Fascinating piece in Physics Today about the struggle to reconcile science and faith in the Muslim world. It’s a very thorough look at the state of science in Islam today, and what needs to happen to restore science’s place in Muslim society.
The language used to frame the discussion should sound somewhat familiar to Christians. After all, Christianity—like Islam, although perhaps to a lesser degree—has both embraced and rejected science at different stages in its history:
Is boosting resource allocations enough to energize science, or are more fundamental changes required? Scholars of the 19th century, such as the pioneering sociologist Max Weber, claimed that Islam lacks an “idea system” critical for sustaining a scientific culture based on innovation, new experiences, quantification, and empirical verification. Fatalism and an orientation toward the past, they said, makes progress difficult and even undesirable.In the current epoch of growing antagonism between the Islamic and the Western worlds, most Muslims reject such charges with angry indignation. [...] In defending the compatibility of science and Islam, Muslims argue that Islam had sustained a vibrant intellectual culture throughout the European Dark Ages and thus, by extension, is also capable of a modern scientific culture.
I’m intrigued by the suggestion that Islam lacks an “idea system” to encourage scientific innovation and exploration. Do you think that Islam’s current struggle to reconcile faith with science is analogous to Christianity’s own checkered historical relationship to science? Does Christianity encourage (or at least allow for) scientific innovation in some way that Islam does not? What’s your reaction to this article?
(I wish I could say that Physics Today is a part of my daily reading, but I’m afraid I just followed a link from Metafilter.)
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August 8, 2007 at 06:57
Discover Magazine did a similar piece last month (paid registration may be required, or you can check it out of your library).
August 8, 2007 at 09:55
I have read of this idea of “backward looking” with Islam in books on Middle East history, Islam, and the so-called Dark Ages. “They say” that Islam looks back in time to get the undiluted truth. “The best is yet to come” is opposite of the thinking within hardcore Islam. Truth was undiluted in the past but is now getting watered down. Nothing new can be learned, we must look backward to regain reality. Science is suppossed to keep testing ideas and finding clearer ideas through better understanding. This idea makes it hard to be a critical thinking within hardcore Islam. To question the past is to question god and his prophet(s). To suggest that the prophet was wrong, even with obvious science, is grounds for head chopping. Islam “looks forward” to returning to the past which includes taking the rest of the world with them. No question about this. Their TV and in-country media make this clear. Speaking of the Dark Ages, it looks like they were not so dark after all. There was tremendous advances in free-market banking, agriculture, and invention in some lands. The Islamic areas were left behind being nomadic and resistant to change.
August 8, 2007 at 13:19
Much of our knowledge of ancient Greek science came to Renaissance Europe only because Islamic scholars preserved it. Copies in Greece and other parts of Europe were burned by Crusaders destroying libraries and sacking cities. Algebra is a term derived from Arabic, because Arabic scholars invented this form of math. A good deal of modern astronomy rests on a foundation of Islamic scholarship.
Like any religion, Islam can be applied to suppress original thought, by those inclined to do so. Like any religion, Islam can be applied to sustain and liberate the human mind, by those inclined to do so. Certainly Christianity has been used both ways.
Finally, we can all pull out the darkest deeds done in the name of someone else’s faith, to condemn that faith, or we can admire its finest contributions to human history. And others can do the same to our faith. God is God, worship is worship, but doctrines are mortal man’s attempt to fit God into a box that our finite minds can understand, or, to make God the servant of our own petty desires.
August 8, 2007 at 14:59
If science were to take into account God and his creative Word then perhaps Christianity and Islam would have more reason to integrate it into the religions. Sure, there are plenty of Christians who study science and make a living in it but from my own personal observations it seems as if most people who study science while believing in God are ridiculed and even persecuted for their beliefs.
So which is more restrictive? The religion or the scientists belitting the religion?
August 8, 2007 at 21:40
My first reaction to this piece is: wow, what a great article! It boldly and thoughtfully tackles ubiquitous causal factors leading to lack of scientific scholarship in Islam.
But I think Matthew is quite correct to note that ” people who study science while believing in God are ridiculed and even persecuted for their beliefs.” For example, Mr. Hoodbhoy’s article summarily dismisses anything outside of the naturalistic, materialistic realm by stating ”...[s]cience finds every soil barren in which miracles are taken literally and seriously…” Both the writer of the article and the believer reading his article implicitly understand that there is now a choice: conform to a “truly scientific” mentality, or continue having faith [which in my case is in the virgin-born, miracle-performing, resurrected Lord Jesus Christ]. So I can certainly see why a fundamentalist Muslim would not want to take up a scientific career if this pervasive “we can know it all and what we can’t see isn’t important” attitude is the litmus test of whether one is scientific or not. Apparently secular humanist dogma considers the fruit of a mind which honors God while making scientific inquiry to be forbidden, if not outright impossible.
Blaise Pascal wrote it best: “Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.”
August 9, 2007 at 08:10
One last comment on Science and scientists. As a scientist (industry) and one who has spent a lot of time in labs and universities, NEVER believe the “white lab coat” signifies absolute truth. Somehow we have been duped into thinking that “science” is TRUTH, and the final answer. Most will not understand but science fudges LOTS of data to reach a “conclusion”. In science you have to come up with a conclusion and explain the way you get to the conclusion. I have personally seen lots of guess-work wrapped up in the mantle of “holy science”. I have even been involved in outright falsehoods because the company needed to “tell a story” about a product. In science you often have to ignore details that get into the way of coming to a desired conclusion. I am not saying that this is the way of all or most science but….it happens more than you might think. I have to laugh at the Discovery Channel and other presentations that wrap everything up in a neat consumable package. To me these presentations are equal to diet pill advertisements that claim you can lose 35 pounds AND develop a 6-pack abs while you sleep.