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A
Qur’anic Approach to Scientific Investigation
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By Sabah
E. Karam, Th.D.
Professor Of Computer Information Systems & Mathematics,
Strayer University, Etc...
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08/06/2002
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The
following paper based on the Qur’an verse 51:49 which describes
the nature of creation. It's transliteration into English is, "Wa
men kulli shayen khalqna zawgyne la'alakum tadhkaroon."
The translation into English is, "And all things have We
created in pairs in order that you may reflect on it."
The
word 'zawgyne' is consistently translated into the English language
as 'pairs.' In scientific literature its meaning is extended to
incorporate such concepts as 'duality", 'complementarity',
'opposites', 'inverses' and several other concepts reflecting
conjugate and/or reciprocal properties. Terms will be listed below,
within their respective disciplines, from the natural, biological
and social sciences. We find mentioned in the Tafsir of Ibn Kathir
the following pairs of creation: the heavens and the earth, the sun
and the moon, light and dark, night and day, the land and the
oceans, life and death, Jannah and Narr. Ibn Kathir elaborates on
the meaning of this verse saying that, "Every aspect of
creation has the pair characteristic, extending even to the animals
and plants. This is the case in order that we may reflect and know
that Allah, The Creator, is One and there is nothing that can be
associated with Him." Besides verse 59:41, there are five other
Qur’anic verses that have the term zawgyne in it. They are: 11:40,
13:3, 23:27, 31:10, and 53:45.
Scientists
in the 20th century have been on a quest to devise models of the
universe which present accumulated knowledge in an integrated,
coherent and unified manner. This paper will examine the historical
attempts to produce unified models for the natural and physical
sciences. It will also look at the contemporary efforts, continuing
the Einstein tradition, of trying to find a model describing all
forces in nature. Recalling the words of Mendeleev, in a lecture to
his chemistry class, "It is the function of science to discover
the existence of a general reign of order in nature, and to find the
causes governing this order. And this refers in equal measure to the
relations of man, social and political, and to the entire universe
as a whole..."
Finding
the causes that govern the general reign of order in the natural
sciences has traditionally been done by observation and
experimentation, theorizing about the results of the experiments,
testing the predictive ability of the theory, reporting the
findings, rewriting the theory to accommodate any anomalies, and
then further experimentation. This process, generally referred to as
the scientific method, has served the academic and science-based
communities in the past when the traditional disciplines were
compartmentalized with well-defined borders and boundaries. The
technological applications of new discoveries have produced new
sub-disciplines, the sub-disciplines further dividing into
sub-sub-disciplines. Neuro-psychology, bio-physics, geo-chemistry,
bio-geo-chemistry are a few of the new research areas. Findings from
these fields are published in over 70,000 journals reporting on
25,000 research fields.
On
the average, since 1978 over forty new scientific journals per week
have been published. The explosion of information and subsequent
'knowledge' in all disciplines, scientific as well as
non-scientific, has increased dramatically. Students of science are
expected to learn a babel of tongues and theories. Attempts to
"integrate" the science disciplines into a coherent whole
have mainly fallen by the wayside and, in some cases, have developed
into new scientific disciplines themselves. A classical example of
an interdisciplinary science, created from two distinct scientific
fields, is cybernetics, the comparative study of biological and
electro-mechanical systems includes the study of machines that
imitate human behavior and artificial intelligence. Technological
applications, improvements and innovations are have contributed to
the exponential growth in scientific knowledge.
The
wealth of information in science has resulted in, not only, the
inability to keep up with the new scientific discoveries but, even
worse, the inability to teach science in a coherent way. Over 200
national reports on the status of science education today describe
the present science curriculum as obsolete. Applying scientific
principles to the knowledge-base of information would, in my
estimation, contribute much to the evasive goal of a unified
perspective on science. Let's look at some of the attempts to
organize the methods of science and some of the arguments against
the possibility of achieving such a goal.
Unified
science, general systems, reductionism, consilience (a consolidation
of theory) and synthesis are some of the key terms used to
characterize the efforts of natural and social scientists to develop
a unifying principle of all the sciences. The structure of the atom
and Mendeleev's periodic table of chemical elements are classical
examples, in physics and chemistry, of unifying principles. Newton's
adaptation of Kepler's and Galileo's theories into the law of
gravity is another example of a unifying model which, depending on
one's orientation, can be called a theory in unification, reduction,
synthesis or general system. The process of reducing or
incorporating one theory into another is also characteristic of the
scientific method.
Theories,
to explain or reduce, existing facts into a complete and consistent
descriptive model are used to make predictions about future events
and investigate related phenomena. When new results, from
experiments and observations render the existing model obsolete or
anomalies and deviations from the predictive pattern of the model
are found, a new model must be created. The development of new
models can happen in many ways. The two most well known ways of
model creation are rearrangement and generalization. At the time of
Copernicus a geocentric model of the universe was in use. His
rearrangement of the planets, which placed the sun at the center of
the planetary system, resulted in a more complete and consistent
solar model. The new model incorporated the older model that could
no longer explain the current observations.
Generalization
of the Newtonian concept of gravity, which included the notion of
space, was used by Albert Einstein in his generalized principle of
gravitation. Replacement, and reduction, of the principle of
inertial mass with gravitational mass led to a more comprehensive
theory. Reordering objects into other accommodating relationships or
expanding a theory, to reflect previously unaccounted for facts, has
been part and parcel of the scientific method since the time of
Aristotle. 
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