Alparslan
Acikgenc, Islamic Science: Towards a Definition
One of
the aims of defining Islamic Science is to generate theoretical understanding
of and insight into the nature and meaning of the concept and enterprise of
Islamic Science, and thus to formally differentiate it, to the extent possible,
from other sciences, especially modern western science, or even from other
salient manifestations of Islamic civilization, like Islamic Art. Of course
formal definitions have their limits, but a basic working definition, if sound
and critically accepted, can provide a degree of rigor, direction and coherence
to a discourse that at times tends to be as disunified as the number of
participants engaged in it, which is significant lately, mainly because, as
Acikgenc himself realizes, "they did not first try to understand what he
[al-Attas] meant by islamization" (p. 1).
Hence,
this little book by Acikgenc (formerly of ISTAC and presently at Fatih
University, Turkey) has been of considerable interest to participants in the
ongoing discourse on Islamic Science. The book consists of an
"Introduction" and three chapters entitled respectively "The
Concept of Islamicity", "The Islamic Concept of Science" and
"The Historical Background of Islamic Science". Many would see it as
a courageous attempt at a conceptual understanding of Islamic science that may
facilitate its revival as an existential reality, and thus they would like to
see to what extent his attempt has been successful. Moreover as Acikgenc
himself puts it, "... in order for science to perform its vital role in a
society, and more specifically in a Muslim society, a clear definition of it
must be provided by the 'ulama'," a.k.a. "scholars of Islam" (p.
4).
In the
"Introduction" Acikgenc says his book "was constructed, not only
as an endeavor to unify my thought into a coherent theory of Islamic science
and philosophy, but a struggle to grasp and disclose the grand project of the
islamization of knowledge which was for the first time developed by Professor
al-Attas ... (p. v)." Thus, one eagerly anticipates in the pages of this
book an explication, or at least a lucent definition, of Islamic science in
authentic Attasian terms. Acikgenc appropriately begins with al-Attas'
definition of islamization as "liberation" from "the magical and
the secular world views," as "devolution to original nature,"
and as "involving first the islamization of language" (pp. 1-2).
Defined as such, islamization is not a "new phenomenon" that only
recently appeared in the process of engagement with the modern world, but something
dynamic, ongoing and continually manifested whenever Islam and Muslims have
confronted situations which challenge their sense of self-identity. This
understanding of islamization is of course quite obvious to all who are
familiar with al-Attas' works.
Therefore
the term 'Islamic science' is in a sense a statement of self-identity--an
identity that has to be defined and asserted with respect to that domain of
human activity called science, because it is realized that science is not
value-neutral but imbued through and through with the identity of the culture
cultivating and promoting it. Since science is value-laden then a
self-conscious assertion of self-identity is needed to avoid an unconscious or
unwitting loss of identity due to the surreptitious introduction into the receiving
culture of a science that presents itself to be universal but whose apparent
universal aspects blind the vision to other aspects that on closer inspection
turn out to be very particular and contextual.
That is
the gist of the "Introduction" and of the second chapter, namely that
since science is value-laden then it is derived from, conditioned by and
integrated into the worldview of the people practicing it, and hence science
cannot be Islamized from the outside in a "mechanical" fashion, but
from the inside by a process of reconceptualization of the whole meaning and
purpose of science. But thereafter the exposition is marred by a somewhat ad
hoc invocation of Kantian terminologies and of an inconsistent and hence
confusing treatment of the key-term 'worldview'. In this regard the three most
pertinent aspects of Acikgenc's exposition that readily open themselves to
criticisms are (i) the less Attasian than Kantian framework, (ii) the
conception of worldview, and (iii) the definition of Islamic science itself.
Acikgenc
begins by citing and discussing al-Attas' definition of 'islamization' but he
does not thereby proceed to explicate the implication of that definition for
arriving at his chosen definition of Islamic science. Such an explication, if
attempted, would require some elaboration on (i) the presuppositions of
al-Attas' definition, presuppositions that are grounded in his conception of
the "nature of man and the psychology of the human soul," (1) and
(ii) how a definition of Islamic science can be consistently worked out from
that prior definition of islamization. Instead, he abruptly brings in the
Kantian conception of a priori knowledge (i.e., the synthetic a priori) simply
because "our exposition of worldview shall utilize the knowledge available
to us from even other sources as well," (p. 9) without at all explaining
precisely just how such a conception is or can be connected to al-Attas'
definition of islamization, and thus be utilized. Without clarifying the
conceptual affinity, if any, between Kant and al-Attas, the introduction of the
former into the "exposition" is arbitrary, irrelevant and
distracting. Thus al-Attas is relegated into the background and the Kantian
synthetic a priori effectively becomes the real starting point of the exposition,
not Attasian 'islamization' or 'worldview', for, indeed, al-Attas has given a
definition of what he meant by the term 'worldview' which Acikgenc does not
cite at all.
Also,
al-Attas has said that "science is definition of reality," (2) (this
Alparslan also overlooks or ignores) which is consistent with his definition of
the Islamic worldview as the Islamic vision of the totality of being and
existence and not of this temporal, phenomenal world alone. (3) Now, this
realist definition of science and worldview will be problematic from within the
perspective of the famous Kantian distinction, even demarcation, between
noumena and phenomena. For it follows from this demarcation that (for Kant at
least) science can only be about phenomena and never noumena, whereas for
al-Attas, true science must ultimately be also about noumena, i.e., that the
study of phenomena should lead the intellect into some insight into the
underlying noumena. The danger for Muslim scientists and philosophers who
unwittingly follow the Kantian framework lies in the neglect on their part of
any serious attempt at an ontological interpretation of empirical scientific
data that is consistent with their religious belief-system or worldview. If
this happens, science will be purely instrumentalist, manipulative and
exploitative in the Baconian sense, and never really cognitive and hence
salvific, and so bye-bye to islamization and Islamic science.
To make
matters worse, in his attempt to work out his conception of 'worldview' from
the Kantian synthetic a priori, Acikgenc falls into tautologies, circularities,
conceptual gaps, inconsistencies and
contradictions too numerous and tedious to exhaust in any detail here. By way
of indications, one may cite the many cases in which claims are asserted as
conclusions only to be reasserted as conclusions with no new informative
content (pp. 8-9); in Kant the synthetic a priori is not conceived as being the
property of a created mind and hence ontologically grounded in a transcendent
"noumenal" intellect, whereas Islamic epistemology posits the real
objective existence of a universal intellect as the ontological ground for all
human cognitive processes (p. 10); proper procedures of inference are absent
throughout the book since the conceptual gaps between propositions and
conclusions are not filled; his statement that "no scientific knowledge is
possible" within certain worldviews (p. 12) is a mere assertion
without citing any anthropological studies, and which contradicts the very
notion that "human reason is by nature architectonic" (p. 11). For if human
knowledge is by nature architectonic, then scientific knowledge is possible in
all worldviews, even in so-called primitive, pre-historic cultures, unless of
course one chooses to define science by the way science is being done in the
high-tech, overly commercialized modern West.
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