Ph.D. Mikhaylov D.V ., Ghassan Adnan Al- Bdairi

Volodymyr Dal East Ukrainian National University, Lugansk , Ukraine

ISLAM AND SCIENCE

The religion Islam has its own worldview system including beliefs about ultimate reality, epistemology, ontology, ethics, purpose, etc. Muslims believe that the Qur'an is the final revelation of God for the guidance of humankind. Science is the pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence. It is a system of acquiring knowledge based on empiricism, experimentation, and methodological naturalism, as well as to the organized body of knowledge humans have gained by such research. Scientists maintain that scientific investigation must adhere to the scientific method, a process for evaluating empirical knowledge that explains observable events in nature as results of natural causes, rejecting supernatural notions. Islam, like all religions, believes in the supernatural that is accessible or interacts with Man in this life.

One of the most important features of Science is the precise quantitative prediction. In this aspect it differs from many religious texts where physical phenomena are depicted in a very qualitative way, often by the use of words carrying several meanings. In the history of science, science in the muslim world refers to the science developed under Islamic civilization between the 8th and 16th centuries, during what is known as the Islamic Golden Age. It is also known as Arabic science since the majority of texts during this period were written in Arabic, the lingua franca of Islamic civilization. Despite these terms, not all scientists during this period were Muslim or Arab, as there were a number of notable non-Arab scientists (most notably Persians), as well as some non-Muslim scientists, who contributed to scientific studies in the muslim world.

A number of modern scholars such as Fielding H. Garrison, Abdus Salam and Hossein Nasr consider modern science and the scientific method to have been greatly inspired by Muslim scientists who introduced a modern empirical, experimental and quantitative approach to scientific inquiry. Some scholars, notably Donald Routledge Hill, Ahmad Y Hassan, Abdus Salam, and George Saliba , have referred to their achievements as a Muslim scientific revolution, though this does not contradict the traditional view of the Scientific Revolution which is still supported by most scholars.

It is believed that it was the empirical attitude of the Qur'an and Sunnah which inspired medieval Muslim scientists, in particular Alhazen (965–1037), to develop the scientific method. It is also known that certain advances made by medieval Muslim astronomers, geographers and mathematicians was motivated by problems presented in Islamic scripture, such as Al-Khwarizmi's development of algebra in order to solve the Islamic inheritance laws, and developments in astronomy, geography, spherical geometry and spherical trigonometry in order to determine the direction of the Qibla , the times of Salah prayers, and the dates of the Islamic calendar.

The increased use of dissection in Islamic medicine during the 12th and 13th centuries was influenced by the writings of the Islamic theologian, Al- Ghazali , who encouraged the study of anatomy and use of dissections as a method of gaining knowledge of God's creation. In al- Bukhari's and Muslim's collection of sahih hadith it is said: «There is no disease that Allah has created, except that He also has created its treatment». ( Bukhari 7-71:582). This culminated in the work of Ibn al- Nafis (1213–1288), who discovered the pulmonary circulation in 1242 and used his discovery as evidence for the orthodox Islamic doctrine of bodily resurrection. Ibn al- Nafis also used Islamic scripture as justification for his rejection of wine as self-medication. Criticisms against alchemy and astrology were also motivated by religion, as orthodox Islamic theologians viewed the beliefs of alchemists and astrologers as being superstitious. Fakhr al-Din al- Razi (1149–1209), in dealing with his conception of physics and the physical world in his Matalib , discusses Islamic cosmology, criticizes the Aristotelian notion of the Earth's centrality within the universe, and explores the notion of the existence of a multiverse in the context of his commentary, based on the Qur'anic verse, «All praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds». He raises the question of whether the term «worlds» in this verse refers to multiple worlds within this single universe or cosmos, or to many other universes or a multiverse beyond this known universe. On the basis of this verse, he argues that God has created more than a thousand thousand worlds beyond this world such that each one of those worlds be bigger and more massive than this world as well as having the like of what this world has. Ali Ku??u's (1403–1474) support for the Earth's rotation and his rejection of Aristotelian cosmology (which advocates a stationary Earth) was motivated by religious opposition to Aristotle by orthodox Islamic theologians, such as Al- Ghazali .

According to many historians, science in the muslim civilization flourished during the Middle Ages, but began declining at some time around the 14th to 16th centuries. At least some scholars blame this on the rise of a clerical faction which froze this same science and withered its progress. Examples of conflicts with prevailing interpretations of Islam and science – or at least the fruits of science – thereafter include the demolition of Taqi al-Din's great Istanbul observatory of Taqi al-Din in Galata , comparable in its technical equipment and its specialist personnel with that of his celebrated contemporary, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. But while Brahe's observatory opened the way to a vast new development of astronomical science, Taqi al-Din's was demolished by a squad of Janissaries, by order of the sultan, on the recommendation of the Chief Mufti, sometime after 1577 AD.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, modern science arrived in the Muslim world but it wasn't the science itself that affected Muslim scholars. Rather, it was the transfer of various philosophical currents entangled with science that had a profound effect on the minds of Muslim scientists and intellectuals. Schools like Positivism and Darwinism penetrated the Muslim world and dominated its academic circles and had a noticeable impact on some Islamic theological doctrines.

In the early twentieth century ulema forbade the learning of foreign languages and dissection of human bodies in the medical school in Iran. In recent years, the lagging of the Muslim world in science is manifest in the disproportionately small amount of scientific output as measured by citations of articles published in internationally circulating science journals, annual expenditures on research and development, and numbers of research scientists and engineers. Skepticism of science among some Muslims is reflected in issues such as resistance in Muslim northern Nigeria to polio inoculation, which some believe is an imaginary thing created in the West or it is a ploy to get us to submit to this evil agenda.