The Spiritual and Ethical Foundation of Science and Technology in Islamic Civilization

Muslim scientists and technologists have for centuries pursued their scientific and technological activities within a spiritual and ethical framework. There was a profound reason for their insistence on such a framework. They believed in an epistemology in which unity of science and technology and spiritual knowledge is duly maintained. They defended this belief by appealing to both revelation (wahy) and reason (‘aql) or to both religious (naqliy) and intellectual (‘aqliy) arguments. By naqliy arguments we mean arguments that are drawn from the Qur’an, the Hadiths, and other transmitted sources. For ‘aqliy arguments on the other hand, we mean philosophical and scientific arguments that are assembled for the purpose at hand through the independent exercise of reason. In Islamic intellectual tradition, these two types of arguments are not considered as opposed to each other but rather complementary and corroborative.

Traditional Muslim scientists and technologists generally embraced the essentially God-centric world-view dictated by the Qur’an. This world-view argues that reality is not limited to the world of sensory experience. Beyond the world perceptible to our physical senses there is another reality encompassing it, which is what the Qur’an calls the ‘unseen world’ (al-ghayb). Subtle and spiritual creatures populate this world. This non-physical world is not unconnected to the physical world in which we human beings live. The existence of the physical world and its functioning in the cosmic system depend on it. There are many verses in the Qur’an that tell us about the connection between the sensory world and the unseen world. But it would be wrong to assume that, just because Muslim scientists believe in the unseen world on the authority of the Qur’anic revelation, they, therefore, lack a scientific spirit and a scientific frame of mind as we understand it today. For them, the unseen world is not just an object of faith. It is also an object of knowledge. Many traditional Muslim men of learning maintain the position that it is possible to arrive at a rational understanding of the unseen world on the basis of our knowledge of the physical world.

Obviously, the traditional Islamic position depicted above would be in sharp contrast to the mainstream epistemology of science and technology in the modern world. Many contemporary scientists do not believe that there is a knowable reality beyond the physical world. Even when they do as, for example, when they speak of the human mind they would argue that it has come into existence as a result of physical processes. There are contemporary scientists who believe in God, but then they look at the physical world as an autonomous reality that has no meaningful connection whatsoever with God. If the great majority of modern scientists have impoverished external reality through this kind of perceptions, it is because they have impoverished beforehand the inner reality of human cognitive powers by reducing trustworthy sources of knowledge to sensory experience and/or certain kinds of reasoning and thinking activities. It is this impoverished ontological and epistemological beliefs that have shaped the nature and characteristics of western science in the last few hundred years. This particular kind of impoverishment has profound consequences on contemporary science and technology, many of which are with negative implications , and, through these two ‘idols’ of modern man, have affected our contemporary human civilization.

From the point of view of Islamic conception of reality and epistemology, which is clearly demonstrated in the Qur’an and Hadiths, there is a strong basis for criticizing the ontological and epistemological foundation of modern science and technology. This criticism is absolutely necessary if we are to bring about meaningful changes to contemporary scientific and technological culture. Certainly there is a need to present a credible critique of contemporary science and technology. While duly acknowledging the many great achievements of modern science and technology, we should be courageous enough to admit their shortcomings, which have contributed to the many ailments of contemporary human civilization. These shortcomings pertain not only to their misapplications by man, which is essentially an ethical problem, but also to the inherent limitations in their epistemology, which is basically a problem of knowledge. We believe that, by accessing Islam’s spiritual and intellectual resources pertaining to knowledge and presenting them to the world community, we would be able to make a contribution to the urgent task of creating a new scientific and technological culture that really serves the interests of the whole humanity. Accordingly, in this paper, we offer to present an introductory discussion of the spiritual and ethical foundation of science and technology in Islamic civilization in the belief that it is precisely such a foundation that contemporary science and technology are really in need of.

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