The descent of water from the sky is a reason for human beings to be thankful to Him: Have you ever considered the water which you drink? Is it you who cause it to come down from the clouds—or do We send it down? And were it Our will, We could make it bitter and salty; why, then, do you not give thanks^ An important aspect of the Qur'anic verses mentioning water is the dual nature of its coming down from the sky: when it is sent in measured quantities, it is a Mercy, but when God decides to punish a nation, He sends it down to drown them, as in the case of the people of Nuh. The powerful and graphic description of the making of the Flood, which would drown all save those who were being carried on a vessel made of planks and nails (alwdh wa dusur),40 opens up a higher level of reflection for those who wish to reflect on final causes and the role of elements in the cosmos: And [long] before those [who now deny resurrection] did Nuh's people call it a lie; and they gave the lie to Our servant and said, "He is mad!"; and he was repulsed; intricate lattice structure of water crystals; spectroscopic studies have produced vast amounts of data; and X-ray crystallography has been used to study other properties of this small molecule without which life cannot exist. Despite its minute deciphering, modern science shows no interest in understanding anything higher than the physical aspects of water. 37. Hud: 7. 38. Al-Baqamh: 22, 164; al-Ancdm: 99; Ibrahim: 32; an-Nahl: 10; Td Hd: 53;

al-Hajj: 5, and many others.

39.Al-Wdq?ah: 68-70.

40. This diminutive description of Nuh's Ark draws attention to the real cause of protection: it was not the Ark, a contrivance made of planks and nails, but Allah's Mercy and Wisdom that saved Nuh and those who were with him. Amln Ahsan Islahl, Tadabbur al-Qufan (Lahore: Far an Foundation, 1998), Vol. 8, 98; henceforth Taddabur.

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thereupon he called out to his Sustainer, "Verily, I am defeated; come Thou, then, to my succour." And so We causes the gates of heaven to open with water pouring down in torrents; and caused the earth to burst forth with springs; so that the waters met for a purpose preordained; And We bore him on a [vessel] made of [mere] planks and nails, floating under Our watch—a recompense for him who had been rejected with ingratitude41 In the service of its Creator, water acts as a tool for punishing transgressors. This dual function of elements is present in winds as well; they can be winds of God's Mercy as well as of His Wrath. They carry rain-bearing clouds as well as torrential currents that pluck men out as if they were uprooted palm-trunks. 42 In adh-Dhdriydt (The Dust-Scattering Winds), an oath is taken on these winds: By the winds that scatter dust far and wide; which carry the burden; which speed along with gentle ease, then apportion [Allah's] decree; Verily, that which you are promised is true indeed, and verily, judgment is bound to corned In another passage, the Qur'an mentions swift winds whose reins have been let loose: By the emissary winds whose reins have been let loose; By the raging dust-storms; By the winds which scatter, thus separating—a clear separation; then they send down a reminder as a warning or as an excuse; Indeed, that which you are promised will come to pass.44 Like all other elements of the cosmos, the Qur'an speaks of winds as if they have a certain degree of consciousness of their existence; they follow 41. Al-Qamar: 9-14. Also see Hud: 25-48, where the story of Prophet Nuh and the Flood is given in greater detail. 42. Al-Qamar: 20. 43. Adh-Dhdriydt: 1-5. 44. Al-Mursaldt: 1-7. Like many other Makkan suwar, the condensed nature of its verses and the vocabulary used pose even more difficulties for translation than usual. The word mursaldt literally means "those which have been let loose", or "sent forth" and some commentators have taken this to mean the angels, but subsequent verses which explain what has been sent forth do not allow this identification, as Imam Islahi has pointed out (cf. Taddabur, vol. 9, 131). The second word in the first verse, wa^l-mursaldti curfd, brings forth a distinct image—as if these winds are like charging horses with their forelocks lifted upward. This imagery is carried over to the next few verses, where words such as 'asfun (swiftly running), nashrun (to spread, distribute, scatter), andfarqan (to decipher) further strengthen the imagery of blowing winds. The muqqasim cdliyah of all the oaths in the first six verses is the Day of Qiydmah: Indeed, that which you are promised will come to pass.

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commands of their Creator, they bring warnings and good news,45 they are both a witness and a means to affect the state of the physical world for specific ends. And unto Sulaymdn [We made subservient] the stormy wind, so that it sped at his behest toward the land which We have blessed,46 and unto Sulaymdn [We made subservient] the wind; its morning course a month's journey and its evening course a month's journey.47 Yet another function of the winds is to bring glad tidings to those who are in dire need. Thus they carry not only life-nurturing rains but also the fragrance of a long-lost son from the tunic which would serve as a secondary cause for the restoration of a father's eyesight.48 Seen in the purely physical aspect, these descriptions and functions of winds and water are subject to certain laws—the "laws of nature"—which give them and the entire physical cosmos an operating consistency and regularity which can be studied with the help of physical sciences. These laws, it should be emphasized, are not really laws of nature if nature is to be taken as some autonomous entity, capable of enacting its laws; precisely speaking, these are laws of the Creator, His custom, sunnatu^Lldh, upon which nature operates. Thus, water and winds, like all other elements of the cosmos, function according to these laws and allow humanity a certain degree of latitude to study these laws and formulate principles, but these laws are not immutable; they cede to the Will of their Creator when He desires so. Thus, fire normally performs its usual function of burning, but when it is commanded to Be cool to Ibrahim^ it does so; likewise, the noble Virgin conceives without having been touched by a man. Mountains

And they ask you about mountains, say: 'My Sustainer will scatter them like dust [far and wide] and leave the earth level and bare; you shall see no crookedness and no height.50 This is a characteristically Qur'anic way of using elements of the cosmos as evidence in support of its message. The specific theme here is the destruction of the entire cosmos on the Day of Qiydmah. Because of their apparent solidity, height, and grandeur, 45.Al-Acmf: 57; al-Furqan: 48; an-Naml: 63; ar-Rum: 46. 46. Al-Anbiytf: 81; also And We made subservient to him the wind, so that it sped at his behest withersoever he willed (Sad: 36). 47. Sabd: 12. 48. Yusuf: 94. 49. Al-Anbiyd": 69. W.TdHd: 105-107.

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mountains are often considered indestructible, but the Qur'an affirms that their apparent strength is but an illusion for, like, everything else in the cosmos, their existence is dependent on the Will of the Creator. Considering their importance in the physical cosmology, it is not surprising that the QurDan contains numerous references to their purpose, function, and utility in the overall cosmic scheme. They have been set on earth like pegs so that it does not move.51 They provide places of refuge and protection;52 they have been made beautiful with streaks of white, red, and black of various shades;53 and they are the abode of creatures that benefit, such as the bee.54 Beyond their physical cosmological functions, however, the Qur'an mentions other characteristic features: like everything else in the cosmos, they extol their Creator55 when commanded; they joined Dawud in his hymns;56 and, despite their solidity, strength, and firmness, they are not able to bear the Qur'an: Had We sent down the Qufan on the mountain, thou wouldst indeed see it humbling itself, breaking asunder for awe of Allah.57 The Qur'an thus makes the mountains both a witness and a proof of the Divine creative act, the purposefulness of creation, and its ultimate dissolution on a Day when mountains will be like tufts of wool;58 instead of being firm, they will move;59 will be shattered into shards;60 convulse and become like sand-dunes;61 their solid mass turning into fluffy carded wool, which will fly hither and thither.62 These powerful descriptions of the state of mountains were not taken as metaphors by the first genera5l.Al-Anbiya^: 31; Luqman: 10; al-Mursalat: 27. It is noteworthy that in these verses and several other verses referring to the firm anchoring of mountain, the Qur'an uses rawdsi (sing, rcfsiyah from the root ws-r), rather than jibdl (sing, jabal). Ra^sa^sh-shay^ means 'something has been firmly established', 'has become fixed,' 'has been made stationary\Lisdn, vol. 14, 321. W.An-Nahl: 81. tt.Al-Fatir: 28. *>±. An-Nahl: 68. 55.Al-Hajj: 18. W.Al-Anbiytf: 79; Sabd: 10; Sad: 18. tf.Al-Hashr: 21. 58.Al-Macdrij: 9. 59.At-Tur: 10; at-Takwir: 3. 6Q.Al-Wdqicah: 3. 61. Al-Muzzammil: 14. 62.Al-Qdricah: 5.

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tion of the bearers of the Qur'an; rather, they moved them, informed their worldview, and led them to reflect on the message of the QurDan. Subsequent cosmological writings of Muslim scientists and philosophers made use of these in their own cosmological treatises. Oceans

The mass of water collectively called bahr (pi. bahur) in the Qur'an can be differentiated in any account of geographical descriptions of the Earth as rivers, seas, and oceans, but for our present description of the sacred cosmology, it is the use of this word and concepts and images associated with it that are our focus. Allah has made oceans subservient to humanity so that human beings can benefit from this body of water. They obtain meat from it;63 it carries their vessels;64 and it contains precious stones.65 Beyond these physical descriptions, however, is a different set of concepts and images associated with the word bahr: the vast body of water— which in some traditions is referred to as existing in seven layers corresponding to the seven skies66—not only provides humanity with physical sustenance; it also stands as a witness to the Ultimate Reality, the Creator and His creation as well as to the Day when oceans will boil over67 and burst beyond their bounds68 If all the water of oceans were to become ink and if all the trees on earth were to become pens, they would not be sufficient to exhaust the words of God.69 Like winds and rains, oceans also obey Allah's commands; they give way to His Prophet when commanded, and drown Pharaoh and his army,70 preserving his corpse as a sign.71 The Cosmos and its Elements as Proofs and Witnesses

As mentioned previously, the Qur'an primarily uses the cosmos (dfdq), the human self (nafs) and history (dthdr) as sources from which it draws proofs and arguments for its message. The three interconnected parts of the message of the Qur'an are (i) the Oneness of the Creator (TawMd); (ii) Prophecy (Risdlah); and (iii) the Return (Macdd). We have already seen Q3.An-Nahl: 16. 64. Al-Isrd": 66. 65. Ar-Rahman: 24. 66. al-Hay^a as-Saniyya, 35-6. 67.At-Takwir: 6. 68.Al-Infitdr: 3. d9.Al-Kahf: 109; Luqmdn: 27. iQ.Al-Baqarah: 50; al-Acrdf: 138. 71. Yunus: 92.

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how various elements of the cosmos are described in the Qur'an in their dual roles as discernible physical entities, regulated through Divine laws (often misnamed laws of nature), and as signs (dydt) pointing to something beyond. This tripartite message is conveyed by the Qur'an in numerous ways. Sometimes the Qur'an draws attention of humanity to its message through gentle persuasive language, urging human beings to use their intellect to observe the signs scattered in and around them; sometimes the message is conveyed in beautiful metaphors; at times the tone becomes harsh with severe warnings; then there are elaborate descriptions of the life of the blessed in the Hereafter which urge human beings to strive for the ever-lasting abode of bliss and not for the fleeting worldly life. Tawhld, the uncompromising, absolute Oneness of the Creator, is the primary foundation of the Qur'anic message; the other two basic teachings of the Qur'an (Prophecy and the Return) emerge from it. And Your God is the One God; there is no deity other than Him, the Qur'an states categorically, the Most Gracious, the Dispenser of Graced This is stated as a matter of fact, as a self-evident truth, and yet the Qur'an provides numerous proofs for this foundational statement of its message both as an argument against (hujjah) those who do not believe and as means for strengthening the faith of those who do. Drawn from the three aforementioned realms, these proofs are presented as material for reflection for those who have eyes to see and hearts to reflect: Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the succession of night and day; in the ships speeding through oceans, carrying what is beneficial for humanity; in the waters which Allah sends down from the sky, giving life thereby to the earth after it had been lifeless and with which He causes all manner of living beings to exist in abundance; and in the movement of the winds and in the clouds running their appointed courses between the heavens and the earth—[in all these] are signs for those who use their intellect.75

Here we have a succinct description of the various elements of the cosmos presented as points of departure for people who reflect on the signs of the Creator. The creation of the heavens and the earth, mentioned at the beginning of this verse, points to both their coming into existence from non-existence and their composition; the former testifies to the infinite Power and Might of the Creator; the latter to His inimitable Skill iZ.Al-Baqarah: 163. 73.Al-Baqarah: 164.

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(san'at) and infinite Wisdom (hikmak). The remarkable harmony of innumerable elements and forces present in the cosmos could not have come into existence had there been more than one creator; in that case there would be more than one operative volition, resulting in the destruction of order and eventually the existence of the cosmos. Without directly mentioning here the most beautiful Divine Names (al-Asmff al-Husna)—such as al-Bdrf and al-Mubdf, which evoke the infinite and absolute creativity of God—the verse refers to the coming into existence of the heavens and the earth as proof of Allah's Oneness and His absolute Sovereignty. The bounteous generosity of the elements of the cosmos (waters bring life to earth, ships carry what is useful for humanity, the winds bring rain) point to His inexhaustible Wisdom and Mercy. Furthermore, the cosmos and its elements testify that there is, indeed, a purpose in their creation, for such a vast, complex, and interconnected cosmos cannot be pointless. The succession of night and day, their regularity, their contrast in color, function, and effects on humanity and other things existing in the cosmos is a proof of the harmonious functioning of various elements of the cosmos, despite their opposite natures. Water exists in multiple forms and serves multiple functions: as oceans, it is the vast network of "highways" for ships which travel, carrying that which is useful for humanity; as rain it comes down from the sky, giving life to lifeless earth. All manner of life (kulli ddbah) comes into existence through water. The movement of winds and clouds (tasriffr-riydhi wa*s-sahdb) are also mentioned as signs. Sometimes winds carry rain-laden clouds; at other times they scatter clouds so that they do not bring rain to the barren earth; for some people winds bring Divine Mercy, for others His retribution. Their movement sets apart the sea for Musa but drowns Pharaoh and his army. When humid, winds nourish vegetation, fruits, and crops; when dry and hot, they help crops and fruits to ripen. Cold and dry winds of autumn turn green leaves yellow and scatter lifeless creatures. Winds pollinate and distribute. And they do all of this according to the plan and command of a Wise and Powerful Creator, the Qur3an tells us, for they have been made subservient (musakhkhardt) between the earth and the skies. Unlike the worldview created by modern science, the Qur'anic view of the elements of the cosmos does not make them subservient to humanity; rather they remain in the service of their Lord, Who created them and set

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on tasks for His purpose. They benefit humanity and their existence and functioning can be studied by human beings through an understanding of the laws prescribed by the Creator for their existence, but they are not in human control by any means; the control of the elements remains in the hands of the Creator. In addition to their physical descriptions and functions, the Qur'an contains numerous allegorical and metaphorical references to the elements of the cosmos. The ships and the oceans are physical, but, metaphorically speaking, one's life is like a ship traveling through a vast ocean of time. At times, this ship comes to stormy waters, rendering a person incapable of carrying on life; at such times, human beings call their Creator from the depths of their beings, asking for help and support. At other times, the ship of life floats through bounteous waters, bringing happiness and joy and many a man then forgets that this joyful existence has been bestowed upon him by the Creator.74 Water pouring down from the sky is physical. It has the capacity to bring forth plants and vegetables, but its ability to do so depends on the receptivity of earth; some regions of earth are more receptive to it than others and benefit from rain, while others remain unreceptive and do not bear fruits. The guidance of the Qur'an is like rain: some remain blind to it, driving no benefit. Winds are physical; they blow whence they are directed, bringing good news or punishment, but there are also winds of Mercy blowing in the hearts of those who believe and remain steadfast in their beliefs and servitude to their Creator. The alternation of the night and the day is an observable phenomenon, but embedded into this physical phenomenon are numerous chemical, physiological, and botanical processes—from the mechanisms associated with the recuperation of the human body to photosynthesis—without which life would simply vanish. But the night also brings dreams, psychic states opening our consciousness to higher, supra-intellectual realities; metaphorically speaking, the light of the day is the invisible inner hope and joy that moves our limbs and bodies to perform the thousand and one functions necessitated by the sheer demand and requirements of life. Then there is the remarkable pairing in the cosmos. This pairing is present at various levels of existence in different domains, in qualities, properties, and characteristics; in physical elements and in non-physical 74. Yunus: 12; ar-Rum: 33; az-Zumar: 8, 49.

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things: the night and the day; the sky and the earth; the sun and the moon; dry and wet; hot and cold; happiness and sadness; male and female. In fact, there exists not a single thing, measure, property, or force in the entire manifest cosmos that is not paired, as if every existing thing is perpetually testifying to its own insufficiency by existentially pointing to, and yearning for, its other half: Of everything We have created pairs, so that you might draw remembrance;75 Limitless in His glory is He who has created pairs in whatever the earth produces, and in their own beings and in that of which they have no knowledge;76 And of all fruits He made pairs.77 This pairing makes each half of a pair complementary to the other, although they possess opposite properties. Taken as a unit, the manifest cosmos as a whole shows a remarkable yearning for its other half—the yet-to-be manifested life in the Hereafter. The Qur'an calls this world ad-Dunyd—derived from the root d-n-w, meaning "that which is near"— while its pair is al-Akhirah, from the root a-kh-r: the latter, the ultimate, that which is yet to come. The elements of the cosmos are both proofs and witnesses for the Hereafter (al-Akhirah), which is infinitely better than this world. This testimony (shahddah) of the elements and, in fact, of the entire cosmos to the Hereafter, is present in various forms in the Qur'an, ranging from oaths to rational arguments drawn from physical properties of the elements. In fact, the very act of creation testifies to the coming of a moment when Allah will fold it back, as this folding back is the other half of the act of Creation. Once reduced to the non-existence whence it came, the cosmos will complete its cycle and usher humanity into another, ever-lasting abode: Have they not seen how Allah initiated creation and how He repeats it? Indeed, this is a light [matter] for Him. Say unto them: travel through the earth and see how He created in the first instance, and thus, too, will Allah bring into being a second time; for verily, Allah has power over everything.78 Taken as a whole, this entire cosmic scheme of the Qur'an establishes an inalienable link between the manifest cosmos and its Creator. Furthermore, built into this Qur'anic description of the cosmos is a teleology which anchors the physical cosmos in a metaphysical realm, thereby establishing an incontrovertible nexus between God and the cosmos, on 75. Adh-Dhdriydt: 49.

76. Yd Sin: 36.

77.Ar-Racd: 3. Also al-Ancdm: 43; an-Najm: 45; al-Qiydmah: 39. iS.Al-'Ankabut: 19-20.

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(Concluded)

Part IV Operationalization of Islamic Science

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[16] SCIENCE EDUCATION: THE ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVE Seyyed Hossein Nasr

In everything there exists a sign from Him Bearing proof that He is One.

The first question to pose concerning science education from the Islamic perspective is whether science education is necessary, and only if the answer is in the affirmative, should it then be asked what kind of science education would be in accordance with that perspective. Few Muslims would debate the necessity of education not only for practical ends but as an integral part of Islam as a religion. Education or al-ta'lim wa' l-tarbiyah can be interpreted in fact as the heart of the religious life, leading man through ta'lim or the transmission of knowledge as well as tarbiyah or the training of the soul to an ever greater degree of perfection until the arrival of the moment of his meeting with the Lord. In the Islamic context, education can in a sense be interpreted as life itself as it should be led and pursued. As for science as currently understood, it exists as an undeniable component of modern civilization and is in fact in a sense its heart. And to the extent that the Muslim world has been influenced and dominated by the forces of modernism, it too has come to be influenced to an ever greater degree by Western science. Moreover, before modern times, Islam had cultivated its own scientific tradition for a thousand years, a tradition which remained over the centuries as one of the glories of Islamic civilization. In order for Islamic civilization to survive as well as to face the realities of the modern world, it is necessary, therefore, to have some kind of science education in the Muslim world. Whether Muslims wish to reject modern science, accept it wholeheartedly or appraise it critically and integrate into their life and thought whatever in it is in conformity with the Islamic world view, they must know this science in depth. There-must exist, therefore, a science education in the curriculum of schools within the Islamic world. The question that remains is what kind of science education? How is science to be taught without destroying the Islamic world view? How is it to be taught without alienating Muslim youth from their own culture? How it is to be taught in the light both of the clear doctrines contained in the Qur'an and Hadlth about the world of nature and of the long tradition of Islamic science created by devout Muslims on the basis of these doctrines over the centuries? To answer such questions is one of the basic challenges facing the Muslim intelligentsia today and it is to some of these questions which we wish to turn in this discourse. At the very beginning, it must be asserted clearly that there is such a reality as the Islamic perspective concerning the sciences of nature and the way or ways of teaching such sciences. Islam possesses of course a Sacred Law (al-SharT ah) to guide the actions of men and doctrines (al-' aqa' id) concerning the nature of God,

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science His Names and Qualities. But Islam also possesses distinct teachings concerning the nature of the world, its origin and end and the relation of the world to its Creator.1 The Qur'an refers ceaselessly to the natural order and the Qur'anic revelation addresses the cosmic order in such a fashion that the world of nature may be said to participate along with man in the reception of the Divine Revelation.2 Likewise, modern science, far from being value-free, is based on a specific world view derived from certain philosophical, religious and also anti-religious theses drawn from European thought.3 Whatever the neutral character of facts described by modern science might appear to be, this science makes certain definite assumptions concerning the nature of reality, causality and such categories as time, space, matter, energy, form and number. These assumptions are based upon the philosophical background from which modern science grew, while the growth of this science is also related to certain specific social factors of European society. This science cannot to taught in the Muslim world as if the world view upon which it is based were not there, or as if Islam did not possess its own perspective concerning the sciences of nature and could accept blindly and uncritically any science as being the 'ilm mentioned in the Qur'an and iheHadith simply because the root of the word science comes from the Latin scientia which can be translated as al-ilm. A century of uncritical thinking along these lines in the Muslim world has produced such a catastrophic result in the educational system and within Muslim society, that it is no longer possible to turn a blind eye to the question of science education from the Islamic perspective. It has now become imperative to ask what is the Islamic perspective upon science education and how to create a science education program which would enable Muslims to perserve their own religion and culture, confront the modern world and be able to avoid the calamities which the modern world is facing as a result of the application of a science based upon the forgetting of God and the working of God's Will in the world of nature and of man. The root of the Islamic attitude towards nature and the sciences of nature is to be found in the Noble Qur'an and its most important and authoritive commentary which is the Hadlth. These twin sources of the Islamic tradition contain a definite doctrine of the origin, nature and end of the cosmos, a doctrine which was elaborated later by generations of Muslim thinkers. Although it is not possible here to elucidate fully the Qur'anic doctrine concerning nature,4 one can at least point out its most salient features. First of all, it is necessary to point to the remarkable frequency with which the Noble Qur'an refers to nature and natural phenomena. The cosmos participates in the Qur'anic revelation and the phenomena of nature possess an "Islamic" meaning and convey a message to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. Their message, moreover, is related to the truth revealed in the Qur'an for they are the signs (dydt) of God as are the verses of the Sacred Text and as is man who is himself the observer of these signs.5 The cosmos is also a book, the Qur'an al-takwml of certain later commentators, upon whose "pages" are inscribed the primordial revelation of God, but a book which can only be read by one whose mind and soul has been transformed by the message of the revealed or written Qur'an (the Qur'an al-tadwirii). The message of

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science this cosmic book is moreover, not simply the external features of nature or the quantitative aspects of phenomena although even these aspects and features possess a significance beyond themselves. The Qur'an and Hadlth teach us about a cosmos which has a Creator and Sustainer, a beginning and an end. They speak of the cosmic order as being created through the truth and not in vain, of possessing a goal and purpose, of being based on design and not having come into being through chance, or reflecting a wisdom whose significance lies beyond the domain of phenomena. The Islamic universe does not begin with an accidental big bang, nor evolve by chance through aeons, nor change without a purpose and goal. Its laws are not independent of the Will and Wisdom of its Creator, and its existence depends at every moment upon the Divine Command BE (kun) which generated the cosmos at the beginning. Its end is not the cold death of a star or galaxy but integration into higher realms of being described so majestically in the eschatological verses of the Qur'an and in certain Hadiths. Science education according to the Islamic perspective must begin and have as its background throughout all the stages of education this Qur'anic view of the cosmos, which can itself be taught and elaborated on various levels from the stage of a beginner to that of the most advanced student. This view must provide the criteria and framework within which the modern sciences must be judged and evaluated. The Qur'an is not a book of science in the modern sense as some modern apologists have tried to make it, seeking to harmonize this current scientific hypothesis with one verse of the Sacred Text and that supposedly scientific fact with another. But the Qur'an and Hadlth do contain the principles of the cosmology and philosophy of nature which must serve as the framework and governing philosophy of all science education in the Islamic world. These sources contain also the roots of a complete epistemology which does not limit the knowing faculty of man to simply the senses and reason but includes also revelation as the supreme source of knowledge complemented by intellection (ta'aqqul) which must not be confused with ratiocination as understood in post-medieval Western thought. On the basis of these teachings, there developed over the ages an elaborate Islamic methodology of science which must also be always kept in mind and taught in an appropriate manner in any program of science education which seeks to be Islamic.6 In addition to turning to the Qur'an and Hadlth, it is essential to focus attention upon the Islamic sciences which grew and developed over the centuries in Islamic civilization. These sciences, which also played a major role in the development of Western science, did not simply happen to be cultivated by people who were Muslims and who lived in the Islamic world. They are profoundly Islamic in the sense of being integrally related to the Qur'anic conception of the cosmos and of applying the principles found in the sources of the Islamic revelation to the sciences which Muslims created by integrating the sciences of antiquity, whether they were Greek, Persian or India, into the Islamic world view. It is not possible to have an Islamic science education by quoting a few verses of the Qur'an which are usually interpreted on the basis of a sense of intellectual inferiority vis-a-vis Western science and circumventing a millenium

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science of Islamic science and philosophy which is inseparable from it. The neglect of the philosophy and history of Islamic science in science education in the Islamic world has had very unfortunate consequences during the past century and cannot be continued if an truly Islamic educational system is to be created. The modern discipline of the history of science itself was created in the late 19th and early 20th century in first Europe and later in America mostly on the basis of a positivist philosophy. Its two most important founders, G. Sarton who was an eminent scholar of Islamic science and E. Mach, espoused the cause of a positivism which is a far cry from the Islamic philosophy of science. Muslim scholars of this century have not dealt as much as it is necessary with their own scientific tradition and when they have, it has been usually on the basis of the methodologies and philosophies established by Western historians of science. What is needed before anything else is a thorough Islamic history of science which would incorporate what Western scholars have discovered7 into an Islamic framework and continued research into the vast number of Arabic, Persian and some Turkish and Urdu manuscripts dealing with the various sciences and medicine. The whole notion of what is "exact" science and what is not "exact" and in fact the whole concept of what constitutes "science" must be moved out of the constraints placed upon this notion by 19th century positivism and seen in the light of the Islamic scientific tradition itself. Moreover, the relation of Islamic science to Islamic revelation must be reinterpreted in the light of Islam and the whole idea of decadence as it was conceived by earlier Western orientalism in the case of Islamic civilization must be reexamined. Later developments of science in Ottoman Turkey, Safavid Persia, Mamluk Egypt and Mogul India must be added as chapters to the better known earlier periods of Islamic science. On the basis of this integral view concerning the whole tradition of Islamic science, the history of Islamic science must be studied and taught not as a chapter in the history of Western science but as an integral part of Islamic civilization. It must be seen as a thousand year long scientific tradition on whose basis alone can Muslims take the next step in the development of a science which would be related to their own world view rather than being simply a chapter in the history of Western science written on Muslim soil.8 As far as science education itself is concerned, in the earlier stages all approaches to the teaching of the sciences should be based on the Islamic scientific tradition itself. The student should be taught that the Muslims had carried out extensive scientific activity for nearly a millenium in one part of the Islamic world or another and that this activity was carried out almost always by men who were devout Muslims. The students should be also taught that these sciences were an integral part of the Islamic intellectual tradition and that if they were opposed here and there by this or that theologian or jurisprudent, it does not mean that they were anti-Islamic, for the Islamic intellectual tradition possesses many schools and dimensions. The students should be made aware that the fact that the Islamic sciences did not continue to expand and develop during all the periods of Islamic history and especially since the llth/17th century is not a condemnation of Islamic 7

Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science civilization. No civilization in history has kept a sustained interest in the development of the sciences of nature at all times as the ancient Egyptian and Chinese traditions bear witness. To identify science with civilization is a modern Western invention; and even in the case of the West, who can predict with certitude that the best Western minds will be attracted to physics and the other sciences a century from now as they have been since the 11th/17th century, even presuming that modern science and its applications do not prevent man from continuing his existence on earth until then? Finally, Muslim students must be taught that although the earlier phases of the Islamic scientific tradition influenced medieval and Renaissance Western science greatly, Western science underwent a revolutionary change of perspective in the 11th/17th century and developed under a new paradigm very different from that of Islamic or for the matter Latin science. Modern science owes much to Islamic science but is not simply a further development of Islamic science which in contrast to modern science was cultivated in a universe governed and sustained by God, where the sacred dominated over everything and where the secular or profane was not even accepted as a legitimate category, where reason was still wed to the intellect and subservient to revelation, where men saw the signs of God in all things and studied nature to discover God's wisdom and purpose, where the sciences of nature were integrated into a hierarchy of knowledge, the highest form of knowledge being that which concerns the Divine Reality, namely, La ildha illa'Llah. Islamic civilization was not great because it contributed to modern science but because it was able to create an elaborate science of nature without bringing about that modern alienation of man from nature and also from God which has already withered away the soul of modern man and is now threatening his very physical survival.9 On the level of the particular sciences, the Islamic sciences should be taught as much as possible with their Islamic identity before proceeding to the teaching of the modern science in question. This can be done especially in elementary and secondary education. For example, in mathematics practically every branch of the subject before differential and integral calculus was developed by Muslim mathematicians on the basis of earlier Greek and Indian works. In this case, arithmetic and algebra should be taught as subjects developed by Muslim scientists and in certain cases as algebra even the book of Khayyam could be adopted as a text. Number theory should be taught on the basis of the works of Ghiyath al-Din Jamshld Kasharii and others and the names of modern Western mathematicians brought in only later in advanced mathematics when necessary. How many Muslim students even know that the science of trigonometry was formulated as a separate branch of mathematics by al-Blrurii and Nasir al-Din alTusI? In many parts of the Islamic world where the trigonometric functions such as sine and cosine are used under their European names, hardly any student is even aware that sinus itself is the translation of the Arabic jayb. In astronomy, the early introduction of the subject into the curriculum could be carried out almost completely in terms of Islamic astronomy. Students could be introduced to the configurations of the heavens through works of Muslim astronomers while the institution of the observatory and the development of

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science instruments which were in fact still in use when Tycho Brahe made his observations could be treated from the point of view of historical development of the observatories of Maraghah, Samarqand and Istanbul. Even mathematical astronomy and the astronomical revolution of the llth/17th century could be treated with the Muslim critique of Ptolemaic astronomy especially that of Naslr al-Din al-Tusi, Qutb al-Dln al-Shlrazi and Ibn al-Shatir in view. It can also be shown that the heliocentric system was known as a possibility to Muslims and that if the Muslims did not bring about the Scientific Revolution as it occured in Europe, it was because the Islamic tradition with its emphasis upon the sacred character of God's creation would not permit that secularisation of the cosmos which was a necessary condition for the rise of the mechanical view of the universe. In chemistry, it is hardly ever taught that many of the instruments used in secondary school chemistry laboratories to this day came originally from the Islamic world as such words as alembic (al-'anbiq) testify or that the division of substances into mineral, vegetable and animal or the acid-base theory are grounded in ideas developed by Muslim alchemists and chemists such as Jabir ibn Hayyan and Muhammad ibn Zakariyya' al-Razi. Of course alchemy is not simply a rudimentary chemistry, nor simply a superstition except for those who do not understand its principles. It is at once a science of the cosmos and a science of the soul.10 But it is related to modern chemistry which grew out of its cadaver once the spirit of this discipline was lost. Even before modern times, however, the Muslims had developed chemistry in addition to alchemy although the rapport between the two was not antagonistic as it was to be in the West beginning in the llth/17th century.11 On the basis of this tradition, a great deal drawn from Islamic sources could be taught to students before they would be introduced to Boyle, Lavoisier and other founders of modern chemistry. In physics, usually students are introduced directly to the classical physics of Galileo and Newton. Muslim students could, however, be first introduced to the ideas of Ibn Sina, Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdadl, Ibn Bajjah and others who criticized in various ways the Aristotelian theories of projectile motion and discovered the fundamental concept of momentum. This would serve as not only the historical background for the Pisan Dialogue and Galilean physics, but would also turn the attention of the student to the concern of Muslim scientists with some of the issues which have remained central to modern physics. In certain branches of physics such as the science of weights and measures and optics a great deal can be drawn directly from such figures as al-Blruril and alKhazirii for the former and Ibn al-Haytham and Kamal al-Din al-Farsi for the latter. There is no reason why in fact both these disciplines cannot be taught at the secondary level and even to some extent at the level of elementary college physics on the basis of Islamic sources.12 As for medicine and pharmacology, it is illogical and even absurd to neglect the Islamic tradition at a time when Western medicine itself is facing such a crisis and when so many Westerners are seeking alternative forms of medicine including the Hippocratic and Islamic. In this field, the philosophy of Islamic medicine should be taught to all students while traditional Islamic medicine and

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science pharmacology should be taught parallel with the Western as is already the case in Pakistan and among Muslims of India.13 In this way, not only will the human relationship between the doctor and the patient and the religious nature of medicine and the vocation of the physician be preserved, but a very efficient and economically feasible form of medicine that is also closely related to the dietary habits and the whole culture of the Muslim peoples will become available once again. Furthermore, at least a step will be taken in preventing to some degree the excessive use of modern pharmaceutical products in Islamic countries which like much of the rest of Asia and Africa have become dumping grounds for drugs some of which possess unknown serious and negative side effects. The few instances mentioned are merely examples which could be multiplied in many other fields such as geography, geology, botany and zoology. Science education from the Islamic perspective would demand that in each case the Islamic science in question be studied and presented in a manner that it would first of all give a sense of confidence to the student in his own religion and culture and secondly provide a bridge and sometimes an antidote to the modern Western sciences whose study creates so often a sense of alienation among students toward their own religious and cultural traditions. Only on the basis of the Qur'anic conception of nature and the Islamic sciences which developed within Islamic civilization for a millenium, should the modern sciences be taught to students. These sciences must indeed be taught in depth and they must be mastered fully if Muslims are to write another chapter in the history of their own scientific tradition. But the Western sciences should not be taught in a vacuum nor en bloc. They should be taught once the mind of the student is trained in the manner outlined above; and they should also be taught critically and in such a manner as to separate fact from hypothesis and tested hypothesis from mere theory. Where certain theories such as that of evolution parade as scientific fact, they should be exposed for what they are and full use must be made of the studies of the shortcomings of modern science and its criticism being made in the West itself to an ever greater degree during the past decades.14 Modern science is itself undergoing a profound philosophical crisis especially as its frontiers in the field of physics. The boot strap theory, quantum mechanics and the anthropic principle in modern astrophysics and cosmology all require a philosophy of nature different from what has been prevalent since the 11th/17th century. Moreover, there are even more extensive philosophical, ethical and even scientific criticisms being made of many fields of modern science by eminent scientists and philosophers of science themselves, while a number of scientists have been searching in oriental sources for new paradigms15. If such search has been directed mostly toward the Far East and India thus far, it is because Islamic doctrines and teachings are by and large less available to the Western intelligentsia than those of India and the Far East. In such a situation, all modern science must be taught to Muslim students critically. To describe the stratigraphy of a geological formation is one thing and to speak of its genesis "millions and millions" of years ago quite another. The first is based on observation and the second on the philosophical theory of

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science uniformitarianism an the concept of a purely quantitative and uniform time, both of which are not themselves "scientific" but assumptions made by modern science concerning the nature of reality. There is no reason why one could not describe the rock formation without accepting the agnostic or deistic presumptions upon which theories of genesis in geology are usually based or by neglecting the possibility of other forces not now observable acting in the cosmos, or by refusing to believe in cosmic rhythms and the hierarchy of existence about which traditional Islamic sources have spoken so often. In such fields as modern cosmology and evolution especially, there is need for great discernment for both are based on assumptions which are diametrically opposed to Qur'anic teachings. As far as cosmology is concerned, an Islamic educational system should point to the completely provisional nature of modern cosmology based on incredible extrapolations and therefore subject to constant change every few years. Islamic cosmology could always be taught as a symbolic science of the cosmos which can act as the background for every science of the cosmos which could legitimately be considered as Islamic and which can provide meaning even for the discoveries of vast stellar spaces and galaxies by modern astronomy. As for evolution, there is no single hypothesis in modern science which is as opposed the dicta of the Qur'an and in fact the traditional teachings of all religions as evolution, which was in fact espoused to allow men to be able to study the wonders of nature without having to point to the necessity of a Creator. In contrast to the views of certain modernist Muslims influenced by 13th/19th century European thought, the Qur'an does not contain the roots of the theory of evolution nor did traditional Islamic thought ever divorce creative power from the "Hands" of the Creator.16 During the last few decades, a chorus of scientists has joined philosophers and theologians in their criticism of the Darwinian theory of evolution, basing themselves only on scientific facts and observations.17 Strangely enough, this is taking place exactly at a time when in the West certain theologians are beginning to turn against the traditional theology of the church and develop a kind of "evolutionary theology" of which the works of Teilhard de Chardin are a well-known example.18 No educational system in the Islamic world should teach the biological and geological sciences without full awareness of the literature which is critical of both evolution and such movements, and without distinguishing for the student the difference between facts and hypotheses based on a world view which excludes God as an active principle in the created order. The ethical and sociological criticisms of modern science emanating now from the West must also be considered in the teaching of these sciences and Muslims have much to learn from this kind of scholarship. It must be remembered, however, that the problem of modern science from the Islamic point of view is not only its unethical applications. This fact must certainly be emphasized and science must always be taught in the light of the Islamic doctrine that knowledge should never be divorced from ethics as the traditional madrasah system always underlined. But it must also be remembered that in contrast to what many modern Muslim apologists write, the problem of modern science is not only the way its applications are divorced from ethical considerations. It is also in its

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science creating of a knowledge of the natural order from which God and even man have been abstracted, leading despite the outcry of certain individual scientists, to a view of the universe in which man himself is redundant and where all that is spiritual and sacred appears as unreal. To avoid the pitfalls of a scientistic world view which has spread in the West despite the protest of many scientists, science education in the Islamic world should emphasize at all stages the limitations of science as a way of knowing, the hierarchy of knowledge and the existence of a higher form of knowledge which is not invalidated by modern science, but which alone can provide the final meaning of whatever discoveries modern science makes, to the extent that these discoveries correspond to some aspect of reality. Science education should also emphasize to the students the dangers of reductionism and being out with clarity with Islamic teaching that the higher can never grow out of the lower nor be reduced to it. Science education should enable Muslim students to learn modern science in depth but also as a step toward creating a veritably Islamic science, performing the same task that early Muslims did vis-a-vis the Graeco-Alexandrian, Persian and Indian sciences. They must have the necessary religious and intellectual background to be able to think as Muslims rather than be consumed by a science which, although claiming to be international, is really Western and related to a value system closely related to the history of the West. They must know the tradition of Islamic science and make it their own in such a way as to feel that they belong to it.19 Only then can they set about to master modern science and perhaps take a step in creating a new chapter in the history of Islamic science by making contributions which would be at once Islamic and scientific within an Islamic paradigm of the natural sciences and with methodologies in conformity with the Islamic intellectual tradition.20 In such an effort, they would absorb modern Western science into their world view but not as an alien body of knowledge. Rather, they would absorb and consume it as an organic body consumes food which in being digested is also analyzed into components some of which are absorbed and others rejected. In conclusion, it must be emphasized again that the Islamic world has no choice but to master modern science, but it can only do so without destroying its own world of faith if this science is critically appraised in the light of the Islamic intellectual tradition and studied only after students become well-versed in the Islamk scientific tradition and the ethos of Islam itself issuing from the Qur'an. At a moment when modern science is undergoing a crisis and when many are seeking to revive the ethos of Islam, it would be a tragedy to overlook the crucial task of reviving the Islamic intellectual and scientific tradition and of studying critically modern science in the light of the principles drawn from this tradition. The task is a difficult one, but despite this difficulty the question of science education remains central to all present day educational concerns. It is a question that must be addressed and which no one seriously involved with Islamic education can overlook. The Islamic world certainly has the intellectual means of confronting this challenge and with faith in Divine Succour will be able to achieve this difficult task, for with God all things are possible. As the Qur'an

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science asserts ease follows upon difficulty when there is reliance upon the Will of the One who created the universe and who is the ultimate reference of all knowledge of His creation.

Notes 1. On Islamic doctrines concerning nature see S. H. Nasr, "The Cosmos and the Natural Order", in World Spirituality - A Historical Encyclopedia of the Spiritual Quest, vol. 19 on Islam, (ed. S. H. Nasr), New York, and idem., An Introduction to Islamic CosmologicalDoctrines, London 1978. 2. It should never be forgotten that the first revelation was received by the Blessed Prophet in the bosom of nature in the cave of al-Hira' and that according to traditional sources the whole sky was transformed in this experience. 3. See E. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundation of Modern Physical Science, London, 1925; and S. H. Nasr, Man and Nature, Kuala Lumpur, 1986. 4. On Qur'anic verses referring to nature, see F. Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'dn, Chicago, 1980. 5. See Nasr, An Introduction..., p. 6. 6. See O. Dakar, "Ibn Sina's Methodological Approach towards the Study of Nature in His 'Oriental Philosophy' ", HamdardIslamicus, vol. VII, no. 2, Summer 1984,gpp. 33-49; idem., "The Question of Methodology in Islamic Science", Muslim Education Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 1, 1984, pp. 16-30; and S. H. Nasr, "Reflection on Methodolgy in the Islamic Sciences," Hamdard Islamicus, vol. Ill, no. 3, Fall 1980, pp. 3-13. 7. A quarter of a century ago we began a seven-volume annotated bibliography of books, monographs and articles on Islamic science in all non-Islamic languages including not only European ones but also Chinese and Japanese. Our goal was to make this vast material available so that a group of Muslim scholars under the auspices of some university or institute could study all these works and on the basis of what has been done so far by non-Muslim scholars and of course the writings of Muslim scholars themselves to produce a new version of Sarton's Introduction written from the point of view of Islamic historiography and the Islamic conceptions of science. Two volumes of the project have been already published as An Annotated Bibliography of Islamic Science, Tehran, 1975 and 1978 and Lahore, 1985. The third volume on mathematics is now being published by the Suhail Academy of Lahore while the last four volumes, whose texts were completed and ready for publication, were lost in Tehran during the events of 1979. 8. In both our Science and Civilization in Islam, Cambridge (USA), 1968; and Islamic Science An Illustrated Study, London, 1976, we have tried to present the tradition of Islamic science in this manner. The details, however, are far from complete even as far as present day knowledge of the various branches of the Islamic sciences are concerned. It is hoped that a joint effort by a number of scholars can produce a more extensive opus based on this concept but embracing the extensive research that has been carried out even since these works were written. 9. See T. Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends, New York, 1973, idem, Unfinished Animal, New York, 1977; E. Schumacher, Guide for the Perplexed, New York, 1978; and S. H. Nasr,Afa« and Nature. 10. See T. Burckhardt, Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos - Science of Soul, trans. W. Stoddart, London, 1967. 11. See S. H. Nasr, "From the Alchemy of Jabir to the Chemistry of Razi," in his Islamic Life and Thought, London, 1981, pp. 120-123. 12. Ibn al-Haytham's works can also be used in many other branches of physics and astronomy. By emphasizing his significance in optics, we do not in any way wish to detract from the significance of this remarkable scientist in other fields.

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

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The Hamdard Institutes of Karachi and New Delhi established by Hakim Muhammad Said and Hakim Abd al-Hamid have rendered great service in the propagation of Islamic medicine which for historical reasons is often referred to as Unarii or Bu 'An medicine in that area. See for example, W. Smith, Cosmos and Transcendence, La Salle (111.), 1984; and W. Heitler, Naturphilosophische Streifzuge, Braunschweig, 1970. Such works as the Tao of Physics of F. Capra have by now become quite popular. Although they do not deal with Oriental doctrines in depth, they do indicate an important trend in the Western Oriental doctrines in depth, they do indicate an important trend in the Western scientific community. See Shaikh Abdul Mabud, "Theory of Evolution: An Assessment from the Islamic Point of View", Muslim Educational Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 1, 1986, pp. 9-56. See for example, G. Sermonti and R. Fondi, Dopo Darwin, Milan, 1980; D. Dewar, The Transformist Illusion, Mulfreesboro (Tenn.), 1955; E. L. Grant Waston, Nature Abounding, 1941; and L. Bounoure, Determinisme et finalite, Paris, 1957. On the traditional critique of evolutionism and such movements see S. H. Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred, New York, 1981, chapter seven. Recent debates throughout the Islamic world on Islamic science and its meaning, although still rudimentary in many quarters and suffering from certain dogmatic or ideological restraints in others, are nevertheless valuable in bringing about greater awareness of the significance of this tradition. For a critical appraisal of the recent debates concerning Islamic science see, M. Y. Ahsan, "Trash and Treasure", Iqbal Review, vol. 27, no. 1, AprilSeptember 1986, pp.201-249. During the past three years the Muslim Association for the Advancement of Science in Aligarh has been founded with this specific goal in view. See their journal MAAS which began publication in 1985.

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[17] Some Specific Methodologies of Relating Mathematical Sciences and Islam

Shaharlr bin Mohamad Zain

President Akademi Sains Islam Malaysia

The discourse on the compatibility or the incompatibility of Islam with contemporary knowledge under the name of the Islamization of knowledge, or knowledge from the Islamic perspectives is at least three decades of age. The purpose of this movement is to establish a better knowledge which is, among others, more compatible with Islamic principles and hence the expected byproduct is a modern or contemporary Islamic science. Thus the issues are methodology of teaching the contemporary science which constitutes science from an Islamic perspective; and the modifications, reconstructions or even completely new constructions of science which constitutes not only an improved and comprehensive knowledge but also more compatible with and relevant to Islam. It is suggested that a good method of teaching a contemporary science topic from an Islamic perspective is by highlighting the original setting of the problem and the system of belief of the relevant scientists which led to the discovery or the construction of the knowledge concerned and a critical evaluation of the subject based on the current knowledge and Islamic values; whereas a most important method of producing new product of Islamic science is of course by the Islamic value driven method. Each of these methodologies is elaborated with examples in mathematical sciences initiated by the author in the last few years, namely in

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Introduction The antagonism between modern science and religion especially Islam is not new especially on issues relating to ethics and applications. However at least since 1960s, much more fundamental issues on science and Islam have been raised. The first major event relating to these issues was the First World Conference on Islamic Education held at the University of King Abdul Aziz, Saudi Arabia in 1977. The proceedings of this conference is edited by al-Attas1. The conference is of course concerning with the teaching and educating Muslims with the contemporary knowledge as such that the knowledge would not undermine the Islamic heritage, values and teachings. Since then many such conferences have been organised, and many books and articles on the Islamic education have been published (see for example a recent article by Hassan and references therein)2. A review on the implementation of the resolutions of the series of the World Islamic Education Conferences is found in Ghulam3, albeit not comprehensive enough and sometimes biased toward the author's institution and the present political scenario of the country where the institution is situated. Our article4 was purposely written, among other aims, in order to rectify this shortcoming. The second important event was the publication of the book by alFaruqi entitled the Islamization of Knowledge in 19825, a concept which was arguably first introduced by al-Attas (see in his Islam and Secularism especially his second edition)6. Since then, many Islamic universities have also been established notably the International Islamic University Malaysia (established in 1983), even though the name "Islamic University" is not new at least in the Malay World since the first such university was established in Bandung, Indonesia in 1950s albeit with different emphasis on the nature of the subjects offered in the university. Recent reviews on the nature of contemporary Islamic science and technology are found in Wan Ramli and Shaharir7. However, despite a vast number of books and articles on Islamic science produced so far, a concrete example on how a particular subject or topic should be taught Islamically is not (easily) available. The author did propose in 1985 an outline on how to teach First Year University Calculus on 1 al-Attas, S.M.N., (Pyt). The Aims and Objectives of Islamic Education. Proc. the First World Confr. Islamic Education, Jeddah, King Abdul Aziz Univ. Press, (1979). 2 Hassan Langgulung,"Islamic Education and Human Resource Development in Moslem Countries'*, Kesturi 8 (1), 1-18, (1998). 3 Ghulam Nabi Sabeq, 'The Islarnization of Education since the 1977 Makkah Education Conference: Achievement, feilures and task ahead, Muslim Education Quarterly, 18 (1), 39-64, (2000). 4 Shaharir b.M.Z., "Kemajuan pendidikan sains terkamir di Malaysia dengan penekanan khas kepada sains matematik", Submitted to the Jurnal Pendidikan UKM (2003). 5 al-Faruqi, I.R."Islamization of Knowledge: General Principle and Workplan:", Washington, International Institute of Islamic Thought (1982). 6 al-Attas, S.M.N., Islam and Secularism, Kuala Lumpur, ABIM, Second ed.,1996 by ISTAC, International Islamic Univ. Kuala Lumpur (1978). 7 Wan Ramli b.W.D. and Shaharir bJVIZ., "Indeginisation of Technology and the Challenge of Globalization: Proc.UKM-UC Seminar on Technology in Development. Bangi: Pusat Pengurusan Penyelidikan Univ. Keb. The Case of Malaysia", MAASJourJslamic Science, 15 (1-2), 109-134 (2001).

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Differentiation8 and later the concept was brought down to a school level mathematics9, in accordance with some principles of Islamization. But the idea has not been developed until only recently10"15 where some of its features are extended into university education as discussed in this paper. At least as far as Malaysia is concerned, it should be mentioned that the year 1988 was a milestone in Islamization of knowledge as the government of Malaysia had embarked on a very important step towards a realization of a dream. The step taken was the introduction of a new philosophy in the Malaysian school education which emphasise on values in every subject (including School Science and Mathematics). There were sixteen values prescribed in the curriculum which includes justice, freedom, honesty, dilligence, cooperation, rationality, thankfulness, .... be inculcated in the teaching of every school subject.16 But until now, there is not a single text book available which the teachers feel the difference in its content or approach compared with the text books published before 198817. Incidentally, the author had a number of times criticised the inappropriateness of the Malaysian Sixteen Values with the values in the "Islamization of knowledge" and the actual historical development or applications of the school's Science and Mathematics 8

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11 12 n 14.

is

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ShaharTr b. M.Z. "Contoh pendekatan kuliah sains ketslaman matematik." Asasains. Akademi Sains Islam Malaysia. 1/85:27-32 (1985). ShaharTr b. M.Z. and Abdul Latif b.S.,"Pendekatan Bersepadu di dalam Pendidikan Matematik", Simpos. Kurikulum Baru Sekolah Menengah sponsored by KGMS-GPMS held at IPPN (Tnst. Aminuddin Baki), Genting Highland, Kuala Lumpur (1987), published by Institut Kajian Dasar Kuala Lumpur, 1992 with the title Pendidikan Matmatik: Satu Pendekanan Bersepadu". ShaharTr b. M.Z. (Ed.), Garis Panduan Prinsip dan Pelaksanaan Matemadesa. Bangi: Persatuan Sains Matematik Malaysia, (2001). Shaharir b. M.Z. "Unsur-unsur kemanusiaan dalam matematik sekolah", Jurnal pendidik dan Pendidikan 1/&/M 2002/2003 18:15-28(2002). ShaharTr b. M.Z. "A need for an indigenized methodology of teaching in Malaysian School mathematics.", Proc. to the Internal Conf. on School Mathematics and Sciences, Kuala Lumpur, Akademi Sains Malaysia, 1-13 (2002). ShaharTr b. M.Z."Penulisan fizik sekolah cara ASASI:Dinamik SPM", Kesturi 12 (1&2): 21-53 (2002). ShaharTr b. M.Z. Beh. S.H. Lim S.Y. & Tarn Y.K., "Tabii dan tahap penerapan nilai dalam buku teks matematik tingkatan satu: rujukan khas kepada penulisan pecahan, peratus, perimeter dan luas." A Research Report ST/18/2001 (IDR001002). Faculty of Sc. & Technol. Research Grant Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. 14pp (2003). ShaharTr b. M.Z. Muhammad Alinor b.A.K., Mat Rofa b.L, Ummul Khair S.Bt H.D., Alawiyah bt. I. & Zalina bt. M.A. "Pembangunan matematik sekolah menegah mengikut falsafah matmadesa", A Research Report ST/16/2001. Faculty of Sc. & Technol. Research Grant Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. 34pp (2003). Adnan Kamis (Pyt). Kurikulum Berspadu Sekolah Menengah. Pandangan dan Maklum Balas, Bangi: Penerbit Univ. Kebangsaan, Malaysia (1993). ShaharTr b. M.Z., Beh. S.H. Lim S.Y. & Tarn Y.K. "Tabii dan tahap penerapan nilai dalam buku teks matematik tingkatan satu:rujukan khas kepada penulisan pecahan, peratus, perimeter dan luas." A Research Report ST/18/2001 (IDR001002). Faculty of Sc. & Technol. Research Grant Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. 14pp (2003).

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subjects18"21, and indeed proposed therein some specific examples of a complete new way of writing a secondary school mathematics and physics topics which we believe constitute an Islamic approach to the subject. But it is even much more unfortunate that the Malaysian Ministry of Education had shifted her emphasis on school curriculum from "the inculcation of values" and "Islamization" started in 1988 untill practically 2000 to a pure technical orientation and Anglocization especially from the year 2003 when the government had officially declared that from that year all sciences and mathematics subjects in school will be taught in English instead of in Malay (the official Malaysian national language). However, let us hope that most of the Malaysian Muslims and in general, Muslims all over the world would still be interested in the "Islamic Science" model. Whatever the case may be, we believe that "Islamic science" is still one of the most exciting fields of research that a Muslim scholar should embark upon. We also believe that the usual emphasis on "Islamic science" which is not based on the methods described in this paper constitutes the main reason for the nonproliferation of the subject, and hence the two well known journals in Islamic Science, the MAAS Journal of Islamic Science (based in India), and Kesturi (based in Malaysia), and American Jour, of Islamic Social Sciences (based in USA) have been able to receive only a few articles on the subject matter of science. In this paper, we show concrete Islamic methodologies in approaching the mathematics of optimization, an elementary finance mathematics, and an aspect of physical mathematics produce significant progress in the subject matter of the contemporary mathematics. We believe that these methods can equally be applied to any science subject. Some General Methodologies We believe that for any established topic in mathematical sciences, general methodologies of relating the subject matter with values and culture, or in short religion, are important and fruitful in bringing the relevance of the innovation (or even invention) of the subject in accordance with the need of a 18 19

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Shahariir b. M.Z., Unsur-unsur kemanusiaan dalam matematik sekolah. Jurnal pendidik dan Pendidikan USM 2002/2003 18:15-28 (2002). ShaharTr b. M.Z., A need for an indigenized methodology of teaching in Malaysian School mathematics. Proc. to the Internal Conf. On School Mathematics and Sciences, Kuala Lumpur: Akademi Sains Malaysia: 1-13 (2002). ShaharTr b. M.Z., Penulisan fizik sekolah cara ASASI: Dinamik SPM Kesturi 12 (1&2): 21-53 (2002). Hwang, C-L, dan Masud, A.S.M., "Multiple Objective Decision Making Methods and Applications." Berlin, Springrer-Verlag (1979). ShaharTr b. M.Z., Beh. S.H. Lim S.Y. & Tarn Y.K., Tabii dan tahap penerapan nilai dalam buku teks matematik tingkatan satu:rujukan khas kepada penulisan pecahan, peratus, perimeter dan luas. A Research Report ST/18/2001 (IDR001002). Rohani bt. "A.R.Sorotan Landasan Konsepo Optimum Utiliti dan Optimum Pareto" M.Sc. Thesis, Fakulti Sains Matematik Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. (1997).

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particular value and culture (in particular the Islamic values). Thus one of the methodologies is related to the method of'highlightingphilosophical aspect of the situation -which inherently motivates, strongly influences or forces the mathematical scientists to think the way they do or should be. Yet another important aspect of the subject, but usually negleted or perhaps rarely or has never been mentioned before this, is a preliminary approach to a topic by appealing to the meaning and the etymology of the terminologies in the topic concerned. The other methodology is to relate the subject with the human issues or activities, either economics, political, socio-cultural and religious in nature which originally gave rise to the problem and hence the needs to invent mathematics in order to understand and perhaps solve the problem. Finally is the methodology whereby the basic principles and premises, assumptions or axioms of the present elements of science are reexamined vis a vis the Islamic values, principles, or laws. Any of these methodologies could be made to realise via a historical approach based on original sources or selected later related issues which suit for the topics. A necessary requirement fet implementing these methodologies successfully is the recognition the importance of the qualitative nature of a scientific subject, especially the mathematical sciences subject, as elaborated by the author elsewhere22. All these methodologies provide avenues for a critical evaluation of the science, and in particular the mathematical sciences, and open up discussions which are related to Islam and with possible improvement based on Islamic values. We show how these methodologies work when applied to a specific selected topics in mathematical sciences. Optimization of a Single Objective Function The concept of optimum for a single objective function of a single variable is taught to science students at the upper secondary school and/or the first year science programme, without relating to the values and culture, such that the optimization is perceived as a neutral or value-free knowledge. But then how does a teacher or a lecturer approach the subject Islamically? First of all, we should discuss the etymology of optimum, extremum, minimum and maximum which are obviously value-laden. This has never been highlighted at least in the usual mathematics books. Therefore the interpretation, the understanding and finally the model of these terms are thought, believed or seen, so far, to be not culturally bound. Students must be reminded that human beings are naturally interested in optimization because their religions, especially the revealed religions such as Islam (since Adam), teach them that the God is Superlative, and created man as the best possible of His Creations. Thus it is only natural for scientists to seek for any natural laws based on optimization of a 22

Kualitatif lawan kuantitatif aspek tentang tabii sains matematik. Kesturi 13 (1&2): 23-38 (2003). Shahanr b. M.Z. Penulisan fizik sekolah cam ASASI: Dinamik SPM Kesturi 12 (1&2): 21-53 (2002).

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certain objective which is elaborated further later on in this paper. In the world of modern management, especially in the TQM or the Six Sigma Management, the meaning of the word best is not just subjective but dynamic in nature which led to the concept of continuous improvement and continuous increment in the aspirational level of satisfaction. Optimization as an Economic Problem According to Tikhomirov23, the first problem of optimization ever recorded in history of western science is the problem faced or posed by a Greek scholar known as Heron in 400 B.C. in which he sought to determine the best place to build a port along a shore such that it would be most convenient for all the people in the inland. The "best" here was then modelled in the simplest way in term of distances, and Heron envisaged it as a problem of identifying a third place best for each of the two existing places as shown below:

(0/0= A B=(c,i) O

D=(*,0)

Thus the problem is to minimise the distance function d, the total distance of a straight road from A to D and from B to D, which is simply:

d(x) = V*2 + x2 + J(c - x)2 + b2 This is referred to as the Heron problem which was said solved by Heron himself via geometry. But of course he wanted to improve the model into the better meaning of "the best" (better than just "the minimum distance of straight lines"), or/and to extend it to the situation where many more places involve such as to locate the 4th place best for the three existing planar places, or what now may be described as to locate the n-th place best for n-\ existing places (coplanar or even noncoplanar places). A variant of this problem (unfortunately known as the Steiner's problem, after a 19th century mathematician) is to locate a fourth place whereby the sum of its distances from the three known places is minimum. The invention of calculus of optimization in the 16th century is, among others, is to solve the simplest Heron problem to the most complicated Heron problem which is yet unsolved completely even today. In this case the simplest Heron problem to solve the problem of manimizing dfx) given above for all values of jc. The situation is now wide open for criticism of the model and 23

Tikhomirov, V.M., Stones about Maxima and Minima., Amer. Math. Soc. (1990).

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the mathematics involved including based on Islamic values. The "better" the formulation of the problem the more Islamic the mathematics is. Optimization as a Manifestation of a Philosophy of Nature The second optimization problem is truly the manifestation of subscribing a philosophy of nature. The problem is on the nature of light, and it was first posed and solved by al-Haitham, an Islamic scientist during the peak of the Islamic Civilization in the 10th century24. And five decades later it was reformulated by Fermat, a French mathematician. Both scholars postulate that light travels in any medium with the least possible time, but unfortunately this principle only referred to by the Westerners (and often follows by Muslim teachers and scholars) as the Fermat's principle of light (especially in the Anglo-Saxon tradition). This postulate is actually only fair to be thought as a scientific principle inspired by the Islamic teaching that God creates thing with a minimum effort or action. (The word "Islamic" should be understood as those teachings revealed not only to the Greatest Messenger, Muhammad S.AW. but also to the any Messenger of God (27 of them) mentioned in the alQur'an). The "action" here is of course interpreted as "time". This problem no doubt represents one of the best examples which shows that a religious cosmological philosophy does lead to important mathematics and science. Here, in the simplest situation, the principle leads to the minimization of a single variable function/:

where v(i) is the speed of light in the medium /, (0, a) is the coordinate of a point on the ray of light in the first medium, and (c,b) is the coordinate of a point on the ray of light in the second medium and (x,0) is an arbitrary point of incidence at the interface of the two media as shown below: A= (0,a)

D = fe0) B = (c,6) This problem was of course first formulated by al-Haitham (Latinised as Roshdi Rashed (Pyt.) Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, I-III. London. Routledge (1996).

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Alhazen) and about 600 years later by Fermat in 1666, but only the later is well known; in fact the principle envolved in the solution of this problem is known as the Fermat's Principle. Actually both of them, Fermat and al-Haitham solve the minimisation problem by appealing to a complicated geometrical constructions, though Fermat believed that the solution must be x at which what we now refer to as the derivative of/ is zero, because such calculus was not yet invented for a nonpolynomial function such as/above. The problem was only solved by Leibniz in 1684 (a Germanic-French scholar) after he successfully and elegantly formulated the calculus of differentiation as we know it today. Of course there were many other well known Fermat's contemporary scholars interested in this problem notably Snell (an experimentalist), Descartes (a French scholar) and Huygens (a Dutch scholar). Again, one of the well known laws in optics unfortunately known as the SnelPs law (regarding the nature of an incident and reflected ray of light) even though such law had already been obtained by al-Haitham and Fermat long time earlier. Optimization as a Realisation of a Cosmological Doctrine The third simplest optimization problem is the Newton's problem of determining the best shape of a three dimensional moving object created by the Christian God. This is an extension of the Greek belief that the best static objects created by god are those referred to as circle, sphere, and the five Platonic Solids (the regular polyhedrons: tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron). Newton interpreted the problem as the problem of determining the geometrical shape which minimizes the air resistance to the moving body. This is now referred to as an aerodynamical problem! Of course Newton never thought the problem other than to fulfill his philosophical belief on the Christian God's creation. This is another example whereby religious beliefs lead to (new) mathematics. There are many mathematical models of this problem as discussed by Tikhomirov25, and one of them led to a problem of minimizing a single variable function /:

/(*) = x2 + (R2 - x2) —^^—,0 < x < R (R-x)2+H2 after considering the resistance offered by the frustum of a cone moving in a "rare medium" (an unrealistic medium!), where R is the radius of the base of the cone and H is the altitude of the frustum and x is the radius of top of the truncated cone. This is an example of an optimization problem with constraint, albeit the simplest. But the earliest constraint optimisation problem is said to be formulated by Kepler which is influenced by the culture of keeping (or 25

Tikhomirov, V.M., Stories about Maxima and Minima., Amer. Math. Soc. (1990).

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fermenting and selling) wine in his society (Austrian) in barrels of various sizes and shapes. The price of the Austrian wine varies only according to an approximate measure of the content of the barrel by measuring the height of the wine in the barrel. Kepler was astonished by this practice and came to a problem of determining the maximum volume of a cylindrical barrel inscribed in a sphere. Of course the problem is to maximise

subject to the constraint

00 where (x,y) is the positive coordinate of the circle with a radius R. Thus even in the most simplest situation, originally the concept of optimal decision was not independent of the culture and values as already suggested by the term "optimal decision" as both "optimal" and "decision" are indeed value laden. The situation is much more value laden when we deal with the more complicated and realistic problem of optimization discussed below. But before we discuss that, it is worth speculating here a piece of ancient Malay mathematics of optimisation. Since the ancient Malay scholars or perhaps appropriately called also the Malay "sophists", actually known as the penditas and the begawans, (at least between 400 A.D - 1200 A.D, and the words are of course from Sanskrit) believe that the entire cosmos contains many worlds of spheres and our world is just one of the spheres which

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inscribed a cuboid in which we live in26, then a natural mathematical problem for them is most likely "what is the maximum size of the cuboid which is inscribed in a sphere?" or symbolically Maxi. %xyz subject to

x2 +y2 +z 2 =R2, jc>0,7>0, z>0 (The size of the cuboid is 2x, 2y and 2z) This is yet another good example of good mathematics which arises from a cosmological doctrine. Re-examination of the Concepts of an Optimum for a Multiple Objective Function in Relation to Ideologies, Philosophies and Islamic Values There are more than 10 definitions of the meaning of an optimal point in a multiple objective optimization other than optimal with respect to the utility function27'28. We always maintain that each of these mathematical concepts of optimization is influenced or motivated by a system of belief and values, religious or cultural29'30, even though a deep and comprehensive study on the subject is done a few years later as reported in this paper. Shaharir and Rohani31 have discussed at length on the influence of ideologies and philosophies on the definition of an optimal solution based on a utility optimization, namely on utilitarianism and on the nature of mankind in western world. In her thesis, Rohani32 also discusses the nature of this optimization method, and on the influence of Pareto's ideology and philosophy on the definition of his well known concept of optimization. It is as though to neutralize the issue, this optimization is known by various other 26 27 28 29 30 31

32

Shaharfr b.M.Z., Pengenalan Sejarah dan Falasafah Sains. Bangi, Malaysia: Pusat Penerbit dan Teknologi Pendidikan, UKM (2001). Hwang, C-L, dan Masud, A.S.M., Multiple Objective Decision Making Methods and Applications. Berlin: Springer-Verlag (1979). Rohani bt. A.R., Sorotan Landasan Konsepo Optimum Utiliti dan Optimum Pareto. Msc. Thesis. Fakulti sains Matematik Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (1997). Shaharir b. M.Z., Simbiosis antara Sistem Nilai denga'n Sains Matematik. Bangi, Malaysia: Pusat Penerbit dan Teknologi Pendidikan, UKM (1990). Shaharir b. M.Z., Pengaruh budaya ke atas sains matematik. Kesturi, 2(2): 30-43 (1992). Shaharir b. M.Z., & Rohani bt. A.R. Pengaruh system nilai dalam pengoptimuman utiliti berketentuan: kearah teori yang lebih serasi dengan Islam. Pros. Simpos. Kebangsaan Sains Matematik ke-VH. 290-296. Institut Teknologi MARA (ITM) (1996). Rohani bt.A.R., Sorotan Landasan Konsepo Optimum Utiliti dan Optimum Pareto. Msc.Thesisfakulti sains Matematik Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (1997).

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names such as vector optimization, efficient solution of optimization, and dominated solution of optimization. In fact, if one to define the meaning of the Pareto optimal point purely in term of algebraic notation, as normally done in almost all mathematics books, such as

x* is a Pareto point iff there is no other x such that f , (x) > f , (**) V/ and 3i3f,(x)> f, (x*) then the dependency of the definition on an ideology or philosophy is hidden. This is an unfortunate nature of incomplete presentation of mathematics as we have discussed elswhere33, on the nature of qualitative and quantitative aspects of mathematics. This brings us to another point in an Islamic methodology of mathematical science, namely the balance between qualitative and quantitative aspects must be prevailed at all time. It is by highlighting the hidden ideologies and philosophies in the utility and Pareto optimisations that we34 were able to improve a definition and a formulation of a multiobjective optimisation based on Islamic values. Rohani35 also manages to highlight the need to replace an axiom by an Islamic user friendly axiom as such that an Islamic utility optimisation is achieved. Religious Values Driven Paradigm in the Modern Development of Mathematical science: the Case of Finance Mathematics and Mathematical Physics. 1. Mathematical Products Based on Specific Islamic Principles in Finance and Banking System One of the major critics to Islamic banking and financial institutions is on the same nature of their calculations involved, such as on loans (Islamic loans known as mudarabah, musharakah, etc, or conventional loans based on mathematics of interest). Thus what is Islamic if an Islamic product is just the qualitative part of the product such as the interest is replaced by the profit or the service. This is of course not satisfied by many mathematically literate Muslims. This is infact a problem of infusion of the Islamic principles (qualitative in nature) in .loan modeling (mostly quantitative in nature). The aim should be to produce a mathematical model better than the conventional models, as such that a person who deals with an Islamic banking system would be less burdened than those who deal with the conventional banking 33 34

35

Soper, D.E., "Classical Field Theory" J. Wiley (1976). Shahrir b. M.Z. & Rohani bt A.R., Pengaruh system nilai dalam pengoptimuman utiliti berketentuan: ke arah teori yang lebih serasi dengan Islam. Pros. Simpos. Kebangsaan Sains Matematik ke-VH. 290-296. Institut Teknologi MARA (ITM) (1996). Rohani btA.R., Sorotan Landasan Konsepo Optimum Utiliti dan Optimum Pareto. Msc.Thesis. Fakulti sains Matematik Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (1997).

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system. There are a few scholars who actually had attempted in this venture. They are Shaharir, Abdul Aziz and Abdul Malik. Shaharir36 shows that the mathematical model for mudharabah is indeed different from the conventional loan, which has not been realized by majority of Muslims even today! But the model is still unsatisfactory and needs to be further improved, Abdul Aziz37 shows that a conventional loan is not necessarily inferior to the "Islamic loan" available in Malaysian Islamic finance institution; whereas Abdul Malik38 proposes a new mathematical model for Musharakah Mutanaqisah for buying a property but he shows that his model is still materially not always better than the existing Islamic or conventional product. The important thing here is to realize that Islam does give new finance mathematics, and that mathematics still needs to be improved so that the products are competitive enough compared to the conventional mathematics. The more advance and more comprehensive issues on Islamic financial mathematics are plenty, and one of them is the issue of formulating to whole mathematical theories on investment, portfolios, etc. in terms of the stochastic differential models in contrast to that in conventional theories such as found in Bias et a/39. Recently Maheran and the author40'41 and also Shaharir and Maheran42 published series of papers on Islamic model of these financial problems which could be used to produce various new Islamic products in the contemporary banking systems to replace the usual "Islamic products" which are based on the conventional mathematics (un-Islamic values). This is truly one of the most sophisticated Islamic finance mathematics. 2. Searching for Better Physical Laws Based on Islamic Value According to western history43, the oldest functional optimisation problem (optimisation of a quantity which depends on function) is the problem whose solution was cunningly used by a Phoenician (Greek) princess in 9 century B.C. known as Dido who seek for a piece of land of a size which would be encircled with a bull's hide from a fierce leader in a bay now known as bay of Tunis (Tunisia). When her wish was granted, she cleverly cut a bull's hide into narrow strips to become a piece of long string and with it she could 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Shahrir b.M.Z. Pinjaman secara Islam: Satu alternatif Isu Pengurusan Pemiagann. Faculti Pengurusan Perniagaan. Univ. Kebangsaan Malaysia. 1:3-16 (1989).

Abdul Aziz. Bin Jemain. Perbandingan pembayaran pinjaman cara Islam dan conventional. Matematika. 8 (2):133-142(1992). Abdul Malik bin Zakaria. Model matematik untuk pembayaran. Kesturi. 11(1 &2): 1-13 (2001) Bias, B., Bjork. T., Cvitanic. J. El Karoui, N., Jouini, E. and Rochet, J.C. 1997. Financial Mathematics. Springer Verlag ((1997). Maheran M.J. & Shahrir b,M.Z. Model ''bam"pinjaman mudarabah berasaskan ekuiti. Pros. Simpos, Kebang. Sn Matema. Ke-10 Skudai: UTM, pp. 179-190 (2002). Maheran M.J. & Shahrir b.M.Z. Persamaan Beza Mudharabah Perniagaan. Presiding Stmpos.Keb. Sn Matenia Ke-Xl. K. Kinabalu: UMS: 202-209 (2003). Shahrir b.M.Z. & Maheran M.J. Mudharabah model for business loan based on equity. Proc. Seminar on NonBank Financial Institutions: Islamic Alternative. Kuala Lumpur 1-3 March 2004. D3FIM-IRTI: 1-10(2004) Tikhomirov, V.M., Stories about Maxima and Minima, Amer. Math. Soc (1990).

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enclose a large area of land where she later built the famous city known as Carthage (presently in Tunisia). A similar story was narrated in Islamic tradition that Abu Nawas, the famous advisor to a Khallfah (Caliph) Harun alRashTd (11th century. A.D). He only asked the Khalifah to grant him a piece of land which would be encircled with sheeps hide, when the Khalifah offered him a favour. It is assumed that Dido and Abu Nawas knew the solution of the problem of maximising the area enclosed by a given length of a string (a curve). We may refer this as the Dido-Abu-Nawas problem, even though in western literature it is commonly known as Dido's problem only, or the classical isoperimetric problem. The problem in our modern term is of course b

max \y(x)dx a

subject to

JVn+[/(*)]']* = p.y(w = ° = x«)

o

based on the following model of maximising an area under yet an unknown function y formed by a string of length p, and the problem is illustrated by the following graph.

_Q

The method of solving this problem was not known to modern scientists until 18th century after which a new calculus was formulated, known as the calculus of variation, again by French mathematicians notably Euler and Lagrange. Of course there were other problems also which have motivated them to invent this new calculus which we discuss below. Extending the hypothesis of al-Haitham-Fermat on the nature of light which they assume to travel in shortest possible time, L'Hospital (a French scholar) formulated a law of light propagation from a point (0,b) to a point (a,y) in a medium in which the velocity of light v depends only on y as

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This is yet another optimization problem where the variable is a function. Consciously or not, L'Hospital is just following the philosophy of al-Haitham and Fermat that laws governing the propagation of light must be designed by God with His minimal effort, or in a perfect (optimal) way. But a more important and far reaching philosophico-religious belief which leads to a functional optimization is the one first proposed by Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, a French Christian monk in the 18th century (to be exact, he lives in 1698-1759), who effectively states again here that a law of motion is a God's law created through His action with a minimum effort. This is known as the principle of least action or quite often also referred to as the Maupertuis Principle! The al-Haitham-Fermat principle is just an example of the manifestation of this belief and the action here is an integral expression. In a simple situation in classical mechanics (Newtonian mechanics), the action is identified as

b ^L(x,x,t)dt, L(x,x,t) = \mx2 - V(x,t) 0

>J

where m is the mass of the particle concerned and x is the position of the particle. The law of motion of this particle is the solution of the minimization of this action integral. It was the effort of the 18th century French mathematicians especially Euler and Lagrange which led to the invention of a new type of calculus (with respect to the Newton-Leibniz calculus) known as the calculus of variation which solves this problem and any other similar functional optimization such as the Le Hospital optic problem and the Dido-Abu Nawas problem. The success of this mathematics has led mathematical physicists later on to formulate every law of physics in terms of the minimisation of an action integral with a suitable Lagrangean L. This is well known as the Lagrangian formulation of a dynamical system and it has been established44'45 that the formulation works for all (important) classical dynamical systems), in Einstein theory of special and general relativity46'47, and in quantum (particle or field) 44

45 46 47

Soper, D.E. Classical Field Theory. J. Wiley (1976).

Cao, T.Y. Conceptual Developments of2(?h Century Field Theories. CUP (1997). Rindler, W. Introduction to Special Relativity. 2nd ed. Clarendon (1991). Logunov, A. A. Relativistic Theory of Gravity, Nova Sc. Pub. (1998).

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theory even though sometimes it needs modifications and further extensive research)48'49'50'51. In each of these formulations, it is assumed that the laws of quantum physics contain in the functional integral in which its integrand is to be minimised (God's law, or Sunnatullah). We believe that this could be further improved to suit the same philosophico-religious belief as in other fields mentioned earlier.

48

49 50 5J

Tikhomirov, V.M., Stories about Maxima and Minima., Amer. Math. Soc. (1990). Bogoliubov, N.N. General Principles of Quantum Field Theory. Benjamin (1990). Das, A., Field Theory: A Path Integral Approach. World Scientific (1993). Shahrir b.M.Z. The action principle in quantum mechanics. J. ofPhysAl: 553-562 (1974). Shahrir b.M.Z. & Zainal b.A.A. Penyelesaian kamiran nyata bangi persamaan resapan kompleks berpotensi kuadratik teritlak kompleks. Matematika. 13:29-40 (1997).

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[18] SOME UPSTREAM RESEARCH PROGRAMS FOR MUSLIM MATHEMATICIANS: OPERATIONALIZING ISLAMIC VALUES IN THE SCIENCES THROUGH MATHEMATICAL CREATIVITY

Adi Setia Mathematics, like all other sciences, exact or inexact, pure or impure, is value-laden. Values were there before the axioms, and the latter embody the former. Hence mathematics is formalization of values by which they are clarified and made operative. This understanding is explored here by suggesting some upstream research programs for Muslim mathematicians as a guide toward operationalizing Islamic values in the sciences through the power of mathematical rigor and objectivity. Keywords:

Upstream/downstream research programs; Islamic mathematics; values; value systems; science and values; Islamic worldview.

This article is inspired to a large extent by my reading and understanding of the works of Roshdi Rashed1 and Imre Lakatos.2 In my opinion their works, among those of others,3 are very important for creative4 Muslim mathematicians who want to reflect deeply on the meaning, scope, and goals of mathematics as well as on the nature of the truth and certainty5 sought by mathematicians when they do, or rather, create mathematics. The foundational conceptual, meta-mathematical starting point here is to see mathematical creativity as "a human activity, a meta-process, which acts upon and generates new mathematics."6 Although my discussion shall focus for the most part on Islamic mathematics,7 Malay-Islamic mathematics,8 and the Islamization of mathematics,9 I believe that the underlying, more general thrust of this article will Adi Setia is Assistant Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, Department of General Studies, International Islamic University Malaysia and Associate Research Fellow, Institute for Mathematical Research, Malaysia. Email: [email protected].

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be of some relevance to all non-western mathematicians10 who wish to develop philosophies, methodologies, and practices of mathematics that are more in line with their respective religious beliefs, cultural traditions, and value systems.11 If mathematics, like science in general, is value- and culture-laden,12 then, ipso facto, any theories, methods, and models developed in mathematics will accordingly also be value- and culture-laden.13 As argued by Brian Martin, the Platonic conception of mathematics as value-free is itself a value-laden conception which only serves to hide from most people the intimate links between mathematics as such and the belief systems of its practitioners.14 Or, in the words of Rev. Richard S. Kirby, who argues for a "theology of mathematics": The future math, like the past, cannot be value free. It has always been a radically human activity. It serves human purposes. It may be rigorous, but its objectivity is subject to human values, including the [evolving] ideology of 'objectivity'. It is also one of the most vibrant areas for human creativity, as new fields emerge in areas such as vector analysis, topology, calculus, set theory, and many other fields.15

Similarly, in his important inaugural professorial address the eminent Malaysian mathematician Shaharir bin Mohamed Zain shows in some detail through a selection of mathematical topics that: ...the development of each topic was indeed first started by appealing to a value system and belief on the basic nature of the issue. Then, the mathematical results obtained were used to confirm and strengthen the value system or belief. More often than not, this [i.e., the results obtained] became a new value system and belief on which further development of mathematical science was based...[hence] mathematical science is not as objective as it is commonly believed... not purely quantitative and logical...mathematical truth is shown here as many-valued and relative to a particular agreed paradigm. Its acceptance is not purely based on rationalism, logic and consistency, but also based on pragmaticism, aestheticism, rigour, sophistication, belief and personality of scholars.16

From the above conclusion that mathematics is value-laden, Shaharir then draws the attention of Malay-Muslim mathematicians to the idea (quite novel at the time) of the rationality and the imperative of the Islamization of mathematics as a "symbiosis" between mathematics and the Islamic value-system, namely, a mathematics whose objective, quantitative results embody the cognitive and ethical values of Muslim mathematicians who care deeply about understanding and living the Islamic vision of truth

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and reality17 in both their personal and professional lives.18 Upstream and Downstream Research What is meant here by "upstream" research19 is research that is motivated by a high sense of critical self-awareness on the part of the researcher of his personal identity and purpose in life, in line with his understanding of, and commitment to, the worldview and value-system he is embracing or declares himself to be embracing, and includes the understanding of the real problems he has identified to be tackled as a result of that critical self-awareness.20 This attitude obviously implies a consummate desire for intellectual creativity and entails the uncommon moral courage to formulate and pursue a concomitant research program that will be seen in the eyes of many of his peers to be against current thinking, or useless, or even altogether senseless, and hence one that will most likely not be funded under the prevalent system of public and private research funding, and will not contribute significantly to personal career advancement.21 Studies have shown that, in the history of Islamic and western mathematics, it is such upstream research that generated new mathematical theories—even new mathematical fields!—not previously imagined or anticipated and which, in turn, not only generated new sciences and technologies but also opened up new vistas on aspects or orders of reality underlying the natural order that had been previously inaccessible to, hidden from, or overlooked by the intellectual scrutiny and the spiritual insight of thinkers and scholars.22 What is in constrast, though not necessarily in opposition,23 to upstream research is what can be called "downsteam" research, which unfortunately (for the most part24) has been the concern and focus of the great majority of mathematicians, especially Malay-Muslim mathematicians.25 Downstream research is "retail research" that is restricted to the narrow, largely uninteresting objectives of merely developing technical refinements to existing mathematical theories, theorems, and sub-fields that have already "matured," or, worse still, to develop new but trivial applications therefrom or to test the effectiveness of, and reception to, the various readily available techniques, methods, softwares, and models. Such retail work is very effective as a means (in fact, is the best means) to generate piles of publishable (largely repetitive?) academic articles in scholarly journals each year, and to, in turn, put one on the fast track to promotion to full, tenured professorship, in line with the mantra "publish or perish."26 Needless to say, this kind of work is more, even when at its best, in the nature of a "mopping-up operation" rather than of identifying

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new, authentic, non-trivial problems and formulating lasting solutions to them. The intellectual nadir of such downstream research is reached, or even breached, when mathematical theories, theorems, fields, models, techniques, softwares, and applications originally developed in the context of western secular cultures for tackling their problems as they conceived them in line with their worldviews and value systems, are simply adopted without examination for use in the contexts of cultures adhering to totally different value sytems, beliefs, and worldviews, and belonging to totally different sociohistorical backgrounds. An end result of such uncritical borrowings from one by another (specifically from the West by Muslims) is the proliferation of third rate mathematical journals publishing third rate articles of little or no use and meaning to anybody (even to the authors themselves!), and which serve no particular purpose except perhaps that of exhausting as efficiently as possible the valuable public funds allocated for scholarly publishing in university annual budgets. As a brief case in point, we know that many scientists and mathematicians supportive of neodarwinian evolution in the west have developed quite sophisticated mathematical techniques (call it biomathematics) for modelling gradual, random change over time, or for demonstrating the phenomena of spontaneous self-organization in natural phenomena.27 But what exactly is the relevance of these techniques and models that from the very beginning have simply assumed the truth of evolutionary theory for Muslim scientists and mathematicians who believe in the divine creation of nature and who wish to develop a new theory (or a new biomathematics) to account for the diversity of life based on the counter-assumption of the world as being created by a transcendent deity of wisdom and power? Is it not self-destructive for Muslims if these ostensibly exact, objective, and value-free mathematical techniques and models are simply learned, taught, and applied in biology without first exposing and criticizing the not too subtle atheistic assumptions underpinning them? Since mathematical theories, techniques, and models are only as true or as false as the value-laden assumptions underlying them, Muslim mathematicians have to develop a new biomathematics based on the fundamental assumption of creationary rather than evolutionary origins and diversity of life.28 Another thing to bear in mind is that upstream research need not be totally theoretical in nature or only involve "pure" science or mathematics, such as can be seen in the remarkable but largely ignored and misunderstood case of David Bohm in the field of theoretical physics.29 In many

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cases, upstream research may involve appropriate and readily available conceptual and methodological aspects of applied science and mathematics to tackle problems arising from a radical rethinking of certain key concepts and approaches prevalent in the natural and human sciences. For instance, many of the biomathematical tools already developed are more amenable for use in the empirical clarification of design rather than descent, regardless of the original intention of the inventors of those tools. This is because mathematics is essentially concerned with discovering, describing, and analyzing patterns^ in nature, and this notion of patterns has much more conceptual affinity with the notion of creation by intelligent design31 rather than evolution by blind chance. Another example is pressing the tools of financial, fiscal, and monetary mathematics32 into serving the global movement for reviving the Islamic gold dinar and silver dirham as real money with intrinsic value to replace the fiat money system of paper and electronic currency33 which have no intrinsic value whatsoever. This creative, critical appropriation of the tools of mainstream financial mathematics will most certainly in time generate a new econometrics to model and facilitate the new monetary reality gradually spreading on the ground. This new econometrics will benefit not only Muslim but also non-Muslim economists and scholars who are now active in promoting the return to gold and silver as a more equitable, non-hegemonic means of local, regional, and global exchange. This will result in a new conception of the meaning of 'money', which will in turn generate a new monetary economics founded upon an authentic Islamic philosophy of money.34 In short, upstream mathematical research will be motivated by theoretical or cognitive change (e.g., from descent to design theory), or ethical change (e.g., from toxic to green chemistry35), or legal change (e.g., from fractional to full reserve banking36). So, at times, upstream mathematical research is directed at discovering new, better theories or methods, at other times at applying existing theories and methods to tackle problems arising from radical rethinking of prevalent ideas and concepts, and at other times yet to formalizing the empirical and practical implications of a heightened awareness of the cognitive and ethical imperatives of scientific work.37 In the remainder of this article I shall briefly outline some examples of upstream mathematical research that should be pursued by Muslim mathematicians concerned about operationalizing the worldview and value system of Islam in their ostensibly "value-free" mathematical dis-

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ciplines, and thus in the process discovering and developing new mathematical theories, methods, and models for tackling non-trivial problems they themselves have identified and chosen due to that very concern. This will constitute their intellectual liberation (al-tahrlr al-caqli) from alien and alienating and trivial (even pseudo-) problems having little or no relevance to the religious and cultural contexts of the communities in which they live and find social and material support for their work. Their liberation will itself liberate their communities who look up to them for guidance. In short, they should know the fine art of identifying true problems for themselves and for their communities and then go on to formulate and implement their own mathematical research programs for finding novel effective solutions to those problems amenable to clarification in mathematical terms. That dynamic, proactive attitude constitutes mathematical emancipation (al-tahrir al-riyddi/al-hisdbi) from the straightjacket of secular, western mindframes which care not a jot for the role of religion, the sacred, and the transcendent in scientific and technological endeavors. The modern western mindset cannot control nor manipulate the transcendent, and so it marginalizes, expels, and even coopts and smothers it out of objective existence altogether.38 Modelling the Islamic Monetary System When invited to present a paper39 at a mathematics conference last year40 I was rather taken aback by a spirited presentation of a mathematician41 who revealed in some detail that the so-called Islamic banking and finance (IBF) system did not possess its own home-grown financial mathematics for modelling and clarifying, and hence truly instituting, a nonusurious banking and finance architecture. On the contrary, the financial model it uses is more or less plagiarised (or replicated) from conventional banking and finance models (which is in turn premised on the totally usurious fractional reserve banking principle = FRB42) and modified here and there in an ad hoc fashion and applied to Islamic banking and finance, which is then projected in the public eye to be non-usurious and hence equitable.43 To put this issue in a nutshell, we may quote Meera and Larbani at some length: Fractional reserve banking (FRB) is the basis of the presentday monetary systems. In most countries, Islamic Banking and Finance too operates under this principle. This article argues that the FRB has effects on the ownership structure of assets in the economy, and that this effect violates the Islamic principles of ownership. It argues that money creation through FRB is creation of purchasing power out of nothing which brings about

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unjust ownership transfers of assets in the economy, to the bank effectively, paid for by the whole economy through inflation. This transfer of ownership is not based on human effort by taking on legitimate risks and neither with the knowledge nor the consent of the initial owners. These violate the ownership principles in Islam and tantamount to theft. It also has the elements of riba. On the same basis, Islamic governments should not create fiat money since this is equivalent to taking assets of the people, rich and poor alike, forcefully without compensation. It is, therefore, important that Shariah scholars come up with a fatwa on both the fiat money and the fractional reserve banking system. Such a fatwa is urgent and pertinent before Islamic banking and finance, that operate under these systems, takes a course that may prove to be difficult to reverse later. The Islamic economic and finance system cannot be founded upon a money system that is fundamentally equivalent to theft and riba.44

After five decades or so45 of the global Islamic banking and finance movement, one should have thought that by now the movement's financial mathematicians, if it has any, would have already systematically developed and matured a viable non-usurious financial architetcure, but this did not happen. This, however, is not surprising, given the stifling global hegemony of the US dollar and the Euroamerican controlled international institutions set up to ensure that hegemony. This failure exposes both the moral and intellectual bankcruptcy of Islamic banking and finance (IBF), which, in reality, serves only to facilitate a very crude and clumsy (pick-and-choose) cooption of traditional fiqh al-mucdmalah categories into an alien, thoroughly riba?-infested macroeconomic framework. I mean, for instance, what precisely is FRB (fractional reserve banking) but creating money out of hot air (if that is not riba\ then nothing is!), and how can you have IBF embedded in a FRB financial, fiscal, and monetary meta-architecture?46 Apart from the promising start seen in the works of Masudul Alam Choudhury on 'endogenous money' in the Islamic context,471 have so far yet to find in the "expert" literature any thorough, systemic meta-fiqhi deconstruction of the dense network of neoliberal economic concepts underpinning the modern monetary system. The result of this foundational intellectual failure is the fact that IBF has become ever-more coopted and embedded into the mainstream usurious system instead of charting out a vigorous, autonomous, parallel course of its own, which, in time, would supercede the mainstream system. Anyone with even an iota of sound fitrl intelligence (caql sallm) will see the obvious fact that the only reason why

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IBF is so popular with the big western banks is that it provides a "window" into which flow the wealth, savings, earnings, and investments of a large segment of the Ummah who sincerely care about organizing their finances along authentic Islamic lines.48 And so our duty and mission as financial mathematicians are to revive an authentic independent Islamic economic system which can stand on its own feet while interacting with, and eventually superceding, the mainstream system, not to crack our brains in rushing to fit Islamic mucdmalah categories into what is essentially an utterly usurious economic meta-architecture founded on dogmatic growthism and developmentism that are clearly responsible for so much of the desolation of the social and natural landscape we see and suffer today.49 Hence it is not surprising at all to observe the appearance of many vocal thinkers and financial experts who argue that the Islamicity of mainstream IBF is only skin-deep if not highly suspect, whereas, behind the veils of Arabic-sounding terminologies befuddling and seducing the lay public, it is still very much usurious at its core. This group of thinkers and experts50 call for a return to the Islamic gold dinar and silver dirham as real money to replace paper and electronic money (fiat, notional money), a call made more poignant by the ongoing financial meltdown affecting the world's usurious banking system.51 Clearly, a new financial and economic system founded on the gold dinar and silver dirham52 will entail a new financial mathematics and a new econometrics to model, clarify, and institute the new, emerging financial and economic dynamics. This will in turn promise many fruitful avenues for upstream mathematical research for mathematicians, Muslim and non-Muslims alike, who thirst for demanding yet meaningful intellectual and academic challenges, especially if such upstream research is directed toward operationalizing (i.e., realizing in reality on the ground of daily life) one's value-system and worldview, in this case in the practical financial, economic, and commercial realities at the local, regional, and international levels of voluntary and contractual exchange. Such a radical reconceptualization of finance and economics so that they accord with the Islamic value-system, which rejects all forms of usurious transaction, covert or overt, will also bring about new physical and mathematical models of wealth and poverty.53 These new models will no longer refer to paper or electronic money, itself bereft of any intrinsic value, as the measure of wealth, but will rather refer to real wealth as wealth, such as the wealth of unexploited natural resources in the form of minerals, lands, forests, farms, and general ecological well-being. These

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resources will then be seen rather as 'natural capital'.54 For instance, to be wealthy a "developing" nation need not liquidify and hence irreparably deplete its natural real estate, but will wisely utilize it sustainably to generate liquid income in perpetuity. It is not out of place here, in this respect, to find affinity, and perhaps to forge an alliance, with the Buddhist economic55 outlook described by Schumacher: Another striking difference between modern economics and Buddhist economics arises over the use of natural resources. Bertrand de Jouvenel, the eminent French political philosopher, has characterised "Western man" in words which may be taken as a fair description of the modern economist: He tends to count nothing as an expenditure, other than human effort; he does not seem to mind how much mineral matter he wastes and, far worse, how much living matter he destroys. He does not seem to realize at all that human life is a dependent part of an ecosystem of many different forms of life. As the world is ruled from towns where men are cut off from any form of life other than human, the feeling of belonging to an ecosystem is not revived. This results in a harsh and improvident treatment of things upon which we ultimately depend, such as water and trees.56 All these natural resources, now re-envisioned as capital assets57 (rather than operational expenditure58) will be new indicators of wealth to be measured with new measures appropriate to them and to their roles in the promotion of long term holistic well-being, leading in turn to a global economic emancipation (al-tahrir al-iqtisddi) of nations and the final overthrow of neoliberalism masking itself as globalization.59 Waqfand the Revival of the Islamic Gift Economy I was reading an article in a recent issue of The Ecologist60 (The Economist^ nemesis) about what is called the pre-modern "gift" economy,61 and that set in motion the following train of thought. As Muslims we do not have to dig overly far into some pre-historical, pre-urban "huntergatherer" societal set-up for an existential instance of the gift economy in order to learn how to give again, and indeed to give more than to take as a matter of principle and practice. The Islamic Gift62 Economy (IGE)63—through zakdt, saddqah, hibah, qard hasan, hadiyah,fard'id, venture capital (muddrabah and mushdrakah)64 and, especially, waqf5—was systemically realised in history as a central civilizational feature of highly complex urbanised Muslim societies, so much so that, for instance, Ibn Battutah would marvel at the astonishing array of various awqdf (private charitable trusts and endowments) he

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found operative in Damascus. There were awqdffor feeding stray cats, for compensating masters for losses caused by their servants' mistakes, for the maddris and hospitals, for the caravanserais and travellers' inns, for providing municipal services and upkeeping mosques, and so on.66 The impression one immediately gets from Murat Cizakca's well documented detailed study of the waqf institution in the Ottoman period is that almost all public goods and services—educational, municipal, social welfare, health, etc.—were funded and provided by private, largely decentralised community based awqdf, so much so that the State needed to spend next to nothing for provisioning these and the concomitant bloated bureaucracy they would entail, but concentrated its resources almost solely on defense, war, and public security.67 What we have here in effect is an Islamic form of what modern economists call 'privatization', except that in this case public goods and services were taken care of by members of the ruling elite and the rich in society, in their private capacity, as an act of perpetual charitable giving—sadaqah jdriyah—through the august institution of waqf. Now, contrast that scenario with today's runaway, self-interested privatization happening all over the world, in which public services (e.g., public utilities) are taken over by the well-connected business elite not to serve the people but to take, or rather, to scoop, more from the people—the scoop economy. To rub salt into a raw wound, many of these privatization projects are subsidized by the state or financed through bank loans, which means by taxpayers' money or public savings, and, in many cases, these projects are also bailed out by the state when they fail—in effect, a scoopthrice economy!68 The net result of this is a lop-sided system in which it has been estimated that "the richest 225 people own more wealth than the poorest 2.5 billion".69 It is of course in the interest of both the people and the state that the central government be as minimal, limited,70 and unintrusive as possible, and hence avoid overburdening the population by various taxes to fund inefficient, centralized, and overly bureaucratic public services. But robbing the people thrice through ill-conceived privatization projects modeled on the neoliberalism of the Thatcher-Reagan-Mahathir71 era is not the solution, and even more so if this involves fire-sales of public assets to foreign predatory multinationals, such as has happened in Indonesia.72 The solution is to revive the Islamic institution of waqf as a major socio-economic force in contemporary Muslim societies, in which private economic surpluses are systematically recycled back into the public domain instead of

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accumulated for the sake of accumulation, or worse, siphoned out of the country altogether. Fuqahc? and economists will have to work together creatively to re-realise the Islamic gift economy. Surely there is more to Islamic Economy than profiteering Islamic Banking and Finance. Privatization is a neoliberal macroeconomic policy in which public goods and services like water supply, electricity, telecommunications, education, health, public transport, and others are privatized, i.e., sold by the government (public trustee) to private corporations to be run as private, for-profit commercial enterprises. In theory, the point of privatization is quite plausibly altruistic, namely to enhance efficiency in the delivery of those public goods and services and to reduce the fiscal burden of the state and hence the tax burden on citizens under the banner of "minimal government". But what actually happens in practice in most cases is that privatization becomes a process through which the state engages in the fire-sale of public goods to a select group of the politically well-connected corporate elite. Moreover, the sale is further subsidized through government loans (taxpayers' money) and bank loans (public savings), and more often than not the government again steps in with public funds to bail out struggling or bankrupt corporations involved in these privatization projects, as has happened in the case of Malaysia with its national airline and steel industry. It turns out that on the whole privatization is premised on what can be called the principles of the "scoop-thrice economy." The first scoop is when public goods are auctioned off to private interests at fire-sale prices, the second when the sale is subsidized by government and bank loans, and the third when public money is again used to bail out these privatization projects when they lose steam for one reason or another and fail to deliver. Although the concept of minimal or limited government in itself is well reasoned rationally and historically and hence quite acceptable, yet the privatization of public goods and services is not the way to minimize the state—especially when in practice it opens the door for the takeover of national wealth by foreign corporate interests, as has happened in Indonesia, Russia, Bolivia, and elsewhere. Moreover, when we take the trouble to scrutinize the national budgets of countries like Malaysia, for example, we do not find any significant reduction in the size of the government machinery, despite almost two decades of privatization,73 but on the contrary it actually increased with the allocation for management and administrative purposes (so-called operating expenditure) amounting to almost three times as much as the allocation for development, i.e., the net

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productive amount that actually reaches the people outside of the government bureaucracy itself.74 In contrast, we have well documented examples from Islamic economic history (as researched, for instance, by Murat Cizakca) showing how the institution of waqf (private charitable trusts) had traditionally performed the pivotal, community-based function of funnelling private wealth for public interest objectives. These charitable trusts were so successful in providing for almost all public goods and services needed by ordinary people that the function of the state was reduced to that of defense and public security, as noted earlier in the case of the Ottoman state. Thus public goods and services such as madrasahs, hospitals, and social welfare were funded from incomes generated through property and cash waqfs or endowments by wealthy private individuals as well as high ranking public officials of the realm. Here we have a clear historical example of what we now term "civil" or "caring" society75 in which the well-off in the community take care of the basic human needs of the economically and socially marginalized, thus contributing significantly to local, direct people-topeople self-empowerment. It is in this respect of privately initiated social reciprocity or civil conviviality that we are in full accord with Margaret Thatcher when she says: I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand "I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!" or "I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!" "I am homeless, the Government must house me!" and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations...76

Except that our response to her challenge would not be through her stick-it-down-their-throats brand of neoliberal privatization but through a creative, systemic revivification of the Islamic institution ofwaqf, as well as encouraging the voluntary re-manifestation of other civic societal aspects of the Islamic gift economy. Surely waqfcan and should engage and interact with neoliberal privatization, but that on its own autonomous terms, guided by the overriding controlling principle of public interest superceding private interest, which must of course be the principal business of government.77 In short, the institution of waqf should be revived and

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promoted as a more viable and equitable alternative to neoliberal privatization in which waqf incomes and profits are recycled into delivering public goods and services instead of being scooped up, accumulated, and concentrated in the hands of the few as in the case of runaway neoliberal corporate privatization. The revival and promotion of the institution of waqf in contemporary socioeconomic realities open up a whole challenging and promising area of upstream mathematical research for Muslim mathematical economists, especially in the area of monetary, fiscal and financial economics, taxation, and econometrics, for modelling both the micro- and macro-economics of waqf (mathematical modelling of waqf).78 This will in turn pave the way toward the rise and consolidation of a new economic system that is no longer premised on and geared toward (over) accumulation, (over) concentration, and (unsustainable) growth of private wealth (the economics of growthism and developmentism), but one that is premised on mutuality, cooperation and redistribution (zero-growth, steady-state, redistributive economics),79 or what Schumacher calls "Buddhist economics".80 This radical approach to economic planning is more in line with the Islamic ethico-economic value-system which promotes giving to, rather than scooping from, others. This approach can be referred to as the Islamic Gift Economy (IGE) in which the emphasis is on the principles of mutuality, redistribution and cooperation instead of coercion, accumulation and competition. The IGE principles are realised in practice through saddqah, hibah, hadiyah, zakdt,faraid, qard hasan and waqf, and other valid and acceptable forms of social and contractual exchange. The Islamic Gift Economy (IGE)81 will exist in direct opposition to, yet in engagement with, the Neoliberal Scoop Economy (NSE) premised on usury leading to unsustainable growth, over accumulation and over concentration, which leads to a massive transfer of public wealth into private, irresponsible hands. Neoliberal capitalists like to talk a lot about the so-called 'free rider' problem, whereas the free-rider problem is neoliberalism itself as most dramatically amplified by the ongoing global financial meltdown.82 It has deliberately developed and deployed its own private mathematical language as an intimidating intellectual weapon by which it imposes its policies on the world, much like an economic ring of power which paralyses the ability of people to counter-response by projecting an aura of irrefutable objectivity, universality, and inevitability: submit or be disownedl The goal of upstream research in mathematical economics for Muslims will be to destroy this ring83 and create a new economic objectivity and re-

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ality for themselves and quite possibly for the world through cross-cultural, socio-economic dialogue of free and thinking peoples, a kind of a global civil societal exchange based on mutual consent (can tarddin).84 As J. K. Galbraith ever so candidly puts it (paraphrased): Neoliberalism is pushed from the bottom by motivating the poor to work hard out of desperation and pulled from the top by motivating the rich to work hard out of avarice.85 That way of (mis-)doing business is soon to end in favor of innumerable down-top, informal yet intimately interlinked networks of global "conviviality".86 Mathematical Interpretation of Atomistic/Occasionalistic Cosmology Mainstream Islamic cosmology, i.e., as articulated through the AshcariMaturidi kaldm of the Ahl al-Sunnah wal-Jamacah, and adhered to by Imam al-Ghazali, Imam Fakhr al-Dln al-Razl, the Malay-Islamicculama including the Sufis,87 is what can be described as atomistic/occasionalistic cosmology in which the structures and processes of the cosmos, including bodies, space, time, energy, and light, are viewed as being discrete or discontinuous in nature instead of continuous.88 This atomistic cosmology is in turn built upon an ontology that uncompromisingly stresses the absolute dependence (iftiqdr) of the cosmos (cdlam) on the power and will of the Creator (al-Khdliq). This cosmo-ontology can be described as the metaphysics of dependenceA/^'^r.89 Muslim physicists who understand and accept this cosmology and ontology as their fundamental conceptual starting point, especially those who are involved in the fields of physical cosmology and theoretical and mathematical physics, shall find it worthwhile to formulate and promote upstream mathematical research programs for constructing mathematical models and techniques that can describe, clarify, and study the discontinuous, atomistic nature of every aspect of natural phenomena.90 They may thus engage, on similar mathematical and physical terms, opposing models and theories that in one way or another stresses the continuity of nature, and which may (though not necessarily)91 imply the independence of nature from a higher ontic source. Moreover this kind of upstream research can provide us with the intellectual and scientific tools necessary for intelligent (non-naive, non-simplistic, and non-banal) constructive participation in the ongoing cross-religious, inter-faith discourse on traditional theological responses to, and interpretations of, the discoveries of modern physics and cosmology. I believe that the importance of this kind of work in our present age is already prefigured by the following quotation from al-Imam Sa'd al-Dln al-Taftazani, the great Ashcari mutakallim

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and logician. If the question is raised whether there is any benefit resulting from this position [of affirming the atomic minimal part] which is different (from that of the Philosophers), we reply that there is. In establishing the pure atom we escape many of the obscurities of the Philosophers, such as the positing of primary matter (hayuli) and form (surah) which leads to the eternity of the world, the denial of the resurrection of the body, and many of the fundamental laws of measurement (al-handasah), upon which obscurities rests the continual motion of the heavenly spheres; and also the denial of the rending (al-kharq) of them and their being coalesced together again (al-iltfdm).^ For instance, aspects of discrete dynamical systems theory, finite geometry and discrete combinatorial geometry and combinatorics, and modular systems theory, etc., can be further developed and extended to work out and clarify in formal terms the full implications ofkaldm atomistic cosmology for both the physical and the life sciences (e.g., the study of consciousness, mind, and language).93

Mathematical Interpretation of Explicate and Implicate Orders Islamic cosmology views the physical world as the manifest world (cdlam al-zdhir), the world of sense and sensible experience, which is embedded in a deeper, hidden, unseen world (cdlam al-ghayb), the world of spiritual (noetic) realities that while beyond the reach of the senses is yet accessible through intellectual reflection and spiritual experience (trans-empirical consciousness). In modern physics, David Bohm is among the few who attempt to see the world of physical realities as constituting an explicate or unfolded order that is embedded in a deeper implicate or enfolded order of a higher degree of reality.94 He promotes his notion of an implicate order underlying, integrating, and unifying the diverse discrete and seemingly autonomous and fragmented phenomena of the explicate order as an ontological interpretation of relativity and quantum mechanics, and hence as a conceptual approach toward unifying or rather reconciling the two theories in terms of a higher theory of the nature of ultimate reality. In books such as The Undivided Universe and Wholeness and the Implicate Order he attempts to build a new physics and also a new mathematics or algebra to clarify in more precise terms the nature of the interrelation and interaction between the explicate and implicate orders of existence.95 In my opinion, Muslim physicists and mathematicians should seriously study the Bohmian approach to physics since (i) it is explicitly clear,

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honest and upfront about its underlying metaphysical assumptions; and (ii) it is more in line with major aspects of Islamic cosmology and ontology, and hence can be critically appropriated into the context of an empirical and mathematical Islamic Cosmology Research Program (ICRP).96 This is a more creative move than to allow oneself to be continuingly caught in trivial downstream research whose upstream flows out of the mainstream secular, naturalistic, reductionist framework that either implicitly or explicitly deny as a matter of principle the ontological reality of a higher yet deeper implicate order underlying and influencing the manifest explicate order of sense and sensible experience. Critical appropriation and further creative development of the Bohmian cosmo-ontological approach to physics and cosmology will most certainly lead to the formulation of novel upstream research programs in mathematics, physics, and cosmology for developing new mathematical and physical models for describing in more precise conceptual and empirical terms the ontic reality of the dependence of the explicate order on the implicate order and hence on a transcendent creator of power and wisdom. Also, the theological "transcendent creator of power and wisdom" corresponds, at least in formal terms, to what Bohm and Hiley mean by the super-implicate order, or rather the super-order, of a descending series of implicate orders in which the higher enfolds the lower, and in which the lower is unfolded with respect to the higher, until we reach the lowest order,97 which is the explicate, unfolded, manifest order of the physical, material world of sense and sensible experience of seemingly autonomous, separate and fragmented entities and processes.98 Mathematical Interpretation of Creationary Theory It is often claimed by neodarwinists that creationism or creationary theory is merely religious metaphysical dogma not amenable to scientific, empirical inquiry, i.e., not testable against observed facts of the extramental physical world. Well, the same can be said for evolutionary theory, which has a long and chequered pre-darwinian history as a more or less factfree metaphysical idea before Charles Darwin rearticulated it in more or less experiential terms rendering it amenable to empirical testing against physical, biological observations. Whether it has actually passed the test of empirical observation is quite another question. The real question about creationary theory is not about its metaphysical nature or lack thereof, but whether it could be infused with experiential content sufficient enough for it to be re-expressed as a physical, scientific

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theory amenable to rigorous systematic empirical inquiry. In other words, if an originally metaphysical, meta-scientific theory (religious or otherwise), such as creationary theory, can be consistently re-conceptualised in physical, experiential terms, then it becomes a scientific theory subject to the same stringent empirical tests as the opposing evolutionary theory. If evolution can be allowed to go from metaphysical to the physical, I cannot see why that privilege should be denied to creationism, in the name of objective scientific fair play. Therefore the real problem with creationary theory is then really this: If the world is created by a transcendent intelligence of power and wisdom, then what precisely are the observable physical features of the world indicating it as being a product of intelligence rather than of chance?" In the end, as far as science is concerned, the question boils down to whether the given empirical evidence is weighted in favor of one rather than the other theory. Michael Behe in his influential book Darwin s Black Box has proposed a powerful empirical theory of creation or design that I believe can be further developed, extended, and explicated in more exact (i.e., mathematical) terms to eventually supercede completely the mainstream neodarwinian consensus. His quasi-formal, physical definition of design can be briefly paraphrased and restated in the following terms: design is the arrangement of parts to realise a structural and/or functional whole beyond the capacity of the individual, separate parts, such that the absence or removal of any one of those parts destroys the structure and/or function.100 This definition has I think captured in a brief sentence the essential, formal elements of anything that can be described as having been designed, thus rendering it possible for its logical implications to be further worked out mathematically and then tested empirically against any aspect of biological or nonbiological phenomena. Thus, our foundational conceptual standpoint here is that (following al-Fakhr al-Razi and al-Nursi101) if anything in nature is created/designed, then everything is, including the whole of nature itself,1^ thus leading to what Robert A. Herrmann calls a General Intelligence Design (GID) theory,103 already implied in qualitative terms by al-Nursi in his remarkable Nature: Cause or Effect.104 Right now, the standard creationary theory as articulated by Behe and Dembski (call it the Behean-Dembskian synthesis) is arbitrarily restricted to biological function. Muslim mathematicians should be able to raise the stakes of the creation-evolution debate by formally generalising the design theory to all natural phenomena, biological or

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physical, i.e., to both biotic and abiotic systems. I believe that Muslim mathematicians who reject neodarwinian evolution will be able to draw from systems and information theory, as well as other relevant branches of mathematics, to formulate upstream research programs for developing new mathematical techniques to describe, clarify, and bring into more precise analytic focus the design features so selfevident in both biological and non-biological phenomena, from the subatomic to the cosmic, from inanimate rocks to animate brains.105 Accountancy and Actuarial Mathematics Accountancy and the actuarial sciences are part of the larger field of financial mathematics. The eventual replacement of the mainstream fiat money system with the Islamic gold dinar system will certainly entail radical reforms to, and even total replacement of, the accountancy and actuarial principles, standards, and models now in use, in line with foundational changes in the way money, wealth, risks, costs, benefits, and the very notion of "accountability" are conceptualized and defined in a dinar-dirham economy, which is in turn embedded in a larger Islamic Gift Economy meta-architecture.106 The reconceptualization of wealth and money will in turn open up new avenues of upstream research programs in the actuarial and accountancy sciences.107 For instance, the dynamic and creative revival of the august institution ofwaqfcan provide, inter alia, a system of communal (i.e., decentralized, community-based) social welfare "insurance" for the economically marginalized. Now, a social welfare net within the framework of waqfa.nd tabarru* principles will entail a thorough rethinking of mainstream actuarial methods of assessing 'risk', which are largely based on rent-seeking arbitrage rather than mutuality structures, even in the so called takdful (mutual support and solidarity) insurance business.108 Maybe the very concept of insurable "risk" will have to be rethought very thoroughly indeed, at least as to what extent it has been decoupled from its roots in the uncertainty of gambling.109 I wonder if today's takdful industries have properly thought out this and similar foundational issues and come out with its own actuarial science—assuming that is possible, given the traditional fiqh objection to insurance?110 As noted by Bill Maurer in his sensitive anthropological economic study: [Though] Self-consciously positioned as a moral and ethical alternative to conventional insurance, it [takdful] employs the same actuarial tables and statistical conventions while serving the perceived needs of the faithful, whether those needs be to

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provide for family after death or save money for the holy pilgrimage.111

Another case in point: the "philosophical base" of actuarial science is secular utilitarianism rooted in 18th-19th century western capitalism. Therefore, to the extent that this philosophy and its context are incompatible with Islam and its context, at least, the actuarial sciences have to be redefined and reformed. In the long run, statements on actuarial practices will be erected on principles which in turn are built on fundamental ideas and concepts. These fundamentals will be relatively invariant over time, while standards will respond to current issues facing the actuarial profession. If the standards of practice that are developed are to be consistent, such standards must be related to a coherent intellectual foundation—a set of fundamental actuarial concepts such as set out in this work.112 The above quotation reflects an on-going re-examination of the foundations of the actuarial sciences by western practioners of the art. Is that healthy dose of critical self-consciousness also infused into the minds and hearts of Muslim actuaries and financial mathematicians in the course of their training and practice of the art of risk management and econometric modelling? Or are they efficient but mindless automata, robotic manipulators of tables and models the historical and axiological provenance of which they know next to nothing about? Mathematical Modelling of the Islamic Green Economy On another note, a greener,113 more eco-friendly approach in the way things are being done in the various scientific and technical fields (green chemistry,114 green engineering,115 green manufacturing,116 green industry,117 organic agriculture,118 green investment,119 green energy,120 the fair trade movement,121 economic downshifting or simple living,122 green financing,123 etc.) will, among other things, require new quantitative models of accountancy and risk management which take into systemic consideration what are now conveniently dismissed as externalities (hence nonexistent) in conventional models. What are pushed aside as externalities will then to a large extent be seen as internalities and hence seen also as constitutive components of the costs, benefits, and risks of a project, small or large.124 However, in mainstream accountancy and actuarial sciences today, these externalities and by-products are seen as incidentals that need not be seriously and systematically considered in evaluating the impact of a

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project on public stakeholders. It is this systemic, irresponsible, self-interested attitude about public costs and benefits that lies at the bottom of widespread social and natural environmental degradation in the wake of physical development and runaway economic growth. ...the entity and monetary measurement concepts, by relegating the damaging effects on the social fabric and environment as externalities, means that accounting hides itself in the clothes of objectivity by not measuring these at all! As accounting itself creates reality by communicating it, it leads to certain behavioural consequences, which is in line with the materialistic utilitarian worldview of capitalism. These include competition, conflict and domination.125

Hence, a both qualitative and quantitative (i.e., mathematical) thorough and radical review of modern accountancy and actuarial sciences along authentic Islamic lines will make sure that the spirit and practice of true accountability (muhdsabah) and responsibility (amdnah) re-infuse these and related disciplines.126 Malay-Islamic Mathematics and Ethnomathematics in General Another upstream mathematical research program disregarded by most researchers into Malay-Islamic thought127 is systematic research into the rich scientific and mathematical heritage of Malay-Islamic scholars between 1500 to 1900 CE. Aspects of this neglected mathematical heritage include texts in astronomy, calendarical reckoning, inheritance division, and mathematics as such. In this regard I have, in collaboration with INSPEM,128 detailed a research project to study and produce an annotated translation of a mathematical treatise by the 19th century Malay-Islamic mathematician alShaykh Ahmad al-Khatib bin cAbd al-Latif al-Minangkabawi entitled cAlam al-Hussdb f i cllm al-Hisdb.l2g The idea here is to work backwards from a relatively late scholar like al-Minangkabawi to earlier pre-colonial MalayIslamic mathematical writers to eventually produce an overall picture of how pre-Islamic Malay ethnomathematical elements were synthesized with later Malay-Islamic ones and then later still with modern western mathematical ideas. Apart from enriching our knowledge of the mathematics of a significant ethnogeographical region of the larger Islamic world, which I believe will be a worthwhile objective on its own, it is quite possible that we may find new mathematical concepts and techniques which could have interesting and useful contemporary relevance, and hence be revived and developed further. But this possibility will only be open for exploration by

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those of us who are not too obsessed with modern western mathematical achievements as the only standard for evaluating progress or regress in any scientific field whatsoever. Conclusion Mathematics, like all other sciences, exact or inexact, pure or impure, is value-laden. Values, whatever their source, were there before the axioms, and the latter merely embody the former. Hence mathematics can be understood as the formalization of values by which they are further clarified and infused into the natural and social sciences and made operative for cognitive and pragmatic purposes. This understanding of the value-ladenness of mathematics has been explored here by suggesting some upstream research programs for Muslim mathematicians as a rough guide toward how they could go about embodying and realising Islamic values in, and through, their work, thus operationalizing the Islamization of the sciences through the power of mathematical rigor and objectivity. Endnotes

1. The Development of Arabic Mathematics: Between Arithmetic and Algebra, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994); idem., Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, 3 vols. (London: Routledge, 1996); idem, "Metaphysics and Mathematics in Classical Islamic Culture: Avicenna and his Successors," in Ted Peters, Muzaffar Iqbal, and Syed Nomanul Haq (eds.), God, Life, and the Cosmos (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 173-193; idem, "Between Philosophy and Mathematics: Examples of Interactions in Classical Islam," in Islam & Science (Winter 2005), 153-165; idem, "The Invention of Classical Scientific Modernity," in Revista Latinoamericana de Historia de las Ciencias y la Tecnologia, vol. 12, no. 2 (May/August 1999), 135-147. For more information about him and his valuable works, see his personal website, . To me, the main importance of Roshdi Rashed's historically grounded works, at least in regard to this article, lies in their detailed documentation and explication of the fruitful symbiosis between philosophy (including theological and metaphysical ideas) and mathematics in the works of classical Islamic mathematicians. 2. Imre Lakatos, Mathematics, Science and Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); idem, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); idem, Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). I have borrowed the Lakatosian framework in my "Islamic Science as a Scientific Research Program," Islam & Science (Summer 2005); and "Three Meanings of Islamic Science," in Islam & Science (Winter 2007). 3. Including Brian Martin, "Mathematics and Social Interests," in Search, vol. 19, no. 4 (July-August, 1988), 209-214; and, especially, Michael Polanyi, Personal

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science 174 • Islam e> Science • Vol. 6 (Winter 2008) No. 2 Knowledge: Toward a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). My deliberate first-person tone in this article is simply to support Polanyi's emphasis on the importance of recognizing and acknowledging the scientist's personal, passionate involvement in the discovery and validation of his knowledge, which he then presents to the world as impersonal and objective. His basic message is that science is not just a matter of impersonal knowing, but more fundamentally, a matter of personal being. See also his Knowing and Being: Essays by Michael Polanyi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Science, Faith and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); Tacit Dimension (Glouchester, MA: Peter Smith, 1983); and idem, with Harry Prosch, Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). 4. Needless to say, this article is only intended for those who want to create rather than merely do mathematics. For a brief thought in this regard, see the short paper by Ror D. Follendore, "Mathematical Creativity," at . A more academic description of creativity in mathematics is the chapter on "Mathematical Creativity," by Gontran Ervynck, in David Orme Tall (ed.), Advanced Mathematical Thinking (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2004), 42-53. 5. Apart from Lakatos's works already cited, for a short overview of foundational philosophical problems in mathematics, see and the references therein. The Wikipedia articles on "Mathematics" () and "Philosophy of Mathematics" () are also very helpful. 6. Gontran Ervynck, "Mathematical Creativity," 42. 7. Specifically, reflective studies on Arab-Islamic mathematics by Roshdi Rashed, such as his "Between Philosophy and Mathematics: Examples of Interactions in Classical Islam," in Islam & Science (Winter 2005), 153-165. 8. Specifically, the preliminary studies on various aspects of Malay-Islamic ethnomathematics based on the textual evidence by scholars and mathematicians associated with Akademi Sains Islam Malaysia (ASASI = The Islamic Science Academy of Malaysia). Most of their studies are published in the Malay language in local Malaysian scientific and mathematical journals, and I am thinking of writing an English summary of them for a global audience. 9. The Islamization of Mathematics follows from the Islamic Mathematics Research Program (IMRP), which is a component of the Islamic Science Research Program (ISRP) sketched out in my "Three Meanings of Islamic Science: Toward Operationalizing Islamization of Science," in Islam & Science (Summer 2007), 23-52; and "Islamic Science as a Scientific Research Program: Conceptual and Pragmatic Issues," in Islam & Science (Summer 2005), 93-101. 10. Including Western mathematicians such as ethnomathematicians interested in learning, studying, researching, and promoting the mathematical thought, pedagogy, and practice of non-western peoples and cultures, which they see as having their own, autonomous, intrinsic worth. For a survey of

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non-western mathematics, see, for instance, Marcia Asher, Ethnomathematics: A Multicultural View of Mathematical Ideas (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1991); see also Helaine Selin and Ubiratan D'Ambrosio (eds.), Mathematics Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Mathematics (New York: Springer, 2000). Here, the word "western" is understood in the intellecto-cultural sense elaborated by Serge Latouche, The Westernization of the World: The Significance, Scope and Limits of the Drive towards Global Uniformity (London: Polity Press, 1996). In this book, Latouche makes a forceful, intellectually impassioned case for his thesis that the West is now a masterless machine on a wild rampage through the globe, devouring all, culture and nature, in its path. See also Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam & Secularism (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1993), especially chapter four on "The Dewesternization of Knowledge," 133-138. 11. For a discussion, see Brian Martin, "Mathematics and Social Interests," in Arthur B. Powell and Marilyn Frankenstein (eds.), Ethnomathematics: Challenging Eurocentrism in Mathematics Education (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), 155-171; also Liz Bills and Chris Husbands, "Values in Mathematical Education: How Mathematical?" (). 12. For a balanced, wide ranging discussion which looks at both sides of the coin, see Harold Kincaid, John Dupre, and Alison Wylie (eds.), Value-Free Science?: Ideals and Illusions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). For a discussion from a Christian perspective, see Michael H. Veatch, "Mathematics and Values: Can Philosophy Guide Projects," in Journal of Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences (ACMS), 2004 Inagural Issue, 1-14, . For a Muslim mathematician's perspective, see Shaharir Mohamed Zain, Symbiosis between Value Systems and the Nature of Mathematics (Bangi, Malaysia: Penerbit UKM, 2006). The value of this work can be enhanced by drawing on the studies of Roshdi Rashed (which he overlooks completely) to provide detailed examples from the fruitful symbiosis between philosophy (including metaphysical ideas) and mathematics in the works of classical Islamic mathematicians. As it is, the thesis is supported mostly by examples from western mathematics and physics with only brief incidental references to classical Muslim mathematicians, despite his call in the conclusion for the Islamization of mathematics. 13. This may smack of extreme relativism, but the fact is that objectivity in mathematics, as in science, arises not out of the a priori, unilateral assertion of objectivity on the part of a hegemonic mathematical culture, which is then imposed, directly or indirectly, on the receiving, subjugated or coopted, culture, but out of cross-cultural, critical appreciation on the part of the receiving culture for the intellectual products of the source culture, which then become objectivised and, in some cases, universalised, precisely because that exchange is, as it were, *an tarddin (Qur'an, al-Baqarah: 233; al-Nisa': 29), that is, by mutual consent. 14. For instance, Brian Martin, "Mathematics and Social Interests," in Search, vol. 19, no. 4 (July-August, 1988), 209-214; reprinted in Arthur B. Powell and

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science 176 • Islam e> Science • Vol. 6 (Winter 2008) No. 2 Marilyn Frankenstein (eds.), Ethnomathematics: Challenging Eurocentrism in Mathematics Education (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 155-171. For more on the idea of culture-laden mathematics, see Paul Ernest, "Values and the Social Responsibility of Mathematics" () which is an adaptation of chapter eight of his Social Constructivism as a Philosophy of Mathematics (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1998). 15. "God and the Future of Mathematics," World Network of Religious Futurists (June 27, 2000) at . 16. Shaharir bin Mohamed Zain, Symbiosis between Value Systems and the Nature of Mathematics (Bangi, Malaysia: Penerbit UKM, 2006), 6. His address was delivered on July 5, 1990 at the National University of Malaysia. He is an accomplished mathematician and mathematical physicist, and an important founding member of the Islamic Science Academy of Malaysia (ASASI), for which he has also served as president for many years. Much of the operative orientation of this article is inspired by my many hours of personal intellectual interaction with him, though I must say we do have our sometimes unnecessarily heated differences. 17. Or the 'Worldview of Islam' as elaborated by Syed Muhammad Naquib alAttas, Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam: An Exposition of the Fundamental Elements of the Worldview of Islam (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 2000); idem, Risalah untuk Kaum Muslimin (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC). For al-Attas's own summary of the worldview of Islam, see "Islamic Philosophy: An Introduction," in Journal of Islamic Philosophy, 1 (2005), 11-43 (). For applying the worldview of Islam as articulated by al-Attas to the domain of science and technology, see my various articles in the Canadian journal Islam & Science, especially "Al-Attas's Philosophy of Science: An Extended Outline," Islam & Science (December 2003), 165-214; and "Three Meanings of Islamic Science: Toward Operationalizing Islamization of Science," Islam & Science (Summer 2007), 23-52. See also the important article on Islamic cosmology by Mohd Zaidi b. Ismail, "The Cosmos as a Created Book and Its Implications for the Orientation of Science," in Islam & Science (Summer 2008), 31-53. For applying it to the domain of education in general, see Wan Mohd Nor Wan Baud, The Educational Philosophy and Practice of Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas: An Exposition of the Original Concept of Islamization (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1998). 18. Shaharir, Symbiosis, 61. 19. Here the term is obviously not used for what passes under that name in the oil industry. It refers to what goes by the name of 'fundamental' or 'basic' research in academia, but I want to capture the sense of active, dynamic flow of creative thought and action inherent in authentic research, as in the upstream and downstream flow of a spring or river, for at times we need to row upstream against the current, and at other times, flow downstream with the current. The notion of the "flow," as in the flow of a stream, is also promi-

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nent in David Bohm's description of the interaction between the explicate and implicate orders of reality. He calls this flowing mode of thinking and speaking the "rheomode"; see David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London: Routledge, 1980), 34-60. 20. This can be viewed as practising the Socratic philosophical imperative of "Know Thyself" and the religious injunction implied in the Prophetic saying "man carafa nafsahu carafa rabbahu" ("he who knows his self knows his Lord"). For an explication of this saying in the context of the meaning and practice of 'religion' in Islam, see Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam, especially chapter one on "Islam: The Concept of Religion and the Foundation of Ethics and Morality," 41-90. 21. Hence, faced with the choice of either sacrificing a professional career (i.e., money) or cognitive vision (i.e., truth), the critically self-aware researcher of conscience will obviously opt for the former as the much lesser sacrifice, but more often than not—as my experience in Malaysian academia so far shows—the circumstances need not be that dire, for it is quite possible to pursue both career and truth and, moreover, to do so in such a way that the pursuit of career serves the pursuit of truth. It requires a lot of tact (at times outright bluntness), patience, and persistence, but it is achievable. All these will obviously demand an inclination for deep cognitive introspection into the meaning and purpose of one's scientific profession, as well as application of the psychospiritual practice ofmuhdsabah, murdqabat al-nafs, tafakkur, tadabbur, and dhikr into the direction of scientific research. For an outline of Islamic psychospiritual introspection, see Malik Badri, Contemplation: An Islamic Psychospiritual Study (Kuala Lumpur: Medeena Books, 2000). 22. Roshdi Rashed says the following in his article "Between Philosophy and Mathematics: Examples of Interactions in Classical Islam," in Islam & Science (Winter 2005), 153-165 on 157: "We are, in other words, seeking the organising role of mathematics. We will highlight how the philosopher-mathematicians proceed in their search for mathematical solutions to philosophical problems, a fruitful approach which generates new doctrines and even new disciplines." Upstream research in the sense meant here can thus be seen also as an effort to encourage today's Muslim mathematicians to revive in their work that classical Islamic legacy of creative, dialectical symbiosis between mathematics and philosophy. 23. Especially not in opposition if the downstream research itself flows out from the results of an upstream research one has identified and chosen for oneself, or that one self-consciously accepts and adheres to. In other words, one has to be very self-conscious of one's research agenda and its source of inspiration, if one wants to be a true scientist-mathematician instead of a mere number-technician and symbols-manipulator. 24. For the most part, because in this case involvement in downstream research grows out of uncritical acceptance or even blissful ignorance of the higher upstream research agenda served by that downstream research. 25.1 certainly cannot claim to speak for the global Muslim mathematical community in general, but I have posted an earlier, very much shorter Malay draft

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science 178 • Islam e> Science • Vol. 6 (Winter 2008) No. 2 of this article to a number of prominent Malay-Muslim mathematicians associated with the Academy of Islamic Science Malaysia (ASASI), and so far they do not seem to be protesting this claim. Moreover, my survey of some issues of the research bulletin of the Malaysian Institute for Mathematical Research, at which I am an invited associate research fellow, tends to support this impression of a mostly downstream activity, lacking an upstream, integrative vision that is to be realised in detail at the downstream level. 26. Now, I personally believe that this seductive mantra serves only to retard our understanding of the real goal of academic life, which is to produce "useful knowledge" (cilm ndfic) and the wholesome actions Carnal sdlih) to be derived therefrom, not produce papers and to push them around to people who do not really care a jot about what you say. In other words, one publishes, if at all, only to promote and clarify the truth, not one's career or the prestige of the university. Career, money, and prestige may be important, but they are only of incidental importance. What is of foundational importance is truth, and the incidental merely serves the foundational and builds itself on it, otherwise it is just hot air and scattered dust (habcfan manthuran). On this issue, see the eye-popping article by Mohamed Gad el-Hak, "Publish or Perish: An Ailing Enterprise?" in Physics Today (March 2004), 62. 27. Such as Suzanne Sadedin, "A Simple Model for the Evolution of Irreducible Complexity," at ; and Stuart Kauffman, The Origins of Order: Self-Oranization and Selection in Evolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). A favorable review of Kauffman's book is, by Reilly Jones in Extropy, #13, vol. 6 no. 2 (3rd Quarter 1994), also at . For Michael Behe's critical comments, see his Darwin s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York: The Free Press, 1996), 29ff, 155ff, 178ff, 189ff; and his The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism (New York: Free Press, 2007), 159. But actually mathematics is a double edged sword, and so there have been mathematicians (not necessarily antievolutionists) who argue against the neo-darwinist synthesis on mathematical grounds alone. I dare say that the severe sword of mathematics in fact cuts more easily into evolutionary rather than into creationary theories, so much so that squaring evolution with mathematics is like squaring the circle. For more on this see Paul Moorhead and Martin Kaplan, eds., Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, Wistar Institute Monograph No. 5 (Philadelphia: Wistar Institute Press, 1967); James Coppedge, Evolution, Possible or Impossible: Molecular Biology and the Laws of Chance in Non-Technical Language (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1973). 28. Here I am not at all advocating extreme mathematical relativism, which is no solution at all, given the fact that we shall continue to engage, and be engaged by, evolutionist biomathematicians. On the contrary, what I have in mind is a meta-mathematical, methodological equivalence of creationary and evolutionary biomathematics as a shared basis for mutual constructive engagement, somewhat along the lines of Stephen C. Meyer, "The Methodological Equivalence of Design and Descent," in J. P. Moreland (ed.),

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The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 67-112. 29. David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London: Routledge, 1980); idem, The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory (London: Routledge, 1995); idem, with F. David Peat, Science, Order and Creativity: A Dramatic New Look at the Creative Roots of Science and Life, new ed. (London: Routledge, 2000). See also F. David Peat, Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind (New York: Bantam, 1987). 30. Lynn Arthur Steen, "The Science of Patterns," in Science, vol. 240 no. 4852 (April, 1988), 611-616; also, Keith Devlin, Mathematics, The Science of Patterns: The Search for Order in Life, Mind and the Universe (New York: Scientific American Library, 1994). 31. Actually the word 'intelligent' in "intelligent design" is redundant and should be dropped, since design already implies intelligence. 32. Modern monetary economics and the mathematics developed to formalize that economy is basically based on the Berkeleyan idea of notional (i.e., specie-less) money as opposed to real (specie-based) money, see C. George Caffentzis, "Algebraic Money: Berkeley's Philosophy of Mathematics and Money," in Berkeley Studies, 18 (2007), 3-21. For a brief overview of the nature of money, see Alia Sheptun, "Philosophy of Money," at . 33. More so when we definitely know that paper and electronic money is integral to the global ribd (usurious) fractional reserve banking system; further discussion below. 34. To my limited knowledge at the moment, there is as yet no contemporary comprehensive yet intensive treatment of the Islamic philosophy of money that engages closely and critically with western philosophies of money and the institutions and practices derived therefrom, but a good start is M.A. Choudhury, Money in Islam: A Study in Islamic Political Economy (London: Routledge, 1997). 35. Which will, inter alia, entail a drastic physical, economic, and mathematical redefinition of, say, the concept of efficiency; see Prabhat Patnaik, "On the Concept of Efficiency," at ; cf. Richard Wolff, "'Efficiency': Whose Efficiency", Post-Autistic Economics Review, no. 16 (September 16, 2002), article 3 . 36. In which case, the concept of'banking' will itself undergo a radical semantic change, and thus become thoroughly Islamized, so much so that a new term may have to be coined to describe the new systemic economic and monetary reality. 37. In a recent series of (overly?) spirited discussions with Shaharir Mohamed Zain of ASASI on the meaning of "upstream/downstream research," I realised that the concept of 'research' in Islam needs to be explicated further, and perhaps given a separate treatment called, tentatively, "The Islamic Philosophy of Research" that would draw heavily from Islamic intellectual history while

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science 180 • Islam e> Science • Vol. 6 (Winter 2008) No. 2 engaging closely with the modern conception and practice of the term. Obviously, if we have to talk intelligently and reflectively about the Islamic Science Research Program, then the notion of 'research' must be submitted to a rigorous semantic analysis in order to explicate precisely in conceptual and practical terms what we mean when we say we are doing 'research', say, by applying aspects of the method of semantic discourse analysis. A brief overview of semantic analysis in Islam is Syamsuddin Arif, "Preserving the Semantic Structure of Islamic Key Terms and Concepts: Izutsu, al-Attas and al-Raghib al-Isfahanl," in Islam e> Science (Winter 2007), 107-116. 38. See, for instance, Hutson Smith, Beyond the Post-Modem Mind (Wheaton, Illinois: Quest Books, 1989). For an interview with him by Jeffrey Mishlove on this theme, see . 39. On "Kalam and Mathematics in the Islamic Intellectual Tradition," presented in Malay. 40. Seminar Sehari Sains Matematik Rumpun Melayu (One Day Seminar on Malay Ethnomathematics), organised by the Institut Penyelidikan Matematik (INSPEM, Institute for Mathematical Research) in collaboration with the Akademi Sains Islam Malaysia (ASASI, Islamic Science Akademi of Malaysia), Putrajaya, Malaysia, November 21, 2007. 41. Maheran Mohd Jaffar, with Shaharir Mohamad Zain and Abdul Aziz Jemain, "Perkembangan Model Matematik Pelaburan Islam Berkonsep Musyarakah," = "Developing a Mathematical Model of Islamic Investment based on the Concept of Mushdrakah" presented by Maheran M. Jaffar at the said oneday seminar. See also the valuable references on the issue listed therein. According to her, Malay Muslim mathematicians are pioneering research into the mathematical modelling of equity finance based on partnership and venture capital. 42. Ahamed Kameel Mydin Meera and Moussa Larbani, "Ownership Effects of Fractional Reserve Banking: An Islamic Perspective," 1-25 (); and Bashir Timol and Haitham al-Haddad, "The Credit Crunch: An Islamic Perspective," islam21c.com, November 6, 2008 (). See also Sir Harry Page, "In Restraint of Usury: The Lending of Money at Interest," Chartered Institute for Public Finances and Accounts (London: CIPFA, 1985); Michael Rowbotham, The Grip of Death (Charlbury, Oxfordshire: Jon Carpenter, 1998); idem, Goodbye America (Charlbury, Oxfordshire: Jon Carpenter, 2000); Margrit Kennedy, Interest and Inflation-Free Money (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1995). 43. I really think that it is high time that we view Islamic Economics as being very much wider and deeper than Islamic Banking and Finance (IBF), and even then, on deeper analysis, the Islamicity of IBF is highly suspect, smacking more than anything else of a very crude and clumsy cooption of traditional mu'dmalah categories into an alien, thoroughly riba infected and infested macroeconomic and monetary framework. Through a well thought out, comprehensive and systematic Islamic Economics Research Program, we shall tell and show all thinking Muslims (the cdqilin) that they should have

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had enough of this nonsensical, intellectually suffocating, window-dressing game passing itself off as IBF, and go all out for the real thing, which is operationalizing authentic Islamization of economics on the ground, immediately even, whenever possible and feasible, thus realizing the salient features of the The Islamic Gift Economy (by Adi Setia, forthcoming). But then, possibility and feasibility are things we have to work intelligently and diligently for, rather than hope for in passivity and seething frustration at the West. More below in the relevant sections. 44. Meera and Larbani, "Ownership Effects of Fractional Reserve Banking: An Islamic Perspective," 1. 45. Since 1963, when the economist Ahmad al-Najjar started his Mit Ghamir Savings Bank which functioned as a savings bank based on profit sharing on returns from investments, and hence was basically a form of venture capital company. There are many sources on him, Muslim and non-Muslim; see, for instance, Clement M. Henry and Rodney Wilson (eds.), The Politics of Islamic Finance (Edinburg: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 267-268. Anyone can easily see how far today's mainstream Islamic banking system has deviated beyond redress from this noble beginning rooted in communal mutuality; on the cause of this deviation, see Tarik M. Yousef, "The Murabaha Syndrome in Islamic Finance," in Clement M. Henry and Rodney Wilson (eds.), The Politics of Islamic Finance (Edinburgh: Ediburgh University Press, 2004), 63-80; cf. Mahmoud A. El-Gamal, "Mutuality as an Antidote to Rent-Seeking Sharica-Arbitrage in Islamic Finance," . It is time for us to systematically go back to our roots and start afresh, this time with our vision clearly fixed on the operative principles of The Islamic Gift Economy based on equity and mutuality rather than one-sided profiteering from impersonal, one-size-fits-all debtfinancing contracts that financially enslaves the other side more or less for life. These operative principles are nicely presented in Joseph A. DiVanna, Understanding Islamic Banking: The Value Proposition that Transcends Cultures (Cambridge: Leornado and Francis Press, 2006). 46. So far I simply have not found in the "expert" literature any thorough, systemic meta-fiqhi deconstruction of the dense network of secular economic concepts underpinning the modern monetary system, specifically the intimately interlinked concepts of fiat money, legal tender, notional money, paper money, electronic money, plastic money (credit cards), and the usurious deception of the principle of fractional reserve banking, but a very good start is definitely the two important articles by Ahamed Kameel Mydin Meera and Moussa Larbani, "Seigniorage of Fiat Money and the Maqasid alSharfah: The Unattainableness of the Sharicah," in Humanomics, vol. 22, no. 1 (2006); and idem, "Seigniorage of Fiat Money and the Maqasid al-Sharicah: The Compatibility of the Gold Dinar with the Maqasid" in Humanomics, vol. 22, no. 2 (2006). See also the interesting insider revelation by David Musa Pidcock at the Beyond Money website, "David Pidcock's View on the State of Islamic Money, Banking, and Finance," Science • Vol. 6 (Winter 2008) No. 2 ing-and-finance/>. 47. Masudul Alam Choudhury, Money in Islam: A Study in Islamic Political Economy (London: Routledge, 1997); idem, The Islamic World System: A Study in PolityMarket Interaction (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004). His writings on various aspects of the Islamic Political Economy (IPE) can be accessed at . See also Rodney Shakespeare, "Binary Economics: Linking Money to Productive Efficiency and Justice, . 48. See the expose by Muhammad Saleem, Islamic Banking: A $300 Billion Deception (Xlibris, 2006); cf. Mahmoud A. El-Gamal, Islamic Finance: Laws, Economics and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); cf. Timur Kuran, Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). 49. See Hamza Andreas Tzortzis, "Usury: The Forgotten Terrorism," in Islam21c. com, May 2 2007 (). 50. In Malaysia they have formed a mucdmalah council () of which I am an active invited member. The economics part of this article can also be read as providing a degree of objective (meta-fiqhi) intellectual substance to my involvement in it. A lot of people like to overly associate the present day revival of the Islamic dinar to the Murabitun movement or rather network (), but anyone who looked at the issue deeply will see that the concern for an equitable and truly mutual system of exchange symbolized and embodied in the dinar is something trans-sectarian and even trans-cultural, simply because the love for gold is ingrained in human nature by divine fiat. 51. See Michel Chossudovsky, "Global Financial Meltdown," in Global Research, September 18, 2008 (); idem, The Globalisation of Poverty and the New World Order, new and expanded ed. (Ottawa: Global Reserach, 2003). 52. For Imam al-Ghazali's position on the divinely ordained role of the gold dinar and silver dirham as means of voluntary exchange in the overall context of his economic thought, see the useful study by S. Mohammad Ghazanfar and Abdul Azim Islahi, Economic Thought ofal-Ghazali (Jeddah: King Abdulaziz University, 1997). For some mathematical economic models of the dinar in action, see Nuradli Ridzwan Shah bin Mohd Dali Abdul Ghafar bin Ismail, "The Flexible Model, Gold Dinar and Exchange Rate Determinism: An Exploratory Study Part 1," ; Ahamed Kameel Mydin Meera, "Integrating Al-Rahnu with the Gold Dinar: The Initial Building Blocks toward a Gold-Based Economy," ; Mansor H. Ibrahim, "Monetary Dynamics and Gold Dinar: An Empirical Perspective," < http://islamiccenter.kau.edu.sa/english/Journal/Issues/Pdf/19_2/192Mansor_05.pdf>; Ahamed Kameel Mydin Meera and Moussa Larbani, "The Gold Dinar: The Next Component in Islamic Economics, Banking and Finance," .

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53. Including more holistic notions and models of wealth and hence measures of both public and private profit and loss as well; see the must-read book by Mark Anielski, The Economics of Happiness: Discovering Genuine Wealth (New Society Publishers, 2007); also, Wolfgang Sachs, "Equity and New Models of Wealth," Wuppertal Institute Paper, ; compare Marco Cagetti and Mariachristina De Nardi, "Wealth Inequality: Data and Models" (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 2005), online at . 54. Thomas Prugh, Robert Costanza, et al., Natural Capital and Human Economic Survival (Solomons, Md.: International Society for Ecological Economics, 1999); AnnMari Jansson, et al., Investing in Natural Capital: The Ecological Economics Approach to Sustainability (Washington, B.C.: Island Press, 1994); Gretchen C. Daily, ed., Nature's Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems (Washington, B.C.: Island Press, 1997); Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1999). 55. Now being applied in Bhutan, where the holistic Gross National Happiness (GNH) replaces the materialistic Gross National Product (GNP). Why don't Muslim nations follow suit, since it is obviously a very good example to follow? See also Arthur C. Brooks, Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America and How Can We Have More of It (New York: Basic Books, 2008); and Andrew C. Revkin, "A New Measure of Well Being from a Happy Little Kingdom," New York Times, October 4 2005, . For an Islamic religious and philosophical perspective on happiness, see Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, "The Meaning and Experience of Happiness in Islam," in his Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam, Chapter II, 91-110. 56. Ernst Freidrich Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper, 1989), 63. 57. A capital asset is wealth that is retained to generate more wealth, like a rubber tree that is not immediately cut down for its wood but is instead retained to generate latex over many years resulting in extra wealth many times greater than would have been realised if the tree had been cut down immediately for its wood. 58. An operating expense is expense which yields its benefits immediately for running a business, and so it is the cost incurred for running an enterprise. That is precisely the way modern economics views nature: as resources to be spent/depleted immediately to run an enterprise, hence the cost of the modern economy is the whole of nature itself. Modern accountancy assuages the conscience of modern economy by "externalizing" this cost so it does not appear in the balance sheet, and is hence made invisible despite its glaring visibility. When the term 'resources' is then extended to human beings, we can understand why they must be worked to exhaustion, their labor and energy to be totally spent, that the enterprise be efficient and productive. The modern economy grows by exhausting nature and culture, and modern

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science 184 • Islam e> Science • Vol. 6 (Winter 2008) No. 2 accountancy's job is to make that growth very objective, universal, and value free indeed. 59. For a discussion of an alternative Islamic vision of wealth, see Masudul Alam Choudhury, "Dispensation of Wealth in Islam," . 60. Laura Sevier, Mike Henderson, and Nritijuna Naidu, "Ecovillages: A Model Life?," in The Ecologist 9, June 3, 2008), . For a brief, general analysis of the gift economy, see Gifford Pinchot, "The Gift Economy," in In Context, no. 41 (Summer 1995), accesible at . A book length treatment in the context of modern industrial societies is David J. Cheal, The Gift Economy (London: Routledge, 1988). 61. See the famous study by the French sociologist Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (London: Routledge, 1990). For a good insight into the intimate link between the gift and the economy of abundance instead of scarcity, see Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (London: Routledge, 2003); see also in this regard his seminal article extracted from that book, "The Original Affluent Society," accesible at . For a forceful debunking of the "self-interestedness" conception of human nature in modern economics, see also his The Western Illusion of Human Nature (Cambridge: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2008). 62. Refers to both voluntary and obligatory giving. 63. Hence an essentially cooperative, redistributive (tacdwuni) economics by mutual consent (can tarddin) rather than a competitive, accumulative (takdthuri) one by imposition and coercion (karhan). For instance, paper money or fiat money or notional money is money only by virtue of the legalised, political coercion (karh qdnuni/siydsi) of the state, hence the phrase "fiat" and "legal tender." But once the the artificial political border is crossed, the money immediately becomes worthless unless exchanged into another currency, another form of legal tender, the money of the host state. In contrast, specie or real money like the gold dinar and silver dirham are always money purely in virtue of the mutual consent of the parties directly involved in the exchange, and this mutual consent is in turn by virtue of the mutual recognition (can tacdrufin) of the intrinsic value/wealth of the physical content of the gold or silver in the dinar or dirham; hence a dinar of 4.25 grams of gold shall always be recognized or accpted as money (i.e., as a means of exchange) regardless of its original provenance or place of minting. Unlike notional or artificial money limited by artificial political borders, real money is natural, universal,/i'tfrf money unlimited by artificial borders, since it does not at all appeal to external coercive political authority but to the innate, natural/^n~ inclination of man, as clearly borne out in the divine declaration, "Beautified for mankind is love of the joys (that come) from women and offspring, and stored up heaps of gold and silver, and horses branded (with their mark), and cattle and land. That is comfort of the life of the world, whereas Allah, with Him is a more

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excellent abode!' (Qur'an, Al clmrdn: 14); translation based on Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Qufdn (Makkah: Muslim World League, 1977), 48. As for the US dollar, its "universality" is totally artificial, purely by virtue of it being imposed on the whole globe as international legal tender by the political economic might of the United States exercised through utterly undemocratic institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Though called "world" and "international" they simply are not concerned with acting in the global public interest, but very much concerned with acting in the euroamerican private interest, especially the global private interest of the industrialised Euroamerican North. Now we are beginning to see that this Global Financial Emperor has no clothes; nay, it doesn't even have a body. It is only a financial black hole, sucking the life and wealth of the world into its bottomless vacuum. Hopefully by now we have enough sense to rev up our escape velocity to free ourselves from its deadly attraction of utter destruction. 64. Or equity financing based on mutual consent (can tarddin) as opposed to the unilateral, shove-it-down-your-throat, one-size-fits-all kind of debt-financing business model of most "Islamic" banks obssessed with short term, riskfree profit making. A true Islamic bank is concerned with creating wealth (i.e., total well-being) for its clients, especially the poor and the economically marginalized, not self-interested profits for itself by systemically sucking wealth from them or worse, selling debts (i.e., credit cards) to them. 65. Abul Hasan M. Sadeq, "Waqf, Perpetual Charity and Poverty Alleviation," in International Journal of Social Economics, 29: 1/2, 2002, 135-151; see also Peter C. Hennigan, The Birth of a Legal Institution: The Formation of the Waqf in Third-Century A.H. Hanafi Legal Discourse (Leiden: Brill, 2004). 66. Ibn Battutah, The Travels of Ibn Battutah, trans. H. A. R. Gibb and C. F. Beckingham, 4 vols. with index (London: Hakluyt, 1958-2000), 1: 129 ff. See also Richard van Leeuven, Waqfs and Urban Structures: The Case of Ottoman Damascus (Leiden: Brill, 1999). He says in the conclusion (at 207) that waqfs "were a mechanism through which private interests and enterprise could be co-ordinated with the interests of the urban community.... Waqf networks formed the pattern underlying urban development." Cf. Ira Marvin Lapidus, Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 67. Murat Cizakca, "Ottoman Cash Waqfs Revisited: The Case of Bursa 15551823" (Manchester: FSTC Limited, 2004), online at ; originally published in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 38: 3 (1995); see also idem, A History of Philanthropic Foundations: The Islamic World from the Seventh Century to the Present (Istanbul: Bogazici University, 2000). See also R. J. Barnes, An Introduction to Religious Foundations in the Ottoman Empire (Brill: Leiden, 1987). 68. Or the "profits-over-people economy"; see Noam Chomsky, Profits over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999). In effect, what we have here is that big privatization projects tacitly compel the

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science 186 • Islam & Science • Vol. 6 (Winter 2008) No. 2 government to act as public guarantor, bearing substancial risks for minimal or no returns, based on the exclusively self-serving principle of "privatizing profits and socializing losses." 69. United Nations Development Report, 1998, cited in 1st Ethical's Guide to Why Islam has Prohibited Interest, and Islamic Alternatives for Financing (Bolton, UK: 1st Ethical Limited, 2005). Of course, privatization is only part of the picture; the other, bigger part, is the systemic transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich nations due to the usurious monetary policies of the IMF and World Bank imposed on poor countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. For an analysis of the reasons for Third World debt, see Susan George, A Fate Worse than Debt: The World Financial Crisis and the Poor (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990); see also idem, The Debt Boomerang (London: Pluto Press, 1992); and idem, How the Other Half Dies (London, Penguin, 1991). 70. In Islamic history, the power of the Sultans was limited by the Sharfah through the institution of the culama3; in secular democracies like the US, it is limited by the constitution through tripartite division of government into the legislative, the judical, and the executive. 71. See Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Privatizing Malaysia: Rents, Rhetoric, Realities (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995); see also Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Tan Wooi Syn, "Privatization and Re-Nationalization in Malaysia: A Survey," 1-44 (). 72. Ross H. McLeod, "Privatisation Failures in Indonesia" (). Specifically, on the water supply privatization fiasco, see Bill Guerin, "Indonesia Losing Its Thirst for Privatization," . See also "Water Privatization in the Asia Pacific Region," . 73. Implemented under the guiding mantra of "Malaysia Incorporated." 74. 128.8 billion ringgit for operating expenditure and only 48.1 billions for development expenditure; see "Full text of PM's Budget 2008 speech," The Star, September 7, 2007. 75. If, according to the working definition given by the Center for Civil Society at the London School of Economics, "civil society refers to the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared interests, purposes and values," involving institutional forms distinct from the state, then the institution of waqf has been and shall continue to be the cornerstone for establishing vibrant communities largely socio-economically autonomous, even aloof, from the centralised political apparatus of the state. In other words, waqf allows the socio-creative space for communities to micro-manage their own affairs, instead of surrendering their communal creative rights to the state, which should instead, by virtue of its central power, focus on establishing the macro-framework for such communal creativity to be possible, encouraged, and facilitated. On the idea of the civil and civic in the Islamic context, see the excellent analysis by Mohammed A. Bamyeh, "Civil Society and the

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Islamic Experience," in ISIM Review, no. 15 (Spring 2005), 40-41. 76. "No such thing as society," interview with Douglas Keay, Woman's Own, September 23, 1987. 77. In practice, this means that the state must shift from the neoliberal "businessfriendly" approach to the civil societal "people-friendly" approach, and give all its support (preferably indirect) toward realising local and communal socio-economic self empowerment. 78. Some preliminary research projects being done in this respect are Dian Masyita, Muhammad Tasrif and Abdi Suryadinata, "A Dynamic Model for Cash Waqf Management as One of the Alternative Instruments for Poverty Alleviation in Indonesia," ; M. Shoaib Khanzada, "The Wakala Waqf Model," ; Magda Ismail Abdel Mohsin, "Awqaf: The Social and Economic Empowerment of the Ummah," ; Habib Ahmed, "WaqfBased Microfinance: Realising the Social Role of Islamic Finance," %20Waqf%28Dr.%20Habib%29.pdf>; Duddy Roesmara Donna, Mahmudi, The Dynamic Optimization of Cash Waqf Management: An Optimal Control Theory Approach" ; and Hisham Yaacob, "Islamic Accounting Framework in Relation to Waqf Accounting and Accountability," . 79. Herman E. Daly, Steady-State Economics, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1991); idem, Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development (Boston: Beacon Press, 1977); idem and K. N. Townsend (eds.), Valuing the Earth: Economics, Ecology, Ethics (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1993); Bill McKibben, Deep-Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007). See also the First International DeGrowth Conference in Paris, 18-19 2008, . 80. When one really comes to think of it, much of E. F. Schumacher's description of Buddhist economics can be paraphrased in Islamic terms with no loss of conceptual and spiritual rasonance with the original; see his "Buddhist Economics" in his Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper Perennial, 1989). The more one reflects on this the more one realises the paradoxical soullessness and hence shallowness and cluelessness of modern Islamic (debt-finance-obsessed) economic discourse and practice. 81. For some case studies of the Islamic Gift Economy, see Benjamin Soares, Islam and the Prayer Economy: History and Authority in a Malian Town (University of Michigan Press, 2005). See also idem, "The Prayer Economy in a Malian Town", . For the Mamluk gift economy and the role of pious endowments within it, see Adam Sabra, Poverty and Charity in Medieval Islam: Mamluk Egypt, 1215-1517 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science 188 • Islam & Science • Vol. 6 (Winter 2008) No. 2 2000); also Michael Bonner, Mine Ener and Amy Singer (eds.), Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts (New York: SUNY, 2003); Amy Singer, Constructing Ottoman Beneficence: An Imperial Soup Kitchen in Jerusalem (NY: SUNY, 2002); Holger Weiss (ed.), Social Welfare in Muslim Societies in Africa (Stockholm: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2002). 82. See Jamie Morgan, "The Free Rider Principle: How Privilege is Subsidized," in Sand in the Wheels, ATTAC Newsletter, no. 161 (2003), 4-7, . 83. It is quite possible that this neoliberal ring of power, like Sauron's ring, will be destroyed in the very bowels of Western academia whence it was cast. See for instance the courageous work being done by Jamie Morgan to achieve this objective with his colleagues at the Anti-Capitalist Research Organization at Lancaster University. An excellent incisive overview of the various sociopolitical currents opposing global neoliberalism is Derek Wall, Babylon and Beyond: The Politics of Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Globalist and Radical Green Movements (London: Pluto Press, 2005). 84. Qur'an, al-Nisd3: 29. 85. , 6. 86. Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (New York: Harper & Row, 1973). 87. Cf. Mohamed Haj Yousef, Ibn 'Arabi: Time and Cosmology (London: Routledge, 2008). 88. See the important, comprehensive and detailed study by Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, A Commentary on the Hujjat Al-Siddiq ofNur al-Dm al-Rdniri: Being an Exposition of the Salient Points of Distinction between the Positions of the Theologians, the Philosophers, the Sufis and the Pseudo-Sufis on the Ontological Relationship between God and the World and Related Questions (Kuala Lumpur: Ministry of Culture, 1986); idem, The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1970); cf. M. B. Altaic, "Atomism in Islamic Kalam," in Etudes Orietales, no. 23/24 (2005). With regard to the origins of Islamic atomism, Josef Van Ess has this to say, "When we want to understand the phenomenon [of Islamic atomism] we have to first forget our Western associations and to take it as such, in its own environment, as an independent and original system; the question of its "sources" has to be answered later"; see his "Atomism in Early Islamic Thought & its Relation to Pre-Islamic Iranian Thinking," . 89. This metaphysics is succintly summarized in philosophico-theological terms by the Imam Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-SanusI al-Hasanl in his Main alSanusiyyah, also called Umm al-Bardhin, in which he explicates the meaning of Id ildha ilia Allah as the absolute independence of God from all that is other than Him, and the absolute dependence of all that is other than Him on Him. This essentially means that all of creation and every part thereof are dependent on God for their existence, and no aspect of the world can be independent from Him. In short, He is self-sufficient and not in need of anything, whereas all else is in need of Him. See the translation of Umm al-Bardhin (together with its commentary by his disciple, Shaykh al-Malall)

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in Auwais Rafudeen, The Aqidah of Tuan Guru, released by , 1428H, ; cf. Shaykh Abu Adam al-Narujiy, Al-'Aqidah al-Sanusiyyah: Translation and Commentary, released by , 1428H, . 90. I have in mind here the kind of work done by, for instance, Henri Poincare as described in Jeffrey J. Prentis, "Poincare's proof of the quantum discontinuity of nature," in American Journal of Physics, vol. 63 no. 4 (1995), 339-350. To quote from the abstract, "Poincare's analysis is based on an ingenious physical model consisting of long-period resonators interacting with shortperiod resonators. A unique formulation of statistical mechanics, based on the calculus of probabilities, Fourier's integral, and complex analysis, logically unfolds throughout the memoir. Poincare invents an 'inverse statistical mechanics' that allows him to prove a crucial result that no one had proved before: The hypothesis of quanta is both a sufficient and a necessary condition to account for Planck's law of radiation. In a separate, more universal proof, Poincare proves that the existence of a discontinuity in the motion of a resonator is necessary to explain any observed law of radiation." 91. Simply because, firstly, most modern physicists are agnostics with regard to the ontological interpretations of their theories, and secondly, the ontological import of the problem of continuity versus discontinuity of nature depends ultimately on how the two are reconciled. 92. Shark Al-cAqtfid Al-Nasafiyyah, trans. Earl Edgar Elder, A Commentary on the Creed of Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950), 32 (with slight modifications). 93. This will entail, of course, a reconceptualization of what is meant by 'the minimal part that cannot be further minimized (or reduced?)' and its extension to animate systems, and ultimately to mental, conscious systems. For instance, one approach will be to describe "The Linguistic Theory of Fakhr al-Dln al-RazI" (forthcoming) and to see how that follows (or does not follow) from his atomic physical theory; cf. John-Michael Kuczynski, Conceptual Atomism and the Computational Theory of Mind: A Defense ofContent-Internalism and Semantic Externalism (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007). The extension of physical atomism to biology will entail the concept of biological atomism, which, I think, corresponds to the Behean 'irreducible complexity', but obviously this is not the place to elaborate further. For a general scientific reflection on modern cosmology in relation to the worldview of Islam, see Bruno Guiderdoni, "Modern Cosmology in the Islamic Worldview," . 94. Seyyed Hossein Nasr does not seem to be very clear in his understanding of Bohm's cosmology and ontology; see his Religion and the Order of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 49. He confuses between the enfolded and unfolded (which latter refers to the explicate not implicate) orders, and thinks that Bohm's implicate order refers to the material world. A proper reading of Bohm will show that he actually affirms the atomic structure of the material physical world, but that this manifest, unfolded world

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science 190 • Islam & Science • Vol. 6 (Winter 2008) No. 2 of apparently independent, separate, fragmented, and discrete entities and processes are actually embedded or enfolded in a deep-structure called the implicate order and ultimately the super-implicate order, in which the principles of discontinuity and continuity, change and permanence, nonlinearity and linearity, and indeterminism and determinism, matter and spirit, mind and body, are reconciled. In other words, there is an underlying continuity and permanance but these refer to a higher and deeper implicate order of reality than the physical, material and sensible explicate order. To put it yet again in another way, the physical world is relatively discrete and discontinous by virtue of it being explicate or zdhir, but there is an underlying unity between the separate physical parts of the world because of its embeddedness in the implicate order. Hence the continuity and unity that are to be sought are not at the level of the material but at the level of the spiritual, but even then the continuity and unity at the level of the spiritual is only relative, for absolute continuity (baqtf) and unity (wahddniyyah) is God's alone, at the level of the super-implicate order beyond the limits of human cognition and intellection. This cosmo-ontological scheme of Bohm's is in general conceptual affinity with the Islamic ontology of the six degrees of existence outlined by Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas in his The Intuition of Existence, On Quiddity and Essence and The Degrees of Existence, which constitute chapters V, VI, VII respectively of his Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam: An Exposition of the Fundamental Elements of the Worldview of Islam (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 2001), 177-320 passim. These three tracts (best read and studied together) have been previously published as separate monographs, also by ISTAC. 95. Acareful, balanced defence of Bohm's ontological interpretation of relativity and quantum mechanics against his many detractors is Oliver Passon, "Why isn't every physicist a Bohmian?," in Quantum Physics (December 2004), . In his words, "This note collects, classifies and evaluates common criticism against the deBroglie-Bohm theory, including Ockham's razor, asymmetry in the deBroglieBohm theory, the "surreal trajectory" problem, the underdetermination of the deBroglie-Bohm theory and the question of relativistic and quantum field theoretical generalizations of the deBroglie-Bohm theory. We argue that none of these objections provide a rigorous disproof, they rather highlight that even in science theories can not solely be evaluated based on their empirical confirmation." See also idem, "What you always wanted to know about Bohmian mechanics but were afraid to ask," in Physics and Philosophy 3 (2006), ;also at . See also Oliver Passon, "How to teach quantum mechanics," in European Journal of Physics, 25 (2004), 765-769. See also Peter R. Holland, The Quantum Theory of Motion: An Account of the de Broglie-Bohm Causal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 96. Somewhat along the lines of, say, Michael Anthony Corey, God and the New Cosmology: The Anthropic Design Argument (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman

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and Littlefield, 1993), whose insights can be critically (i.e., not naively in the sense of a simplistic and lazy "concordism") integrated into Islamic cosmoontology, as outlined, for instance by Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas in his Prolegomena and other works; see Adi Setia, "Al-Attas's Philosophy of Science: An Extended Outline," in Islam & Science (December 2003), 165214; and Mohd Zaidi Ismail, "The Cosmos as the Created Book and Its Implications for the Orientation of Science," in Islam & Science (Summer 2008), 31-54 and the references therein. I personally believe that the Muslim (creationist) scientist should team up with the Christian (creationist) scientist for the common goal of putting science back on its religious foundations from whence it had slipped off, simply because the religious view, as noted by Sir John Eccles, "is the only view consistent with all the evidence" (cited in M. A. Corey, 287). 97. It is interesting here to note that in traditional Islamic philosophy, the physical world is seen as the lowest order of reality, hence the term dunyd in reference to it, and hence the reason why physics or the philosophy of nature is traditionally called al-falsafat al-sufld, or al-cilm al-asfal (the lowest philosophy/ science), whereas mathematics (al-riyddiyydt) is called al-cilm al-awsat or alhikmat al-wustd (the middle science/middle wisdom), and theology or metaphysics (al-ildhiyydt) is called al-hikmat al-culyd (the highest science). Quite clearly this hierarchical order has been inverted in secular academia. 98. David Bohm and B. J. Hiley, The Undivided

Universe: An Ontological

Interpretation of Quantum Theory (London: Routledge, 2002), 378-380; cf. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas's exposition of the meaning of zdhir and bdtin in his Prolegomena, 237 ff. If the whole purpose of science is to point the way from the apparent to the underlying reality, then the Bohmian ontological approach must be taken seriously, otherwise one is stuck with a meaningless, instrumentalist "system of formulas" (the Copenhagen approach) that points to nothing. Needless to say, for Muslim physicsists and mathematicians (assuming they care enough about the worldview of Islam), an ultimately agnostic, nihilistic approach is a complete no-go area. For Bohm's view on the relation between religion and science, see David Bohm, "Fragmentation and Wholeness in Religion and in Science," in Zygon, 20: 2 (2005), 125-133, which is based on a talk he gave in September 1983. 99. This is also the salient problem ofkaldm's natural theology (in fact kalam is to a large extent natural theology), and its notion of the minimal, unitary part (jawhar al-fard/al-juz^ alladhi Id yatajazza^u) underpinning its extraordinarily rich and creative response to that problem. 100. Although Behe's original definition deals more or less exclusively with accounting for biological function, my paraphrase of it extends it to biological structure, which can in turn be extended to all natural processes, structures and functions, biological or otherwise, including any physical systems, somewhat along the lines of Robert A. Herrmann's General Intelligence Design (GID) theory (). My inspiration for this is D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's brilliant work, On Growth and Form, originally published in 1917, which applies mathematical

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science 192 • Islam & Science • Vol. 6 (Winter 2008) No. 2 insights to description and explanation of biological structures, thus effectively founding biomathematics. I recommend the new Dover edition of the work entitled On Growth and Form: The Complete Revised Edition (New York: Dover, 1992). Thompson's biomathematical insights can be extended to all inanimate physical systems. Here is not the place to argue why this book should be more at home in creationary rather than evolutionary thinking, but I don't see Behe referring to it in his books. Regardless, Thompson was dissatisfied with the prevalent evolutionary (overly subjective and qualitative) "survival of the fittest" framework for explaining the diverse forms and structures of organisms and the transformations they undergo (including limits to those transformations), and hence, through his book, he wished to promote structuralism with its emphasis on physical laws and mechanics and hence mathematics as an explanatory and descriptive alternative more in accord with the principle of Occam's razor (i.e., the principle of elegance and parsimony in scientific explanations). Dissatisfaction with the-survivalof-the-fittest dogma is no conclusive proof that he is an anti-evolutionary thinker, but I do think that his book is at least theoretically neutral with respect to both evolutionism and creationism, and at best more in conceptual affinity with the latter. In any case, why should evolutionists like Kauffman have exclusive rights to coopt, rightly or wrongly, Thompson biomathematical insights into fleshing out his beliefs rather than those of the creationists? Among the newest developments in biomathematics (or mathematical biology) are Michael Jacob and Sten Andersson, The Nature of Mathematics and the Mathematics of Nature (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1998); and Sten Andersson et al., Biomathematics: Mathematics of Biostructures and Biodynamics (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1999). William Dembski is doing interesting ongoing work on the interface between biomathematics and the design inference with the tentative title Mathematical Foundations of Intelligent Design (). As fellow creationists, Muslim mathematicians should make it their point to follow his work closely and perhaps contribute significantly to that project as an aspect of what I envision as a fruitful MuslimChristian Creationary Alliance (MCCA). So far he has modelled 'specificity' (see his "Specification: The Pattern that Signifies Intelligence" at , and it would be interesting to see how he would model Behe's 'irreducible complexity', but see the potential in Bernard P. Zeigler, "Multifaceted Modelling Methodology: Grappling with the Irreducible Complexity of Systems," in Behaviorial Science, vol. 29, no. 3 (1984), 169-178; and especially Abraham Boyarsky and Pavel Gora, "A dynamic system interpretation of irreducible complexity," in Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society, vol. 7, no. 1 (2002), 2326. See also the discussion at ; and .

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101. See Adi Setia, "Taskhir, Fine-Tuning, Intelligent Design and the Scientific Appreciation of Nature," in Islam & Science (Summer 2004), 7-32. 102. Another way to put it is that if any part of the cosmos is designed then every part is, including the cosmos itself in its totality. 103. See . As a matter of fact the GID theory as articulated by Herrmann has a high degree of conceptual affinity with kaldm and sufi cosmo-ontology. See his mathematical and logical approach to GID theory in Science Declares Our Universe is Intelligently Designed (Longwood, FL: Xulon Press, 2002). 104. Badl'uzzaman Sa'Id NursI, Nature: Cause or Effect, trans. Sukran Vahide (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 1997). 105. For recent research into mathematical interpretations of creationary design theories, see Robert A. Herrmann, Science Declares Our Universe is Intelligently Designed (Longwood, FL: Xulon Press, 2002); William A. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Bernard P. Zeigler, "Multifaceted Modelling Methodology: Grappling with the Irreducible Complexity of Systems," in Behaviorial Science, vol. 29, no. 3 (1984), 169-178; and, especially, Abraham Boyarsky and Pavel Gora, "A dynamic system interpretation of irreducible complexity," in Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society, vol. 7, no. 1 (2002), 23-26. On the role of mathematical information theory in deciding between evolutionary and creationary theories, see anonymous, "Mathematics and the Origin-of-Life Problem," . In this regard I believe that the notion of biological irreducible complexity can be further informed and clarified by drawing from the parallel notion of mathematical irreducible complexity; see Gregory Chaitin, "The Halting Probability Omega: Irreducible Complexity in Pure Mathematics," in Milan Journal of Mathematics, 75: 1 (December 2007). 106. Adi Setia, "The Islamic Gift Economy: Outline of a Comprehensive Islamic Economics Research Program," forthcoming. To paraphrase Benjamin Soares, we can say that the Islamic Gift Economy (IGE) is an operative economy of gratitude (shukr) and generosity (karam), in which foundational principles of Islamic spirituality thoroughly infuse all aspects of economic activity. For a philosophico-ethical exploration of the "logic of the gift," see Alan D. Schrift, The Logic of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of Generosity (London: Routledge, 1997). 107. For some preliminary research, see R. Haniffa and M. Hudaib, "A Theoretical Framework for the Development of the Islamic Perspective of Accounting," in Accounting, Commerce and Finance: The Islamic Perspective Journal, 6: 1/2 (2002), 1-71. Shahul Hamid bin Hj. Mohamed Ibrahim, "From Conventional Accounting to Islamic Accounting," ;TheaVinnicombe and David Park, "The Implications of Islamic Jurisprudence for the International Harmonization of Accounting Standards," ; Malik Mirza and Nabil Baydoun, "Accounting Policy Choice in an Interest Free Environment," . 108. Referring to risk-free profits obtained by manipulating the legal and economic environment instead of by actual trading and producing real wealth through mutual sharing of capital, risks and profits; such is the way conventional IBF and takaful business operate. A recent comprehensive critique is Mahmoud A. Gamal, Islamic Finance: Law, Economics and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 109. See the study by Bill Mauer, Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason (Princeton: Princeton University Press). 110. Nuh Ha Mini Keller, Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law (Beltsville, Maryland: Amana, 1997), 942-943. 111. Bill Mauer, Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason (Princeton; Princeton University Press), 151. Another complication is the lack of mutuality structures in conventional Islamic banking and insurance; see Mahmoud A. El-Gamal, "A Simple Fiqh-and-Economics Rationale for Mutualization in Islamic Financial Intermediation," , which also gives some detail on the mechanisms by which conventional Islamic finance and insurance have been hijacked by the secular capitalist credit and risk industry. A further conceptual and operational critique of conventional takaful is, unfortunately, beyond the scope and intent of this paper, but I hope what has been said will spur a thoroughgoing rethink of conventional Islamic takaful and banking so that they go beyond the name to the substance toward true (re-)mutualization and true tabarru* which allow neither front-door nor back-door selling of risk (bay' al-ghardr) or selling of credit (bayc al-dayn). See also Mahmoud A. El-Gamal, "An Economic Explication of the Prohibition of Gharar in Classical Islamic Jurisprudence," 8 (2) Islamic Economic Studies (April 2001), 29-58; idem, ElGamal, M. "An Economic Explication of the Prohibition of Riba in Classical Islamic Jurisprudence," Proceedings of the Third Harvard University Forum on Islamic Finance (Cambridge: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, 2000), 31-44; idem, M. El-Gamal, "Interest and the Paradox of Contemporary Islamic Law and Finance," Fordham International Law Review (December 2003), 108-149. 112. Charles Lambert Trowbridge, Fundamental Concepts of Actuarial Science (Schaumburg, IL: AERF, 1989), 7. Of course, a thorough review of actuarial science will entail also a concomitant thorough de-coopting of mainstream Islamic economics, banking, finance, and insurance (takaful) from what Masudul Alam Choudhury calls "neoliberal and neoclassical doctrinaire," in his "Islamic Economics and Finance: Where Do They Stand," in International Accounting and Finance, 1: 2 (2008), 149-167. 113. Adi Setia, "The Inner Dimensions of Going Green: Articulating an Islamic

Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science

489 Adi Setia • 195

Deep-Ecology," Islam e!r Science (Winter 2007), 117-150, and the references therein. 114. See the journal Green Chemistry, . 115. See the power point presentation on green engineering by David Shonnard and Hui Chen, "Green Engineering, Process Safety and Inherent Safety: A New Paradigm," . 116. See the website of The Center for Green Manufacturing, . 117. Wendy Pyper, "Emulating nature: The rise of industrial ecology,"in Ecos, no. 129 (2006), 22-26; cf. Janine M. Benyus, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (New York: Harper Perennial, 2002). 118. Such as permaculture; see Bill Mollison, Permaculture: A Designer's Manual (Tyalgum, NSW: Tagari, 1992). 119. See the website of the Green Money Journal, . 120. After spending some time browsing through the wonderful website, one might say that it was the Islamic Civilization that initiated and maintained the green energy revolution on a global scale, because much, if not all, of the energy requirements powering its agriculture, communications, industries and manufacturing were drawn from renewable animal, water, and wind power. If "small is beautiful" describes Buddhist economics, then "green is graceful" describes Islamic industry. See also the website of The International Journal of Green Energy, . 121. See Mark Hayes and Geoff Moore, "The Economics of Fair Trade: A Guide in Plain English," (2005) ; cf. Alex Nicholls and Charlotte Opal, Fair Trade: Market-Driven Ethical Consumption (London: Sage, 2005). 122. See for instance, Lynn Huggins-Cooper, Downshift to the Good Life: Scale It Down and Live It Up (Oxford, UK: Infinite Ideas Limited, 2007); Polly Ghazi and Judy Jones, Downshifting: The Best Selling Guide to Happier, Simpler Living (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2004). 123. Stephen Leahy, "Environment: Report Finds Rising Tide of Green Financing," IPS, November 24, 2008. 124. Especially so in the case of multibillion-dollar megaprojects having largescale and long-term, cross-generational social and ecological impacts; see Bent Flyvbjerg, Nils Bruzelius, and Werner Rothengatter, Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). This searching book is based on empirical case studies of megaprojects in Western Europe. It would be good if investigative Muslim economists undertook similar empirical case studies of megaprojects undertaken in Muslim countries. In the case of Malaysia, I have to say that the Bakun

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Contemporaiy Issues in Islam and Science 196 • Islam & Science • Vol. 6 (Winter 2008) No. 2

125.

126.

127.

128.

129.

mega-dam project deep in the rainforests of Sarawak cannot, by any stretch of the economic imagination, be seen to have been undertaken in the best public interest of the country; see Anil Netto, "Dirty dams draw dirty smelters," in Asia Times Online, January 25, 2006, . Shahul Hameed Mohamed Ibrahim, "Nurtured by 'Kufr': The Western Philosophical Assumptions Underlying Conventional (Anglo-American) Accounting," in International Journal of Islamic Financial Services, 2: 2 (2000), 32, also accesible at , 14 (emphasis mine). See also A. R. A. Rahman, "Accounting and Public Interest: An Islamic Reflection," paper presented at the National Accounting Seminar, Mara Institute of Technology, Malaysia, 1995; M. R. Taheri, "The basic principles of Islamic economy and their effects on accounting-standardssetting," ; and Meryn Lewis, "Islam and Accounting," Accounting Forum 25: 2 (2001), 103127. Some works along these lines include T. Hayashi, On Islamic Accounting: Its Future Impact on Western Accountings (Niigata, Japan: The Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, International University of Japan, 1989); M. K. Lewis, "Islam and Accounting," in Accounting Forum, 25: 2 (2001), 103-127; M. K Lewis, "Islamic Corporate Governance," Review of Islamic Economics, 9: 1 (2005), 5-29; Rania Kamla, Sonja Gallhofer, and Jim Haslam, "Islam, Nature and Accounting: Islamic Principles and the Notion of Accounting for the Environment," in Accounting Forum, vol. 30 (September 2006) no. 3, 245-265, http://d.scribd.com/docs/2gxk064xooweduna7qea.pdf. Here I specifically refer to historians of Malay-Islamic literature who focus their research on literary works to the near exclusion of philosophical, scientific and mathematical ones. Malay acronym for the Institute for Mathematical Research based in Putra University Malaysia (formerly Agricultural University of Malaysia), Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. Scholars associated with ASASI, like Drs. Alinor, Mat Rofa and Abdul Latif Samian, have previously written brief research articles on this important work, but what is envisioned through this new research project is a complete translation into modern Malay and a critical commentary, after which a detailed study in English will be undertaken. (Kuala Lumpur: Khazanah al-Fataniyyah, 2006).

Name Index

'Abduh, Muhammad 89, 263 Abdulhamid II, Sultan 214 Abdullah, Wan Sahaimi Wan 111-24 AbiAufi, Zurarab. 387 Abraham 88, 101 Adam 194, 230, 253, 391, 435 Al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din 263, 273 Ahmad, Rais 6, 46, 47 Ahsan, M. Yousuf 191 Allah 9, 46, 47, 48, 59, 143, 144, 239, 259, 268, 272, 278, 303, 345, 382, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 392, 394, 395, 398, 400, 401, 402, 407, 408, 410, 411, 412, 413, 415 Altizer, Thomas JJ. 188 Alvares, Claude 372 Ameur, Redha 213-54 al-Amuli, Sayyid Haydar 10 Anees, Munawar Ahmad 4, 5, 33, 52, 53, 260 Aquinas, St Thomas 311, 312, 315 Arberry,AJ. 329 Aristotle 8, 12, 17, 53, 80, 81, 129, 147, 149, 150, 153, 163, 165, 307, 379 Asaria, Mohammad Iqbal 5 Ashraf, Ali 9 Ataturk, Kamal 92, 262 al-Attas, Syed Muhammad Naquib bin Ali bin Abdullah bin Muhsin xx, 25, 204, 260, 327-76 passim, 432 Averroes (Ibn Rushd) 236 Aziz, King Abdul 432, 442 Bacon, Francis 33, 60, 65, 274, 305, 315, 325, 359 Bacon, Roger 81, 274 al-Baghdadi, Abu al-Barakat 111-24 passim, 424 Bakr, Osman 5, 9, 25, 26, 27, 222 al-Bayhaqi, Imam 389 Beer, Gillian 27 Behe, Michael 463 Bergson, Henri 347 Bernard, Claude 284 al-Biruni 13, 101, 423, 424

Blackhirst, Rodney 402 Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna 23 Bohm, David 53, 60, 61, 450, 461, 462 Bohr, Niels 315 Bondi, H. 104 Bonhaufer, Dietrich 190 Borrow, George 37 Boudjedra, Rachid 257 Bouzaid, Ahmed 255-78 Boyle, Robert 102, 424 Brahe, Tycho 424 Bucaille, Maurice xiii, xiv, 197, 198 Bukhari, Muhammad 395 Bultman, Rudolph 204 al-Buni, Shams aldin 11 Burckhardt, Titus xviii, 8, 191, 282 Burtt, E.A. 299 Campbell, William xiv Camus, Albert 181, 206 Capra,Fritjof 60, 199, 362 Carnap, Rudolf 187 Cartwright, Nancy 42 Chalmers, A.F. 35, 36, 55 Chomsky, Noam 373 Choudhury, Masudul Alam 453 Christ, Jesus 203 Cizakca, Murat 456, 458 Coates, Peter 334, 359, 365 Collingwood, R.G. 288 Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. 8 Copernicus, Nicolaus 43 Corbin, Henry 9, 17, 365 Cruce, Lee 198 Danner, Victor 8 Darwin, Charles 26, 202, 347, 359, 462 David, King 87 Davies, Merry 1 Wyn 5 Davies, Paul 99, 105, 348 Dawkins, Richard 182, 185, 197 de Beavoir, Simone 206 de Chardin, Teilhard 426

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Contemporary Issues in Islam and Science

de Jouvenel, Bertrand 455 de Maupertuis, Pierre Louis Moreau 444 de Sitter, Willem 104 Dembski, William A. 463 Democritus 312 Descartes, Rene 37, 60, 180, 187, 290, 301, 306, 307, 315, 325, 359, 438 Dharr,Abu 387 Dicke, Robert 104 Dido 442, 443, 444 al-Dunya,Abi 389 Eaton, Gai 8, 9, 191 Eddington, Sir Arthur 208, 311, 359 Einstein, Albert 45, 79, 104, 183, 184, 198, 199, 305, 321, 444 Ellis, G. 104 Euler, Leonhard 443, 444 Faisal, King xiii Fakhry, Majid 236 Fansuri, Hamzah 329 al-Farabi 50, 85, 117, 225, 235, 322 Al-Farsi, Kamal al-Din 424 Faruq, King 264 Al-Faruqi, Ismail xv, 260 Fatehpuri, Niaz 198 de Fermat, Pierre 437, 438, 443, 444 Feyerabend, Paul 23, 37, 45, 49, 54, 57, 61, 62, 187, 200, 205 Ficino, Marsilio 304 Foucault, Michel 6, 56, 65, 187, 190 Frank, Philip 198 Freud, Sigmund 182, 183, 197 Fromm, Erich 182 Galbraith, J.K. 460 Galileo 33, 43, 187, 288, 290, 301, 324, 424 al-Ghazall, Imam 18, 50, 53, 54, 64, 130, 194, 206, 213, 221, 222, 223, 225, 236, 238, 344, 350, 460 Gide, Andre 206 Gold, I. 104 Golshani, Mehdi 95-108, 238 Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas 23, 24 Gould, S. 182, 184 Guenon, Rene xviii, xix, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 16, 21, 25, 191, 280, 283, 284, 313 Guiderdoni, Bruno 346

Haddad, Yvonne 260 Haider, Gulzar 5, 49, 50 al-Haitham 437, 438, 443, 444 Hall, Robert 17 Haq, S. Nomanul 125 Hardy, Thomas 181 Hartle, J. 105 Hartmann, Nicolai 308 Hartshorne, Charles 204 Hasn, S.Z. 198 al-Hassan, Ahmed Y. 18 Hawking, Stephen 104, 105, 184, 199 Hayward, Alan 27 Hearn, Walter R. 100 Heisenberg, Werner xi, 20, 201, 232, 310, 312, 313, 314, 360, 361, 373 Heron 436 Herrmann, Robert A. 463 Hiley, BJ. 462 Hill, Donald R. 18 Hippocrates 53 Hirst, Paul 56 Hoodbhoy, Pervez 204 Hoyle, F. 104 Hubble, Edwin 104 Hume, David 35, 103, 202, 286 Hurayrah, Abu 401 Husaini, S. Waqar A. 6, 34 Hussain, Adel 260 Husserl, Edmund 308 Huxley, Julian 182, 189 Huygens, Christian 359, 438 Ibn 'Abbas 383, 387, 388, 389, 404 Ibn 'Umar 389, 395 Ibn al-'Arabi 332, 339, 344, 347, 350 Ibn al-Haytham 424 Ibn al-Shatir 424 Ibn Bajjah 424 Ibn Battutah 455 Ibn Hayyan, Jabir 424 Ibn KathTr 395 Ibn Khaldun 51, 52, 206, 347 Ibn Mas'ud, 'Abd Allah 403 Ibn Miskawayh 347 IbnRushd 51, 225, 236, 238 Ibn Sa'd, Sahl 386 IbnSayyadl89

Contemporary Issues in Islam and Science Ibn Smaxxi, 51, 111-24 passim, 126, 127, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152, 158, 161, 163, 164, 167, 169, 225, 235, 322, 350, 424 IbnTaymiyyah 81, 223 IbnYunus 13 Iqbal, Muhammad 80, 81, 82, 177-209 passim, 346, 347 Iqbal, Muzaffar 379-96, 397-416 Al-Isfahani, Abu Majid Muhammad Rida alNajafi 107 Jackendoff, Ray 354 James, William 208 Al-Jami, Nur al-Din ' Abd al-Rahman ibn Ahmad 328 Jaspers, Karl 308 Jeans, James 208 al-Jili,Abdal-Karim 353 John, St 305, 321 John Paul II, Pope 108 Johnson, Phillip E. 185 Jordan, Pascal 201 Joyce, James 206 Jung, Carl 182 Kalin, Ibrahim xviii, xix, xx, xxi, 145-76, 279-302 Kamali, Mohammad Hashim 75-93 Kant, Immanuel 202, 353, 359 Kashani, Ghiyath al-Din Jamshid 13, 423 Keller, Nu Ha Mini 339, 365 Kepler, Johannes 17, 37, 43, 438, 439 Kettani, Ali 6, 34 Khalil,As'adAbu 256 Khan, Ansar Zahid 7 Khan, Fathellah 203 Khan, Hamid 64 Khan, Sayyid Ahmad 78, 96 Al-Khazini 424 al-Khudri, Abu sa'id 389 al-Khwarazmi 13 Kierkegaard, Soren 193 King, David 14 Kirby, Rev. Richard S. 448 Kirmani, Mohammad Riaz 6, 47, 48, 49, 50, 54 Kirmani, Mohammad Zaki 4, 6, 45 Knorr-Cetina, Karin 43 Kuhn, Thomas S. 37, 44, 45, 54, 62, 187, 205

493

Lagrange, Joseph Louis 443, 444 Lakatos, Imre 62, 447 Laplace, Pierre-Simon 180 Larbani, Moussa 452 Lardier, Jean 70 Latour, Bruno 39, 40, 41 Lavoisier, Antoine 424 Lawrence, D.H. 206 Leaman, O. 235 Leibniz, Gottfried 299, 438, 444 Lenin, Vladimir 198, 199 Lings, Martin xviii, 8, 9, 329 Mach, E. 422 Mackensen, Ruth Stellhorn 51 al-Maha'imi 339 Maheran, M.J. 442 Malcolm, Norman 196 Malik, Abdul 442 Manzoor, S. Parvez 4, 5, 20, 51 Marcel, Gabriel 198 Martin, Brian 448 Marx, Karl 179, 203 Massignon, Louis 9, 17 Maturana, Humberto 61 Maurer, Bill 464 Maxwell-Boltzmann 20 Meera, Ahamed Kameel Mydin 452 Mermer, Yamine 213-54 Meyerson, E. 300 Michiel of Venice, Marcantonio 17 Midgley, Mary 27 Mimouni, Jamal 6, 33 Mimouni, Rachid 256 al-Minangkabawi, Shaykh Ahmad al-Khatib bin 'Abdal-Latif 466 Mitroff, Ian 35 Moore, Keith xiii Moses 88, 235 Muhammad 51, 83, 84, 87, 88, 266, 383, 399, 403, 437 al-Mulk, Nizam 24 Mutahhari, Murtada 79, 102 al-Muttalib, al-'Abbas bin 'Abd 392 al-Nabulsi, 'Abd al-Ghani 339 Nagel, Thomas 290 Naik, Zakir 198, 203 al-Nasafi 350

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Contemporary Issues in Islam and Science

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein xviii, xix, xx, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 51, 53, 82, 83, 90, 91, 191, 205, 277, 279-302 passim, 303, 304, 306, 307, 310, 317, 318, 320-26, 419-28 Nasser, Gamel 261, 262, 263, 271 Nawas, Abu 443, 444 Nazzam 157 Needham, Joseph 66 Needleman, Jacob 8 al-Nejjar, Z.R. 6, 34 Newton, Isaac 37, 39, 45, 60, 187, 289, 424, 438, 444 Nietzsche, Friedrich 181, 203, 304, 347 al-Nursi, Bedi'uzzaman Sa'id 213-54 passim, 342, 345, 463 Pareto, Vilfredo 359, 440, 441 Paton, H.J. 180, 181, 191, 192, 193, 194, 198 Paul, St 305 Penrose, R. 104 Pingree, D.E. 125 Planx, Max 79 Plato 8, 12, 17, 33, 53, 64, 80, 122, 150, 207, 312, 379 Plethon, Gemisthus 304 Plotinus 8, 206 Poincare, H. 300 Polanyi, Michael 62, 335, 369 Popper, Karl 36, 37, 62, 187, 205, 244 Pribram, Karl 53 Prigogine, Ilya 53, 60, 61 Ptolemy 20, 391 Pythagorus 8, 11, 12, 13, 17, 150, 379 Al-Qaradawi, Yusuf 259, 260 Qutb, Sayyid 255-78 passim Rahman, M. Kaleemur 4, 6, 50, 51, 52, 53 Rahman, Taha Abdel 225, 234 Rashed, Roshdi 447 Al-Rashid, Harun 443 Ray, John 321 al-Razi,AbuBakr 81 al-Razi, Fakhr al-Din xxi, 98, 123, 124, 125-44 passim, 460, 463 al-Razi, Muhammad ibn Zakariyya' 424 Reagan, Ronald 456 Rescher, Nicholas 373

Rida, Rashid 263 Rimbaud, Arthur 196 Rohani 440, 441 Rorty, Richard 232 Rumi 9, 98, 193, 347 Russell, Bertrand 35, 181, 183, 197, 199, 200 Ryle, Gilbert 286 Sabzawari, Muhammad 'All 165 Sadiq, Imam Ismael 7 Sadiq, Imam Jafar 7 Sadr, Husain 260 Sadra, Mulla 51, 106, 123, 124, 145-76 passim al-Safa, Ikhwan 7, 11, 347 Sagan, Carl 185 Said, Hakim Mohammad 7 Salam, Mohammad Abdul 257 Salam, Muhammad Abdus 6, 33, 38 Al-Sar, Husein 260 Sardar, Ziauddin xv, xvi, xvii, 3-27, 33-70, 202, 259, 260, 277 Sarton, G. 422 Sartre, Jean-Paul 206 Satan 253 as-Sawi, AJ. xii Schimmel, Annemarie 221 Schrodinger, Erwin 20, 201 Schumacher, E.F. 335, 359, 363, 455, 459 Schuon, Fritjof xviii, xix, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 16, 21, 25, 27, 194, 206, 207, 208, 283 Schweitzer, Albert 181 Sellars, Wilfred 185 Setia, 'Adi xx, 125-44, 327-76, 447-67 Sezgin, Fuat 17 Shah, Muhammad Maroof 177-209 passim Shaldrake, Rupert 53 Sharifi, Hadi 9 al-Shatibi, Ibrahim 81 Shayegane, Daryus 256 al-Shaykh,Abu 387, 389 al-Shirazi, Qutb al-Din 424 Sidiqi, Raziudin 199 Simpson, George Gaylord 106, 185 Skinner, B.F. 182 Smith, Huston 208 Smith, Wolfgang 303-18, 320-26 passim Socrates 53, 80 Sokolowski, Robert 316 Sontag, Susan 185, 194 Soroush, Abdolkarim 91

Contemporary Issues in Islam and Science Stace, W.T. 335 Stebbing, Susan 181 Steuco, Agostino 304 Suhrawardi 145, 148, 166, 169, 322 Sulieman, Ibrahim 5 al-Suyuti, Jalal al-Din 386 al-Tabarani 389 Tabataba'i, Allama Sayyid 239 al-Taftazani, al-Imam Sa'd al-Din 460 Tertullian 193 Thatcher, Margaret 456, 458 Theodore of Mopsuesia 194 Thomas, St 17 Thompson, W.R. 26 Tibi, Bassam 257, 258, 259, 260, 277 Tikhomirov, V.M. 436, 438 Till, Von 185 Tolman, Richard C. 104 Trismegistus, Hermes 12 al-Tusi, Nasir al-Din 13, 423, 424 'Umar, al-Imam Diya al-Din 143 Umar 51, 52

al-Uqlidusi 13 Uthman 274 Verala, Francis 60, 61 Vivekananda, Swami 195 von Liebenfels, Jorg Lanz 24 von List, Guido 24 von Sebottendorf, Rudolf 24 Waqqas, Sa'ad-Abi 51 Weinberg 97, 184, 185, 199 White, Andrew Dickson 204 Whitehead, Alfred North 179, 195, 204, 207, 307, 308 Wiligut, Karl Maria 24 Wilson, E.G. 197 Woolger, Steve 39, 40, 41 Ya'la, Abu 389 Yahya, Harun 198 Zahner, Robert Charles 196 Zain, Shaharir bin Mohamad 431-45, 448

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