Alparslan Acikgenc, Islamic Science: Towards a Definition

Acikgenc begins very well with some manifestly true propositions acceptable to many people who believe in the Islamization of the sciences, but instead of substantiating them with well-documented historical case studies, he remains content with tautological redundancies and general assertions which are left bibliographically vacuous for the most part. Here and there he makes references to al-Attas' psychology and philosophy of science, but his program is neither conceptually nor substantially explicative in any self-consistent manner of al-Attas' program. A more historical than analytical approach to the philosophy of science should be more fruitful for coming to a more substantial and meaningful definition of Islamic science. At any rate, one cannot and should not avoid studying how great figures of Islamic science such as Ibn al-Haytham, al-Biruni, Ibn Sina and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi reflected on the philosophical and empirical sciences in which they excelled.

(1.) In Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam: An Exposition of the Fundamental Elements of the Worldview of Islam, 2nd ed. (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 2001); henceforth Prolegomena.

(2.) Al-Attas, Syed Muhammad Naquib, The Concept of Education in Islam: A Framework for an Islamic Philosophy of Education (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1991), p. 2.

(3.) Prolegomena, pp. 1-2.

(4.) Chomsky, Noam, Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), 156-9.

(5.) Mautner, Thomas (ed.), A Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), s.v. "tautology".