IQBAL IslamModernScience 2000

Islam and Modern Science: Formulating the Questions
Author(s): MUZAFFAR IQBAL

Source: Islamic Studies , Winter 2000, Vol. 39, No. 4, Special Issue: Islam and Science
(Winter 2000), pp. 517-570
Published by: Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, Islamabad
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23076112
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Islamic Studies 39:4 (2000) pp. 517-570
Islam and Modern Science:

Formulating the Questions
MUZAFFAR IQBAL
Introduction
Islam and Muslims have played a rather insignificant role in the birth and
development of modern science. The historical currents that gave birth to
modern science were diverse and complex. European civilization did receive
certain concepts, ideas, scientific data and theories from the Islamic scientific
tradition but that borrowing was restricted to a period and a worldview which
was characteristically medieval, not modern. During the seventeenth century
Scientific Revolution, these contributions of the Islamic scientific tradition to
European science were lost in the process that gave birth to modern science. In
the final analysis, the Islamic view of Nature has nothing to do with the
concept of Nature on which modern science is based.
The paper asserts that the contributions made by the translation
movement that brought Islamic (and Greek) scientific and philosophical works
to Europe were limited to the beginning of the Renaissance period after which
the scientific enterprise in Europe (and later in the whole of Western world,
including the United States of America) took a decisively different course,
making it a strictly Western phenomenon.
The paper further argues that by severing its ties with the metaphysical
foundations on which Islamic science was based, modern science produced a
fundamental cleavage with whatever it may have received from the Islamic
scientific tradition. It also explores the process of appropriation and
transformation of the Islamic scientific tradition as it flowed into the currents
that were shaping European science at the time of translation movement and
identifies various points of cleavage produced during the process of
appropriation—a severance that fundamentally altered the received material.
Finally, the paper attempts to formulate questions that can be legitimately
asked about the relationship of Islam with modern science.

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C^g MUZAFFAR IQBAL
ROOTS OF MODERN SCIENCE
Modem science emerged in Europe on the foundations of the Greek sc

tradition which had been assimilated—and transformed—into the c
Islamic tradition of learning during its long habitation in th
heartlands. Europe received this transformed tradition through a fasc
process of transmission. This received tradition acted as a surrogate m
modern science; but the delivery proved to be fatal for the surrogate m
All of this happened during the Middle Ages which are not rea
"dark ages" as is usually believed; rather the very idea of Dark Ages fi
in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century out of an arrogance,
derogatory term placed side by side with the idea of enlightenment. I
firmly entrenched in the Western culture as the European Re
progressed.1
European scientific tradition of the Middle Ages was primarily situated in
the chain of Christian monasteries spread throughout Europe. These
monasteries had started as early as the fourth century. By the time St. Benedict
(d. ca. 550) established his monastery at Monte Cassino, south of Rome, this
way of life had matured so that he could formulate rules governing the lives of
those who chose to live in these monasteries.2 Bede, who entered the
1 The Middle Ages extend over at least nine hundred years. Most historians take the end of
Roman civilization in the Latin West (around 500 ce) as the beginning of the Middle Ages. The
period between 500 to 1000 forms the early Middle Ages and the period between 1000 and 1200
is generally classified as the transition period. From 1200 to 1450 is the "high" or "late" Middle
Ages. Not all historians agree on these dates. But there is a consensus that by 1450, European
Renaissance was well underway and the Middle Ages were over.
2 The Benedictine Rules were widely adopted within Western monasticism. The monastic life
was primarily devoted to contemplation and worship but there are enough examples to dispel
the generally held view that natural philosophy (as science was then called) was totally absent
from monastic tradition. The well-known examples of Isidore of Seville (ca. 560-636) and the
Venerable Bede (d. 735) testify to the presence of a tradition that was not wholly devoid of
interest in Nature and its study. Raised in Spain, and educated by his elder brother, Isidore lived
under Visigothic rule and became the Archbishop of Seville in 600. His works range from
biblical studies to theology, literature and history. Two of his works, Nature of Things and
Etymologies, are monumental treatises of the Middle Ages which offer encyclopedic accounts of
the whole range of classical learning. The Etymologies is a fascinating account of nature of things
on the basis of etymologies of their names. It exists in more than one thousand manuscripts and
covers all branches of knowledge covered in the Middle Ages: theology, medicine, law,
timekeeping (including the calendar), geography, agriculture, cosmology, mineralogy and
anthropology. For further details on Isidore, see, William H. Stahl, Roman Science: Origins,
Development and Influence to the Later Middle Ages (Madison: University of Madison Press,
1962), 213-23.

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ISLAM AND MODERN SCIENCE: FORMULATING THE QUESTIONS
monastery of Wearmouth in Northumbria, in northeastern Engl

modern Newcastle, at the age of seven to spend the remainder of his
left his mark on a whole range of subjects taught in the eighth
included in his works is a Ecclesiastical History of the English People an
Nature of Things as well as two textbooks on timekeeping and the calen
The focus of monastic tradition was ecclesiastical but this does not m
that medicine, logic and other Greek and Roman sciences were al
absent from the communal life. We know for sure that Boethius
translated parts of Aristotle's logic and composed handbooks on th
arts. Gregory the Great (ca. 550-604), who became pope in 590, left
respectable body of sermons, lectures, dialogues and biblical comm
Toward the end of the eighth century, there was another burst o
which revived tradition of learning, this time under the patr
Charlemagne the Great who inherited a Frankish kingdom in 768
contained parts of modern Germany and most of France, Belg
Holland. By the time of his death in 814, he had enlarged his kin
include more German territory, Switzerland, part of Austria and m
half of Italy. His empire, known as Carolingian Empire, was t
centralized empire to appear in Europe since the Roman
Charlemagne instituted a state-wise educational enterprise under A
730-804), headmaster of the cathedral school at York in northern
who was especially brought to the court of Charlemagne to direct
educational enterprise.4
It was this educational system established by Alcuin which was to i
the transmission of Greek learning (through the Arabic route) into
Europe. An imperial edict mandated the establishment of cathedr
monastery schools. This laid a foundation on which was built the gran
of learning in the later centuries.5 Alcuin attracted a group of sch
were interested in serious theological reflections and it was this s
schools which produced men like John Scotus Eriugena (fl. 850
Irishman attached to the court of Charlemagne's grandson, Charles
Scotus was the most influential and ablest scholar of the nineth centu
West with an excellent command of Greek, learned in the monasti
He was to translate a number of important Greek works into Latin in
to several original works in Latin.
A century later, another beneficiary of Carolingian educational
Gerbert (ca. 945-1003), was to become one of the first intellectua
3 Ibid., 223-32.
4 For these details, see, David Lindberg, The Beginnigs of Western Science (Chicago: Uni
Chicago Press, 1992), 185.
3 Ibid., and references therein.

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520 MUZAFFAR IQBAL
between Islam and Latin Christendom. Gerbert arose from his humble
beginnings to the high office of Pope through a series of dramatic events
which exhibit his sharp intelligence as well as scholarship. His election as Pope
Sylvester II in 999 provided him an institutional structure for the pursuit of
his scholarly ambitions. But already in 967 when Gerbert crossed the Pyrenees
into the northeastern corner of Spain to study mathematical sciences with
Atto, the bishop of Vich, he had forged a link with the Muslim Spain which
was to serve as a decisive point of contact between Islamic scientific tradition
and Latin West.
Gerbert's letters are our source for ascertaining the extent of his interest
in Islamic sciences at this early stage of intellectual interaction between
Muslim Spain and Europe. The Letters of Gerbert with His Papal Privileges as
Sylvester II,6 provide ample testimony to Gerbert's wide ranging interests as
well as influence. In these letters, one finds Gerbert asking for specific
manuscripts and books. In one letter, he asks for a book on numbers by the
Arabic speaking Christian Joseph the Spaniard, in another, he asks for a book
on astronomy which had been translated from Arabic by Luptins. He
instructs friends on mathematical and geometrical problems and imparts
instructions on the construction of astronomical model as well as on the use of
abacus for multiplication and division, using Arabic numerals.
Transmission of Islamic Scientific Tradition to Europe

Gerbert (d. 1003) did not live to see the enormous changes that were
about to transform Western Europe during the eleventh and the twelfth
centuries—transformations that were crucial to the emergence of modern
science. After the Viking and Magyar invasions of the ninth and tenth
centuries which devastated much of Europe, there came a period of strong
monarchies, political stability and economic growth. The reasons for these
developments are complex and beyond the scope of the present study. Suffice
it to say that after remaining a receiver of foreign armies for centuries,
Western Europe reversed the pattern and became an aggressor, first in Spain
and then in the Holy Land where it dispatched armies of crusaders. As a result
of re-urbanization, a new educational system emerged. Stable, prosperous
monarchies, continuous economic growth and increased agricultural
production between 1000 and 1200 contributed to a population explosion
during which the population of Europe may have quadrupled.7
6 Harriet Pratt Lattin, ed. and trans., The Letters of Gilbert with His Papal Privileges as Sylvester II
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1961).
David Herlihy, "Demography" in Joseph R. Stiaye, ed., Dictionary of Middle Ages [henceforth
DMA], 13 vols. (New York : Scribner 1982— ), 4: 136-48

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During the eleventh and the twelfth centuries, along with the populatio
explosion, there arose a chain of new schools throughout Western Eur
with far broader aims than those of monastery schools. What is important
our purposes is the fact that these schools were centred on the interests of
"master" who directed them, just like the schools in the Islamic civilizat
which attracted students to a particular teacher whose name was synonymo
with that of the school. And just like their counterpart in the Muslim worl
these European schools were not fixed geographically; they went where thei
master-teacher went.8
These new schools multiplied. The number of students and teacher
increased and some of them became large enough to need organization a
administration; this was the beginning of evolution of universities whi
would subsequently become home to an intense scientific activity.
These universities arose in Western Europe as spontaneously as the
schools had. No date can be fixed for their founding because they were
founded. At that early stage, universities were not educational institut
with buildings and charters; rather, the early universities were merel
voluntary associations or guilds where teachers and students pursued th
common interests. The word "university" (from the Latin universitàs) mere
meant a guild, corporation or association where people pursued commo
(universal) ends; it had no educational connotations. Nonetheless, t
customary date for the masters of Bologna to have achieved university status
1150, for those of Paris, about 1200 and those of Oxford by 1220.9
The presence of stable monarchies created opportunities for employmen
of learned scholars at courts as well as need for administrators for grow
state institutions. This meant expansion of universities and their curric
Education in these early universities followed the centuries old tradition
guilds which had been established all over the world. A student entere
university at about age fourteen and studied with a teacher for three to fou
years, attending lectures and discussing various books and authors. At the e
of that period, the student would present himself to be examined for youn
man's degree. Having passed this examination, the student now became a sor
of journey man who could impart instructions to new students under t
direction of a master, while he continued studies. After another period
8 On the medieval schools, see, Nicholas Orme, English schools in the Middle Ages (Lon
Methuen, 1973); John J. Contreni, "Schools, Cathedral", in DMA, 11: 59-63
9 None of these dates can be taken as fixed. They represent a development in the history
Western Europe which spanned two centuries. For an excellent introduction to the histor
universities, see, Astrik L. Gabriel, "University", in DMA, 12: 282-300. Also see, Geo
Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinbur
Edinburgh University Press, 1981). Professor Makdisi has established that these univers
were established on the pattern of Islamic madrasahs.

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MUZAFFAR IQBAL
522
three to five years, the student could present himself for a higher examina
that would confer full rights on him and give him full membership in
faculty of arts.
These universities were bigger than schools; numbers varied between 2
to 800 students. Oxford probably had between 1,000 to 1,500 students i
fourteenth century, Bologna was of similar size but Paris may have had up
2,500 students.10
For our study, more than number of students, we need to know
curriculum of these universities. What was taught changed over time b
interesting feature of these early universities was their uniformity
curriculum. There were minor differences in emphasis but almo
universities taught the same subjects from the same texts. This may have
the result of paucity of texts at this stage but this common curricu
produced a phenomenal result: medieval Europe acquired a universal s
Greek and Arabic texts as well as a common set of problems which facilita
a high degree of student and teacher mobility across countries. Thus teach
earned their ius ubique docendi (right of teaching anywhere) and mo
between different universities, all of which used Latin as their languag
instruction.
This, again, demonstrates an important parallel between medieval Euro
and the Muslim world where Arabic was the universal language of scholars
and where students and teachers easily moved across a vast geograph
expanse.
Perhaps the most important characteristic of the medieval European
university curriculum was the fact that from its modest beginnings in the
twelfth century, the Aristotelian tradition grew to hold center stage by the
second half of the thirteenth century. This was, partly, due to the intense
transmission activity that had brought the whole Aristotelian corpus from its
Arab home to Europe.
The links between Muslims and Europeans had never been completely
severed. Travellers, traders and border cities with multi-lingual populace kept
the links alive. As early as 950, there was an official exchange of ambassadors
between the courts of 'Abd al-Rahmän (277/890—350/961) at Cordoba and
Otto the Great (912-973) in Frankfurt. As already mentioned, Gerbert had
gone to northern Spain in the 960s to learn Arabic mathematical sciences. A
century later, Constantine (fl. 1065-85), a north African who had become a
Benedictine monk, went to the monastery of Monte Cassino in southern Italy
where he translated medical treatises from Arabic into Latin. These included
10 Ibid.

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ISLAM AND MODERN SCIENCE: FORMULATING THE QUESTIONS ^3
the works of Galen (d. 129) and Hippocrates, (ca. 460 BC — ca. 377 Be) which
were to become the foundations of medical literature in the West.11
These were, however, "harmless translations"; they did not impinge upon
faith nor posed any problems for the new class of educated Europeans who
found a most attractive intellectual reservoir in Spain. The presence of
Mözärabs12, a cosmopolitan culture, ample supply of Arabic texts and
generous patronage combined to produce a translation movement which was
to transform European learning over the course of a century and a half. While
this translation activity was beginning, the reconquest of Spain further helped
the process. The fall of Toledo in 1085 into Christian hands provided an
excellent library which was exploited to the maximum extent during the next
hundred years.
In an atmosphere ripe with enthusiasm, adventure, conquest, patronage
and texts, there was no dearth of translators. Many Spaniards were fluent in
Arabic. John of Seville (fl. 1133-42) translated a large number of astrological
works, Hugh of Santalla (fl. 1145) also translated works on astrology and
divination and Mark of Toledo (fl. 1191-1216) translated Galenic texts. Those
who came from abroad included Robert of Chester (fl. 1141-50) from Wales,
Hermann the Dalmatian (fl. 1138-43?), a slav and the Italian, Plato of Tivoli
(fl. 1132-46).
The first translations were done without a scheme and merely for the
sake of transmission of knowledge. But soon there arose need for translation
of specific works whose references had been found in earlier translations and
these were done by able translators who searched for these texts. Among the
greatest of these translators was Gerard of Cremona (ca. 1114—87) who came to
Spain in the late 1130s or early 1140s from northern Italy in search of
Ptolemy's Almagest. He found a copy in Toledo, where he remained until he
could master Arabic to translate it.
But once in Toledo, Gerard also found a host of other texts which were'
simply astounding in character. Over the next thirty to forty years, he was to
produce an enormous number of translations, no doubt with the help of a
team of assistants. Thus, in addition to Almagest, he is credited with the
translation of al-Khwärazmi's Algebra, Euclid's Elements and fifteen other
works on mathematics and optics; fourteen works on logic and natural
philosophy, including Artistotle's Physics, On the Heavens, Meterology, and On
Generation and Corruption; he translated twenty-four medical works, nine of
these were Galenic treatises and one was Canon of Medicine, Ibn Slnä's
monumental work which was to remain as the mainstay of medical
11 Michael McVaugh, "Constantine the African", in Charles Coulston Gillispie, ed., Dictionary
of Scientific Biography [henceforth DSB\, 17 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1981-90), 3: 393-95
12 Spanish and often Arabic speaking Christians.

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MUZAFFAR IQBAL
524
curriculum all over Europe for at least four hundred years. Total number of
books translated by Gerard of Cremona is between seventy and eighty, all of
these were of high quality because of his command over languages as well as
subject matter.
Let us note, even at the expense of digressing, that Gerard is comparable
to Hunayn ibn Ishâq (192/808—260/873), the Nestorian Christian who is
credited with a large number of translations, ranging from medicine,
philosophy, astronomy, mathematics to magic and oneiromancy13 from Greek
and Syriac into Arabic. Out of the 129 titles enumerated by him in his Risälah,
he himself translated about 100 into Syriac or Arabic or into both. The list is
not exhaustive.14 Likewise the medieval European translation movement can
also be compared with the earlier Baghdad translation movement which
brought a large number of Greek, Persian and Syriac texts into Arabic during
a period extending from eighth to tenth century.
The Greco-Latin translation movement continued well into the
thirteenth century. Just like the Greco-Arabic translation movement, it
became more refined over time and as the technical terms and ability of the
translators improved, many works were retranslated. William of Moerbeke (fl.
1260-86) was one such translator who provided a complete Aristotelian corpus
to Latin Christendom along with translation of major Aristotelian
commentators. He revised older translations where needed. He also translated
a number of Neoplatonic works.
With this background in mind, let us now examine how this received
Greek and Islamic tradition was to first become the dominant intellectual
force in Medieval West and then give way to a new and opposing force out of
which grew the worldview which was to produce modern science.
The first thing to note is the texts that were translated. The Medieval
West seems to have been interested in medicine and astronomy at the
beginning of the translation movement in the tenth and eleventh centuries.
During the first half of the twelfth century, a large number of astrological
works were translated along with enough mathematical works to allow a
13 Divination through dreams.

14 To my knowledge no study exists which compares the impact of the life and activity of these
two men separated by three centuries but so comparable in their roles as transmitters of
knowledge from one civilization to another. Hunayn's life is a fascinating story, both of one
man's commitment to a life devoted to scholarship as well as of the vibrant currents that were
flowing into the making of Islamic scientific tradition during his life. Biographical material on
Hunayn has been collected by G. Gabrieli, "Hunayn ibn Ishäq", Isis, iv (1924), 282-92; by Lutfi
Sa'di, "A Bio-bibliographical study of Hunayn ibn Ishäq al-'Ibädl", Bulletin of the History of
Medicine, Π (1934), 409-46. and in Meyerhof's notes to al-Bayhaqï's Tatimmät in Osiris, viii
(1948), 122-217. For a short biographical note see entry by G. Strohmaier, "Hunayn b. Ishäq al
'Ibâdî", in Lewis et. al, ed. The Encycloepedia of Islam, new edition Thenceforth EI\ (Leiden: E. T.
Brill, 1986), 3: 578-581.

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ISLAM AND MODERN SCIENCE: FORMULATING THE QUESTIONS ^,5
successful practice of astronomy and astrology. But medicine, astronomy and

astrology in the Islamic civilization rested on a powerful metaphysical
foundation and they could not have been understood without understanding
the foundations on which they were constructed. Thus, a large number of
philosophical works were also translated in the beginning of the second half of
the twelfth century; this activity continued into the thirteenth century and
eventually all metaphysical works dealing with the foundations of Islamic
scientific tradition in general and medicine in particulr were translated into
Latin. This meant the whole of Aristotelian corpus, almost all of Ibn Sina
(Avicenna, 370/980—428/1037) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1126-98) and a host
of others whose works were needed to properly understand and grasp the
philosophical foundations of Islamic scientific tradition.
Let us also note that, contrary to commonly held notion, it was not the
Islamic scientific tradition that had arrived in Europe to take it out of its so
called Dark Ages—if anything like that ever existed. It was the inner dynamics
of the European civilization that had created the need to make use of the
Islamic scientific tradition. Even a cursory glance at what was translated makes
this point abundantly clear.
Fortunately, we can reconstruct, with reasonable accuracy, what was
translated as well as when and by whom:15 Ibn Sina was one of the first to be
translated into Latin. The physical and philosophical parts of his Kitäb al-Shifä
were translated by Dominicus Gundissalinus and John of Seville in Toledo in
the 12th century; Alfred of Sareshel translated the chemical and the
geographical parts in Spain at the beginning of the thirteenth century and al
Qänün fi'l-Tib was translated by Gerard of Cremono in Toledo in the 12th
century. Among others who were translated between the 11th and the 13th
centuries are Ibn Rushd [as Averroes, by Micheal Scot, early 13th century];
Ibn al-Haytham (354/965— 430/1039) [as Alhazen, by more than one
translators, end of 12th century]; Al-Färäbl (d. 339/950) [by Gerard of
Cremona, in Toledo, 12th century]; al-Räzi (ca. 250/854—313/925) [as Rhazes,
by Gerard of Cremona and Moses Farachi, in Toledo and Sicily, in the 12th
and thirteenth centuries]; Al-Kindl (ca. 185/801—252/866) [by Gerard of
Cremona in Toledo, in the 12th century]; al-Khwârazml (ca. 184/800—ca.
15 A. C, Croinbie, Tb-' History of Science: From Augustine to Galileo (New York: Dover
Publications, 1995), pp. 56-58. This seminal, though now dated, work by Crombie has an
interesting publication history. This Dover edition, first published in 1995 is an unabridged
republication of the second revised and enlarged edition (1959), reprinted with corrections in
1970 and reprinted in one volume in 1979 by Heineinann Educational Books, I.ondon, under
the title Augustine to Galileo/Volume I. Science in the Middle Ages: 5th to 13th Centuries; Volume
Π. Science in the Later Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: 13th to the 17th Centuries. (Original
publication: Falcon Press Limited, London, 1952, under the title, Augustine to Galileo: The
History of Science A.D. 400-1650.)

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MUZAFFAR IQBAL
233/847) [by Adelard of Bath and Robert of Chester in the 12th century] a
Jäbir ibn Hayyän (d. 200/815) [by various translators in the 12th and
centuries).
This somewhat incomplete, but representative, list clearly shows that the
European intellectual tradition was looking for a particular type of material;
that it was not interested in the Islamic scientific tradition per se; in the
dynamics of its own development, it needed to recover its own antiquity; it
found it in Aristotle's Arab home and recovered it. In this process, it came
across Ibn Sinâ, Al-Kindï and Ibn Rushd and took them as well—not as
representatives of the Islamic scientific tradition but as commentators of
Aristotelian corpus. Notice that those who were translated, were translated
because of their importance for Aristotelian studies and not for their
contributions to Islamic scientific tradition. Had the Islamic scientific tradition
been the need and focus of the European science, the list of translated material
would not have been restricted to the above group of scholars and scientists,
all of whom were profoundly interested in Aristotle.
Note the omissions in the above list: One obvious omission in this
feverish translation activity is Abü Rayhän al-Blrünl (362/973—442/1050)—
Ibn Sïnâ's able contemporary whose vast corpus of writing, which includes
180 works of varying length, embracing vast fields of knowledge, was not
translated. This omission is more than accidental. Al-Bïrûnï was not translated
because he was not needed at that stage by the European scientific tradition. In
fact, his real appreciation had to wait until the twentieth century. And this is
not an isolated example. Medieval Europe was equally uninterested in a host of
other Muslim scientists whose contributions did not fit the requirements of
the nascent science in Europe.16
European Intellectual Milieu

In order to understand the true meaning of this translation movement and its
impact on the subsequent developments, we need to reconstruct the
intellectual milieu in which these translations arrived, first as a trickle and
then as a torrent. Until the twelfth century, European intellectual life was
relishing the peaceful but fervent expansion of the educational system. During
the early part of the twelfth century, recovery of the writings of the Latin
church fathers, a few translations of Greek works (Plato's Timaeus and parts of
Aristotle's Logic) and a few new translations both from Greek and Arabic
quietly flowed into the main stream of the new educational activity.
16 While the responsibility for the views expressed here is mine, I would like to acknowledge the
input of many discussions held with Syed Nomanul Haq on these matters over the years; these
discussions have contributed to the process of crystallization of these views.

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ISLAM AND MODERN SCIENCE: FORMULATING THE QUESTIONS J
But the large-scale translation activity of the thirteenth century that

opened the flood gates of knowlédge from a civilization which was considered
to be hostile, pagan and dangerous, posed a serious threat to the intellectual
life. The new material was simply irresistible in its utility, power and quality.
And some of it was harmless, as far as the religious and philosophical beliefs
were concerned. Thus treatises on mathematics, optics, meteorology and
medicine were welcomed. Euclid's Elements, al-Khawârazmï's Algebra, Ibn al
Haytham's Optics, Ibn Sïnâ's Canon of Medicine and even Ptolemy's Almagest
posed no serious threat but when it came to works which had profound
metaphysical implications, there was no easy solution. Once translated and
circulated, these works could not be un-translated and removed from the
intellectual horizon of Western Europe and their presence posed a serious
threat to the religious beliefs which demanded immediate response.
Aristotle and his Muslim commentators were the first to meet resistance.
In 1210, a council of bishops issued a decree forbidding instruction on
Aristotle's natural philosophy within the faculty of arts; this decree was
renewed in 1215 by the papal legate Robert de Courçon.17
Though this decree was only applicable to Paris, it marks the beginning
of a long process that would eventually cast shadows over the later history of
science and religion discourse in the West. Bans on Aristotle (1210, 1215 and
1231) had a short life and by 1240, Aristotle's works on natural philosophy
were being taught in Paris as they had been in taught in Oxford and Bologna.
By 1255, Aristotle had won a respectable place in the academia; in that year
the faculty of arts at Paris passed new statutes which made it mandatory to
include all known works of Aristotle in the curriculum. This change was
accompanied by another change which is of interest for our topic. Aristotle
did not barged upon the intellectual tradition of the West unaided; he was
received in company of Ibn Sina whose Platonized versions of Aristotelian
corpus posed serious threats of pantheism.
However, around 1230, the commentaries of Ibn Sina started to be
replaced by those of Ibn Rushd in whom the Latin West discovered a more
authentic and less Platonized commentator. It was for this reason that Ibn
Rushd, who became known as the Commentator, was to enjoy immense
respect and popularity in the West.
But in spite of his new companion, Aristotle was still as unacceptable to
the Christian West as he had been to the Muslim East when he first arrived in
his Arab home. Both the Islamic and the Christian traditions had to struggle
with an Aristotelian cosmos that was made up of eternal elements and destined
to last forever because the elements had not come into being at any moment
17 On reception of Aristotle in Paris, see, Fernand Van Steenberghen, Aristotle in the West,
trans., Leonard Johnston (Louvian: Nauwelaerts, 1955)

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528
and hence they will not cease to be. This was obviously in direct contradict
to the opening chapters of Genesis. Likewise, both traditions were threaten
by the Aristotelian notion of the Prime Mover as the deity that was etern
unchanging and hence incapable of intervening in the operation of the cos
that ran on its own on the basis of cause and effect relationships. Obvi
there was no room for miracles—a central element in both the Islamic as w
as the Christian traditions. But this was not all. There were other troub
elements in Aristotelian system which had sparked intense debates in
Muslim world and which now arrived in the Latin West: the astrolog
theories which accompanied Aristotle's philosophy taught that human
and will were influenced by celestial objects and hence they impinged
Christian notions on sin and salvation; the nature of soul in Arist
philosophy which argued that the soul was the form and organizing princi
of the body and had no independent existence. It needed a body to exis
hence at death, both the individual's form (i.e. body) and soul ceased to exi
a notion which was, once again, incompatible with Christian teachings on t
immortality of the soul.
But these specific concepts which were incompatible with Christi
teachings were merely the tip of the iceberg; at a more fundamental l
Aristotle posed the same threat to the Latin West as he had posed to M
East: his system was taken to be a rational alternative to the rev
knowledge. This opened floodgates of another kind; now Aristote
philosophy was standing at par with theology and as a rival to biblical stud
A chasm had opened; one could follow theological methods and arrive a
conclusion or follow philosophical methods to arrive at a totally oppo
conclusion, with both claiming to be true. This was the beginning of
classical fight for authority; the rivalry between Athens and Jerusalem, a f
which would been won by Jerusalem for a short while and then lost forever
As the century ran its course, Aristotle bloomed in the new universiti
The most attractive feature of Aristotelian philosophy was its complete
Aristotle had constructed a cosmos in which everything was in p
everything followed a simple basic set of logical assumptions. He offe
cosmology in which universe and its constituents were convincingly mapp
from the outer heavens to the earth in the centre, everything had a func
and all functions were explained. He provided details which the West
never heard before. From his account of motion to the rich and deta
descriptions of his biological corpus, everything fitted so well in an or
cosmos which ran its course and which was explained in terms such as form
matter, substances, actualities and potentialities the four causes, the
elements, contraries, nature, change, purpose, quantity, quality, time
space.

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529
By the second half of the thirteenth century, new commentaries h

started to appear and the Latin West had started to come to terms wi
Aristotle. Robert Grosseteste (ca. 1168-1253) was one of the first to produce
commentary on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, which tried to harmo
Aristotelian notions with Christian beliefs through Platonic and Neoplat
influences. Grosseteste's cosmology made use of Neoplatonic emanationism t
reintroduce the biblical account of creation ex nihilio into Aristotle's
cosmology.18
Roger Bacon (ca. 1220-ca. 1292) was to continue Grosseteste's work well
into the thirteenth century. Bacon was a tireless champion of the new learning
and he saw no conflict between Aristotelian philosophy and his own theology.
But others were more cautious. In particular, the attitude of the Franciscan
order around the middle of the thirteenth century was one of extreme caution.
Bonaventure (ca. 1217-74), who studied liberal arts and theology at the
University of Paris and then stayed on to teach theology from 1254 to 1257
before resigning to become a minister general of the Franciscan order,
respected Aristotelian philosophy but he was much more cautious than Bacon
about the utility of philosophy in matters of faith.
Grosseteste, Bacon and Bonaventure made important contributions in
finding a way out of the impasse that the Aristotelian corpus had produced
but it was left to two Dominicans, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas,
who were active in the middle and later years of the thirteenth century to
forge a powerful synthesis between Aristotelian philosophy and Christian
faith. Albert the Great (ca. 1200-1280) was born and raised in Germany,
educated at Pedua and the Dominican school in Cologne. He arrived in Paris
in the early 1240s to study theology and became the master of theology in
1245. Between 1245-1248, he was the Dominican professor at Paris; Thomas
Aquinas studied under him and when Albert was called back to Cologne in
1248, Thomas accompanied him.
Albert wrote his voluminous commentaries on Aristotle after his
departure from Paris. No one in the Western Christendom had paid so much
serious and sustained attention to Aristotle. In many ways, he resembled Ibn
Sina. Both men were profoundly impressed by Aristotle, both wanted to
remain independent of Aristotle's influence and both tried to harmonize their
faiths with Aristotelian philosophy. No wonder, Albert was heavily
influenced by Ibn Sïnâ's works. The twelve volume nineteenth-century edition
of Albert's works, consisting of more than 8,000 pages, stands as a
monumental testimony to Albert's contribution in forging a synthesis
between Aristotelian philosophy and Christian faith. Albert was able to
18 For details of Grosseteste's cosmology, see, James McEvoy, The Philosophy of Robert
Grosseteste (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 149-88 and 369-441.

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j-^q muzaffar iqbal
produce this synthesis becau

home with the works of m
their own synthesis of Islam
one finds in Albert's works a
of Muslim and Greek autho
Constantine the African and
Albert's able student, Thom
contributions made by his t
expense of theology, both un
to use that power in service o
than his teacher in addressing
Intellect, Against the Averroi
the nature of the soul. He agr
the substantial form of the b
form; one capable of existing
soul does not.
Along with these efforts
Christian faith, there was a p
century Europe that disrega
philosophy. Siger of Brabant
Dacia (fi. 1270) were two re
compromise between ph
philosopher, one has to remai
remained attached to his
philosopher, he cannot de
philosophy cannot admit th
admission will introduce an
Although Boethius had prof
his group were considered r
were issued by Etienne Tem
thirteen philosophical propo
radicals in the faculty of arts
was a strong official respon
academic circles in Paris.
Rather than serve a sev
condemnation merely added
from his Arab home to stay
for him in the main discours
time and in 1323, Pope John
1325, the bishop of Paris re
applicable to Thomas's teach

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531
The problems were not resolved, however. With time, they became more
sophisticated. It was realized that at the heart of the problem lie two
epistemological claims: one by philosophy and the other by theology. Τoward
the end of the thirteenth century and early in the fourteenth, men like John
Duns Scotus (ca. 1266-1308) and William of Ockham (ca. 1285-1347) tried to
diminish the area of overlap between theology and philosophy by questioning
the ability of philosophy to address articles of faith with demonstrative
certainty. In this attempt to separate theology and philosophy, there was also
an effort to achieve peace and cohabitation. The central doctrine of this peace
plan was that the Articles of faith could not be challenged by philosophy and
natural philosophy could not encroach on religious grounds.
The influence of Islamic scientific tradition and the debates which it
sparked in the theological circles ran their course, often echoing an earlier era
when these issues were bitterly contested within the Islamic world. A good
example is the emphasis on Divine omnipotence in the theological debates of
the fourteenth century—a theme which was central to Christianity. If God is
absolutely free and omnipotent, this means that the physical world is
contingent rather than necessary. This means that there is no necessity that it
should be what it is; it is entirely dependent on God's Will in all respects: in its
form, function, operation, in fact, in its very existence. The observed physical
laws are not necessary, they are imposed by the divine will. The cause and
effect relationships, too, are not necessary; they are contingent. Fire burns but
not because fire and the act of burning are necessarily connected; rather it is so
because God chose to connect them, empowering fire for the function of
burning. God is free, and can choose to "disconnect" the relationship between
fire and its power to burn, as He did in the case of Shadrach, Meshach and
Abednego when they were cast into burning furnace but were not harmed, as
the Book of Daniel recounts (Ch. 3); this miracle represented a perfect
example of God's omnipotence and His right to suspend natural causation
when He chose. It is no accident that this line of argument reads as if one is
reading al-Ghazâlï (450/1058—505/1111): "In our opinion, the connection
between what is habitually believed to be a cause and what is habitually
believed to be an effect is not necessary," al-Ghazall had written in his seminal
work, Taba fut al-Faläsifah (The Incoherence of the Philosophers)·.
But [with] any two things, where "this" is not "that" and "that" is not "this" and
where neither the affirmation of the one entails the affirmation of the other nor
the negation of the one entails negation of the other, it is not a necessity of the
existence of the one that the other should exist, and it is not a necessity of the
nonexistence of the one that the other should not exist—for example, the
quenching of the thirst and drinking, satiety and eating, burning and contact
with fire, light and the appearance of the sun, death and decapitation, healing and

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MUZAFFAR IQBAL
532
the drinking of medicine... so on, to include all observable among connec

tilings in medicine, astronomy, arts and crafts. Their connection is due to pr
decree of God, who creates them side by side, not to its being necessary in it
incapable of separation. On the contrary, it is within [divine] power to cr
satiety without eating, to create death without decapitation, to continue life
decapitation, and so on to all connected things. The philosophers denied
possibility of [this] and claimed it to be impossible.19
And this is not an isolated coincidence; the medieval European debates o

natural laws and their relationship with religion bear a striking resemblan
similar debates in the Muslim world. This resemblance is the result of a sim
process in two different contexts in the two civilizations. In the Mu
world, al-Ghazali's reflections on causality were the mature produ
discourse on Aristotelian philosophy which had gone through a full cir
from initial encounter through translation to acceptance and th
appropriation and critical reflection. The debates in the fourteenth cen
Europe were likewise a product of refinement and critical reflection
fundamental questions which arose from the encounter between Christiani
and the Aristotelian corpus.
In both cases, this produced two divergent views. According to the fir
view, nature did not have its own permanently assigned laws; rather
depended, wholly and without exception, on divine will for the contin
validity of its laws. According to this view, any other explanation of n
laws would amount to compromise on God's omnipotence. According t
second view, it was held that God could have chosen to create any wor
wished, but He chose to create this world with its laws; hence na
philosophy can only discover the laws which this exhibit, laws which
universal and can be discovered by going out to look for them.
The former view provided an easy explanation of miracles. It also creat
room for God's absolute and ordained powers by arguing that G
omnipotence gave Him the power to create any kind of world out of
infinite number of possibilities but having created this world, God cho
manifest His power in a particular mode and since He is a consistent Go
does not tinker with His creation and having created this world, God's acti
manifests within the existing order (i.e. His ordained power); of course the
are exceptions to this general rule, but they are extremely rare.
According to the latter view, unless the natural world was taken on
own absolute value, with its own well-established laws, there was no se
way of studying the order and laws which were inherent in the world
19 Al-Ghazalî, Tahafut al-Falasifah, trans., Michael E. Marmura as The Incoherence o

Philosophers (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 2000), 166

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533
arguments were a powerful motivation for going out and discovering th

laws though that did not happen until three centuries later and by the tim
happened, the medieval world had been shattered and pushed into the confi
of history.
II
GENESIS OF MODERN SCIENCE
In the first section, we have briefly sketched the process of transmiss

Islamic scientific tradition to the Medieval Europe. In this, we will exp
process that gave birth to modern science in Europe and see how this w
based on the transmission, assimilation or modification of what was re
from the Islamic scientific tradition. Fortunately, this task has be
easier by the "continuity debate" which has received a lot of attention
the history of Western science. Some of the best historians of scie
written on this subject and there is enough evidence to show that
science grew out of a view of Nature that is not only alien to Islam bu
Medieval European views of nature.
The "continuity debate" is a perennial topic in the history of sc
has made its rounds among the historians for more than a century. Th
revolves around the crucial issues of "continuity" and "discontinu
modern science with the Medieval science. One group of historians of
claims that modern science is the natural outcome of an internal p
growth of science in which the Medieval science was but one
continuity that goes back to antiquity. The opposite camp holds that m
science has nothing to do with its medieval precursor. In between t
extremes lie a host of intermediate positions.
This is not a place to delve deep into this debate but we do need to
outline the broad concerns of this discourse because an understanding
relationship of Islamic scientific tradition to modern science depends o
the central issues in the "continuity debate" are understood in the
context of metaphysical foundations of science.
The central questions in the "continuity debate" have bee
formulated by David Lindberg in his 1992 work, The Beginnings of
Science:
What difference did the ancient and medieval scientific tradition make in
run? Did it have a permanent or continuing influence on the course or th
of Western science, or was it an inconsequential cul-de-sac that ultim

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nowhere? Or to pose the question in its most common form, were medieval a
early modern science continuous with each other, or discontinuous?20
In retrospect, the normative Western tradition was to pass a judgment on

Middle Ages as a period of darkness, stagnation and decay. This was al
the verdict of the major voices in the seventeenth century. Francis B
(1561-1626), Voltaire (1694-1778), his younger contemporary Cond
(1743-94) and the Swiss historian Jacob Burchhardt (1818-97), wh
generally credited with the coinage of the ubiquitous term "Renaissanc
conceived the Middle Ages as the dark period. This judgment was to re
unchallenged until the early years of the twentieth century when theoret
physics opened a chasm in the certainty of scientific knowledge. But by th
the popular notion about the Middle Ages as the dark ages had attain
universal currency and anyone voicing an opposite view had to fight a diff
battle.
But slowly, a respectable body of literature did emerge which challenged

the prevalent view.21 Shortly after World War Π, the revisionist history
witnessed a dramatic expansion, both in quality as well as in quantity. There
were many reasons for this. The worldview which had produced the
condescending attitude toward the Middle Ages (and in fact toward the whole
history) was badly shaken through the experience of the War; a significant
number of new scientific and mathematical texts were carefully studied and
the works of historians such as Marshall Clagett (1916— ), Anneliese Maier
(1905-1971) and especially those of the French historian of science, Alexandre
Koyré (1892-1964), powerfully articulated an alternate view which was
supported by impressive scholarship.22 According to Koyré, what the founders
20 David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, 355

21 One of the earliest to cast a stone was the French physicist and philosopher Pierre Duhem
(1861-1916). While inquiring into the intellectual predecessors of Leonardo da Vinci, Duhem
discovered a series of remarkable medieval texts and authors to whom he attributed many later
discoveries. These included the works of Jean Buridan (d. ca. 1358), Nicole Oresme (d. 1382).
This led Duhem to formulate his influential, but flawed theories, about the anticipation of
Copernicus's theory of the diurnal rotation of the earth, Descartes's analytic geometry and
Galileo's law relating time and distance traveled in free fall by Oresme. See Pierre Duhem, Le
Systeme du Monde, 10 vols. (Paris: Hermann, 1913-1959), 7: 534. A little later, historians like
Charles Homer Haskins (1870-1937) and Lynn Thorndike (1882-1965), were to add
considerable weight to the counter arguments which tried to rehabilitate the Middle Ages. See,
Charles Homer Haskins, Studies in the History of Mediaeval Science (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1924) and Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8
vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923-1958), also his Science and Thought in the
Fifteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944).
22 See, for examples, Clagett Marshall, Greek Science in Antiquity (London: Abelard-Schuman,
1957); The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1959); Studies in Medieval Physics and Mathematics (London: Variorum, 1979), and Anneliese

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535
of modern science did was neither refinement, nor improvement of what t

had inherited; they had to actually "destroy one world and to replace it wit
another":
They had to reshape the framework of our intellect itself, to restate and
reform its concepts, to evolve a new approach to Being, a new concept o
knowledge, a new concept of science.23
In order to explore the relationship between Islam and modern scien

we need to examine that aspect of the continuity debate which deals with th
very concept of nature. Thus the relevant questions will be: How did t
Islamic scientific tradition view its subject, that is, nature? What were
metaphysical foundations on which this view was built? What was
methodology used to study nature? How was all of this received in Medi
Europe and what did the founders of modern science do with this recei
tradition?
One of the cornerstones of the continuity debate is the question o
scientific methodology. The proponents of continuity thesis, especially,
enormously influential Alistair Crombie (1915— ), contend that t
experimental methods of the early modern science had an integral continuit
with the Middle Ages. In The History of Science: From Augustine to Gali
Crombie claims that "there can be little doubt that it was the development
these experimental and mathematical methods of the 13th and the 14
centuries that at least initiated the historical movement of the Scientific
Revolution culminating in the 17th Century".24
Maier, On the Threshold of Exact Science: Selected Writings of Anneliese Maier on Late Medieval
Natural Philosophy, Selected and translated with an introduction by Steven D. Sargent
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982). Anneliese Maier is one of the most
insightful historians of science who paid special attention to the philosophical underpinnings of
the Medieval science. Most of her work remains unavailable in English. Her other works on the
subject include the nine volume series Storia e Letteratura (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e
Letteratura, 1966); five volumes of her Studien zur Naturphilosophie der Spätscholstik [Studies on
late scholastic natural philosophy] all published by Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, between 1949
and 1958; three volumes of Ausgehendes Mittelalter, collective essays on fourteenth-century
intellectual history published in 1964, 1967 and 1977 by Edinioni di Storia e letteratura. A
memorial volume in her honour was published in 1981 as Studi sul XIV secolo in Memoria di
Anneliese Maier, ed. A. Maierù and A. Paravicini Bagliani (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e
Letteratura, 1981) which includes an updated bibliography of her works.
23 Alexandre Koyré, Metaphysics and Measurement: Essays in the Scientific Revolution (London:
Chapman and Hall, 1968), 21.
24 A.C. Crombie, The History of Science: From Augustine to Galileo, II: 121. Crombie makes
several contradictory statements, often within a single page, about the worth and contributions
of "Arab science" to the Western Christendom. Examples abound: "Of the actual knowledge
from the stores of Greek learning which was transmitted to Western Christendom by the

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536
This claim has been seriously challenged by a number of subseque

works, including those by Koyré and A. Rupert Hall (1920— ). But wha
more important for our purpose is the fact that recent scholarship has ma
powerful case for the fundamental shifts in the very foundation of
Medieval and modern science. For example, commenting on the contin
debate, David Lindberg wrote in his aforementioned The Beginnings of
Western Science:
An even stronger case for discontinuity can be made, I believe, if (follow

Alexandre Koyré's lead) we shift our focus from methodology to worldvie
metaphysics. The specific metaphysical developments that I have in mind are t
rejection, by the "new scientists" of the seventeenth century (Galileo, Descart
Gassendi, Boyle, Newton, and others) of Aristotle's metaphysics of nature, for
and matter, substance, actuality and potentiality, the four qualities, and the f
causes; and the resuscitation and reformulation of the corpuscular philosophy
the ancient atomists. This produced a radical conceptual shift, which destroye
the foundations of natural phislosphy as practiced for nearly two thousa
years.25
This assessment is shared by many other historians of science, such as

Anneliese Maier, whose insightful studies of the Medieval science have
enormously enriched the field and A. Rupert Hall, the author of the
celebrated The Revolution in Science 1500-1750.26 Maier's various works
corrected the ideas forwarded by Duhem and along with Alexandre Koyré, she
demonstrated in rich details, the definite break between the medieval past and
the discoveries of Bruno, Galileo and Descartes.
This is not to say that the seventeenth century scientists were consciously
attempting to break away from the past; they were busy in the construction of
large-scale systems and with the formulation of new worldviews. Nor was the
break with the past an abrupt process; it was a gradual process in which the
medieval worldview gave way to the triumphant modernity in various stages.
A case in point, amply demonstrated by Maier, is the concept of motive force.
Arabs, together with some additional observations and comments of their own, some of the
most important was the new Ptolemaic astronomy..." (vol. I, p. 64); one can find such examples
on almost every page of the chapters dealing with the "Arab science". Crombie is a forerunner
of a peculiar breed of historians of science who advance the thesis that all that Muslim scientists
did during the golden age of their science and civilization was to "add a few observations and
comments of their own" to the received Greek science. This breed should be taken as a special
branch of Orientalists and though Orientalism has withered out from the mainstream discourse
on Islam, this breed continues to thrive. See, for example, the work by sociologist Toby E.
Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West (Cambridge: University of
Cambridge, 1993).
25 David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, 361.
26 A. Rupert Hall, The Revolution in Science 1500-1750 (London: Longman, 1983)

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537
For the medieval world, its metaphysical content vis matrix, was the ac
quality that produces motion; only the Cartesians tried to elimin
completely the qualitative aspect of motive force.27
Ibn Rush had formulated this problem in Physica in the follow
manner. He first postulated both possibilities and then chose one as b
more correct. Here is how he conceived the problem: On the one ha
motion differs from "perfection" attained as a result of the motion onl
degree, not in essence; thus from this standpoint, motion belongs to the sam
category as the goal to which it is directed, since motion is nothing but
gradual creation of the "perfection" in question. On the other hand, one
consider motion to be the process by which the "perfection" is attained; in
respect, motion is a genus unto itself, since the "way to the thing" (via ad r
is different from the "thing" itself. Thus considered, motion actu
represents a special category. Ibn Rushd then states that the second opinion
more popular but the first is more correct.28
In contrast, new metaphysics of the seventeenth century was to constru
a mechanical "world of lifeless matter, incessant local motion, and rand
collision," to use David Lindberg's eloquent expression.29 The new metaphysi
thus "... stripped away the sensible qualities so central to Aristotelian natura
philosophy, offering them second-class citizenship, as secondary qualities, o
even reducing them to the status of sensory illusions."
For the explanatory capabilities of form and matter, it offered the size, shape, a
motion of invisible corpuscles—elevating local motion to a position
preeminence among the categories of change and reducing all causality t
efficient and material causality. And for Aristotelian teleology, which discover
purpose within nature, it substituted the purposes of a creator God, imposed o
nature from the outside.30
To be sure, the Islamic scientific tradition had a contribution in th

process that led to the emergence of the Medieval European scientific tradit
which viewed nature from a perspective that was not wholly alien to Isla
perspectives. The overlap was never complete, as is natural for any tw
distinct civilizations but, nevertheless; there was a broad sphere
commonality in the way the two traditions viewed nature. But this sha
perspective was short-lived and as the Middle Ages gave way to Renaissa
27 Anneliese Maier "The Nature of Motion" in On the Threshold of Exact Science, 21-39.
28 Averroes, Aristotelis stagiritae de hysico auditu libri octo cum Averrois cordubensis vari
eosdem commentaries, vol. 4 of Aristotelis stagiritae omnia quae extant opera, Juntas Ven
1550, cited by Anneliese Maier, On the Threshold of Exact Science, tr. Steven D. Sargent., 25.
29 David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, 362.
30 Ibid.

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MUZAFFAR IQBAL
538
and Medieval science to the seventeenth century the Scientific Revolution,

common area between the Islamic scientific tradition and the new science
emerging in Europe rapidly shrank and finally there remained nothing of that
old commonality.
The breach thus produced was only to widen with time. The inner
dynamics of the post-Renaissance European civilization, the abandonment of
the essential natures of qualities—which were considered to be an integral part
of matter in the Islamic as well as in the Greek scientific traditions—emphasis
on the geometric properties of corpuscles (shape, size, motion) and finally the
mathematization of nature at an unprecedented scale was to produce a final
cleavage with whatever was received from the Islamic scientific tradition.
Thus prior to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, there
was a common universe and a common language of discourse between the
sciences that were emerging in Europe and those that had developed in the
Islamic civilization. But this common universe was rent asunder, once and for
all, as Professor Nasr has eloquently stated in his seminal work, Religion and
the Order of Nature:
It was this common universe of discourse that was rent asunder by the rise of
modern science as a fesult of which the religious view of the order of nature,
which is always based on symbolism, was reduced either to irrelevance or to a
matter of mere subjective concern, which made the cosmic teachings of religion
to appear as unreal and irrelevant.31
In the same work, Professor Nasr clearly traces the point of cleavage
between the received material and the new science:
From the idea of cosmic order and laws created by God through His Will and
applicable to both men and nature to the idea of "laws of nature" discoverable
completely by human reason and usually identified with mathematical laws,
divorced from ethical and spiritual laws, there is a major transformation that
played a central role in the rise of modern science. This new idea of laws of
nature also eclipsed the earlier Christian understanding of the subject, although
later theologians tried to "Christianize" the seventeenth-century scientific
concept of laws of nature. Interestingly enough, such an event did not take place
in other civilizations with a long scientific tradition such as the Chinese, Indian,
and Islamic, and this is of great significance in the parting of ways between the
modern West and other civilizations as far as the understanding of the order of
nature and its religious significance are concerned.32
31 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Religion and the Order of Nature (New York: Oxford University Press,
1996), 129
32 Ibid., 133

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ISLAM AND MODERN SCIENCE: FORMULATING THE QUESTIONS c^9
ΠΙ
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ISLAMIC SCIENTIFIC TRADITION
Chaucer (ca. 1340-1400) tells us in The Canterbury Tales, that his Do

Physic:
Well knew he the olde Esculpius

And Deyscorides, and eek Rufus,
Olde Ypocras, Haly and Galyen,
Serpion, Razis and Avicen,
Averrois, Damascien and Constantyn,
Bernard and Gatesden and Gilbertyn.iJ
Out of the fourteen authorities quoted, there are five Greek34, seven
Muslims, one French and two Englishmen. Written in the 1390s by a man
who was a public servant, a courtier and a diplomat trusted by three successive
English kings—Edward ΙΠ (1312-1377), Richard Π (1367-1400) and Henry IV
(1366-1413) — these tales, told by a group of about thirty pilgrims, reflect the
general status of these men and an appraisal of their contributions to the
Medieval Ages.
But within a century, that appraisal was going to change. Islam and
Muslims were going to be cast out of the European memory as major players
in the advancement of science and their role was to be delegated to the second
class citizenship—a position that was to remain firmly entrenched in Western
scholarship for almost five hundred years and only yield to a revised appraisal
toward the end of the twentieth century.35
The European Renaissance attempted to rebuild a civilization based on its
antiquity but without taking note of all that had been achieved between the
loss of its classical heritage and its recovery, through a route that favoured
Plato over Aristotle, atomism of Epicurus and Lucretius in preference to
Aristotle's qualitative matter. It was this fascination of establishing direct
relationship with its own antiquity that led Renaissance philosophers and
scientists to discover pre-Socratic and Pythagorean traditions. The task of
reconstruction of science was proceeding in an atmosphere which was hostile
33 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979), Π:
429.
34 Including one mythical

35 Even now, the true appreciation of Muslim contribution to sciences remain sketchy and
writers like Toby Huff continue to present accounts of science in which Muslim contributions
appear marginal and cosmetic. See, his The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the
West.

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I^Q MUZAFFAR IQBAL
to Islam and Muslims and thus r

the European Translation Movem
a large body of sophisticated wor
This reappraisal of the Muslims
result of major shifts in Europea
philosophical foundations of t
fifteenth century. Plato had rep
and mathematics had acquired t
for almost a century, it was goin
relation to astronomy. Thus it
scholarly Polish priest, Nichola
demands of mathematical ele
universe—as the harbinger of
placing the sun at the centre of
be derived from such a constru
circles within circles, or epicy
planets to explain their heavenly
It was this imaginative leap tha
al-Haytham, Abü 'Ubayd al-Jüz
Dln al-'Urdl (d. 664/1266), Ibn a
to take, though he came very clo
Muslim astronomers.37 In fa
Neugebauer's Mathematical Astro
has become impossible for a
Copernicus and Muslim astr
associated with the Maragha scho
36 Already in the fourteenth century,

Rushd in Limbo, the First Circle of H
Aeneas, Caesar, Aristotle, Plato, Orphe
God, in perpetual desire, though not
Inferno, trans. Mark Musa (New Yor
placed the Prophet Muhammad (and 'A
whose mutilated and bloody shades, ma
bemoan their painful lot. See Ibid., 326
and torn!/In front of me, and weeping,
37 See for example, George Saliba, H
University Press, 1994), especially the a
Also see, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, An Intr
State University of New York Press,
Bïrûnï in which al-Bïrûnï states; "I hav
SijzL I liked it very much and praised h
some to the effect that the motion we s
sky. By my life, it is a problem difficul
38 New York: Springer, 1984.

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541
out by Swerdlow and Neugebauer who referred to Copernicus as "the las

the Maragha astronomers". Both Copernicus and his predecessors were dealin
with the same problem and Copernicus used the same theorem that was firs
invented by al-'Urdl to reform Ptolemaic model for the upper plan
Copernicus also had access to another theorem, now called after "T
Couple" after the name of its inventor, Naslr al-Dïn Tûsï (d. 597/1201
672/1274).39
It is important to note that in their criticism of Ptolemaic astronom
both Copernicus and his Muslim predecessors were concerned with a cen
issue in the philosophy of science. Both objected to Ptolemaic model on
grounds that any system of "science must be inherently consistent, and
premises must always have the same meaning throughout its development".
In this particular case, if a sphere is a physical body with certain properties, a

was accepted by Ptolemy and all medieval astronomers after him, then th
sphere cannot, through the mechanism of an equant or the like, be made to m
in a mathematical system in a manner that is not consistent with its properties
a sphere. The original accepted notion of a sphere is that the sphere is capable
uniform motion in place around an axis thai passed through its center. Th
notion would no longer make sense if the axis was later assumed to pass throug
a point other than the center.41
This was the objection raised by Ibn al-Haytham in his monumental wor
Shukuk 'alä Batlamüs.n The weight of centuries which prevented Copern
from publishing his theory for several years,43 also prevented 'Urdí, who sta
that he was afraid of publishing his astronomical theory because it was
different from what was commonly accepted and that he held on to
theory for several years before he published it.44
When Copernicus finally decided to published his book, D
revolutionibus orbium coelestium,4b in 1543, he had only a few days to live
39 G. Saliba, History of Arabie Astronomy, 29, where he mentions the work of Neugebauer w
established the fact that diagrams representing Tusi Couple were found in the manusc
which were accessible to Copernicus.
40 Ibid., 27.
41 Ibid.
42 See, 'Abd al-Hamid Sabrä and Nabil Shehäbi, al-Shtikük 'ala Batlamyüs (Cairo: National
Library Press, 1971), quoted in G. Saliba, History of Arab Astronomy, 251.
43 He had conceived his heliocentric system as early as 1520s but did not publish it until 1543.
44 See, Mu'ayyid al-Dïn al-'Urdï, Kitâb al-Hay'a, The Astronomical Works of Mu'ayyid ai-Din al
'Urdí, ed., G. Saliba (Beirut, no publisher mentioned, 1990), 340, quoted by G. Saliba, History of
Arab Astronomy, TJ.
45 On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres.

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542 MUZAFFAR IQBAL
fact, a copy of the published wor

Frauenburg on the very last da
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) a
Copernican thought to its logi
even astonished Copernicus. Co
but he had done so through a ref
Ptolemaic and Aristotelian; by
careers, the limited reformation
of the accepted framework of
revolution and the beginning of
two centuries to complete but on
forever the way human beings
being.
This radical revolution in science produced an unbridgeable chasm

between the concepts of nature in Islam and in modern science. It happened
gradually, within the intellectual climate of Europe and through the
interaction of a vast number of direct and indirect influences. These included
invention of various powerful instruments and tools, construction of machines
and an unprecedented rise in Europe's military and naval power, vast
improvements in hydraulics, metallurgy, mining, agriculture and the use of
printing press to rapidly reproduce results of new science for quick
dissemination to an increasing receptive and enlarging readership.
The birth of modern science in Europe was certainly not a process that
occurred in a vacuum; it happened in a social and historical context, within a
fixed geographical area and within a cultural and religious tradition. In
addition to the translation movement already mentioned, there were many
other factors— some outside the area of natural sciences—that contributed to
the birth of modern science in Europe. These range from the foundation of
institutions such as scientific societies47 and universities—which became home
to a systematic study of nature—to the appearance of a new star in 1572 (a
supernova, as we call it now) which was observed and reported by Tycho
Brahe (1546-1601). Indeed, the very large number of factors that went into the
46 Note that later theories about fear of persecution by Church as being a reason for hesitation
of publishing his work hold no weight in the light of abundant evidence which shows that
Copernicus had in fact circulated his work in manuscript form as early as 1514; the manuscript
was then called De hypothesibus motuum coelestium a se constitutes commentariolus ("A
Commentary on the Theories of the Motions of Heavenly Objects from Their Arrangements");
he gave lectures on his theory in Rome in 1533 before Pope Clement VE, who approved, and a
formal request was made to Copernicus to publish his theory in 1536. See, "Copernicus" in The
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed.(Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1985), 16: 814-15
47 One of the first to be founded was the one at Naples in 1560, by Giambattista della Porta.

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543
birth and subsequent development of modern science are imp

enumerate for these are part of the currents that give birth to civiliz
Some of these currents remain underground, others are easier to note
others work indirectly. For the purpose of this article, which is p
concerned with understanding the ways in which one can legitimat
the relationship between Islam and modern science, we need not go in
details. However, we do need to briefly mention some of the more im
developments during and after the seventeenth century which f
removed modern science from its medieval roots and which changed t
foundations on which the study of nature was to be based.
The new science of the seventeenth century was based on the mech
philosophy which perceived nature as constructed of hard, impe
particles. All bodies were made of these particles and hence they must p
all behave in a similar manner; there was no distinction between the h
spheres and the sublunar world as Galileo was himself to see, with
eyes in 1609 through his new telescope that had been constructe
tenfold magnification. Galileo claimed that he could not divorce a body
its primary properties which, he held, were size, shape, quantity and
though he could imagine away taste, colour and smell, which
secondary qualities.
Thus a mélange of fundamentally new assumptions had to be a
before the new science could take roots. Along with this shif
revolution in epistemology; it was the new science, with all its powerf
of discovering nature that held the supreme authority. If scriptural t
in conflict with what the new science discovered, then they h
reinterpreted and Galileo himself earnestly initiated this process. In h
of 1615 to Madam Christina of Lorraine, the Grand Duchess of T
"Concerning the Use of Biblical Quotations in Matters of Scie
reinterprets Joshua 10: 12-13 in the light of his own discov
emphasizing the fact that the verse 10: 13 tells us that the sun stood st
midst of the heavens. He then argues, in a most persuasive manner, th
command Sun, stand thou still, stand thou still, must have been issued
the end of the day because had it been in the early part of the day
would have no need to request the miracle to pursue victory in battle
had been near the meridian, either it would have been needless to
miracle, or it would have been sufficient merely to have prayed f
retardation".48 And finally, he proves that the verse can be best unde
"in agreement with the Copernican system, we place the sun in the 'm
48 Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, trans., Stillman Drake (New York: Anchor B
214

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MUZAFFAR IQBAL
that is, in the center—of the celestial orbs and planetary rotations, as it is m
necessary to do".49 He then goes on to make the epistemological leap:
As regard to other scriptural passages which seem to be contradictory to

opinion, I have no doubt that if the opinion itself were known to be true
proven, those very theologians who, so long as they deem it false, hold th
passages to be incapable of harmonious exposition with it, would fi
interpretations for them which would agree very well, and especially if t
would add some knowledge of astronomical science to their knowledge
divinity.50
In spite of these pre-emptive measures, Galileo could not save himself

from the condemnation of the Congregado Sanctae Inquistitionis which
condemned the proposition "Sol est centrum mundi..." (The sun is the center
of the universe) in 1616. But by then Galileo, humanist, artist, experimenter,
inventor, scientist and courtier had an international fame and his defense was
not for one of his theories but for experimental science itself and for the right
of the scientists to study nature as it was—a congregate of bodies made up of
matter, shape, size and motion. Galileo's self-defence was bold, confident, even
aggressive. "First they have endeavored to spread the opinion that such
propositions in general are contrary to the Bible and are consequently
damnable and heretical". He wrote to the Grand Duchess Christina, "...they
had no trouble in finding men who would preach damnability and heresy of
the new doctrine from their pulpits with unwonted confidence, thus doing
impious and inconsiderate injury not only to that doctrine and its followers
but to all mathematics and mathematicians in general.51
But Galileo's public condemnation could not stop new science; all it did
was to drive it out of Italy into the Protestant world which had a particular
favourable attitude toward the ideology of opposition to the power of Roman
Church and its clergy and support for Copernicanism as well as a mechanism
for rapid dissemination of new scientific knowledge without the fear of
Inquisition.
It will be useful for our purpose to conclude this section by pointing out
the social utility of the new science which was best articulated by the Lord
Chancellor of England, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) who conceived a grand
plan to put the new science in the service of the empire. With Bacon, we enter
a new orbit of utility of science: from discovery of nature's secrets to
49 Ibid., 214.
50 Ibid., 215.
51 Ibid., 177.

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command over nature, of course, to the glory of God but for the relie
man's state.
Bacon had an enormous influence on the course of European science and

it is no wonder that the French encyclopaedists, led by Diderot and
d'Alembert, invoked the memory and ideals of Bacon in the first Encyclopeie
(1751)—the most impressive assemblage of knowledge at that time. It is not an
exaggeration to state that Bacon's vast practical programme made science a
powerful tool in the hands of empire builders and though the Baconian vision
was challenged by his own countrymen who wanted science to be much
greater than a convenient and practical handmaiden for the empire builders, it
continued to inspire builders, reformers and industrialists while its opponents
gave a second impetus to science through what came to be known as
Newtonianism.
Born on the Christmas day of the same year in which Galileo had died on
January 8th, Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was to give a definite shape to a vast
ensemble of scientific laws which could be tested by mechanical devices. But
more than that, Newtonian synthesis offered a powerful alternative to a
variety of belief systems. The assimilation of Newtonian ideas was a rapid
process and Newton's influence was not restricted to sciences only. With the
publication of his enormously influential Principia (1687), he was able to
produce a synthesis of thought which affected all realms.
Of course, there were many other factors at work but the "age of
enlightenment" was to usher Europe into ?. new phase of its relationship with
nature. It was an age populated by freethinkers, heretics, pantheists and by
those who proclaimed nature as the object of their worship and those who
conceived God as a clockmaker.
In making possible the shift toward this world and away from the next, the new
science from Descartes to Newton offered a radically altered picture of nature.
Science made nature lawful, and as the definition of creation changed so too did
the human conception of the Creator. A new religious outlook was being
invented. "Natural religion" and "natural theology" became passwords to a
distinctive religiosity. Miracles and divine interventions became rarer; being
religious began to mean thought rather than prayer. A vision of order and
harmony, God's work, replaced biblical texts and stories, God's word. But in the
hands of freethinkers science also permitted the first articulation of a coherent
universe without any creator. The roots our uniquely modern ability to examine
nature and society as self-contained entities and to offer explanations totally
natural, that is entirely human, lie in the crisis of the late seventeenth century. By
the end of the eighteenth century philosophers began to articulate branches of

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MUZAFFAR IQBAL
546
knowledge focused on society, government, and the human psyche. T

beginning of modern social sciences lie in their efforts.52
It is in the Age of Enlightenment that we see the final transformation

Western science which would establish many beliefs as commonplace a
universal axioms: the belief in the progressive nature of scientific knowled
its absolute superiority over all other modes of knowing, its heroic rol
understanding and mastering nature, its right to be totally free and its belie
its own supreme utility. From Galileo to Gassendi and from Descartes
Boyle, an array of European scientists contributed to bring science to t
supreme status.
To be sure, it was not a sudden process. It took almost two hundred yea
to solidify. But each development added to the previous and slowly a g
edifice was built which would command almost universal admiration. A
the way, one can identify major players who transformed the received Gre
and Islamic science to the extent that they became unrecognizab
Copernicus' book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium53 (1543) had me
produced a set of elegant mathematical solutions which placed sun at
centre of the universe, with earth revolving around it; he was still wor
within the Aristotelian tradition which constructed its celestial spheres fro
material which was different from the mundane four elements that compo
the corruptible bodies of the lower world; he was also wedded to the cir
motion, which together with the incorruptible substance of the phys
heavens made the crystalline spheres. But Kepler had the benefit of t
indefatigable observer, Tycho Brahe, who had left reams of careful data
Kepler, who became his assistant in 1600, just a year before his death. And
new star of 1572 and the comet of 1577 had helped. Both were located beyo
the realm of moon and they proved that the heavens were not immuta
after all.
Kepler abandoned the notion of pure crystalline structure of the heavens

and formulated a new set of questions, based on a celestial mechanics—founded
on the same principles as that of terrestrial mechanics—a mechanics that began
to replace the purely kinematic treatment of the heavens that had been the
practice for more than two thousand years; heavens were now made of the
same mundane material, as everything else in the cosmos.
This was a fundamental shift which led to even more fundamental shifts
in basic assumptions of astronomy. Soon, the circular motion was abandoned
52 Margaret C. Jacob, Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997), 74. See also, John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical
Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), chapters 5 and 6.
53 "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres".

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ISLAM AND MODERN SCIENCE: FORMULATING THE QUESTIONS ^j
and eventually a new model of the universe was conceived that not only
transformed the physical universe of Greek and Islamic science but also raised
a totally new set of philosophical and religious questions.
This new cosmos was constructed on the basis of a mechanical
philosophy which emerged in the scientific circles of western Europe during
the first half of the seventeenth century; no one man created it. It was a slow
and organic process, completely European in its origin that evolved in reaction
to the Renaissance Naturalism. Its initial traces can already be seen in Kepler
and Galileo, it gained fuller expression in the writings of such men as Marin
Mersenne (1588-1648),54 Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) and Thomas Hobbes
(1588-1679) and René Descartes (1596-1650) provided mechanical philosophy
the philosophical foundations it so urgently needed in order to completely
replace Aristotelian cosmos.
Descartes was able to provide a metaphysical foundation for natural
philosophy which elevated its status to such a degree that it needed no other
justification. All reality, Descartes argued, is composed of two substances
something characterized by the act of thinking and the material realm, the
essence of which is extension. Here we have the famous Cartesian duality, Res
Cogitans and res extensa, defined and distinguished in such a way that they
stand alone, separate and without any need of connection; two independent
and autonomous realms, two absolutely separate entities. To the thinking
substance, one cannot ascribe any properties characteristic of matter
extension, place or motion; and the material realm was totally devoid of any
and all physic characteristics. The very nomenclature used by Descartes served
to emphasize that physical nature is inert and devoid of any source of activity
of its own: the passive participle extensa for matter, in contrast to the active
participle cogitans, which he used to characterize the realm of spirit.
In this reconstruction, the new cosmos was constructed of lifeless and
inert chunks of matter, devoid of any teleology, a bleak and purposeless
physical entity, which was to become the basis of modern science.
In an immense effort to attain certitude, Descartes tried to rid himself of
every trace of received knowledge by a process of systematic doubt, discarding
any proposition that was dubious until he was left with nothing, but the solid
rock of the simplest proposition for which he was to become famous, that
which he could not doubt: cogito ergo sum.55
54 Mersenne's discovery Mersenne numbers is considered to have been a pioneering effort to

derive a formula that would represent all prime numbers, although Mersenne numbers actually
represent only some primers, their formula provided inspiration for advances theories of
numbers. An ardent supporter of Descartes, he held a teaching post at the convent
L'Annonciade, Paris.
55 "I think, therefore, I am".

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MUZAFFAR IQBAL
548
The cogito became the foundation of a new edifice of knowledge f

which Descartes reasoned for everything: from the existence of God to
existence of the physical world. The physical world, which his senses
perceived had not stood the test of scrutiny; senses were the first deceivers
along with them had gone all sensory data. But now, he could reconstruct
physical world as an entity outside himself but with a very impor
condition: the physical world has no inherent necessity to be what the sen
depicted. A body is red or hot, not because it contains the quality of redne
heat, as Aristotle had argued; it only appears to be red or hot becaus
project our sensations on it. In fact, bodies are merely composed of particl
matter in motion and all their apparent qualities, except for extension, wh
is inherent in matter, are merely sensations excited by bodies in mo
impinging on the nerves.
In one defining year, 1637, Descartes published three fundamental t
which established the mechanical philosophy of nature on solid founda
Discours de la Méthode (Discourse on Method), essays on La dioptrique (Diop
and Les meteors (Meteorology); this was followed by Principia philosop
(Principles of Philosophy) in 1644.
One of the fundamental aspects of the new natural philosophy was
insistence that the physical reality only consists of particles of matte
motion and hence all phenomena of nature are produced by these particles
matter in motion. But where is the source of motion? Since particles
inert, devoid of any qualities, they could not impart motion to themse
The only answer was to assume that the origin of motion lay with Go
created matter in the beginning and set it in motion. This notion
fundamental implications for the subsequent science and religion discourse
we will see shortly. But let us note here that this conception raised an
question: granted that God imparted the initial motion, but what keeps ma
in motion? The mechanical philosophy provided the simple answer: nothing
required to keep matter in motion; motion is a state, just like any other st
in which matter finds itself, it will continue as long as nothing exte
operates to change it. Motion can be transferred from one body to an
through impact, but motion remains indestructible in itself.
Descartes unsuccessfully attempted to analyze impact in term
conservation of the total quantity of motion. His was a plenum univ
because he equated matter with extension, it required that every space be f
with matter; there could be no vacuum. But this raised the fundame
objection: if there is no empty space, how is it possible for any body to m
at all. Every moving body moves, Descartes replied, into the space th
vacates, just like the rim of a wheel turning on its own axis. This gave rise

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his Vortex theory which tried to replace the crystalline spheres

dominated the physical accounts of heavens for half a century.
To be fully established, the new science had to wait for the arr
formidable experimental foundations—a process that had already start
Galileo and his telescope. It matured during the second half of the sev
century through the work of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), who was pr
place, Rouen, which was a leading centre for glass manufacture and at
which was ripe for bearing fruit for demonstrating the power of mec
philosophy. In Pascal, mechanical philosophy found the explanatory po
experimental proof which was impossible to deny.
In one of the most celebrated experiments in the history of scienc
was able to demonstrate the explanatory power of experimental
through the famous experiment on mount Puy de Dôme, performe
brother-in-law who lived in central France, near the mountain. Pa
asked his brother-in-law to leave one barometer at the foot of the mou
a control and take the other to the summit. Of course, the heigh
barometer at the summit dropped, as foretold by Pascal.
The experimental method found more adherents. With the inve
air pump in the 1650s, Robert Boyle (1627-1691) could demonstra
reciprocal relationship of pressure and volume, Boyle's law—which pro
simple quantitative relationship as well as a mechanical explanation
that was to accelerate the emergence of modern science and com
fruition in the work of Isaac Newton who carries the singular disti
bringing to a close the scientific revolution of the seventeenth cen
ushering in the new era of the 18th century physical sciences whi
"provide the framework of scientific thought in the western world for
two hundred years".56
A detailed exposition of Newtonian genius is outside the scope
paper. Suffice it to say that in Newton, western science found the syn
needed to usher a new era in which its quest for mathematization
and its need of a philosophical system to support the mathematize
would find a unique answer.
His Principia, first published in 1687 and revised and enlarged in 1
1726, opens with basic definitions and the three laws of motion and co
the work started by Galileo, Descartes and Christian Huygens (1629
Book II, Newton turned his attention toward Descartes' system of
and showed that a vortex could never yield a system of planets wh
move according to Kepler's three laws; moreover, a vortex could not be
sustaining system, it needs an external force. Having destroyed C
56 Richard S. Westfall, The Construction of Modem Science (Cambridge: Cambridge

Press, 1977), 139

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550 MUZAFFAR IQBAL
system, Newton constructed

universal gravitation which states
all bodies, proportional to the sev
The universe thus reconstructed,
which attracted each other wi
distance between them.
Having postulated a universal

explained natural phenomenon ra
of the motion of moon through
caused gravitational attraction?
had to have a mechanical caus
criticized for injecting the sam
before the scientific revolution
Newton made an attempt to pr
Queries (number 17 through 24).5
an aether pervading the universe
was itself made of particles.
But Newton had another side

philosophers, Newton consider
realities and he referred them di
Scholium", added to the second
Newton felt obligated to state hi
Appended to the end of Book

reassertion of a metaphysical doc
the western science as it mar
Revolution in the nineteenth cen
Acknowledged as the greates

admired and respected by every
become the dying voice of a ci
moorings. Reminiscent of al-G
existence is ontologically depende
and everlasting:
This most beautiful system of the

from the counsel and dominion of
fixed stars are the centers of othe
wise counsel, must be all subject
light of the fixed stars is of the s
every system light passes into all
57 Sir Isaac Newton, Opticks (New York

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ISLAM AND MODERN SCIENCE: FORMULATING THE QUESTIONS ^γ
fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed
those systems at immense distances one from another.58
Newton was also deeply interested in the alchemy—a lifelong passion

which took him to the heart of issue: the relationship of the new science with
God. He was also a Unitarian who had investigated "the history of
Corruption of Scripture" by going through primary sources. Moreover, he felt
that the "corruption of doctrine, which called for the corruption of Scripture
to support it, occurred in the fourth century, when the triumph of Athanasius
over Arius imposed the false doctrine of the trinity on Christianity".59 Central
to the issue of trinitarianism was the adjective homoousios, which was used to
assert that the Son is consubstantial (*homoousios) with the Father. In an earlier
sketch of the history of the church in the fourth century, he described how
the opponents of Arius in the Council of Nicaea wanted to base their
argument solely on scriptural citations as they rejected Arianism and affirmed
their own convictions that the son is eternal uncreated logos. In any case,
Newton was convinced that there is only one God, who sustains the world of
nature:
This Being governs all tilings, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord ove
and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God... He is eternal
and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, his duration reaches from
eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity to infinity; he governs all things,
and knows all things that are or can be [known]. He is not eternity or infinity,
but eternal and infinite; he is not duration or space, but he endures and is
present. He endures for ever, and is every where present; and by existing always
and every where, he constitutes duration and space... As a blind man has no idea
of colours, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives
and understands all things. He is utterly void of all body and bodily figure, and
can therefore neither be seen, nor heard, nor touched; nor ought he to be
worshipped under the representation of any corporeal thing. We have ideas of his
attributes, but what the real substance of any thing is we know not. In bodies, we
see only their figures and colours, we hear only the sounds, we touch only their
outward surfaces, we smell only the smells, and taste the savours; but their
inward substances are not to be known either by our senses, or by any reflex act
of our minds: much less, then, have we any idea of the substance of God. We
know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final
58 Isaac Newton, The Principia, trans., Andrew Motte (New York: Prometheus Books, 1995),
439-443.
59 Richard S. Westhalt, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1980), 314.

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j. ,_2 MUZAFFAR IQBAL
causes; we admire him for his perfectio

account of his dominion...60
Post Newtonian Science
Western science after Newton took a road that was to deepen the chasm
between religion and science. The so-called biological revolution which
completed the modern scientific outlook was decidedly based on a doctrine
which pushed religion out of the foundations of western science, leaving
theologians with a daunting task and scientists with a degree of freedom and
prestige they had never enjoyed before. Separated into two independent
realms, henceforth, religion and science were supposed to live within their
own spheres. This remained the dominant view for most of the nineteenth
century. The biological revolution of the nineteenth century was to complete
the process initiated in the seventeenth century and produced the worldview
now associated with modern science. The work of Darwin on biological
evolution, of Mendel on genetics and of Schleiden and others on the cell
theory transformed the biological sciences, producing a final cleavage with the
Middle Ages and all that had gone before in the world of science. Henceforth,
fixity of species was to be scorned at just like the fixity of the earth and "the
belief that the Creator must have personally attended to the fabrication of
every kind of diatom and bramble was no less primitively animistic than the
belief that His angels governed the revolutions of the planetary orbs".61
• This view did not go unchallenged. The mechanistic biologists had so
clearly and decisively pushed the boundaries of discourse between religion and
science that they "met the full force of ecclesiastical wrath".62 But the
nineteenth century biology was not working in isolation; it had, as its solid
foundation, a vast amount of technical data and a scientific methodology that
had been already established. It built its monumental edifice on the basis of
work done by Leeuwenhoek and Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694), on the
systematic and careful categorizations of Ray and Linnaeus. Unlike Aristotle
the zoologist and Theophrastus the botanist, whose purpose had been to
investigate the functioning of living organism for their philosophical ends, the
biologists and botanists of the nineteenth century were interested in their
subjects for completely different reasons; they were also dealing with an
enormous amount of data63 which needed to be catalogued and once it was
catalogued, there arose internal need to devise theories, based on this data.
60 Issac Newton, Principia, 440-41.

61 A. Rupert Hall, The Revolution in Science 1500-1750, 331.
62 Ibid.
63 Aristotle or Theophrastus never knew more than about five hundred distinct kinds of animals
or plants, compared to some six thousand distinct plants which were known and had been

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The work of Muslim scientists had greatly enlarged the scope of zo

and botany from what it was during the Greek period but almost all w
zoology and botany in the Islamic scientific tradition had a definit
the overall tradition: herbs were studied for their medicinal uses and
of nature and behaviour of animals was carried out within the field of
cosmography, which had a distinct purpose such as the highlighting of the
wonders of creation, for example the work of Abü Yahyä Zakariyyä ibn
Muhammad al-QazwIni's (ca. 600/1203—682/1283), The Wonders of Creation.
This is not to say that there were not independent works devoted to single
subjects such as agriculture and zoology and botany but they all had a purpose
beyond their own subject or were part of a general scheme which extended
beyond the range of their own field. For example, the famous work of al-Jähiz
(ca. 159/776-255/868/869), Kitäb al-Hayawän, (The Book of Animals) is a
literary work meant to entertain, though it contains a huge amount of
zoological data and groups animals into various groups.64 Al-Jähiz draws upon
Aristotle's Historia animalium as well as his own scientific studies to describe
large mammals as well as birds and insects (such as flies, gnats, scorpions and
lice). "He distinguishes running, flying, swimming and crawling animals and
opposes the carnivores to the herbivores. He likewise differentiates doglike
animals and catlike animals, and ruminates. He divides birds into the
categories of birds of prey, defenseless birds, and small birds".65
Another feature of al-Jähiz's work is his description of the process of
adaptation of animals; he accepts the possibility of spontaneous generation of
some animals, which led some twentieth century Muslims to conclude that he
was a forerunner of Darwin.66 The zoological treatises of 'Abd al-Malik ibn
Qurayb al-Asma'i (second/eighth century) also contained information on
human anatomy as well on the camel, the sheep, the horse and many other
animals. Al-Jähiz was translated into Latin, as were many other zoological and
botanical works by Muslim scientists. These include Tähir al-Marwazï's (d. ca.
514/712) The Nature of Animals and The Lives of Animals by Kamäl al-Dïn
Muhammad ibn Müsä al-Damiri (742/1341—808/1405) which "is the most
complete source of knowledge of zoology in Islam, and one of the best sources
described by 1600; this number trebled during the following century. See, Rupert A. Hall, The
Revolution in Science 1500-1750, 336.
64 See, M. Plessner, "al-Jähiz, Abü 'Uthmän 'Amr Ibn Bahr," in Charles C. Gillipsie, Dictionary
of Scientific Biography [henceforth DSB] (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1980), 7: 63-65.
65 Ibid.
66 This erroneous opinion has made its rounds among many twentieth century Muslims who
have tried to see in al-Jâhiz a Darwinian precursor. See, for example, the twelve lectures
delivered by Prof. Hamidullah at the Islamia university, Bahawalpur, translated into English by
Afzal Iqbal as The Emergence of Islam, Lectures on the Development of Islamic World-view,
Intellectual Tradition and Polity (Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 1993), 143-44.

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MUZAFFAR IQBAL
of its folklore".67 This work was translated into Latin during the seventeenth
century. But these works, like those of the Medieval European biologists dealt
with their subject mater within a metaphysics which was to be replaced
gradually but decisively and which was to produce a new biology and a new
worldview in the nineteenth century. But this, again, was a slow process.
Post-Newtonian world was a kaleidoscope of assumptions, methods,
theories and even contrasting and competing metaphysics. The central
question was over the roots of physical world. Did God create a self-sufficient
world, the best of all worlds, but self-sufficient and requiring no further
tinkering or did He need to tinker with the machine: Would a perfect God
create an imperfect world? Debates over these issues were carried out
throughout the eighteenth century as Newtonian mechanics was further
refined and rnathematized.68 Leibniz's (1646-1716) vis vívva (living force),
dynamical systems, fluid dynamics, the physics of elastic media, the theory of
conservation of living force, advocated by the Swiss mathematician Johann
Bernoulli (1700-1782) in his discussion of the collision of elastic bodies, and
the gradual separation and calculus from its purely physical and geometrical
roots—all contributed toward the eventual replacement of all qualitative
aspects of nature. In 1788, Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1813) published his
Analytical Mechanics in* which there was not a single figure. Lagrange boasted
in the preface that neither geometrical nor mechanical reasoning is necessary;
only algebraic operations subject to formal relationships between variable
were needed to explain mechanics.
The eighteenth century was to be called le siècle des lumieres, the century
of light, by the French. The term "enlightenment", first used by Immanuel
Kant (1724-1804) in 1785, was to become associated with this century and the
hallmark of this worldview as "reason" which became synonymous with the
laws of nature. God was to be known, not through His word, the revelation,
communicated to human beings by a prophet, but through His works,
Nature. And Nature could only be known through the new science, not
through the formal logic of the past. Nor was this approach restricted to
natural sciences. If Nature could be known through natural laws, human
nature could also be known through certain laws and if one were to
understand these laws, human condition could be vastly improved. Bacon had
already spoken of the supreme value of science as a means to improve human
welfare, the next step was to put science in service of society and state. This
was done through the establishment of scientific societies, which were
67 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1968), 113.
68 For example, it was after Newton's death that his second law of motion became F=ma (or in
differentials: F=md2x/dt2.

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patronized by absolute monarchies. The Royal Society and the Paris Acad
served as initial models on which Peter the Great (1672-1725) founded
academy in St. Petersburg and Fredrick the Great (1712-1786) reorganized th
Berlin Academy in 1743.
In addition to science, technology became the new tool of a vast
transforming concept: progress—that ubiquitous third word of
Enlightenment triad; the other two being natural law and reason. Though th
invention of Newcomen's (1663-1729) steam engine or James Watt's (173
1819) addition of a separate condensor to increase its efficiency had no dire
relationship with the development of the science of mechanics and have bee
shown to be independent innovations, springing purely from the mechanica
necessities of the machines, yet, the very idea of science in the service
society was instrumental in replacing the emphasis on an otherworldl
spiritual, transcendental goal of knowledge to this worldly prosperity, comfo
and ease; science was, henceforth, a way to material progress and it fou
many popularizers. Voltair's Letters on the English (1734), for example, show
how the past ages had been the ages of darkness and backwardness and h
the new science, the works of Bacon, Newton and others had unleashed
potentials, not only for understanding nature, but also about the nature
human beings themselves. Along with this new worldview, came its o
gospels. One such being Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690
John Locke (1632-1704).
Regarded as the father of empiricism, the doctrine that all our knowled
is derived from experience, Locke argued against Plato, Descartes and
scholastics that there is no innate ideas or principles. He supposed mind to b
like a white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas or essence, with
any innate concept of God. According to him, metaphysical rationalis
reasoning about that which cannot be experienced, is simply another- form
illusion. Natural laws can be discovered and understood by way of empir
reason; thus we can gain knowledge of God only through His laws; He is
author of nature, its First Cause—the clock-maker God. In this formulat
God was "becoming a footnote to the knowledge of nature. Others wo
eventually erase even that".69
David Hume (1711-1776) would do exactly that. The three books of h
Treatise of Human Nature, written in France during 1734-1737,70 wou
complete the work of empirical philosophy of Locke and Berkeley (1685
1753). Hume asserted that the so-called First Cause can never be experien
and hence cannot be assumed; he desired to build a theory of knowled
69 Anthony M. Alioto, A History of Western Science (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 198
262.
70 The first two were published in 1739, the third in 1740.

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556 MUZAFFAR IQBAL
strictly on the basis of experien

to be learnt from experience an
In France, the publication of
between 1751 and 1772 would a
scattered about within the reach
was to become the notion of
rational, universal, clock-like a
miraculous, ushered modern scie
convulsions of the French Rev
violence and expansion of Euro
distant corners of the world. Th
hand and that of Darwin on the
and life, like no other century b
The Great Chain of Being, tha
Islamic tradition as well as th
Likewise, the Aristotle's notio
growth of every individual creat
encountered problems. This id
established notion of the grand
the classification work of natur
ground.
The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) had introduced a
binomial system of naming, using genus and species, to identify the organism.
He was convinced that there were as many species as God had created in the
beginning. But as his students and disciples pillaged Europe and sent him more
and more plants which seemed to exhibit properties of hybrids, his conviction
became less firm.
Then came the enormous work of a Frenchman, Comte de Buffon (1707

1788), who published his thirty six volumes of Histoire naturelle, between 1749
and 1785, bringing into light an amazing and vivid description of the
wonderous diversity of nature, never seen before in such a comprehensive
manner. This natural history of living things suggested change, climatic effects,
departure of organism from the traits of their ancestors. Already in 1755, Kant
had suggested that the solar system might have evolved over time from matter
condensed and separated from the sun and in 1796 Laplace (1749-1827) had
developed his theory, called the nebular hypothesis, which postulated sun's
atmosphere had extended beyond the orbits of the planets and rings appeared
as a result of gravitational pull. According to this theory, in the beginning, the
earth was a fireball which cooled over time. Buffon calculated time required
for a body like earth to cool enough to support life and his figure was 74,000
but that was still not satisfactory. Buffon, then, thought in terms of epochs,

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rather than years—epochs could allow for gradual change, for apparen
extinction of some organic forms, degeneration of some species from other
and the disappearance of earlier forms. Fossils were thought to be remnants
the Universal Deluge which had submerged earth, according to the Bibl
accounts of Noah's Flood, which was the primary geological event of t
earth's history. By the time the eighteenth century closed, naturalists were
possession of fossils which had no obvious relationship to contempora
species. Buffon had written of gigantic mammoth bones, six times larger th
those of normal elephants.
The work of scientific revolution was completed by Darwin, not only in
the biological sciences but also by completing the philosophical revolu
that had accompanied it. We will have more to say about his contributio
the development of modern science but for now, suffice it to say that the
science was to dispense the ancient doctrine of teleology and replaced it wit
continuous variations, through natural selection. But Darwin did not spr
out of a vacuum; ground had been prepared for his arrival by a steady flow
discoveries and theories throughout the preceding centuries. The publica
of Zoonomia or the Laws of Organic Life (1794) by Erasmus Darwin (173
1802), Charles's Darwin's grandfather, suggested that organisms must adapt
the physical conditions in which they find themselves. Erasmus argued
sensations, hunger, sex, the need for security—all of these and many ot
factors played a role in the acquisition of new parts and modification
species. But it was left to his grandson, Charles, to demolish the now cracki
structure of the old worldview.
IV
THE TRIUMPH OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
Taken as a whole, modern science is a unique enterprise—a purely Eu

phenomenon that was to acquire an international character of unprecede
magnitude. Though ultimately a product of Western civilization, t
modern science and its more utilitarian offspring, technology, is e
sought by all cultures all over the earth. But more than this hung
modern science has produced in other civilizations and cultures, it is its
transforming force, that interests us here.
In its triumphal march during the last one hundred and fifty
modern science has been able to obliterate all other ways of exploring na
at least in a practical sense. One does not need years of research to verif
aspect of modern science: from Islamabad to Jeddah and from Beij
Niamey, contemporary scientific research is based on the same foundatio

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MUZAFFAR IQBAL
558
it is in any Western university or research laboratory. Obviously, the pres

of an NMR spectrometer in Karachi does not make it Islamic, just like
presence of thousands of Muslim scientists in European and North Ame
laboratories does not make their research Islamic science.
It is this extraordinary universality of modern science which makes it
unique and unprecedented phenomena in human history. The sh
magnitude of its reach, its ability to penetrate cultures as different as Isla
and Hindu, Chinese and those of the North American Aboriginal nations, h
no parallel in human history. The manner in which modern science has
able to obliterate all other ways of studying Nature from the face of earth
its irresistible appeal are unique to this modern enterprise which arose
small part of Europe in the seventeenth century and which has since been
to penetrate the whole living habitat.
But perhaps more wondrous is the fact that on a small part of this tin
planet, that orbits around a very ordinary star, in the suburbs of a galaxy
billion stars, which, in turn, is a very ordinary galaxy among millio
galaxies, there arose a science which was able to transcend culture
religious barriers and within a span of three centuries, change the way hu
beings lived, died, communicated, married, gave birth to children, prod
their food, clothing and housing and conducted other thousand and one dai
routines of their lives.
The fact that electrons, atoms and molecules on the one hand, and gear
levers and beams on the other, have become universally accepted word
which contemporary scientists and engineers as well as ordinary citizen
various nation-states communicate and conduct their daily business all
the world is indicative of the vast reach of the scientific enterprise. This as
of the universality of modern science is a fait accompli, whether one likes
not.
If history can be our guide, it does not seem possible to return to a

concept of matter, and ultimately of the whole universe, which is built upon
pre-seventeenth century notions of matter, space and time. Whatev
judgment we may choose to pass on modern science, there is no escape fr
it. Even in the domain of non-western medicine, where results of alterna
philosophies of human body and its maladies and treatments have be
effectively demonstrated, modern western medicine is rapidly replacin
traditional practices, causing an irreplaceable loss for the whole human race.
In its onward march, the structure of scientific knowledge has passe
through many revolutions in its various branches as well in its foundation
philosophies. For example, in a century-long, successful struggle, t
Copernican revolution was able to establish that the earth is not the stationar

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centre of the solar system and this scientific discovery was enough to s
very foundation of the belief system which was based on a geocentric s
But this was just the beginning. With Galileo, modern science n
discovered the use of a wonderful little tool, the telescope, it also ent
a structural revolution of its epistemology: henceforth, study of natu
be based on experiments. It is, ultimately, immaterial that Galileo d
fact go on the Leaning Tower of Pisa to perform his experiments in t
what was established was a principle which was as sound as any pri
be and Galileo did have a tool, his telescope from which he could see w
other human being had seen before: the satellites of Jupiter. Ga
established that acceleration creates force and that mass of an object m
by its weight on Earth must be identical with the mass inferred f
happens when it collides with other objects anywhere in the universe
it is accelerated by some force. This principle, known as the equ
principle—which was later to become one of the foundations of
theories of relativity—is one of the fundamental discoveries of moder
which changed the way human beings perceived objects.
Likewise, looking at the seventeenth century, one finds experi

discoveries by William Harvey (1578-1657) which were foundation
emergence of modern concepts of anatomy and blood circulation, just
Descartes' philosophical account of nature was foundation
understanding of nature which developed in the seventeenth cen
which was to affect subsequent centuries. Similarly, Newtonian
which set the agenda for modern science for the next two centuries,
merely an isolated and internal development in physics; it is a p
meditation on the nature of Nature, God, life and their mutual relatio
The transforming ability of modern science was in full force
eighteenth century—a century in which science seems to be preoccupi
electricity and magnetism on the one hand and invention of too
other. It was a century during which technological innovations would
change the way human beings lived at a scale never observed befo
engines, new and powerful telescopes, improved frictional machine
mechanical generation of electrical charges, the condenser f
accumulation and storage, and electroscope and electrometer f
detection and measurement. The eighteenth century also saw an in
preoccupation with quantification,71 standardization of instrume
71 For example, Coulomb's experimental proof that the forces between electrical ch
subject to the law of the inverse square; the law of variation of the force of a magnetic
distance, variation of the compass and its distribution was mapped in increasing det

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muzaffar iqbal
example, improvements in barometers and thermometers) and in

as hygrometer and wind-gauges. Likewise, nomenclature of mode
was further refined and standardized, new apparatus was inv
collection and reaction of gases. Most of all, the eighteenth centu
Europe an immense amount of observational and experimen
other parts of the world—a development made possible, to a larg
to improved navigational techniques. Individual and organiz
explored Africa, Asia, North American and the Pacific Ocean and
The use of new techniques in textile industry,72 application o

principles and technological tools in the construction of pub
buildings, roads, bridges, canals, lighthouses, extensive use
improved steam-engine in mines and water-works and, above
locomotives, steam-carriages and steam boats made their
transform the way human beings moved from one place to anot
But more important, for our purpose, is the combined affect

scientific developments and the corresponding changes in th
foundations of science which was to produce a century which wa
variously known as the century of Enlightenment, the Age of R
of Criticism and the Philosophical Century. It was a century w
the definite break with the past by focusing on this world
concentration that had never been observed in human h
produced an unprecedented confidence in the human reason to u
that there was to be understood in a world which operated on
an orderliness of Nature, without any magical or supernatural in
The next century produced even more fundamental change

first two decades of the nineteenth century, John Dalton (
established that all matter was made up of atoms, each kind
specific weight which differs from other atoms.73 By 1851,
Joule (1818-1889) had established his law of conservation of ener
introduction, in 1865, of the idea of entropy by Rudolf Claus
became the beginning of a vastly powerful concept which eve
and annual fluctuations were established, the magnetic dip was charted and at
to compare the intensities of the Earth's magnetic filed at various places on its s
72 The invention of Wyatt and Paul's spinning rollers, Arkwright's water-frame
looms.
73 Hydrogen atoms are the lightest, carbon atoms are roughly twelve tim
hydrogen atoms, etc. Dalton's papers have been collected by Hyde Wolla
Thomson as Foundations of the Atomic Theory, comprising papers and extrac
(Edinburgh: Alembic Club, 1969).
H That is: if disturbing influences are avoided, no energy is lost in the conversi
to another. This principle of conservation of energy was termed as
thermodynamics.

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known as the famous second law of thermodynamics.75 This led to

introduction of the idea of "arrow of time" into the mainstream of western
science which was to have far reaching influences through its interpretive
power which established that most physical systems evolve only in one
direction.
But perhaps the most important event in the history of nineteenth

century science is the formulation and articulation of the theory of evolution
of species by natural selection by Charles Darwin in his paper first presented
on the afternoon of July 1, 1858 by his friends, Charles Lyell (1797-1875) and
Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) in a meeting of the Linnaean Society.76
Darwin's paper was entitled "On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties;
and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of
Selection".77 The publication of Darwin's book, The Origin of Species by Means
of Natural Selection78 in 1859 and his second major work, The Descent of Man,
in 1871 were to transform the terms of debate about the place of human beings
in nature. In his second book, Darwin presented his "evidence" of the descent
of Man from some lower form (ch. I) along with a complete "mechanism" of
the "manner of development of man from some lower form" (ch. ΠΙ). By
emphasizing that human beings are part of nature, just like any other animal,
Darwin opened a chasm in the scientific and religious understanding of human
nature which continues to draw attention.
The nineteenth century, often called the Age of Certainty, was deeply
interested in the formulation of vast systems, universal theories and
explanations.79 Before the end of the century, Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) had
shown that existence of bacteria and their actions, he had formulated his germ
theory of infectious disease; Heinrich Hertz80 (1857-1894) had generated
75 Entropy is a measure of the degree to which the internal energy of an object is not accessible
for practical purposes, degree of internal disorder on an atomic scale. The second law of
thermodynamics states that other things being equal, there will be a tendency for the entropy or
the disorder of an isolated system to increase.
76 Linnean Society of London, named after the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778),
had as its members the leading botanists, zoologists and geologists in England.
77 In fact Lyell and Hooker presented two papers. One by Darwin and the other by Alfred
Russel Wallace (1823-1913). They appended a letter to the papers by "two indefatigable
naturalists" who had "independently and unknown to one another, conceived the same very
ingenious theory to account for the appearance and perpetuation of varieties and of specific
forms on our planet". See, Howard Mumford Jonesan and Bernarad I. Cohen, Science Before
Darwin (London: Andre Deutsch, 1963), 338.
78 First published on November 24,1859 by John Murray, London. All references to this work
are from Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (New York: Mentor Books, 1958).
79 For example, James Clerk Maxwell's one set of mathematical equations which described
electricity and magnetism, systems of classification of plants and animals, etc.
80 Then at Karlsruhe in Germany.

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^2 MUZAFFAR IQBAL
invisible Maxwell waves in th

Marconi (1874-1937) had fo
spanning the Atlantic Ocean
(1845-1923) had discovered a
human flesh but not bones, X
1908) in Paris identified the sam
first of several elements to be
before the close of the century
1906 Nobel Prize for Physics,
atoms were divisible. By the en
Ernest Rutherford (1871-193
from electrons and a nucleus
nucleus contained positively ch
Deeply interested in "Why"?
century formulated its answer
of physics were thus investi
further mathematized our n
physical constants. For example
energy radiated at a particula
Planck (1858-1947) proposed in
exists only as quanta; the great
quanta concerned. In 1905, E
certain minimum frequency o
metals or to make semicondu
Bohr (1885-1962) would rec
hydrogen, with Planck's discov
only in quanta. This would e
which always have a very preci
that electrons travel around th
around a star, except that only
with a well-defined energy; e
position of electrons from one
being the difference between t
(a ray of light or heat coming
indivisible quanta, each wi
phenomena, first advocated
substantiated by Maxwell in t
his second important paper on
radiation had to be both, a
corpuscles were called photon
81 Then working at Wiirtzburg in Bav

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(1875-1960) to propose that perhaps electrons (which had been th

corpusclars) might also have wavelike properties; by 1926, this had
generally accepted idea as experiments had proved it.
The crowning achievement of the first quarter of the twentieth c
was the independent work of Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) and
Schrödinger (1887-1961). Heisenberg, a German scientist working
Born (1882-1970) and Pasqual Jordan (1902- ) at Göttingen, pr
system to calculate the properties of quantized systems; this was calle
mechnics". Heisenberg had already proved that it was im
simultaneously to measure the position and the speed of a particle, suc
electron. This principle, which became known as Heisenberg's un
principle, had an enormous philosophical impact on the certainty of sc
enterprise which had become entrenched during the nineteenth
Quantum indeterminacy was to play a large role in the emergence
theology in the western world—a theology that attempts to under
relationship between science and Christianity.
Einstein's famous aphorism, 'God does not play dice', is indicativ
contempt for quantum uncertainty. His strongest counter-argume
call attention to a paradoxical implication of quantum mechanics no
as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) Paradox. This can be exp
taking a pair of protons whose quantum spins cancel out. Separat
measurement of the spin of one proton, "collapses" the wave equ
determines the spin of the other. Thus, it appears that a measurement
place can have an instantaneous effect on something that may be li
away. Einstein took this as a proof for the incompleteness of
mechanics. He argued that this result only made sense if the spi
determinate, but unknown to us, before the protons were separate
case, measurement would merely tell what was always the case. But, ac
to the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics, it is not
matter of ignorance; the spin is not determined until it has been meas
other words, the pair of protons cannot be regarded as separate entiti
the measurement has been made.
For the science-religion relationship, quantum mechanics is one
most important branches of modern science for it has not only br
hold of nineteenth century determinism and scientism, it has also ope
an enormous area for understanding processes which seem to violat
laws. Einstein and his colleagues had assumed two laws in formul
EPR Paradox: "The principle of reality" which states that individual
possess definite properties even when they are not being observed
locality principle" which states that a measurement in one of the two
systems can produce no real change in the other. Taken together

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MUZAFFAR IQBAL
564
principles imply an upper limit to the degree of cooperation that is po

between isolated systems.
In 1982 a team of physicists at the University of Paris led by Alain As
demonstrated experimentally that this limit is exceeded in nature. In o
words, our physical descriptions of the world in which we live cannot be b
real and local in the above sense. Most physicists interpret this resul
abandoning the reality principle—the property (spin in this case) has
definite value until the measurement is made.
David Böhm (1906- ) disagreed. He distinguished between the quan
particle (an electron, for example) and a hidden 'guiding wave' that govern
motion. In his opinion, electrons are treated as particles. In a two
experiment, they go through one slit rather than the other but their choi
slit is not random; is governed by the guiding wave, resulting in the
pattern that is observed.82
CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE AND RELIGION DISCOURSE
The foregoing survey of the emergence of modern science and developm

within its various disciplines makes it abundantly clear that neither Islam,
Muslims were the driving force in its birth and subsequent developmen
also shows that modern science formulates theories concerning the origins
cosmos and life that are not always in harmony with the Islamic world
just as they are not always in agreement with the Biblical tradition. Moreo
in its abstraction and mathematization of nature, modern science has not o
attempted to describe and explain nature, it has also formulated its o
theology of nature.
Ideas, perceptions and theories that come into conflict with relig
worldviews or which raise fundamental questions about God's omnipot
and freedom are imbedded in the philosophical foundations of mo
science. Sometimes they emerge as a result of discoveries within spe
branches of science. For example, it was recognized in the 1830s that cells
essential units of living things but it was not until 1880s that differentiat
was made between body cells {somatic cells) and those that are responsible
82 Böhm's aim was to demonstrate that hidden-variables theories are indeed possible.
variables theories, with their underlying determinism, must be non-local, maintainin
existence of instantaneous causal relations between physically separated entities. Such
contradicts the simple location of events in both classical atomism and relativity the
points to a more holistic view of the quantum world. Indeed Böhm himself stressed the h
aspect of quantum theory in his later years, after his conversion from Marxism to theosoph

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reproduction (germ cells). This was the work of German physiologi

Weissman (1834-1914) who also discovered the structures within
nuclei that appeared to be responsible for the transference of in
characteristics from one generation of cells to their successors; th
called chromosomes. He also discovered that in sexually reproducing or
germ cells only had half the number of chromosomes as compar
somatic cells.
This led to discovery that inheritable characteristics are determ
genes; genes are arranged in a linear fashion along the chromosomes, l
on a string. But what were genes made of? The development of ultra ce
in the 1940s made it possible to separate the components of chromosom
it was discovered that chromosomes were made of two components
and a nucleic acid. But it was not until after the second World War that
could establish the identity of the nucleic acid: it was deoxyribonu
(DNA). Its structural model was built by J.D. Watson (1928- ) and F
Crick (1916- ) at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge in April
which illustrated how these molecules could function as repositories of
information. DNA also contained the recipe needed by the cells to c
specific functions; in other words, the secret of life was though
contained within the genetic code. This not only established the
genetics on a firm basis but also brought ontogeny83 within the b
scientific inquiry—an event which has been ranked with Cop
successful advocacy of the heliocentric hypothesis.84
These developments have not been ignored in the West and
theological reflection by a whole range of theologians from all dom
have produced an impressive amount of literature which deals wit
issues in Christianity and science—a subject that has always been pa
western tradition in one or the other form—from Augustine to Newto
major philosopher and scientist has reflected on the implications of sc
discoveries for their faith.
But how do these issues relate to Islam and Muslims? Is it a leg
subject of inquiry? Or is it one of those fields—like "Islam and woman
and democracy" and "Islamic socialism"—which have come to the
world through its encounter with the west as foreign entities whic
legitimacy when placed within the matrix of Islamic thought?85
83 The development or developmental history of an individual organism.

84 John Maddox, What Remains to be Discovered (New York: The Free Press, 1998), 20
85 These are not passing remarks; they are the product of serious reflection on the
modern scholarship which have been imposed upon the Muslim world either in im
corresponding debates in the West (for example, feminism and many shades of schola
related to this movement) or they are totally irrelevant subjects within Islamic
example, the field of Islam and democracy) because they deal with nature of

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MUZAFFAR IQBAL
Briefly stated, the defining questions of contemporary science an

religion discourse in the West revolve around a central core: The quest
related to the origin of cosmos and life formulated in such disciplines as t
cosmology, quantum physics and evolutionary biology; the questions sp
from the concepts of Nature: Is Nature merely a huge coaglomatio
purposeless matter that has somehow emerged on the cosmic plane?
there any teleology observable in natural phenomena? Does God act i
physical world? Or are natural causes sufficient to explain everything—fro
the simple thunderstorm to the formation of galaxies.
During the last forty years, a renewed interest in the field of science
Christianity has produced a large body of scholarly responses and interacti
which seek to build bridges between science and Christian theology.8
course, there is a strong anti-religious camp, representing in the contempo
discourse by scientists like Stephen J. Gould who advocate the princip
Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA); implying that science and relig
belong to two separate realms and never shall the twain meet.87
VI
FORMULATION OF QUESTIONS
Modern science has produced an overwhelming impact on the Muslim world.

From political leadership to reformists and from common man in the street to
the opinion leaders, nobody ever tires of demanding more and more science.
The resolutions adopted by the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) at
its regular summits, the mantra of the political leadership in countries as far
apart as Syria and Pakistan and the universal chorus of the opinion leaders
throughout the Muslim world ceaselessly demand more and more science. It is
another matter that in their blissful innocence, they confuse technology with
obligations of individuals in a system of governance which have evolved on the basis of

fundamentally different notions about the goal and purpose of life of the individuals as well as
that of cosmos.
86 This recent tide owes its existence to pioneering work of Ian Barbour who is recognized as
the "father of contemporary science-religion discourse" in the West. His 1966 book, Issues in
Science and Religion (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966), mapped out a topology of
issues which has been further refined and elaborated by man)' scientists-theologians. It is outside
the scope of this paper to cover this vast scholarship or even mention the key participants in the
contemporary discourse. Fortunately, there are a number of excellent works which provide the
history of this discourse as weil as helpful bibliographies. There are many web-based resources,
including the website of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS),
www.ctns.org, which contains useful definitions, bibliography and other online resources.
87 Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages (New York: The Ballantine Publishing Group, 1999).

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567
science and even when they mean science, they usually mean the
sciences.88
Considering the global reach of modern science, perhaps i

unwarranted that Muslims should be so enthralled with it. In addition
are the obvious needs of contemporary life which force reliance on
science and its products. These range from seeds to telecommunication
defense needs to pharmaceuticals and from consumer goods to es
chemicals. In fact, for all practical purposes, the whole of Muslim
consisting of 1.2 billion people, is utterly dependent on the wester
And this dependency is of perpetual nature. Even if one does not cons
artificial needs of modern Muslim societies that have been create
influx of consumer goods, there exists a fundamental dependenc
western science in areas such as agriculture, pharmaceutical prod
industrial chemicals.
With time, this dependence is increasing and the Muslim world sh
predicament with other non-Western countries in this dependence. Th
many other factors involved. For example, the new genetically altered
various crops are making the traditional methods of farming vir
impossible. According to a recent article in Nature,*9 "Designer rice to
diet deficiencies", we have the beginning of a new era of dependency.
seed produced through "the humanitarian 'Golden Rice' project",
distributed freely. This genetically engineered seed contains vita
precursors, and it was shipped to the International Rice Research
(IRRI) in Los Baños, Philippines. This is the first of many planned
of the rice to institutions in China, India, Africa and Latin Ame
commercial rights for the Golden Rice have been sold to the agr
Syngenta by the two inventors, plant scientist Ingo Potrykus, wh
from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in 1
biochemist Peter Beyer of the University of Freiburg in Germany. Fo
subsistence farmers in any developing country can cultivate Gol
varieties, once available, licence-free.90
88 It is thus not surprising that in most of the public discourse about science, the p
often used is "science and technology", in one breath, without a pause.
89 Quirin Schiemeier, "Designer rice to combat diet deficiencies makes its debut", in
(2001), 551.
90 According to Nature, "the Golden Rice project was promoted by Potrykus, who wanted his
research to help combat the vitamin A deficiencies prevalent in many poor countries,
particularly those relying on rice as a major food source. Rice plants do not normally produce
carotenoids, vitamin A precursors, in the grain. A 'humanitarian board' made up of the two
inventors and representatives of the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Health Organization
and the biotechnology industry, will oversee the distribution of the rice to the research
institutes". Ibid.

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MUZAFFAR IQBAL
568
From this example, one can also infer the complexity of modern scient
enterprise. The licence-fee waiver for the rice mentioned above invol
seventy patents from thirty-two companies and universities! Syngenta has
announced that it has completed the entire rice genome in the last wee
January 2001.
These developments are of immense importance for survival in a world
governed by scientific instruments, technological products and genetically
altered food. No wonder, then, that since the nineteenth century early
modernists and reformers, the general opinion in the Muslim world has been
that the West was able to advance and colonize the Muslim world because of
its science and technology, both spoken of, as if they were one. This has been
articulated over and over and with such regularity that it has become the
gospel of development debates. But in spite of such an overwhelming interest
in science (or perhaps one should say hunger for science), there exists very
little interest in the study of its impact on the Muslim world or in the
relationship between Islam and modern science. Except for a handful of
scholars, no one has paid any attention to the relationship between Islam and
the philosophical and metaphysical foundations of modern science. As a result,
in comparison to the sophisticated and mature discourse on science and
religion in the Christian tradition, one finds nothing comparable in the
Muslim world. Even the questions have not been formulated and the language
of discourse remains underdeveloped.
What one does find, however, is an alarming trend among a majority of
writers as well as among the educated classes which attempts to find every
single modern scientific discovery in the Qur'än. This has given rise to
mountains of apologetic literature which ranges from enormously popular
book of the French Muslim Maurice Bucaille, The Bible, the Qur'an and
Science, first published as La Bible, le Coran et la science,91 in 1976 and since
then translated into every language spoken in the Muslim world to hundreds
of websites which attempt to prove that the Qur'an is, in fact, the word of
God because it contains scientific theories and facts which modern science has
only recently discovered.9*
91 Maurice Bucaille, La Bible, le Coran et la science: les Écritures saintes examinées a la lumiere des
connaissances modernes (Paris: Seghers, 1976), trans., Alastair D. Pannell and the author as The
Bible, the Qur'an and Science. The English translation was first published in 1978 by the North
American Trust Publications, Indianapolis.
92 A recent search using the words "Islam" and "science" and altavista as search engine listed
1,873,545 occurrences, a random sampling of these listings showed that of all the relevant
entries, a large majority was related to this establishing the divine nature of the Qur'an through
modern science. See, Elma Harder and Basit Kareem Iqbal, "Islam and Science Online", Islamic
Studies, vol. 39, no. 4 (Winter 2000), 685-691.

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As a result, any attempt to articulate Islamic perspectives on vario

aspects of contemporary science has to first formulate valid questions
develop a language of discourse. This is a daunting task. But it is also a
essential task which needs to be undertaken by a large number of Musl
scientists who are deeply rooted in various Islamic sciences. Unfortunat
such a species does not exist in the Muslim world. Muslims scientists are
and large, a product of western style secular institutions who do not receiv
any formal training in Islamic thought. And Islamic scholars in the Mus
world generally remain oblivious to sciences.
In the absence of well-trained Islamic scholars who are also scientists, th
only short-term solution is to bring together a small number of Islam
scholars and scientists, who are nevertheless interested and have the necessa
perquisites and interest in Islam and science and produce a small bo
scholarship which can provide seeds for a mature discourse in due time.
One must also note that whereas in the West, it is the Christia
theology93 that has been poised as a counterweight in the science-religi
discourse, one cannot think of Islamic theology to play a similar role. T
classical Western way of understanding the relationship between science
religion is to make a bridge between the Book of Nature and the Book
Scripture, with the underlying assumption that both have the same aut
(God); hence there can be no contradiction between these two modes o
revelation. It is a discourse between science and scientist on the one hand an
theology and theologians on the other.
In any meaningful discourse between Islam and science, Islamic theology

cannot be expected to play a similar role because in the Islamic traditi
theology has dealt with a different subject matter. Islamic theology has been
mainly interested in the discourse between reason and faith and the princip
theological struggle in Islam has taken place between traditionalist theologia
and rationalists, the latter being represented by the Mutakallïmùn,94 wheth
Mu'tazilites, Ahs'arites, Mätüridites or of some other leanings. Thus, Isla
theology would be a poor partner for science in any discourse on Islam
science. The subjects of interest in Islamic theology have been regarding God
attributes, the nature of Paradise and Hell, the nature of punishment in
grave and the like.
For a meaningful discourse on Islam and science, one needs to take t

following into consideration.
93 The field of study and analysis that treats of God and of God's attributes and relations to
universe; study of divine things or religious truth; divinity.
94 Sometimes, though inadequately, called speculative theologians.

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570 MUZAFFAR IQBAL
1. Epistemological consideratio
relation to modern science.
2. Concepts of God, nature of

created beings.
3. Cosmos in Islam, including the
4. Islamic concept of Nature

science.
5. The meaning of the so-called

literature and their relationship
These questions form the core o

science. An essential element fo
Qur'änic sciences ('ulüm al-Qur
truly Islamic, if it is not rooted i
Wa'llähu a'l
Φ ® Φ

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Islam and Modern Science: Formulating the Questions

Author(s): MUZAFFAR IQBAL

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23076112

Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, Islamabad is collaborating with

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Islam and Modern Science:

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ROOTS OF MODERN SCIENCE

Modem science emerged in Europe on the foundations of the Greek sc

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monastery of Wearmouth in Northumbria, in northeastern Engl

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Transmission of Islamic Scientific Tradition to Europe

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13 Divination through dreams.

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successful practice of astronomy and astrology. But medicine, astronomy and

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European Intellectual Milieu

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But the large-scale translation activity of the thirteenth century that

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By the second half of the thirteenth century, new commentaries h

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produce this synthesis becau

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the drinking of medicine... so on, to include all observable among connec

And this is not an isolated coincidence; the medieval European debates o

19 Al-Ghazalî, Tahafut al-Falasifah, trans., Michael E. Marmura as The Incoherence o

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arguments were a powerful motivation for going out and discovering th

GENESIS OF MODERN SCIENCE

In the first section, we have briefly sketched the process of transmiss

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In retrospect, the normative Western tradition was to pass a judgment on

But slowly, a respectable body of literature did emerge which challenged

20 David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, 355

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of modern science did was neither refinement, nor improvement of what t

In order to explore the relationship between Islam and modern scien

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This claim has been seriously challenged by a number of subseque

An even stronger case for discontinuity can be made, I believe, if (follow

This assessment is shared by many other historians of science, such as

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To be sure, the Islamic scientific tradition had a contribution in th

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and Medieval science to the seventeenth century the Scientific Revolution,

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TRANSFORMATION OF THE ISLAMIC SCIENTIFIC TRADITION

Chaucer (ca. 1340-1400) tells us in The Canterbury Tales, that his Do

Well knew he the olde Esculpius

34 Including one mythical