Islamic science
Just
over 21 years ago, I wrote an article for New Scientist entitled
‘Can science come back to Islam?’ (23 October 1980). I was
simply articulating a question that was on the lips of many Muslim
scientists and scholars. The beginning of the 1980s, with OPEC power
at its peak, the Iranian revolution and a growing consciousness in
Muslim societies of their cultural identity, was a period of
particular optimism in the Muslim world. It led many scientists and
academics as well as institutions to emphasize the distinctive
scientific heritage of Islam. One essential component of any
cultural revival, many people argued, had to be the recovery of the
spirit and values of Islamic science. Muslim societies were ready,
as one scientist told me, to make science an integral part of their
culture.
The
achievements of Islamic science, I reported, were conspicuously
absent from the history of science. Objectivity and fair play
demanded that the history of science in Muslim civilisation was
given its due important and rightful place in the overall scheme of
the history of science. We also needed to identify the motives, and
underlying values, of scientists like ibn al-Haytham (d. 1039), who
discovered the laws of reflection and refraction, and al-Biruni (d.
1048), who measured the circumference of the earth and discussed the
rotation of the earth on its axis. How can we encourage these values
in Muslim cultures today? How could we direct science to meet the
needs and requirements of Muslim societies? And how could we inform
science, which is far from a neutral activity, with Islamic values?
These were the questions I raised in the article.
The
article kicked off a global debate. The notion of Islamic science
came under intense scrutiny in a series of international conferences
and specially commissioned studies. The debate crystallised around
three issues. What Islamic science had achieved in history? What was
‘Islamic’ about Islamic science? And, finally, did the very idea
of ‘Islamic science’ have any contemporary relevance?
So,
what has been achieved two decades on
It
is in the history of Islamic science that main progress has been
made. We now know much more not just about the quality of Islamic
science but also its staggering quantity. From astronomy to zoology,
there is hardly a discipline which did not receive the attention of
Muslim scientists and hardly an area where they did not make some
sort of original contribution. Recently, we have learned that the
mathematical models of 14th century scientist ibn Shatir, and the
work of astronomers at the famous observatory in Maragha,
Azerbaijan, built in the 13th century by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, laid
the foundation for the ‘Copernican revolution’. The Maragha
astronomers developed the Tusi couple and a theorem for the
transformation of eccentric models into epicyclic ones.
Copernicus
not only used these two basic theorems to build his notion of
heliocentricity but also used them at exactly the same point in the
model. Much of the new historic research has now been synthesised in
test books, the best being Donald Hill’s Islamic Science and
Engineering (Edinburgh University Press, 1993). Moreover, a three
volume, concise Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science
(edited by Roshdi Rashed, Routledge: 1996) is now also available.
Even
Ottoman science, associated with the decline of Muslim civilisation,
turns out to be a rather fruitful period. The massive project on the
‘scientific literature in the Ottoman period’, carried out under
Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu at the International Research Centre for
Islamic Culture and Arts (IRCICA), Istanbul, turns the conventional
view that science disappeared in the Muslim world in the fifteenth
century upside down. Far from ‘declining’, Ihsanoglu and his
collaborators have shown that science was very much alive right up
to the eighteen century when it shifted towards learning and
assimilating European sciences through translations and adaptations.
How
could modern Muslim societies rediscover this spirit of scientific
inquiry? This question was discussed at numerous conferences and
seminars held in such places as Riyadh, Islamabad, Aligarh, Kuala
Lumpur and Rabat. One particular study in the early eighties,
sponsored by International Federation of Institutes of Advance
Studies in Stockholm, tackled the question head on. The study
concluded that the issues of science and values in Islam must be
treated within a framework of concepts that shape the goals of a
Muslim society. Ten fundamental Islamic concepts were identified as
constituting the framework within which scientific inquiry should be
carried out, four standing alone and three opposing pairs: tawheed
(unity), khilafah (trusteeship), `ibadah (worship), `ilm
(knowledge); and halal (lawful) and haram (unlawful), `adl (justice)
and zulm (injustice), and istislah (public interest) and dhiya
(waste). It was argued that, when translated into values, this
system of Islamic concepts embraces the nature of scientific inquiry
in its totality; it integrates facts and values and
institutionalises a system of knowing that is based on
accountability and social responsibility. The pursuit of scientific
inquiry, the study suggested, should be seen in a Muslim society as
a form of worship, promoting inquiry and thought, public interest
and social justice.
The
framework was widely debated and criticised. Not least in the pages
of the Journal of Islamic Science which started publication in 1985
from the then newly established Center for Studies on Science in
Aligarh, India. It is important to realise that science in this
framework is defined as systematic observation and experimentation
leading to model construction and theory building that generates
universal knowledge. Much as ar-Razi’s (d. 925) detailed and
highly accurate clinical observations provided us with a universal
model of small pox or the kind of accurate observations and theory
building that led Muslim astronomers in the twelfth century to
launch a rigorous attack on the imperfections in Ptolemaic astronomy
and declare, in the words of Ibn al-Haytham, that ‘the
arrangements proposed for planetary motions in the Almagest were
“false”’. However, in the early nineties there was a definite
shift away from this methodology and towards more obscurantist and
dangerous directions. The Islamic science discourse now follows the
way of the Taliban.
This
shift has two main components. The first is based on the
fundamentalist idea that all knowledge, including scientific
knowledge, can be found in the Qur’an.
Backed
by a lavishly funded Saudi project, ‘Scientific Miracles in the
Qur’an’, this tendency has spouted a whole genre of apologetic
literature (books, papers, journals) looking at the scientific
content of the Qur’an. From relativity, quantum mechanics, big
bang theory to the entire field of embryology and much of modern
geology has been ‘discovered’ in the Qur’an. Conversely,
‘scientific’ experiments have been devised to discover what is
mentioned in the Qur’an but not known to science - for example,
the programme to harness the energy of the jinn that enjoyed much
support in the mid-nineties in Pakistan! This highly toxic
combination of religious fundamentalism and ‘science’, akin to
the Creationists, does not just accept all science as Good and True,
but attack anyone who shows a critical or sceptical attitude towards
science and defends its own faith as ‘scientific’,
‘objective’ and ‘rational’. Unfortunately, it is now the
most popular version of ‘Islamic science’.
The
second component can best be described as mystical fundamentalism.
In
this perspective, Islamic science becomes the study of the nature of
things in an ontological sense. The material universe is studied as
an integral and subordinate part of the higher levels of existence,
consciousness and modes of knowing. Thus, here we are talking about
science not as a problem solving enterprise and socially objective
inquiry but more as a mystical quest for understanding the Absolute.
In this universe, conjecture and hypothesis have no real place; all
inquiry must be subordinate to the mystical experience. This
tendency is led by the Iranian scholar and charismatic mystical
master, Syed Hossein Nasr. For Nasr, and his students and followers
such as the Malaysian philosopher of science Osman Bakr and American
mystical scholar William Chittick, all science in the Muslim
civilization was ‘sacred science’, a product of a particular
mystical tradition that traces its roots to the Greeks
neo-platonists. In his historical works, Nasr has concentrated
exclusively on such matters as the occult, alchemy and astrology at
the expense of vast amount of work done on exact sciences in an
attempt to show that Islamic science in history was largely
‘sacred science’. Nasr’s rewriting of Islamic history of
science has been strongly refuted not just by Muslim historians of
science like Faut Sagzin and Ahmad al-Hassan but also by a string of
Western historians such as David King and Donald Hill.
Nevertheless,
for mystical fundamentalism ‘Islamic science’ does not mean
science as it has existed in Muslim tradition and history, but
esoteric products produced within the tradition of Islamic mysticism
or Sufism.
The
mystical tendency has now become the academic orthodoxy. From Kuala
Lumpur to Islamabad, this is what is being taught under the rubric
of ‘Islamic science’. The recent special issue on ‘Islam and
Science’ of the prestigious journal Islamic Studies, for example,
is devoted almost exclusively to the notions of time and space in
mystical thought, the cosmology of certain Sufi groups, mystical
principles in natural theology and other similar topics. The issue
is guest edited by Muzaffar Iqbal, a Pakistani mystical (al)chemist,
who has recently established a Centre for Islam and Science, in
Sherwood Park, Canada. Iqbal’s institution, supported by the
Berkeley based Centre for Theology and Natural Sciences, exclusively
promotes Nasr and his accolades.
Which
is why I feel a strong sense of déjà vu. After saving Europe from
itself by preserving and taking forward scientific basics from
ancient Greece, which could so easily have been lost in the Dark
Ages, science in Muslim civilisation can only ever be marginalised
by obscurantist and mystical tendencies. Now we are seeing a rebirth
of these tendencies, and dislodging them will take considerable
courage and will. Ironically, and sadly, while quoting the
scientific achievements of Muslim civilisation has almost become a
cliché, a genuine revival of Islamic science now appears rather
remote.
But
still I dream of what might have happened if we had been able to
develop Islamic science. Surely it could not have failed to help
transform Muslim societies into knowledge-based societies? When the
debate on this issue briefly came to the fore in Pakistan during the
1980s, it generated tremendous public discussion. It was widely
recognised that any Islamic science worthy of the name must involve
the citizens. That assumed an aware and well-informed public. But
when it became clear that public interest and budgets spent on
educating the people would actually lead to dramatic changes in
Pakistan’s science priorities (for example, away from an emphasis
in nuclear research), the debate was officially suppressed.
The
right kind of science would also have encouraged research that was
fine-tuned to solve local problems. Diarrhoea and dysentery in
Pakistan, flood control in Bangladesh and tackling schistosomiasis
or bilharzia in Egypt and the Sudan would have replaced the
international agenda that is blindly adopted in many Muslim
countries.
Moreover,
certain specifically "Muslim" problems would have become
research priorities. Consider, for example, that almost
three-quarters of all the political refugees in the world are
Muslims. Centres of excellence devoted to the problems of refugees
could have developed materials for quick and clean temporary
housing, efficient and cheap ways of supplying emergency water,
better techniques for providing basic healthcare and so on, ad
infinitum.
Indigenous
knowledge, too, would have received a tremendous boost. Muslim
countries have a valuable, although largely untapped, reservoir of
expertise in medicine, agriculture and husbanding natural resources.
Islamic medicine and healthcare, for example, led the world for some
eight centuries--before the 18th century, when research into and
teaching of Islamic medicine was prohibited by the colonising
powers.
Similarly,
traditional agricultural and water management systems have proved
highly effective and ecologically sound. For example, traditional
chain wells, known as karez in Persian and qanat in Arabic, have
been shown to be superior to modern irrigation schemes. These
ingenious systems consist of one or more mother wells, drained
through a network of tunnels. For centuries before the arrival of
tubewells, the ecologically sound and the exceptionally durable
qanat supplied most of the water for irrigation to villages and
towns throughout the Middle East.
There
are also big philosophical questions just waiting to be asked. What
happens to modern science if its basic metaphysical assumptions
about nature, time, the Universe, logic and the nature of humanity
are replaced with those of Islam? If nature, for example, is seen
not as a resource to be exploited but as a trust to be nursed and
nourished? What would then replace vivisection as the basic
methodology of biology? Human values are considered not so much as
external to science but as totally internal and integral part of
science. How would that change science itself?
The
truth is that it is only in the rewriting of the history of Islamic
science that progress has been made. We now know much more, not just
about the quality of Islamic science but about its staggering
quantity. Recently, for example, we have learned that the
mathematical models of 14th-century scientist ibn al-Shatir, and the
work of astronomers at the famous observatory in Maragha,
Azerbaijan, built in the 13th century by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, laid
the foundation for the Copernican revolution. The Maragha
astronomers developed the Tusi couple and a theorem for the
transformation of eccentric models into epicyclic ones. Copernicus
not only used these two basic theorems to build his notion of
heliocentricity, but also used them at exactly the same point in the
model.
Thankfully,
much of the new historic research has reached the textbooks. The
best synthesis is Donald Hill’s Islamic Science and Engineering
(Edinburgh University Press, 1993), while a three-volume, concise
Encyclopaedia of the History of Arabic Science edited by Roshdi
Rashed (Routledge, 1996) is also available.
Great
stuff, all of it. But still history, and not happening tomorrow--and
certainly not today.
"Ziauddin
Sardar’s Introducing Science has just been Icon Books in London
and Totem Books in New York.
"
Ziauddin
Sardar:
A cultural critic, Muslim scholar, author of many books, and
editor of Futures: The Journal of Planning, Policy, and Futures
Studies. His newest book is Ziauddin Sardar's A-Z of Postmodern
Life (Visions Publications, Feb 2002).He is based in London.
To
see the comments of Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal click
here
