Alparslan Acikgenc, Islamic Science: Towards a Definition

Islam & Science, Summer, 2005

Alparslan Acikgenc, Islamic Science: Towards a Definition (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1996), vi 106 pp, Pb, ISBN 983 99002 8 5

One of the aims of defining Islamic Science is to generate theoretical understanding of and insight into the nature and meaning of the concept and enterprise of Islamic Science, and thus to formally differentiate it, to the extent possible, from other sciences, especially modern western science, or even from other salient manifestations of Islamic civilization, like Islamic Art. Of course formal definitions have their limits, but a basic working definition, if sound and critically accepted, can provide a degree of rigor, direction and coherence to a discourse that at times tends to be as disunified as the number of participants engaged in it, which is significant lately, mainly because, as Acikgenc himself realizes, "they did not first try to understand what he [al-Attas] meant by islamization" (p. 1).

Hence, this little book by Acikgenc (formerly of ISTAC and presently at Fatih University, Turkey) has been of considerable interest to participants in the ongoing discourse on Islamic Science. The book consists of an "Introduction" and three chapters entitled respectively "The Concept of Islamicity", "The Islamic Concept of Science" and "The Historical Background of Islamic Science". Many would see it as a courageous attempt at a conceptual understanding of Islamic science that may facilitate its revival as an existential reality, and thus they would like to see to what extent his attempt has been successful. Moreover as Acikgenc himself puts it, "... in order for science to perform its vital role in a society, and more specifically in a Muslim society, a clear definition of it must be provided by the 'ulama'," a.k.a. "scholars of Islam" (p. 4).

In the "Introduction" Acikgenc says his book "was constructed, not only as an endeavor to unify my thought into a coherent theory of Islamic science and philosophy, but a struggle to grasp and disclose the grand project of the islamization of knowledge which was for the first time developed by Professor al-Attas ... (p. v)." Thus, one eagerly anticipates in the pages of this book an explication, or at least a lucent definition, of Islamic science in authentic Attasian terms. Acikgenc appropriately begins with al-Attas' definition of islamization as "liberation" from "the magical and the secular world views," as "devolution to original nature," and as "involving first the islamization of language" (pp. 1-2). Defined as such, islamization is not a "new phenomenon" that only recently appeared in the process of engagement with the modern world, but something dynamic, ongoing and continually manifested whenever Islam and Muslims have confronted situations which challenge their sense of self-identity. This understanding of islamization is of course quite obvious to all who are familiar with al-Attas' works.

Therefore the term 'Islamic science' is in a sense a statement of self-identity--an identity that has to be defined and asserted with respect to that domain of human activity called science, because it is realized that science is not value-neutral but imbued through and through with the identity of the culture cultivating and promoting it. Since science is value-laden then a self-conscious assertion of self-identity is needed to avoid an unconscious or unwitting loss of identity due to the surreptitious introduction into the receiving culture of a science that presents itself to be universal but whose apparent universal aspects blind the vision to other aspects that on closer inspection turn out to be very particular and contextual.

That is the gist of the "Introduction" and of the second chapter, namely that since science is value-laden then it is derived from, conditioned by and integrated into the worldview of the people practicing it, and hence science cannot be Islamized from the outside in a "mechanical" fashion, but from the inside by a process of reconceptualization of the whole meaning and purpose of science. But thereafter the exposition is marred by a somewhat ad hoc invocation of Kantian terminologies and of an inconsistent and hence confusing treatment of the key-term 'worldview'. In this regard the three most pertinent aspects of Acikgenc's exposition that readily open themselves to criticisms are (i) the less Attasian than Kantian framework, (ii) the conception of worldview, and (iii) the definition of Islamic science itself.

Acikgenc begins by citing and discussing al-Attas' definition of 'islamization' but he does not thereby proceed to explicate the implication of that definition for arriving at his chosen definition of Islamic science. Such an explication, if attempted, would require some elaboration on (i) the presuppositions of al-Attas' definition, presuppositions that are grounded in his conception of the "nature of man and the psychology of the human soul," (1) and (ii) how a definition of Islamic science can be consistently worked out from that prior definition of islamization. Instead, he abruptly brings in the Kantian conception of a priori knowledge (i.e., the synthetic a priori) simply because "our exposition of worldview shall utilize the knowledge available to us from even other sources as well," (p. 9) without at all explaining precisely just how such a conception is or can be connected to al-Attas' definition of islamization, and thus be utilized. Without clarifying the conceptual affinity, if any, between Kant and al-Attas, the introduction of the former into the "exposition" is arbitrary, irrelevant and distracting. Thus al-Attas is relegated into the background and the Kantian synthetic a priori effectively becomes the real starting point of the exposition, not Attasian 'islamization' or 'worldview', for, indeed, al-Attas has given a definition of what he meant by the term 'worldview' which Acikgenc does not cite at all.