Readings

This is the excerpt and quotes we read in the second class. They are followed by questions we were meant to discuss in class, just something to think about.

Excerpt from Article By Sayed Hosein Nasr, entitled Science and Civilization In Islam
The Principles of Islam
The history of science is often regarded today as the progressive
accumulation of techniques and the refinement of quantitative
methods in the study of Nature. Such a point of view considers the
present conception of science to be the only valid one; it therefore
judges the sciences of other civilizations in the light of modern science
and evaluates them primarily with respect to their “development”
with the passage of time. Our aim in this work, however, is
not to examine the Islamic sciences from the point of view of modern
science and of this “evolutionistic” conception of history; it is,
on the contrary, to present certain aspects of the
Islamic sciences as seen from the Islamic point of
view.

To the Muslim, history is a series of accidents that in no way affect the nontemporal principles of Islam. He is more interested in knowing and “realizing” these principles than in cultivating originality and change as intrinsic virtues. The symbol of Islamic civilization is not a flowing river, but the cube of the Kaaba, the stability of which symbolizes the permanent and immutable character of Islam. Once the spirit of the Islamic revelation had brought into being, out of the heritage of previous civilizations
and through its own genius, the civilization whose manifestations may be called distinctly
Islamic, the main interest turned away from change and “adaptation.” The arts and sciences came to possess instead a stability and a “crystallization” based on the immutability of the principles from which they had issued forth; it is this stability that is too often mistaken in the West today for stagnation and sterility.

The arts and sciences in Islam are based on the idea of unity, which is the heart of the Muslim revelation. Just as all genuine Islamic art, whether it be the Alhambra or the Paris Mosque, provides the plastic forms through which one can contemplate the Divine Unity manifesting itself in multiplicity, so do all the sciences that can properly be called Islamic reveal the unity of Nature. One might say that the aim of all the Islamic sciences and, more generally speaking, of all the medieval and ancient cosmological sciences is to show the unity and interrelatedness of all that exists, so that, in contemplating the unity of the cosmos, man may be led to the unity of the Divine Principle, of which the unity of Nature is the image.…..

The Western world has since concentrated its intellectual energies
upon the study of the quantitative aspects of things, thus developing a science of Nature, whose all too obvious fruits in the physical domain have won for it the greatest esteem among people everywhere, for most of whom “science” is identified with technology and its applications. Islamic science, by contrast, seeks ultimately to attain such knowledge as will contribute toward the spiritual perfection and deliverance of anyone capable of studying it; thus its fruits are inward and hidden, its values more difficult to discern. To understand it requires placing oneself within its perspective and accepting as legitimate a science of Nature which has a different end, and uses different means, from those of modern science. If it is unjust to identify Western science solely with its material results, it is even more unjust to judge medieval science by its outward
“usefulness” alone. However important its uses may have been in calendarial work, in irrigation, in architecture, its ultimate aim has always been to relate the corporeal world to its basic spiritual principle, through the knowledge of those symbols which unite the various orders of reality. It can only be understood, and should only be judged, in terms of its own aims and its own perspectives.

Quotes:
“It will suffice here to evoke a few glorious names without contemporary equivalents in the West: Jabir ibn Haiyan, al-Kindi, al-Khwarizmi, al-Fargani, al-Razi, Thabit ibn Qurra, al-Battani, Hunain ibn Ishaq, al-Farabi, Ibrahim ibn Sinan, al-Masudi, al-Tabari, Abul Wafa, ‘Ali ibn Abbas, Abul Qasim, Ibn al-Jazzar, al-Biruni, Ibn Sina, Ibn Yunus, al-Kashi, Ibn al-Haitham, ‘Ali Ibn ‘Isa al-Ghazali, al-zarqab, Omar Khayyam. A magnificent array of names which it would not be difficult to extend. If anyone tells you that the Middle Ages were scientifically sterile, just quote these men to him, all of whom flourished within a short period, 750 to 1100 A.D.”-George Sarton in “The Introduction to the History of Science.”
“The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories, science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence. The Astronomy and Mathematics of the Greeks were a foreign importation never thoroughly acclimatized in Greek culture. The Greeks systematized, generalized and theorized, but the patient ways of investigation, the accumulation of positive knowledge, the minute method of science, detailed and prolonged observation and experimental inquiry were altogether alien to the Greek temperament.”-Robert Briffault in the “Making of Humanity.”
“During all the first part of the Middle Ages, no other people made as important a contribution to human progress as did the Arabs, if we take this term to mean all those whose mother-tongue was Arabic, and not merely those living in the Arabian peninsula. For centuries, Arabic was the language of learning, culture and intellectual progress for the whole of the civilized world with the exception of the Far East. From the 9th to the 12Ith century there were more philosophical, medical, historical, religiuos, astronomical and geographical works written in Arabic than in any other human tongue.”-Phillip Hitti in “Short History of the Arabs.”
“He who searches for truth is not he who reviews the works of the ancients…[it is] he who follows argument and evidence, not the statement by an individual, who is inevitably affected by context and imperfection. It is the duty of he who reads science books, if he wants to learn truths, that he should set himself up as an opponent to all he looks at.. [accepting only what is supported by evidence and argument].”- Ibn Al Haytham, (965–c.1040) Al Shukuk Fi Batlaymous

Discussion Questions:

1.Why is this important? Is science not a field that is driven by its own sense of inquiry? What comes out of situating it within Islamic civilizations?

2.What kinds of social, political and economic environments does science flourish in? What environments do we see described above?

3.What is the purpose of any science(what defines science)? How about when Islam and science are approached together, do they have a coherent and unified purpose?

4.What is your reaction to the above quotes/excerpts? Personal experiences?

No they are not for homework, they were just questions we were going to use in the first class.