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Newsletter for November 2011
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SCIENCE OF THE COSMOS, SCIENCE OF THE SOUL
Excerpt from the Introduction to the
Book of this title
written by Prof. William C. Chittick
Introduction
I began studying Islamic thought forty years ago. I was
originally attracted to the field by a fortuitous set of
circumstances that led me to spend my junior year in college at
the American University of Beirut. A general interest in
non-Western religions blossomed when I was exposed to lectures
and books on Sufism and Islamic philosophy. I quickly realized
that the only way to acquire more than a superficial
acquaintance with these topics was to learn Arabic and Persian.
After a dozen years of study and research, I began publishing
the results of my explorations. My primary concern from the
beginning was trying to understand what Sufis and Muslim
philosophers were saying. How did reality appear to them? How
did they explain the great issues of meaning that people face in
attempting to make sense of their lives?
In most of my publications over the years, I have let Ru¯mı¯,
Ibn ‘Arabı¯, S. adr al-Dı¯n Qu¯nawı¯, ‘Abd al-Rah.ma¯n Ja¯mı¯,
Afd. alal-Dı¯n Ka¯sha¯nı¯, Shams-i Tabrı¯zı¯, Mulla¯ S. adra¯ ,
and others do
the talking, while I sat back with my readers and listened to
their words. In the past few years, however, I have felt more at
ease in applying the insights gleaned from the material to new
contexts. Given the deep seriousness of the authors, it has
seemed to me that I owe it to them to bring out some of the
significance of their perspectives for the specifically modern
context, such as the role played by science in the contemporary
Zeitgeist. It is the attempt to find contemporary relevance that
is the common thread of these essays. Much of the book develops
implications of a distinction between two ways of knowing that
is basic to the great religions under a variety of nomenclature,
though it is typically ignored in discussions of contemporary
issues. Islamic sources speak about it in a variety of ways.
Here I focus on a standard differentiation that is made between
“transmitted” (naqlı¯) and “intellectual” (‘aqlı¯).
Transmitted knowledge is characterized by the fact that it needs
to be passed from generation to generation. The only possible
way to learn it is to receive it from someone else. In contrast,
intellectual
knowledge cannot be passed on, even though teachers are needed
for guidance in the right direction. The way to achieve it is to
find it within oneself, by training the mind or, as many of the
texts put it,
“polishing the heart.” Without uncovering such knowledge through
self-discovery, one will depend on others in everything one
knows.
Typical examples of sciences based on transmitted learning are
language, history, and law. The usual example of an intellectual
science, even though it does not meet all the criteria, is
mathematics. We
do not say, “Two plus two equals four because the authorities
say so.” The mind is able to discover and understand
mathematical truth on its own, and once it discovers it, it does
not depend on outside
sources. The knowledge is known to be true because, once we
understand it, it is self-evident. We can no more deny its truth
than we can deny our own awareness.
Transmitted knowledge depends on hearsay. It is by far the most
common sort of knowledge in any culture or religion. Buddhists
may know that enlightenment is an experience that transcends all
conventional forms of knowing, but, until they achieve it, they
have viii Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul received
what they know about it by way of transmission. Muslims know
that God requires them to pray five times a day, but they take
this knowledge from the ulama, those who have become learned in
the Qur’an and the Hadith. They cannot discover what God wants
from them without the transmission of the revealed sources. So
also for the rest of us: transmission and hearsay provide us
with language,
culture, opinions, worldview, and practically everything we
think we know. In contrast, intellectual understanding is what
we know with complete certainty in the depths of our souls. But
such knowledge is rare.
The search for intellectual knowledge in Islamic civilization
was undertaken in two broad fields of learning, each of which
developed many branches and underwent numerous historical
vicissitudes. For simplicity’s sake, I am calling them
philosophy and Sufism. Philosophy built on the logical and
rational methodologies systematized by the Greeks, and Sufism
based itself on the contemplative techniques received from the
Prophet. The two fields frequently overlapped, especially from
the thirteenth century onward.
Philosophy and Sufism diverged sharply from the transmitted
sciences by acknowledging explicitly that the meanings of things
in the world cannot be found without simultaneously finding the
meaning of the self that knows. Certainly, one studies the world
to achieve the understanding of phenomena, but understanding is
an attribute of the soul, of the knowing subject. Masters of the
intellectual approach recognized that meaning hides behind the
“signs” (a¯ya¯t) of God, that all phenomena point to noumena,
and that
those noumena can only be accessed at the root of the knowing
self. If we view the intellectual tradition in a broad
perspective, it is clear that it did not allow for the sharp
distinction between subject and object that was a prerequisite
for the rise of modern science. If I focus more on Islamic
philosophy than on Sufism here, it is partly because of the
notion often seen in the writings of Western Introduction ix
historians and modern-day Muslim apologists that Islamic science
– which was developed by the philosophers and not the Sufis –
was an important precursor to modern science. I chose the title
“Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul” precisely because
it highlights science and at the same time brings in the term
“soul,”
which is central to the philosophical tradition and about as
unscientific as a term can be.
Let me say up front that the intellectual approach about which I
am writing has been moribund for over a century. A few people
still speak for it, but their voices go largely unheard. The
economic, political, and social forces that drive activity in
the rest of the world have not left Muslims behind. Those who
are able to gain an education normally do so with pecuniary
goals in mind. The technical and practical fields, which can be
mastered rather quickly and offer relative assurance of a
comfortable life, attract the best students and
dominate the universities. The traditional educational
institutions, which used to ask students to dedicate their lives
to the quest for knowledge and virtue, have almost totally
disappeared. In their places have grown up “theological” schools
that churn out zealots and ideologues.
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