Sunday, January 10, 2010

The Islamic Approach to Natural Philosophy

The Islamic Approach to Natural Philosophy
M.B. Altaie

“Probably no chapter in the history of the cosmological argument is as significant – or as universally ignored – as that of the Arabic theologians and philosophers. Although we find in them the origin and development of two of the most important versions of the cosmological argument, namely the argument from temporality and the argument from contingency, the contribution of these Islamic thinkers is virtually ignored in western anthologies and books on the subject”. William Lane Craig (1979)

In Arabic “Kalām” means speech (or a collection of words). However it also means “dialogue” and this is the meaning which was intended for Islamic Kalām. In its philosophical content, “Kalām” is a collection of concepts, assumptions, principles and problems that tries to explain the relationship between God and the physical world in accordance with the basics of Islamic creed.

Classically Kalām was considered to form the foundation of jurisprudence, or “Fiqh”, which constitute the base for Islamic “Shari’a”. Kalām was classified into Jaleel al- Kalām and Daqīq al- Kalām. The former is the part dealing with problems related to the Divine attributes, the resurrection of the dead, and the questions related to the Divine knowledge, will and power. These subjects lead to the question of Man’s Free Will held by one school of Kalām, and the counter proposal of self-acquisition of actions that was suggested by another school.

On the other hand, Daqīq al- Kalām deals with problems of natural philosophy, most prominent of which is the question of the creation or the Eternity of the World and the question of Causality. This leads to discussing the concepts of space, time, motion and many of other aspects of the physical world.

Using Ian Barbour’s terminology, Jaleel al- Kalām would be called “natural theology” whereas Daqīq al- Kalām is the “theology of nature”.

The dependence of Islamic jurisprudence on Kalām arguments was quite clear through the contributions of post- Kalām Islamic clerics who tried to lay down new foundations for jurisprudence. One prominent example was Ibn Hazm A-Zahiri who summarized some of the most fundamental opinions and views of Daqīq al- Kalām in the first volume of his treatise “Alfisal fi Al-Milal wa Al-Ahwa’ wa Al-Nihal”.

Despite the fact that the subject of Kalām was largely ignored, I feel that Daqīq al- Kalām has much to offer to the subjects of natural philosophy and the contemporary philosophy of physics on the conceptual level, and therefore is worth studying. Indeed, the “Kalām cosmological Argument” devised by William Craig is just one contemporary example in a whole field of ideas, concepts and arguments that can be utilized by the modern philosophy of science. However, the subject is in such state now that it cannot lend itself to an effective role without being purified, reformulated and harmonized with modern philosophy. This requires much work to be done and a pains-taking effort, in order to qualify Daqīq al- Kalām for a contemporary role.

My program of study aims at exposing those views of Kalām that have a sound value in present day natural philosophy. Therefore, it heavily relies on two factors: understanding the original terms and phrases as written in original Arabic, and secondly extract their scientific and philosophical implications without falling into projecting self-ideas on the original text. This second requirement can be safe guarded by requesting self-consistency within the analysis of the text.

No way in one-hour lecture that I can provide the audience with a fully substantiated account of the contributions of the Mutakallimūn. However, during such a limited time I will try to summarize their main contributions to natural philosophy which was covered under Daqīq al- Kalām, and I will skim over some vital problems where I feel some genuine research works is needed to be done in order to see a possible use of Kalām in contemporary philosophy of science.

Reasons for the rise of Kalām

One can say that there are two basic reasons for the establishment of the trends of Kalām, the first was internal; when different views in respect to the fate of the Sinner was expressed, Muslim theologians had different opinions. The second reason was caused by some natural “mutation” and, what I call, “back-reaction” of Muslims to the new ideas and thoughts they faced when they came into contact with the new nations and civilizations they conquered during the early days of Islam. This contact created a “Dialogue between Civilizations” rather than a “Clash of Civilizations”. It is quite unfortunate and disappointing that humanity now and thirteen centuries after that great experience comes to the state of no choice other than the Clash of Civilizations according to the American strategist Samuel Huntington.

The two main schools of Kalām

Mutakallimūn formed two main schools, the Mu’tazilites who was the first to be formed, and the Ash’arites. The Elders of the Mu’tazilites were Wasil Ibn Atta’ (d. 131 A.H/748 A.D), Amr ibn Ubaed (d. 145 A.H/762A.D), Abul Huthail Al-Allaf (d. 227/841A.D) Ibrahim Al-Nazzam (d.221A.H/835A.D), and Al-Jahiz (d.255A.H/ 868A.D). Most of the original contributions of the leaders of Kalām was lost, some of their main ideas and arguments were preserved through the writings of their students or opponents. At a later period some prominent leaders of Mu’tazilites appeared who contributed preserved valuable monographs and critiques. Most prominent of these was Abu Al-Hussein Al-Khayyat (d. 300 A.H/912 A.D) and Abu Al-Kassim Al-Balkhi (sometimes called Al-Kabi) (d.319 A.H/931 A.D), Abu Ali Al-Jeba’ie (d. 303 A.H/915 A.D) and his Son Abu Hashim Al-Jeba’ie (d. 321 A.H/933 A.D). Some of the original works of these prominent Mu’tazilites were preserved through the monographs written by their students and followers like Abu Rashid Al-Naysaburi (d. 415 A.H/1024 A.D) and Abdul-Jabbar Al-Hamadani (d. 415A.H/1024 A.D) who wrote an extensive monograph about Mu’tazilites that preserved much of their original thoughts and his student Ahmed ibn Mattaweyh (d. 450A.H/ 1060A.D) who wrote a book preserving a good deal of the opinions of early Mu’tazilites on the subjects of Daqīq al- Kalām.

The Ash’arites school were formed by Abu Al-Hasan Al Ash’ari (d.324 A.H=935 A.D) who brook-away from the Mu’tazilites and formed a new school of thought within the trends of Kalām. Beside Al-Ash’ari the most prominent contributors to Ash’arites Kalām was Abu Bakr Al-Baqillani (d. 403 A.H/ 1012 A.D), and later Abu Al-Ma’ali Al-Juayni (d. 478 A.H/1085 A.D) who wrote some excellent monographs on Daqīq al- Kalām and Jaleel al- Kalām. However one can say that the most efficient utilization of the Kalām was made by Al-Ghazali (d. 505 A.H/1111 A.D) whose contributions are the most mature ones among Ash’arites.

At late times the Ash’arites Kalām was reformulated by Azud Aldeen Al-Eji (d. 756 A.H/1355 A.D) who is considered the last classical Mutakallim.

Daqīq al- Kalām investigated the same basic concepts that are the subjects of present-day physics, like space, time, matter, force, speed, heat, colors, smells (gases) and the like, so it is quite legitimate to revisit Daqīq al- Kalām seeking common understanding, not necessarily with physics but may be with the scientific philosophy of the concept. This trend is supported by the fact that the resources of Kalām are quite different from those of the classical natural philosophy including the philosophy of the Greeks.

Mutakallimūn considered the Qur’an as the prime source for their knowledge about the world, and accordingly they intended to set-up to understand the world according to the stipulations of the Qur’an. This is the main reason why we find that Kalām concepts are different in meaning and implications from their counter part in the Greek and Indian philosophy. For example: the Qur’an stipulates that the world was created by God some finite time in the past, accordingly Mutakallimūn projected this demand into a whole theory of creation of the world and generated their own understanding of substances (Jawaher) and the accidents (A’rath). On the other hand, for God to be free in designing the world according to his own unpredictable will, and for performing full control over the world, nature had to be thought of as being composed of unstable and ever changing events. This requirement generated the concept of ever changing accidents. Accordingly this leads to consider the laws of nature as being undetermined, and therefore lead to, unfortunately, the widely misunderstood concept of causality.

It should be clear that in no way I would claim that the philosophy of the Kalām forms an integrated body, or that it can be found with one individual Mutakallim, or that it forms a complete modern philosophy of nature. Rather, I will try to uncover aspects of those thoughts of Mutakallimūn, which might serve as a possible candidate for integration with the contemporary philosophy of natural sciences, in an endeavor to anticipate a kind of a philosophical feed back to the theory of nature. For example, the idea of “discrete time” that has been part of the general principle of discreteness of nature according to the Mutakallimūn can be utilized in constructing an “all discrete” theory of nature, that may eliminate the present fundamental theoretical problems related to the unification of natural physical forces.

The sources and methodology of Kalām

Mutakallimūn considered the Qur’an their main source for deducing knowledge about the world. Although they did not explicitly refer much to the Qur’anic verses, but it was clear that their main principles were deduced from the Qur’an. This means that they followed a logical sequence of deduction that start with the Devine revelations, that have to be interpreted rationally, and then would understand nature accordingly. Richard Walzer summarized this by saying that: ” Mutakallimūn followed a methodology that is distinct from that of the philosophers in that they take the truth of Islam as their starting point”.

The approach of Mutakallimūn to understand the world can be presented as follows:

God Reason The World

This is just opposite to the approach of the Greek philosophers, which can be presented by the sequence The World Reason God Effectively the same difference applies to Muslim philosophers as opposed to Mutakallimūn but only to note for the compromising approach followed by Muslim philosophers.

The main principles of Daqiq al-Kalām Despite the different views expressed by Mutakallimūn belonging to different schools, we find that they all subscribed to some common basic principles that they have adopted to understand nature, these principles are:

1. The Creation of the world:

According to Mutakallimūn the world is not eternal but was created some finite time in the past. Space and time had no meaning and never existed before the creation of the world. Despite the fact that some of the Mutakallimūn believes that creation took place out of a pre-existing form of matter, the dominant view of Mutakallimūn in this respect is that creation took place ex-nihilo i.e., out of nothing.

2. Discreteness of natural structures:

All entities in the world are composed of a finite number of a fundamental component called Jawhar جوهر (substance) that is non-divisible and has no parts. The Jawhar is rather an abstract entity that does not acquire its physical properties unless occupied by a character called ‘Aradh عرض (i.e., accident). These accidents are ever-changing characters. This was expressed by saying that no accident can stay two successive times العرض لايبقى زمانين أو آنين. Discreteness applies not only to material bodies but to space, time, motion, energy (heat) and all other properties of matter.

3. Continuous creation and ever changing world:

Because God is The absolutely able creator of the world and because He is live and ever acting قيوم , therefore the world has to be re-created every moment and another. Mutakallimūn accommodated this idea by proposing that the world is in a state of continuous creation, i.e., that once it is created it is immediately annihilated. For some reason or another Mutakallimūn associated this action of re-creation with ‘Aradh rather with the Jawhar. But once we know that the Jawhar cannot stand on itself we realize that the process of re-creation is for both. By such a process God stand as the sustainer of the world.

4. Indeterminism of the world:

Since God has the absolute free will, and since He is the personal creator and the sustainer of the world, He is then at liberty to take any action He wishes in respect to the state of the world or its control. Consequently laws of nature that we recognize are actually contingent and undetermined. This resulted in rejecting the existence of natural causality. Mutakallimūn also rejected the Greek four basic elements.

5. Integrity of space and time:

Mutakallimūn had the understanding that space has no meaning on its own. Without having a body we cannot realize the existence of a space. So is the time, which cannot be realized without the existence of motion which needs a body to be affected. This connection of space and time is deeply rooted in Arabic. Therefore, neither absolute space nor absolute time does exist. This understanding formulated their understanding of motion as being discrete and that the trajectory of motion is composed of neighboring “rest-points” سَكَنات. Accordingly they say that a body is seen moving faster than another only because the number of rest-points along its trajectory is small compared to those along the trajectory of the other. However, the Mu’tazilite al-Nazzam believed that motion on the microscopic level takes place in discrete jumps called “tafra” طفرة. Max Jammer considered this understanding of al-Nazzam as being the oldest realization of a quantum motion, he says: ”In fact Al-Nazzam’s notion of leap, his designation of an analyzable inter-phenomenon, may be regarded as an early forerunner of Bohr’s conception of quantum jumps”

It is a fact that different schools of Kalām presented different details of these general principles, rather looking contradictory sometimes. However the main trend of their works fell in the opposite side to the views of Islamic philosophers like Avicenna, Farabi, Razis and Averroes.

Proposed Research Problems in Daqīq al- Kalām At present there are several problems that would easily lend itself for detailed analysis and study, that will uncover those aspects of Daqīq al- Kalām which may be utilized in the context of modern philosophy of nature, some of these are the followings:

1. Discreteness of Time: According to the proposition of Mutakallimūn, time is to be discrete. The name given to the smallest non-divisible element of time is Ana. This notion of discrete time need to be investigated in order to achieve two-folded aim: the first is historical, that may uncover the relation between the notion of discrete time and the concept of motion. In this respect the relation with Al-Nazzam concept of tafra has to be discussed too. The second aim is the investigation of a possible utilization of this notion in contemporary physics, specifically in “quantum gravity”.

2. Causality: Perhaps this is the mostly misunderstood concept in the history of Kalām. The diversity of the concepts involved has caused wide spread confusions. The basic flat rule in this respect lies in the fact that God has the absolute free Will and He is the sustainer of the universe He has created; Nature cannot act consistently on its own. Therefore, all acts should be ultimately attributed to God. This however does not necessarily mean that Mutakallimūn denies the absolute causality, but surely they deny the Natural causality in the same sense, and to the same extent, that modern quantum physics do. However, it is known that Mu’tazilite have named four types of causal relations: I’timad(dependence), I’qtiran (conjugation), Tawleed (generation) and ‘Ada (custom). These concepts need to be investigated and analyze in view of the modern concept of causality in physics. For example, the Aspect experiment poses some challenging questions to the classical notion of natural causality, appoint which needs to be investigated epistemologically.

3. Eternity of the Universe: Philosophers (like Avicenna) wanted to prove the world’s timeless dependence upon God, but the idea of timelessness demands self-sufficiency, and Avicenna’s conception of creation as being contingent in itself and necessary, with reference to its cause, only papers over a contradiction. Al-Ghazali claims that, even on philosophical grounds, all the arguments advanced for an eternal world fail. It is perhaps ironic that Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan would agree with Al-Al-Ghazali in claiming that a universe that has an absolute temporal beginning is what a created universe necessarily means. They, of course, think that by denying such a singularity they have left nothing for a creator to do. This point need to be investigated thoroughly in order to see the basis of agreements and disagreements of the two conclusions.

4. The concept of Motion: According to the principle of discreteness adopted by Mutakallimūn space and time are quantized. It will be of utmost interest to know how Mutakallimūn understood motion. Particularly, it is interesting to know that the concept of speed in Daqīq al- Kalām implies the existence of one universal speed, and that when two objects with different speeds are observed then it means the presence of more stationary instances along the trajectory of one of them compared to the other. This understanding needs to be investigated in details both mathematically and philosophically in order to see whether Mutakallimūn have realized the full picture of motion of particles and whether this understanding has any echo in modern physics, and whether Al-Nazzam concept of tafra has any connection with this understanding beside the possibility, if any, of utilizing this concept for a deeper understanding of motion.

5. The Mu’tazilite Concept vacuum: Mu’tazilite argued that absolute vacuum does not exist, instead they understood vacuum as being composed of un-localized Jawaher. It is of serious importance to study all the motivations that lead Mu’tazilite to adopt such a proposition. Implications of this proposition should be compared with the philosophical implications of Dirac’s particle-hole theory.

6. The size of The Universe: In his famous book: “The incoherence of the philosophers” Al-Ghazali questioned the possibility of the universe being created larger than, or smaller than its present size. He also questioned whether vacuum do exist outside the present volume of the universe such that a further enlargement of the universe would be possible therein. Averroes (Ibn-Rushd) answered negatively to this question but he gave no proper reasoning except his reliance on what Aristotle has already proposed in this respect. This question needs to be reconsidered in the light of the well-established fact that the universe is expanding.

7. Maimonides discussions of Kalām principles: The Jewish philosopher Maimonides discussed the principles set forth by Kalām and especially Daqīq al-Kalām. Some interesting aspects of these discussions need to be highlighted especially those dealing with the motives of those principles.

8. The Kalām arguments of Thomas Aquinas: Most Christian natural theology has stemmed in one way or other from the work of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Two of his arguments for the existence of God have stimulated particular interest among those concerned with science: the cosmological argument (that all change must stem from a necessary, self-existent being who is the First Cause of all phenomena in the universe) and the teleological argument (that order and intelligibility and apparent purpose in nature imply a rational designer). There is a need to reconsider the arguments of Thomas Aquinas in respect to the question of the temporality of the universe. Detailed comparison with the approach of Al-Ghazali would be very interesting.

9. The Craig Kalām Cosmological Argument and the Romero verification proposal: In 1979 William Craig suggested the “Kalām Cosmological Argument” as a proof for the existence of a personal creator of the universe. Recently, in 2003, Gustavo Romero suggested an astronomical observation that could, in his opinion, verify the validity of the Kalām argument. The problem is to check the epistemological validity of the Romero proposal.

10. Daqīq al- Kalām and contemporary philosophy of physics: prospects of philosophical guidance to contemporary theoretical physics are to be studied e.g., the effect of discrete time on formulations of quantum Physics.

I found that Daqīq al- Kalām contains some valuable concepts, assumptions and results that possess sound values in modern philosophy of physics. An immediate contemporary example is the so-called “Kalām Cosmological Argument”, which was devised and popularized by William Craig to stand as a kind of a proof for the existence of God. Such problems can accommodate more detailed investigations and analysis in order to be eligible for a role in modern philosophy of nature.

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