IN MODERN TIMES, critical assessments of the truth value of science, its ethical claims and its uses have been articulated from varying perspectives, including the environmentalist, the philosophical and the religious. Fuelled partly by these modern ethical concerns and partly by revisionist trends in historiography, the discussion on and rethinking of the relationship between religion and science has intensified in recent years. This interest in reconsidering past and present relations between religion and science also has its echoes in a considerable amount of discussion on Islam and science.

            The Islamic contribution to the contemporary debate on religion and science is handicapped by the fact that modern Muslim societies are largely the consumers and not the producers of science (and technology) and lack a thriving, living scientific tradition that manifests itself in all aspects of the acquisition, application, accumulation and development of scientific knowledge. Due to this lack of active, collective participation by Muslim societies in setting the standards of science and charting its possible futures, contemporary discussions of religion and science are often based upon abstract and hypothetical conceptions. Under the circumstances, many contemporary scholars often resort to eclectic and even metaphoric use of traditional Islamic terminology to qualify Islamic science, instead of attempting a systematic reconstruction of the complex set of ideas and cognitive and social practices that historically constituted this science.

            In the absence of a living scientific tradition, therefore, one has to turn to the experiences of the past, when such a tradition did exist. An historical approach enables more reliable reconstructions of what ‘Islamic’ science meant in the actual historical practice of Muslim societies. The papers presented in this issue are part of the proceedings of a conference on Islam and Science held in August 2001 at the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies. By approaching the subject from a variety of historical perspectives and from the vantage point of various scientific disciplines, these articles explore the status of such disciplines in classical Muslim societies and attempt to identify specifically Islamic understandings of science and technology and to articulate Islamic conceptions of the relationship between religion and science as reflected in the historical experience of Muslim societies.

            In the first article, “The Continuum of Knowledge and Belief,” Bennacer El Bouazzati questions traditional notions regarding the epistemological autonomy of discrete forms of knowledge and argues that knowing and believing are actually inseparable mental activities. Drawing upon recent research in the human sciences, El Bouazzati maintains that science is an intellectual construction that does not constitute a neutral system of axioms and laws free of belief and that, as a result, science is not necessarily at odds with religious belief. He also holds that the varieties of rationalism and of belief are invariably interconnected and that a non-dogmatic view of either science or faith would recognize the intersections between these two systems of knowledge. All kinds of knowledge, El Bouazzati argues, are culturally and socially embedded and are, therefore, constantly reconstituted within different social and cultural contexts. Moreover, attempts to delineate orderly distinctions between science and faith are subverted due to the constant transformation undergone by each of these forms of knowledge.

El Bouazzati also maintains that no knowledge can exist in isolation from faith and that faith cannot be definitively demarcated by science. It is equally true, he adds, that belief is itself in continuous transformation and that, therefore, all forms of belief are necessarily partial. Hence, El Bouazzati concludes, communication between various systems of knowledge, including the religious and the scientific, is not just an historical reality, but an epistemological predicament common to all forms of knowledge.

            Following this epistemological overview, George Saliba’s “Islamic Araditiomy in Context: Attacks on Astrology and the Rise of the Hayʾa Tradition” provides a focused assessment of the interaction and confrontation between three systems of knowledge: theology, astrology and astronomy. Saliba first illustrates how the Greek sciences, which were initially received as a unified system of knowledge, were treated in the course of their encounter with Islam. Owing to their metaphysical and astrological components, the Greek sciences were viewed with trepidation by religious scholars; however, rather than a wholesale rejection of these sciences, the encounter between the Greek sciences and Islam led to their fragmentation. One of the results of this fragmentation was the emergence of a new science, known as ʿilm al-hayʾa, as a conscious attempt to free astronomy from astrology. Saliba thus argues that ʿilm al-hayʾa was a specific response, in the Islamic cultural milieu, to religious attacks upon Greek astrology; in the face of these attacks, astronomers consciously redefined and reoriented their discipline and, in so doing, created a new discipline with no antecedent in the Greek tradition. Saliba further delineates how the Muʿtazilī  school of theology, often considered the champion of rational thinking in Islam, was mostly opposed to astrology on intellectual grounds. This opposition was neither monolithic nor grounded in the rejection of foreign sciences.

            In her “On the Location of the Ancient or ‘Rational’ Sciences in Muslim Educational Landscapes (AH 500-1100),” Sonja Brentjes surveys the social and cultural spaces open to the practice of the rational sciences in Muslim societies. Brentjes revisits the issue of the connection between the rational sciences and religious disciplines, and questions the thesis that the sciences declined because they were not incorporated into the curriculum of religious schools (madrasas). Using accounts found in biographical dictionaries, Brentjes argues that, like the religious sciences, study and instruction in the exact sciences were stable features of Muslim educational landscapes. Furthermore, this activity took place within recognizable networks whose structures paralleled those of the religious sciences. This observation is not only borne out by factual information culled from the biographical dictionaries, but trom the many instances in them of parallel discourses to describe education in the rational as well as traditional sciences. In these discourses on education and knowledge, the rational sciences are always present and accorded respect, and are often presented in alliance with the religious sciences. Moreover, Brentjes notes, the sources distinguish between the ancient and the rational sciences and direct their negative assessments toward the former. Brentjes concludes, therefore, that there is no evidence of the decline of the rational sciences owing to their lack of integration into the curriculum of religious schools; rather, the period of their apparent decline seems to overlap with attempts to integrate some of them into religiously-dominated educational landscapes.

            The next two articles provide case-studies of specific connections between religious and scientific disciplines and the shifting boundaries between them. Both articles examine the relationship between Islamic theology (kalām)¹ and science. In his “Problems in Eleventh-Century kalām Physics,” Alnoor Dhanani illustrates how significant aspects of physical theory, in particular, theories of matter, space, time and motion, were discussed in works on kalām. In fact, Dhanani convincingly argues that physics in the Islamic context cannot be properly understood without an examination of kalām texts. Moreover, some of these texts, in his view, cannot be considered merely—or even primarily—as works of theology, but must be approached as legitimate works of physics worthy of study by historians of science. This article is followed by my own “The Adjustment of Science,” which also examines the discipline of kalām, yet traces another way in which scientific and religious knowledge interacted. In contrast to the earlier kalām works discussed in Dhanani’s study, it focuses upon developments in the field after the fourteenth century and not in connection to physical theory, but to astronomy. The article argues that rather than being a source for knowledge on physical theory, later kalām works were themselves informed by developments in the field of astronomy; as a result, the scope of kalām was redefined and transformed from an encompassing system of knowledge to one with limited epistemic authority outside of the area of metaphysics.

            Mohammed Abattouy’s “The Arabic Science of Weights: A Report on an Ongoing Research Project” provides a thorough overview of various aspects of the interaction between religion and science in medieval Islamic society in one particular field of scientific research, the science of weights. Drawing upon an ongoing research project that seeks to provide an exhaustive account of all extant Arabic works on mechanics, Abattouy first provides a concise account of the textual tradition and the tools and methods for the analysis of this vast literature. He then examines the conceptual developments and historical contexts specific to Muslim societies that contributed to the reorientation and reorganization of the science of mechanics and the emergence of a new science of weights. Abattouy also explores the institution of ḥisba (market supervision) as a point of convergence between religious ideas and practices, on the one hand, and scientific knowledge about weighing instruments, on the other.

            Following this overview of one particular discipline, Ramazan Şeşen’s “La science dans l’Empire Ottoman” surveys Ottoman scientific literature, as well as its institutional settings, to trace the traditions that influenced and informed Ottoman science. Until the end of the eighteenth century, Şeşen argues, Ottoman science was primarily an extension of the Islamic tradition of scientific learning, with European influence becoming apparent in the century that followed. Yet, even then, when the content and form of scientific education changed significantly, these developments were grounded in the continuous traditions of Islamic scientific culture.

            The last article in this collection is Charles Burnett’s “The Translation of Arabic Science into Latin: A Case of Alienation of Intellectual Property?” It considers the religious dimensions of the transmission of Arabic scientific knowledge into Europe and the religious and cultural politics of this transmission. Burnett examines some of the ways in which European scholars approached the translation of Arabic works into Latin and the extent to which the choice, form, content, or attribution of these works was informed by their religious and cultural perspectives and biases.

            Following the conclusive evidence assembled in the last few decades for the continuing vitality of the post-eleventh-century scientific tradition in Muslim societies, the present collection of articles sheds much-needed light upon the cultural context that enabled it. Together, these articles chart a complex trajectory of the relationship between religious and scientific knowledge in Islamic culture. By examining various dimensions of this relationship, the articles also undermine theories that posit an essential contradiction between Islam and science, and contribute to the broader scholarly discussion that tends to dichotomize religion and science in post-medieval civilizations.

NOTES

                  ¹ It should be noted, however, that although the primary subject of kalām was theology, it often treated problems of physical theory and astronomy.