The Role of the Spiritual Scientist on the Object of Scientific Research: the Perspectives of Syed M. Naquib Al-Attas and Sayyed Hossein Nasr Khalina Khalili Ph.D. Candidate Centre for Advanced Studies in Islam, Science and Civilization (CASIS)
In search of Truth من عر ف نفسه فقد عر ف ربه He who knows his own self, knows his Lord
Traditional Muslim Thinkers Nasr Al-Attas
According to Al-Attas, the test of true knowledge is in man himself, in that if, through an alternative interpretation of knowledge man knows himself and his ultimate destiny, and in thus knowing he achieves happiness, then that knowledge, in spite of its being imbued with certain elements that determine the characteristic form in which it is conceived and evaluated and interpreted in accordance with the purpose aligned to a particular worldview, is true knowledge; for such knowledge has fulfilled man s purpose for knowing. Al-Attas(1995), Prolegomena of Metaphysics, Islam: The Concept of Religion and the Foundation of Ethics and Morality. p.89
In the beginning, there was unity الست بربكم قالوا بلى شهدنا In the Qur an in Surah al-a raf (7:172) Allah Ta ala says: And when your Lord took out the offspring from the loins of the Children of Adam and made them bear witness about themselves, He said, Am I not your Lord? and they replied: Yes, we bear witness.
Nasr s Assessment of Modern Science (1994) The modern astronomy and physics of Galileo and Newton were based on an already secularized view of the cosmos, the reduction of nature to pure quantity, which could then be treated mathematically, and a complete separation between the knowing subject (scientist) and the object to be known based on Cartesian dualism.
Al-Qur an as the Source of Knowledge ` Our affirmation of Revelation as the source of knowledge of ultimate reality and truth pertaining both to created things as well as to their Creator provides us with the foundation for a metaphysical framework in which to elaborate our philosophy of science as an integrated system descriptive of that reality and truth in a ways which is not open to the methods of the secular philosophic rationalism and philosophic empiricism of modern philosophy and science. (Islam and the Philosophy of Science, Prolegomena, 118)
16th Malay manuscript written in Jāwī The means of obtaining knowledge for the creatures are three: first, the five senses; second, true report; and third, reason. [4] The five senses are hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch; and by each of these five senses one is informed concerning that for which it is appointed. True report is of two kinds, one of the two is report that is successively transmitted (mutawātir), that is [5] report that is established upon the tongues of people of whom reason cannot conceive that they would purpose together on a lie. It is knowledge arrived at deliberately. And it induces necessary knowledge like the knowledge of departed kings of past times, and of distant countries. The second kind is the report of the Messenger of Allāh, may Allāh bless and give him peace, [6] confirmed by miracle (that is, the incapacitation); and this induces deductive knowledge (meaning knowledge requiring demonstration by proof) and the knowledge established by it resembles necessary knowledge in certainty and fixity. As for reason, it is a cause (that is, an instrument) of knowledge also; and that which it establishes by immediate perception (that is, by perception without allowing for the deliberation of thought to adduce proof for it) is necessary knowledge, [7] like the knowledge that the whole of something is greater than its part; and that which is establishes by deduction (that is, requiring demonstration by proof) is called acquired knowledge, like the knowledge that there is fire when one sees smoke. Now as for inspiration (meaning: giving information), it is not among the causes for the cognition of the soundness of something according to the People of Reality may Allāh aid them! The creeds of Imām al-nasafī translated from Jawi to English. Al-Attas, Muhammad Naquib al-attas(1988) The Oldest Known Malay Manuscript: The Aqā id of al-nasafī, Kuala Lumpur: University Malaya Press
The Soul of the Scientist The human soul is created yet it is immortal and conscious of itself. It is the locus of the intelligible and equipped with a faculty variously,(روح) called the spirit (قلب) heart,(نفس) soul/self.(عقل) intellect and The arrival of meaning in the soul (husul) The movement of the soul towards meaning (wusul) Faculties of the Soul Intellect Heart Self Spirit
The Legacy of Spiritual Scientists ī ā - Jurjani (disciple of Ibn Sīnā)
INTUITION The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws, only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them. - Einstein (1918) common form of inspiration, which many rationalists, secularists, empiricist thinkers and psychologists have defined as sensory observations and logical inferences that have long been brooded over by the mind, whose meaning becomes suddenly apprehended, or to latent sensory and emotional build-ups which are released all of a sudden in a burst of apprehension. Al-Attas, Syed Muhammad Naquib, Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam (Kuala Lumpur:ISTAC:1995), 116
The more training, discipline and development of their powers of reasoning and experiential capacities exists within them, in dealing with their specific problems, the higher the level of intuition that they profess.
Intuition or Illumination With reference to intuition at the higher levels of truth, intuition does not just come to anyone, but to one who has lived his life in the experience of religious truth by sincere, practical devotion to God, who has by means of intellectual attainment understood the nature of the oneness of God and what this oneness implies in an integrated metaphysical system, who has constantly meditated upon the nature of this reality, and who then, during deep contemplation and by God s will, is made to pass away from consciousness of his self and his subjective states and to enter into the higher selfhood, subsisting in God. When he returns to his human, subjective condition, he loses what he has found, but the knowledge of it remains with him. It is in the duration of subsistence in God, when he gains his higher selfhood, that the direct and immediate apprehension takes place. He has been given a glimpse of the nature of reality in that duration of coincidence with the Truth. In his case the cognitive content of his intuition of existence reveals to him the integrated system of reality as a whole. Al-Attas, Syed Muhammad Naquib, Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam (Kuala Lumpur:ISTAC:1995),. 119-120
Symbol of Nature Nasr stresses the importance for the scientist to not only heed the voices of nature, but to reach down to the depth of each individual soul, in order to realize that nature holds secrets that will expose deeper knowledge to them. He represents the philosophia perennis approach which embraces the idea of the transcendental unity of all religions; thus the scientist and observer of nature is referred to as both the universal man (insān kāmil), as exemplified by the Prophet Muhammad, or the contemplative gnostic, a person of any religious and denominational background who nourishes his relationship with the Creator and perhaps, with nature with a capital N. Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (London: Mandala: 1968) Chapter 3.
Scientia Sacra Nasr states:.the lack of a metaphysical knowledge, of a scientia sacra which alone can determine the degrees of reality and of science. Only this knowledge can reveal the significance, symbolic and spiritual, of the ever more complex scientific theories and discoveries themselves which in the absence of this knowledge appear as sheer facts opaque an cut off from truths of a higher order. Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (London: Mandala: 1968)p. 31
Phythagorean universe The Pythagorean oath: By him that gave to our generation the Tetractys, which contains the fount and root of eternal nature.
Rediscovering tradition Nasr invites modern scientists to link themselves again with the scientific tradition of the ancients who possessed the sacred science. These sacred traditions if revived means the rediscovery of Greek wisdom, of Plato, Plotinus, and other Graeco-Alexandrian sages and writings such as Hermeticism Similarly, these sacred science was pursued and practiced by Al-Kindi, the peripatetic philosophers (al-mashi iyun), Ikhwan al-safa and others. Proponents of the sacred science believe in the vertical link that connects them to the Source of everything. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (1989) Knowledge and the Sacred. New York: State University of New York Press, p.30
Al-Attas: Tawhid Method of Knowledge The representatives of Islamic thought theologians, philosophers, metaphysicians have all and individually applied various methods in their investigations without preponderating on any one particular method. They combined in their investigations, and at the same time in their persons, the empirical and the rational, the deductive and the inductive methods and affirmed no dichotomy between the subjective and the objective, so that they all affected what I would call the tawhid method of knowledge. - Al-Attas (1995)
Conclusion Both Al-Attas and Nasr subscribes to tradition by highlighting the doctrines and practices of the Medieval Muslims. Their philosophy of science is entrenched in the metaphysics of Islam. Seyyed Hossein Nasr believes in the amalgamation of the metaphysics of both Eastern and Western traditions simultaneously, largely as an attempt to resurrect the lost tradition of the West. While modern science focuses on the empirical aspects of the object of research and the sensory perceptiveness of the observer, science that is grounded in the metaphysics of Islam, is supported by more varied sources of knowledge including the Qur an and the Prophet s narration, reasoning and intuition. Relying on such knowledge in an integrated manner, establishes a unity of knowledge that leads to the path of knowing (ma rifah) the Absolute. A new breed of spiritual scientists is vital in contributing the Tawhid worldview of science as a viable option for the scientific world.