Islamic Science as a scientific research program: conceptual and pragmatic issues

Islam & Science, Summer, 2005 by Adi Setia

Islamic Science, Islamization, and the Road Ahead: Conceptual Issues

The idea of Islamizing the sciences has become a matter of much passionate discussion and debate among Muslim intellectuals and academicians, including professional scientists, mathematicians, engineers and technologists. Many books and articles have been written and seminars held to clarify the idea in conceptual and pragmatic terms. However, it would seem that little progress has been achieved so far toward achieving a broad consensus among them on a positive reception of the idea. Some, like Abdus Salam and Hoodbhoy, (1) reject the idea altogether, while others accept it wholeheartedly without a clear understanding of what the idea really means and entails for their scientific work, but most working scientists have only a hazy notion of the idea without any genuine intellectual commitment for or against it.

This situation is not surprising given the realization that the idea of Islamization of sciences necessarily demands close, critical engagement with the philosophy, history and practice of both Islamic and modern science. Thus, only a very few Muslim scientists and philosophers of science (e.g., Nursi, (2) al-Attas, (3) Nasr, (4) Bakar, (5) Golshani (6) and others) have been successful in articulating the idea with any degree of intellectual insight--though not all use the term 'Islamization'--based on a thorough knowledge of both the Islamic and Western scientific traditions, including the contemporary ubiquity of modern science. However, after three decades or so of Islamization, my feeling is that their works need to be further explicated in terms that can provide practical direction to scientists not exposed to the history and philosophy of Islamic and modern science. One thing that all parties in the debate have realized is that the Islamization of the sciences has to be far more substantial than merely citing the relevant Qur'anic verses and Ahadith, for the real intellectual challenge lies in articulating the religious textual relevance in conceptual terms rich enough to determine the content and direction of actual empirical scientific research.

In view of this complex and difficult situation, it should be fruitful for Muslim scientists to conceive of the Islamization of the sciences or Islamic Science as a long-term scientific research program. (7) Like other scientific research programs (such as kalam and falsafah physical theories, (8) Ibn al-Haytham's optics, (9) classical Newtonian mechanics, (10) Darwinian evolution, (11) Einstein's relativity, (12) quantum mechanics and David Bohm's implicate order, (13) Chomskyan linguistics, (14) Eccles' and Popper's mind-brain interactionism, (15) cognitive psychology, (16) big-bang cosmology, (17) chaos and complexity theories versus intelligent design, irreducible complexity and creation hypothesis, (18) and now superstring theory (19)), the scientific research program of Islamic Science has a core metaphysical component consisting of basic, abstract theoretical assumptions underpinning the program, and a network of auxiliary hypotheses providing directions for the conceptual clarification and empirical investigation of this core metaphysical component, and hence providing rational and scientific evidential support for it. Empirical clarifications, once achieved, may even lead to practical, useful technological and engineering applications which can serve to realize the axiological implications of the core metaphysical component in contemporary Muslim communities throughout the world.

The core metaphysical component here obviously consists of the fundamental elements of the Islamic worldview (i.e., the Islamic vision of man, nature and ultimate reality), while the auxiliary hypotheses provide guidance toward working out the implications of this worldview in empirical terms, for instance, the implications of (i) the Islamic vision of man for formulating a contemporary empirical Islamic psychology and epistemology, (20) (ii) the Islamic vision of nature for formulating an empirically fruitful alternative to Darwinian evolution, (21) (iii) the Islamic vision of ultimate reality for deciding between the Copenhagen instrumentalist and the Bohmian realist interpretation of quantum mechanics, (22) (iv) the Islamic medical methodological alternative to vivisection, (23) and so on and so forth. This research program pertains to both the ongoing conceptual clarification of various aspects of the Islamic worldview, and the concomitant working out of their empirical implications for Islamic science, technology and engineering. In short, a major cognitive function of this research program is to provide directions toward critical conceptual and empirical reevaluations of modern scientific theories which are found to be problematic from the perspective of the Islamic worldview, with a vision toward their eventual modification and even replacement with better theories if necessary.

The articulation of this Islamic Science research program, conceived thus, necessarily requires critical, creative engagement at a deep theoretical level with modern science since it is the default science for which Islamic Science is proffered as the more viable alternative, at least for Muslims if not for humanity at large. Obviously, the ambitious scope of this research program for the revival of Islamic Science necessarily entails an interdisciplinary collaboration between scientists, technologists and engineers on the one hand, and historians, philosophers and sociologists of science on the other.