(DOWNLOAD) "Islam and the Problem of Modern Science (The End Matters) (Essay)" by Islam & Science # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Islam and the Problem of Modern Science (The End Matters) (Essay)
- Author : Islam & Science
- Release Date : January 22, 2010
- Genre: Religion & Spirituality,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 193 KB
Description
Nearly two centuries ago certain regions of the Islamic world (such as Egypt and Muslim India, soon followed by Iran) came face to face with the theories as well as applications of modern Western science, while in Ottoman Turkey the introduction of Western science and certain forms of technology goes back to an even earlier period. Ever since that encounter Western science and technology have penetrated to an ever greater degree into the various parts of the Islamic world and also the various facets of the life and thought of the Islamic peoples, whether they be Moroccan or Malay, from Xinjiang or Mali, and all the Muslim lands in between. The extent of the penetration of Western science and technology may differ from one area to another, but there is no doubt that Western science and its applications in the form of modern technology have affected in one way or another nearly the whole of the Islamic world and pose a challenge of monumental dimensions for the Islamic worldview and what remains of the culture and civilization of Islam, not to speak of the challenge of this science and its Weltanschauung to the Islamic religion itself. The problem and challenges posed by modern science are not the same as those posed by modern technology, although they have become interrelated since the middle of the 13th/19th century. In this essay, therefore, we shall confine our attention to the problem of science, touching upon technology only incidentally, leaving the full discussion of technology to a separate treatment. Since the introduction of Western science into the heartland of the Islamic world in the 13th/19th century, the attitude of most of the modernists and other sectors of the educated Muslim intelligentsia which came to know something of this science was more or less what was stated succinctly by such figures as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. According to this view modern science in the West was nothing other than the further expansion and growth of the science which Muslims had developed from the 2nd/8th to the 8th/14th centuries and which was transmitted to a large extent through Spain and Sicily to Europe. If this science had caused havoc from a religious and ethical point of view in the West, it was the fault of Christianity and not this science. Once the Muslims took this science back into their own fold, they would be able to expand and develop it farther without any of the negative effects which the spread of a secular science and the Industrial Revolution have had upon the West socially, morally and spiritually.