The Only Sacred Ground. Gregory N. Derry
Islamic culture, the tradition known as falsafah. The adepts of this tradition, the faylasufs, were dedicated to a life of reason and critical inquiry. Their view of nature emphasized the orderly workings and unchanging principles of the universe, and hence the faylasufs became important builders of the Islamic scientific tradition. The emphasis on rationality and inherent order in falsafah, however, were not easily reconciled with the fundamental revelatory basis of Islam. For many Muslims, challenging the authority of Muhammad and the Quran by putting the authority of rational thought uppermost was offensive. “The Socratic tradition could not rest content with being bound to limit its questioning within a framework which was imposed by a historical intervention such as Islam. Nor could the Quranic tradition accept subordination for its conclusions to the authority of private human speculation.”26 After a considerable amount of controversy and accommodation, taking place over several centuries, a modified falsafah developed in ways that were more integrally related to the evolving Islamic culture. Although certain segments of society continued to mistrust and resent falsafah, it had become an important part of the mainstream of Islamic civilization by the 12th century, and a crucially important contributor to their concept of nature. Within the overall tradition of falsafah were embedded a number of particular sciences (astronomy, mathematics, medicine, optics, and alchemy) that flourished for several centuries, the most advanced in the world of that time.
The role of nature within Islam was somewhat problematic. The central message of Muhammad concerned humans, and how they should relate to God and to each other. Hence, ethical study and teachings along with interpretation of the Shariah law (culminating in a complex system of jurisprudence known as fiqh) became paramount. Furthermore, because Islam is profoundly historical, in the sense that the revelation to Muhammad was a specific historical event though it has cosmic significance, the study of history is also considered of great importance. Only the Quran and the hadith (sayings of the Prophet) were irrevocably worthwhile in Islam, and for some Muslims nothing else had any worth at all. And yet, nature did have a valid place in Islamic culture, based on both the Quran and the hadith themselves. “Muslim religious doctrine promotes a concept of the entire material universe as a sign of God’s activity, […] Thus, in order to understand God, it is necessary to investigate every aspect of his creation—all phenomena that exist in the world […] study of [God’s] activity is thought to provide knowledge of the right path toward the proper life….”27 The study of nature also offered practical benefits, in areas such as medicine for example. These motivations, along with innate curiosity, assured the development of nature concepts within Islam, even if overshadowed by the study of fiqh law, Arabic grammar, and so on. Another factor that hindered the study of nature in Islamic culture, however, was the educational system. Areas like astronomy, mathematics, and medicine were not taught in the organized system of madrasa schools; these advanced fields could only be learned by apprenticeship with established scholars at observatories, hospitals, royal courts, and settings of that sort. Despite all this, the study of nature reached heights in the Islamic world that Europe would not see for half a millennium. More importantly, the concept of nature they ultimately developed was fully integrated into the fabric of their entire culture.
In the sophisticated cultural milieu of the 12th century, all forms of knowledge and behavior, including the understanding of nature, were grounded in the fundamental basis of Islamic life, the Quranic revelation. Nature was accordingly understood as a manifestation of Divine will, and any particular study or discipline was interpreted within this context. “Islam and science discourse existed within the larger intellectual tradition of Islam and although there were many foreign currents that ran through the warp and weft of the tradition, it remained integrally linked to the Islamic worldview […] science in the Islamic civilization was part of a larger tradition of learning that arranged different disciplines in a hierarchical structure like the branches of a tree. The trunk of the tree in this case was none other than the central concept of Islam: the Oneness of God (Tawhid). Because of this central unifying concept, all branches of knowledge, including the natural sciences, were linked through an inalienable nexus with the metaphysical concepts of Islam. Each branch of knowledge was a contributing tributary to the main stream.”28 An important characteristic of this hierarchy of knowledge was that the physical and the metaphysical were organically related within it, not compartmentalized separately in the way that the modern world typically thinks. Empirical studies, metaphysical insights, mathematical models, and religious experiences all blended together in their emerging concept of nature.
This intrinsic connectedness is seen most clearly in the centerpiece of the Islamic nature concept, cosmology. The Quran itself contains a number of verses outlining cosmological processes, and these verses formed the basis for earliest kalam treatment of cosmological questions. The contact with Greek thought introduced the idea of an eternally existing universe, as opposed to a universe that was created at a specific beginning of time. The fundamental conflict between these two formulations drove a great deal of cosmological thinking in the falsafah traditions. These tensions were ultimately resolved, in part by invoking the emanationist ideas of Plotinus, and an Islamicized version of Hellenic thinking evolved, though the subject always remained one of ongoing debate. The epitome of this work is found in the thinking of the great scholar Ibn Sina (Latinized as Avicenna), who successfully synthesized Aristotle with the Quuranic revelation. Ibn Sina emphasized the distinction between essence and existence, so that these two attributes were both found only in the Necessary Being (that is eternal) but not in material reality (that is merely contingent). “But Ibn Sina’s concept of ‘Necessary Being’ is used here as an ontological principle, in the context of a cosmology where modalities of necessity and contingency play a crucial role. However, it is the close affinity of Ibn Sina’s Necessary Being to the Quranic God and of his single order of reality to the general thrust of Quranic teachings that makes this Hellenized scheme a compelling and powerful case of a fundamental recasting of the Greek legacy […] In sum, Ibn Sina’s cosmology rests on two fundamental premises: (i) that a material entity can emanate from an intelligence, and (ii) that there is in some sense a unity in the entire universe which is dependent upon the fact that the Necessary Being is the ultimate cause of every entity.”29 Islamic cosmology, however, like other traditional cosmologies, was not concerned only with the origin of the universe but also with the purpose of the universe and with the role of humans within this purpose. Humans constitute a microcosm of the greater cosmos, and serve as a link between the spiritual and material realms of existence. Cosmology, with its metaphysical and religious overtones joined to more physical ideas, served as one of the most important links between the concept of nature and the central concerns of Islam.
Astronomy was one of the most important of the Islamic sciences, relating genuine observations of nature with mathematical calculations and models yet also making contact with the more speculative cosmological ideas. Knowledge of the night sky had a long history in Arab culture, was explicitly referred to in the Quran, and was the subject of the earliest translations of Greek and Persian texts. Ptolemy’s Almagest was quickly incorporated into Islamic astronomy, and its observational data continuously improved. The Muslim astronomers were excellent at measurement and observation, establishing major observatories at Isfahan, Maragha, and Samarkand plus a large number of smaller installations (Rayy, Shiraz, Baghdad, Rakka, Cairo, Ghazna, etc.). These observatories were outfitted with improved instruments of various sorts, such as large measuring arcs, sophisticated versions of the sundial, astrolabes, quadrants, and celestial globes. The astrolabe, in particular, was perfected to a high degree. Increasingly precise measurements were compiled into extensive astronomical tables (known as zij) and were used for both practical and theoretical purposes. Practical uses included improvements of the calendar, timekeeping, and establishing the direction toward Mecca (all needed for purposes of Islamic ritual and prayer). Theoretical issues involved the improvement of Ptolemy’s complex model of the planetary movements, which employed epicycles, deferents, and equants. Better data induced Muslim astronomers to look critically at the assumptions and methods of the Ptolemaic system, resulting in a literature that extended over several centuries. A particularly pressing question involved the lack of uniform circular motion resulting from the use of equants. This problem was solved by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, who developed a mathematical construction that preserved uniform circular motion, now popularly referred to as the Tusi Couple (there is evidence that Copernicus was influenced by Ibn al-Shatir’s use of the Tusi Couple in astronomy). The zij tables were also useful in astrology,