Muslim scholars have developed a spectrum of viewpoints on science within the context of Islam.Seyyed Hossein Nasr. "Islam and Modern Science" Scientists of medieval Muslim civilization contributed to new discoveries in science.Haq, Syed (2009). "Science in Islam". Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. . Retrieved 2014-10-22.Robert Briffault (1928). The Making of Humanity, . G. Allen & Unwin Ltd. From the eighth to fifteenth century, Muslim mathematicians and astronomers furthered the development of mathematics.Egyptian Muslim geologist Zaghloul El-Naggar quoted in Science and Islam in Conflict| Discover magazine| 06.21.2007| quote: "Modern Europe's industrial culture did not originate in Europe but in the Islamic universities of Andalusia and of the East. The principle of the experimental method was an offshoot of the Islamic concept and its explanation of the physical world, its phenomena, its forces and its secrets." From: Qutb, Sayyad, Milestones, p. 111, https://archive.org/stream/SayyidQutb/Milestones%20Special%20Edition_djvu.txt Concerns have been raised about the lack of scientific literacy in parts of the modern Muslim world.
Islamic scientific achievements encompassed a wide range of subject areas, especially medicine, mathematics, astronomy, agriculture as well as physics, economics, engineering and optics.Saliba, George. 1994. A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories During the Golden Age of Islam. New York: New York University Press. . pp. 245, 250, 256–57.Hassan, Ahmad Y. 1996. "Factors Behind the Decline of Islamic Science After the Sixteenth Century." Pp. 351–99 in Islam and the Challenge of Modernity, edited by S. S. Al-Attas. Kuala Lumpur: International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015.
Aside from these contributions, some Muslim writers have made claims that the Quran made prescient statements about scientific phenomena as regards the structure of the embryo, the Solar System, and the development of the universe.Cook, Michael, The Koran: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, (2000), p. 30see also: Ruthven, Malise. A Fury For God. London; New York: Granta (2002), p. 126.
Terminology
According to Toby Huff, there is no true word for science in Arabic as commonly defined in English and other languages. In Arabic, "science" can simply mean different forms of knowledge. This view has been criticized by other scholars. For example, according to Muzaffar Iqbal, Huff's framework of inquiry "is based on the synthetic model of Robert Merton who had made no use of any Islamic sources or concepts dealing with the theory of knowledge or social organization" Each branch of science has its own name, but all branches of science have a common prefix, ilm. For example, physics is more literally translated from Arabic as "the science of nature", ; arithmetic as the "science of accounts" .https://giftsofknowledge.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/hans-wehr-searchable-pdf.pdf Searcheable PDF of the Hans Wehr Dictionary (if that doesn't work check https://archive.org/details/HansWehrEnglishArabicDctionarySearchableFormat/page/n607/mode/2up ) The religious study of Islam (through Islamic sciences like Quranic exegesis, hadith studies, etc.) is called "science of religion" (), using the same word for science as "the science of nature". According to the Hans Wehr Dictionary of Arabic, while علم’ ilm is defined as "knowledge, learning, lore," etc. the word for "science" is the plural form علوم’ ulūm.
History
Classical science in the Muslim world
One of the earliest accounts of the use of science in the Islamic world is during the eighth and sixteenth centuries, known as the Islamic Golden Age. It is also known as "Arabic science" because of the majority of texts that were translated from Greek into Arabic. The mass translation movement, that occurred in the ninth century allowed for the integration of science into the Islamic world. The teachings from the Greeks were now translated and their scientific knowledge was now passed on to the Arab world. Despite these conditions, 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, Sultan Bashir Mahmood, 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. Certain advances made by medieval Muslim astronomers, geographers and mathematicians were motivated by problems presented in Islamic scripture, such as Al-Khwarizmi's (c. 780–850) 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. These new studies of math and science would allow for the Islamic world to get ahead of the rest of the world. ‘With these inspiration at work, Muslim mathematicians and astronomers contributed significantly to the development to just about every domain of mathematics between the eight and fifteenth centuries"
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 God 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 astrologists 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 Quranic 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 (alfa alfi 'awalim) 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 Kuşçu'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.F. Jamil Ragep (2001), "Freeing Astronomy from Philosophy: An Aspect of Islamic Influence on Science", Osiris, 2nd Series, , Science in Theistic Contexts: Cognitive Dimensions, , 66–71.
According to many historians, science in the Muslim civilization flourished during the Middle Ages, but began declining at some time around the 14thIslam by Alnoor Dhanani in Science and Religion, 2002, . to 16thAhmad Y Hassan, Factors Behind the Decline of Islamic Science After the Sixteenth Century centuries. At least some scholars blame this on the "rise of a clerical faction which froze this same science and withered its progress."Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History by Ahmad Y. al-Hassan and Donald Hill, Cambridge University Press, 1986, . 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 Constantinople observatory 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 in 1580 CE on the grounds that it encouraged astrology and offended Allah to the point of punishing humanity by sending the plague.Aydin Sayili, The Observatory in Islam and its place in the General History of the Observatory (Ankara: 1960), . Though the causal logic may appear to be specious, Istanbul due it's centrality as a trade hub and large population was in fact a "plague hub" in that era.
Science and religious practice Scientific methods have been historically applied to find solutions to the technical exigencies of Islamic religious rituals, which is a characteristic of Islam that sets it apart from other religions. These ritual considerations include a lunar calendar, definition of prayer times based on the position of the sun, and a direction of prayer set at a specific location. Scientific methods have also been applied to Islamic laws governing the distribution of inheritances and to Islamic decorative arts. Some of these problems were tackled by both medieval scientists of the Islamic world and scholars of Islamic law. Though these two groups generally used different methods, there is little evidence of serious controversy between them on these subjects, with the exception of the criticism leveled by religious scholars at the methods of astronomy due to its association with astrology.
Modern science in the Muslim world
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, modern science arrived in the Muslim world, bringing with it "the transfer of various philosophical currents entangled with science" including schools of thought such as Positivism and Darwinism. This had a profound effect on the minds of Muslim scientists and intellectuals and also had a noticeable impact on some Islamic theological doctrines.Mehdi Golshani, Does science offer evidence of a transcendent reality and purpose?, June 2003
While the majority of Muslim scientists tried to adapt their understanding of Islam to the findings of modern science, some rejected modern science as "corrupt foreign thought, considering it incompatible with Islamic teachings", others advocated for the wholesale replacement of religious worldviews with a scientific worldview, and some Muslim philosophers suggested separating the findings of modern science from its philosophical attachments. Among the majority of Muslim thinkers, a key justification for the use of modern science was the benefits that modern knowledge clearly brought to society. Others concluded that science could ultimately be reconciled with faith. A further apologetic trend saw the emergence of theories that scientific discoveries had been predicted in the Quran and Islamic tradition, thereby internalizing science within religion.
According to 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center asking Muslims in different Muslim majority countries in the Middle East and North Africa if there was a conflict between science and religion few agreed in Morocco (18%), Egypt (16%), Iraq (15%), Jordan (15%) and the Palestinian territories (14%). More agreed in Albania (57%), Turkey (40%), Lebanon (53%) and Tunisia (42%).