From Religion and Science to Kalam and Science

From “Religion and Science” to “Kalam and Science” • Basit Bilal Koshul 235

From “Religion and Science” to“Kalam and Science”

By Basit Bilal Koshul

Abstract: While there is very little material in the Muslim world dealing directly with the topic of“theology and science”, one can still discuss the topic fruitfully. Beginning with the vibrant discussion inthe area of “religion and science” one can infer what types of relationship are possible between “kalamand science”. Most of the inferred positions do not see any positive relationship between kalam andscience; and one of them would see such a relationship to be actually detrimental to kalam. In thework of Muhammad Iqbal, we have an example of a Muslim thinker who envisions the possibility ofa mutually enriching exchange between kalam and modern science. Drawing upon the resources in theQur’an and work done by Gerald Holton in the history of science, this article demonstrates that Iqbal’svision is scripturally and historically grounded.

Key Terms: theology, kalam, science, religion, Muhammad Iqbal, intuition, rationality, Gerald Holton,thematic imagination

Discussing the field of “theology and science” froman Islamic perspective brings with it at least twodifficulties from the outset. First, how are we tounderstand the term “theology”? While this term iswell defined and the discipline itself is of centralconcern in the Christian tradition, the term is for-eign and the (equivalent/similar discipline) is of im-portant but not central concern in the Islamic tra-dition. The term from the Islamic tradition that ismost often translated as “theology” is ‘ilm-u-kalamor kalam. Ghazali notes that in studying the workof the mutakallimun one sees that they “showed anearnest desire for attempting to defend orthodoxyby the study of the true nature of things. Theyplunged into the study of substances and accidentsand their principles.”1 Picking up on Ghazali’s ob-servation it can be said that kalam is that disciplinein the Islamic sciences that seeks to logically artic-ulate/explain the central doctrinal teachings of Is-lam in light of human understanding of the visibleuniverse. In other words kalam is the discipline in

Basit Koshul is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of ManagementSciences, Lahore, Pakistan. He was an Assistant Professor of Religion at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota, from 2002–2006. He isthe co-editor of a forthcoming collection of essays titled “Scripture, Reason and the Contemporary Islam-West Encounter: Studying the Other,Understanding the Self” (Palgrave, August, 2007). His most recent publication is The Postmodern Significance of Max Weber’s Legacy: DisenchantingDisenchantment , (Palgrave, 2005), which is reviewed in this issue of Dialog .

traditional Islamic studies that links faith in God,revelation and resurrection with knowledge of space,time and causality.

The second difficulty in discussing “theology andscience” from an Islamic perspective is the fact thatthere is paucity of resources, due to the novelty ofthe question. One way around this difficulty is touse the abundant literature on the topic of “scienceand religion” in Islam as a springboard into themore novel issue. Speaking of the way science isviewed in the Muslim world Ibrahim Kalin notes:

When we look at the current discourse onscience in the Islamic world, we see a num-ber of competing trends and positions, eachwith its own claims and solutions. Withoutpretending to be exhaustive, they can be clas-sified under three headings: ethical, episte-mological, and ontological/metaphysical.2

Kalin’s classification proves to be helpful in begin-ning the discussion on “theology and science” inIslam because it summarizes the basic ways that the

236 Dialog: A Journal of Theology • Volume 46, Number 3 • Fall 2007

“religion and science” relationship is viewed. We canlook at the basic characteristics of the three differentpositions on the relationship between “religion andscience” as summarized by Kalin and try to inferthe type of relationship between science and kalamthat can be derived from each of three positions.

For the proponents of the “ethical” position, ourfirst one, modern science is an “essentially neutraland objective” phenomenon “with no philosophi-cal or ideological components attached to it.”3 Itis the task of the individual to invest the find-ings of science with meaning and significance andto carry out scientific activity within the ethicalparameters dictated by religion. The basic func-tion of the sciences from this perspective is to“help the believer marvel at the wonders of God’screation.”4

Three Islamic Positions on“Theology and Science”: Ethical,Epistemological, andOntological/Metaphysical

On a very basic level this ethical position sees“nothing essentially wrong with modern science,and it is the materialistic representation of sciencethat lies at the heart of the so-called religion-sciencecontroversy.”5 The controversy can be easily re-solved by placing all scientific inquiry within theframework of Islamic ethics. Thereby religion (i.e.Islam) can play its primary function by setting theparameters for an ethical life and science can playits basic function of heightening the believer’s senseof awe and wonder. Since the primary task of sci-ence is to inspire a sense of awe of the Creator andthe created universe rather than deepen the rela-tionship between faith and knowledge it is difficultto derive a meaningful relationship between scienceand kalam from this position.

The epistemological position, the second in ourlist, views modern science “as a social construct”and “puts special emphasis on the history and so-ciology of science.”6 This position creates a spacefor Islam in the “religion and science” dialogue by

arguing that modern science is “a culturally condi-tioned and historical endeavor with claims to uni-versality and objectivity.”7 Since its claims to uni-versality and objectivity are not warranted, sciencemust acknowledge the Muslim voice as (at least)an equal partner in the dialogue. This particularMuslim critique of modern science is largely basedon the work of Western thinkers such as Popper,Feyerabend and Kuhn. In the epistemological posi-tion the focus is almost exclusively on the charac-ter of and conditions for knowledge claims. Thereis practically no discussion of the relationship be-tween matters of faith and knowledge of the world.Consequently, it is difficult to see a meaningful rela-tionship between science and kalam emerging fromthe epistemological position.

The ontological/metaphysical position, the thirdon our list, goes beyond issues of ethics, episte-mology and philosophy and focuses on “the analy-sis of the metaphysical and ontological foundationsof modern physical sciences”8. This analysis revealsthat the metaphysics of modern science is a rad-ical rupture from the metaphysics of pre-modern(or traditional) science. The latter is based on a sa-cred view of the cosmos due to the divine origin ofthe universe and sees everything as a reflection ofthis divine origin. Furthermore, everything in theuniverse is seen as being intimately related to ev-erything else on a hierarchical “chain of being” thateventually terminates at the divine origin.

From the perspective of this metaphysics, under-standing is arrived at by virtue of contemplativeknowledge and intellectual illumination. In the Is-lamic tradition the doctrine of Tawhid provides thebasis for this sacred, relational, illuminative meta-physics. In stark contrast, the metaphysics of mod-ern science, is characterized by desacralization, di-chotomy and rationality. According to Kalin, thismodern metaphysics is based on five premises: “asecular view of the universe,” a “mechanistic world-picture,” “epistemological hegemony of rationalismand empiricism,” “Cartesian bifurcation. . .betweenres cogitans and res extensa” culminating in a splitbetween subject and object, and “exploitation of thenatural environment.” 9

It is easy to infer a relationship between scienceand kalam based on this distinction between the


metaphysics of modern science and the metaphysicsof traditional science, and the relationship is entirelynegative. For the metaphysics position, as describedby Kalin, any interaction between any part of Is-lam (including kalam) with modern science wouldinevitably and invariably undermine the integrityof Islam because modern science is the very an-tithesis of everything that Islam (and every otherpre-modern, traditional religion) stands for.

Iqbal and the Possibility ofKalam and Science

Thus far we have not had much success in making acase from within the Islamic tradition that suggestseven the possibility of a positive and enriching rela-tionship between kalam and science—let alone be-ing an example of a positive relationship. But suchan example does exist in the work of MuhammadIqbal (d. 1938). Iqbal goes beyond positing that amutually enriching relationship between kalam andscience is possible, he puts forth a detailed argu-ment demonstrating that such a relationship mustemerge between the two if the integrity of religionand philosophy (including “natural philosophy”, i.e.science) is to be maintained in the post-traditionalperiod of human history.

Iqbal notes that the vitality of religion dependson its ability to generate “that special type of in-ner experience on which religious faith ultimatelyrests.”10 For Iqbal belief in God, revelation and lifehere-after is ultimately the result of personal expe-rience, not merely the acceptance of religious doc-trine. He goes on to note that basing religious faithlargely on personal experience brings two challengeswith it. Firstly, there have always been individu-als who have had intellectual/philosophical reser-vations and difficulties in accepting the reality ofthe aforementioned “inner experience.” Secondly,“the modern man, by developing habits of concretethought. . .has rendered himself less capable of thatexperience which he further suspects because of itsliability to illusion.”11 Iqbal recognizes the fact thatin order to make religious faith meaningful in themodern world one will have to go beyond received

tradition, while at the same time remaining loyalto it:

The more genuine schools of Sufism have,no doubt, done good work in shaping anddirecting the evolution of religious experi-ence in Islam; but their latter-day represen-tatives, owing to their ignorance of the mod-ern mind, have become absolutely incapableof receiving any fresh inspiration from mod-ern thought and experience.12

Given the fact that we are living in a very differ-ent cultural context than the ones from by-goneeras, it is our duty to come up with methods thatwould demonstrate the reality of God, revelationand life here-after that are appropriate to our cul-tural and historical context. For Iqbal this meansthat there has to be constructive (as well as crit-ical) engagement with modern science in the areaof kalam, because modern science is the one phe-nomenon that lends our historical-cultural settingsits unique characteristics. Consequently, Iqbal con-siders it a most “urgent demand. . .to reconstructMuslim religious philosophy [kalam] with due re-gard to the philosophical traditions of Islam and themore recent developments in the various domainsof human knowledge.”13

While developments in modern science arelargely responsible for this sense of urgency, he lo-cates a source of hope and optimism in the verysame source (i.e. developments in modern science):

And the present moment is quite favorableto such an undertaking. Classical physics haslearned to criticize its own foundations. Asa result of this criticism the kind of ma-terialism, which it originally necessitated, israpidly disappearing; and the day is not faroff when Religion and Science may discoverhitherto unsuspected mutual harmonies.14

Iqbal makes his own contribution to laying bare“unsuspected mutual harmonies” between religionand science. He shows how a post-Einstein un-derstanding of space, time and causality correctssome of the most intractable difficulties that bedevilthe Cartesian-Kantian philosophical understandingof freedom, immortality and the self or soul. Oncethis correction has taken place a restatement of the


religious conception of God, revelation and resur-rection can be formulated that meets the demandsof modern individuals possessing “habits of concretethought”.

For Iqbal this interaction will be greatly ben-eficial for modern science also. He notes that ithas mistaken the concepts and methods that it usesto study reality for reality itself and almost alwaysfalls into the trap of ascribing attributes to realitythat are actually attributes of its own concepts andmethods. Iqbal notes that it is only with the helpof religion that science can see (and then remedy)this particular malaise. It is well beyond the scopeof this paper to even summarize the kalam andaffirmation/critique of modern science that emergesout of Iqbal’s engagement with modern science andphilosophy.

What I will do in the remaining part of this ar-ticle is to summarize and support Iqbal’s argumenton one specific topic, the relationship between faithand rationality. Like St. Anselm before him Iqbal isacutely aware of the fact that “faith seeking under-standing” is the central aspiration of “theology” orkalam. Before one can even engage in the task ofdoing kalam, the legitimacy of this aspiration has tobe established—it has to be legitimized from boththe religious and scientific perspectives. It is for thisreason that many hadith collections as well as bookson kalam begin with “kitab-ul-’ilm” (book/chapteron knowledge) before going into the more “reli-gious” topics such as prayer, God, etc. Keeping inline with this tradition Iqbal titles the first chap-ter of his book “Knowledge and Religious Experi-ence.”

The Cognitive Element in Faith

Iqbal points out that there are a number of differentways of knowing the world around us; the poetic,the philosophical/scientific, and the religious. Thereligious is different from the poetic because re-ligious knowledge is intra-subjective, while poeticknowledge is largely merely subjective. Religiousknowledge differs from philosophical knowledge be-cause it is not based merely on rationality. While

the philosophical quest is guided by “pure reason”or rationality;

The essence of religion, on the other hand, isfaith; and faith, like the bird, sees its ‘track-less way’ unattended by the intellect which,in the words of the great mystic poet of Is-lam, ‘only waylays the living heart of manand robs it of the invisible wealth of lifethat lies hidden within’. Yet it cannot be de-nied that faith is more than mere feeling.It has something like a cognitive content,and the existence of rival parties—scholasticsand mystics—in the history of religion showsthat idea is a vital element in religion.15

By putting forth the observation that faith is not“mere feeling” and has “something like a cognitiveelement” Iqbal is bringing religion and science intocloser proximity on epistemological grounds. At thesame time he is opening up the possibility of re-ligious faith claims being subject to the criteria ofscientific inquiry. The question that arises here isthe following: Is Iqbal justified in making the claimthat faith has “something like a cognitive element”?A look at the Qur’an reveals that Iqbal is morethan justified in making this claim.

From the Islamic perspective the individualswith the most perfect and complete faith are theProphets and after the Prophets their closest com-panions, their disciples. If it can be shown thateven among these individuals we find instances offaith seeking to complement itself with rational un-derstanding, then we would have scriptural warrantfor Iqbal’s observation that faith is more than merefeeling, that it has a cognitive element. While thereare a number of Qur’anic passages that touch uponthe subject, two passages are particularly relevant inthe context of the present discussion. In both ofthese passages individuals whose faith is completeand perfect, request empirical demonstration thataffirms the validity of their faith—this request is themost compelling evidence that faith has a cognitiveelement. This empirical demonstration is sought sothat the individuals concerned can accept rationallywhat their faith has affirmed intuitively. The firstpassage is a conversation between Prophet Abrahamand Allah (2:260) and the second is a conversationbetween Prophet Jesus and the Disciples (5:112–3).


In the second sura of the Qur’an a conversationbetween Prophet Abraham and Allah is recordedwhere the former requests an empirical demonstra-tion of how the dead will be brought back to life:

And recall when Abraham said, ‘My Lord,show me how You give life to the dead,’ Hesaid, Do you not believe, then?’ [Abraham]said, ‘Most certainly [I believe,] but [I havemade the request] just to put my heart atease.’ (2:260).

It is difficult to say with certainty at what point inhis life Abraham had this conversation with Allah.But the preceding passage (2:258–9), as well as thecontent of this passage, leave little doubt that theconversation takes place at a time when ProphetAbraham is in his mature adult years. Consequently,it is more than a little surprising that he would berequesting an empirical demonstration of a matterof faith as basic and fundamental as the resurrectionof the dead. What is even a bit more surprising isthe fact that the request is granted:

So Allah said, ‘Take four birds and trainthem to come back to you. Then [cut themup into pieces and] place a part of them onseparate hilltops, call them back, and theywill come flying to you: know that Allah isAll-Powerful and Wise. (2:260)

There is a great deal of discussion and difference ofopinion in the tafsir literature regarding the mean-ing of “train them to come back to you.” Thereis even more discussion and disagreement aboutwhether or not the birds were killed before theywere put on different hilltops—most classical ex-egetes are of the opinion that the birds were killed,many modern commentators are of the opinion thatthe birds were not killed. As important and sig-nificant as these differences may be in other con-texts, they are largely irrelevant in the context ofthe present discussion. The passage leaves practi-cally no room for disagreement on the point thatis most relevant to the present discussion: ProphetAbraham, who would be given the titles of “Fatherof the Prophets,” “Leader of Men,” and “Friend ofGod” requests and is granted an empirical demon-stration of a fundamental precept of faith. The pas-sage also leaves little doubt about the fact that the

request for an empirical demonstration is in no waya sign of a lack of faith. When Allah asks ProphetAbraham if he is making the request because he hassome reservations about the reality of resurrection,the reply is very, very emphatic—“most certainlynot.”

The conversation in Surah al-Ma’ida betweenProphet Jesus and the disciples revolves around thesame issues as the conversation between Allah andProphet Abraham in Surah al-Baqara. In 5:110 Al-lah recounts the many favors He bestowed uponProphet Jesus and reserves 5:111 for mentioning amost special blessing of His: “and how I inspiredthe disciples to believe in Me and My messengers—they said, ‘We believe and bear witness that wedevote ourselves to [Allah]’.” The fact that the dis-ciples were people of faith from the very beginningis hardly contestable. The fact that their faith is ofa special type—the disciples having been especiallychosen and inspired by Allah—is also incontestable.

This background makes the dialogue betweenProphet Jesus and the disciples in (5:112–3) allthe more interesting: “And recall when the disci-ples said, ‘Jesus, son of Mary, can your Lord senddown a feast to us from heaven?’ he said, ‘Be mind-ful of Allah if you are true believers’” (5:112). Herethe disciples are making a request that a banquetof food be sent down from heaven by Allah sothat they may taste the food of paradise in thisworld. Prophet Jesus counsels care and caution be-cause such a request could be seen as an indicationof a lack of faith. The reply of the disciples is notunlike the reply of Prophet Abraham—as a matterof fact one part of the reply is exactly the same asProphet Abraham’s reply: “They said, ‘We wish toeat from it; to have our hearts reassured; to knowthat you have told us the truth; and to be wit-nesses of it.’” (5:113) The disciples are making therequest not because they don’t believe in the realityof heaven, heavenly life, heavenly food, etc.—theyare making the request so that their hearts may be“reassured”. Once again there is a great deal of dis-cussion in the tafsir literature regarding the meaningof the words “can your Lord send down a feast tous from heaven?”

Once again this discussion, though very signifi-cant in other contexts, is irrelevant in the present


context. What is most relevant about this passagein the present context is the following fact: Indi-viduals with the most complete and perfect faith intheir time (after the faith of Prophet Jesus), requestempirical evidence that would affirm the validity oftheir faith. The other point of significance is thatfrom the perspective of the individuals making therequest for empirical evidence, the request is in noway a sign of a lack of faith, if anything it is asign of their affirmation of faith. As was the casewith Prophet Abraham, the request of the disciplesis also accommodated by Allah (5:115).

The point that is of immediate concern to us inthe present discussion is that there is explicit scrip-tural warrant to support Iqbal’s observation that“faith is more than mere feeling” and that faith“has something like a cognitive content”. In thecase of both Prophet Abraham and the discipleswe have individuals who have perfect faith in theirhearts but still need rational demonstration that willput their heart at rest. If we step back from thescriptural passages we have treated separately aboveand compare them with a view of identifying somecommon themes running through them—themesthat are relevant to the topic that is of interest tous—then the following three themes emerge.

1. Individuals hold certain beliefs about the universeand their place in it in the absence of empiricalevidence—their commitment to these beliefs isbased on intuitive attraction.

2. These individuals search for and discover empir-ical evidence that affirms the validity of their al-ready held beliefs.

3. Even though the empirical evidence makes nodifference whatsoever in “what” they believe, itaffects “how” they believe—the empirical evi-dence allows their hearts to be “reassured” or “atrest” in a way that wasn’t the case prior to seeingthe evidence.

The Intuitive Element inRationality

After noting that faith is not mere feeling, Iqbalgoes on to note that philosophical and scientific

thought are not mere rationality. He argues thatrational thought and intuitive feeling are intimatelyrelated to each other. He notes that “the two—feeling and idea—are the non-temporal and tempo-ral aspects of the same unit of inner experience.”16

In other words, instead of seeing intuitive feelingand rational thought as polar opposites, Iqbal seesthem as being intimately related and in need ofeach other:

Nor is there any reason to suppose thatthought and intuition are essentially opposedto each other. They spring from the sameroot and complement each other. The onegrasps Reality piecemeal, the other grasps itin its wholeness. Here one fixes its gaze onthe eternal, the other on the temporal as-pect of reality. The one is the present en-joyment of the whole of Reality; the otheraims at traversing the whole for exclusive ob-servation. Both are in need of each otherfor mutual rejuvenation. Both seek visions ofthe same Reality which reveals itself to themin accordance with their function in life. Infact, intuition, as Bergson rightly says, is onlya higher kind of intellect.17

By putting forth the claim that intuitive feeling andrational thought are intimately related to each otherIqbal is challenging the textbook definition of sci-entific thought. In the textbook version of the is-sue, it is argued that the great advances in sciencehave been made once faith, intuition, and other ir-rational, subjective feelings are expunged from sci-entific inquiry and replaced with objective, criti-cal, rational thought. Leaving aside the textbookaccount of how science is done and focusing ourattention on how scientists actually did their scienceit becomes obvious that Iqbal’s description of theintimate relationship between rational thought andintuitive feeling is a much better description of ob-served facts than the abstract, ahistorical textbookdescriptions.

To begin with we will compare the textbook de-scription of how Copernicus formulated that helio-centric model with how he actually did it. Holtonsummarizes the textbook description of the circum-stances leading up to the formulation of the helio-centric model:


Until some years ago, the reigning opinion inthe history of science was that the Coperni-can system was the very model of a new the-ory arising from a crisis brought about by theaccumulation of data contradicting the oldand overly complex theory of Ptolemy andhis followers. Copernicus’ book on the revo-lutions of the celestial objects, it was said,used more trustworthy observational data,yielded a better theory, and so rescued thepractitioners of the time by giving them atlast a calculational method of greater accu-racy for astronomical predictions.18

This textbook description of how Copernicuscame to formulate his revolutionary insights can besummarized as follows:

1) The accumulation of empirical data causedCopernicus to suspect and doubt the geocentrictheories of his day.

2) Copernicus constructed an alternative hypothesis(the heliocentric model) that was in consonancewith the accumulated empirical data.

3) Copernicus’ hypothesis was confirmed because itproved to be a more powerful explanatory devicethan the geocentric models.

In sum empirical data is both the starting pointof inquiry (because it causes doubts to arise aboutthe dominant, accepted theory) as well as the endpoint (because the validity of the novel, revolution-ary theory is established by empirical observations.)As tidy, neat and attractive as the textbook descrip-tion is, it has to be rejected because it has nothingto do with how Copernicus actually arrived at hisrevolutionary insight—and even less to do with thereasons why he affirmed its validity.

Holton notes that scientists using Copernicus’method for calculating astronomical predictions“were no better off after the publication of his greatwork, De Revolutionibus, and in fact they contin-ued to use the Ptolemaic system in essentially theform Ptolemy himself had set forth.”19 Just howlittle of an improvement Copernicus’ method ofcalculation was over earlier methods is illustratedby the fact that Copernicus’ system of 1543 “gavethe same large errors for the predicted location ofMars—up to five degrees—as did the Regiomon-tanes in the 1470’s.”20 Consequently, Copernicus’

affirmation of his theory was not based on itssuperior explanatory power—the instruments andmethods that could establish this superiority didnot exist at that time. Not only did Coperni-cus’ theory not yield predictions that were anybetter than Ptolemaic system, the data on whichhe constructed his theory was no better either.Holton notes: “Like Ptolemy, Copernicus selectedjust enough data (among them many with worse er-rors than he realized) to get his orbits, even bendingsome of them by a few minutes of arc as needed.”21

Given the fact that Copernicus’s system was notbuilt on better observational data and did not yieldbetter predictions than the Ptolemaic system, thequestion naturally emerges—What was the sourceof Copernicus’ confidence in his proposed system?It is worth quoting Holton at length in this re-gard. After detailing the fact that Copernicus’ sys-tem was based on flawed observational data anddid not yield reliable predictions, Holton goes onto note:

But one must remember what he reallywanted to achieve. This he made quite plainnear the very beginning of his great book:‘To perceive nothing less than the design ofthe universe and the fixed symmetry of itsparts.’ What is more, he wanted to do so bysticking to what he called ‘the first princi-ple of uniform motion’ (that is to say, Aris-totelian circular motion), instead of employ-ing nonuniformities and nonconstancies, asthe Ptolemaics had allowed. What convincedhim to make this the cornerstone of his ar-gument, and eventually persuaded his follow-ers, was that he thereby produced a modelof the planetary system in which the relativelocations and order of orbits were no longerarbitrary but followed by necessity. In short,Copernicus is a case study of the privileg-ing of an aesthetically based theory—aboveall the aesthetics of necessity—and even ofthe temporary disbelief in ‘data’ that wouldappear to disprove a favored theory.22

In short Copernicus’ revolutionary scientific in-sights were not the outcome of a scientific the-ory built on carefully collected data, the validity ofwhich was confirmed because it yielded reliable pre-dictions. The revolutionary insights were the result


of the “privileging of an aesthetically based theory”which was privileged in spite of the fact that accu-mulated data contradicted it and calculated predic-tions failed to verify it. It is obvious that somethingmore than “rationality” (as commonly understood)was at work in Copernicus’ scientific investigations.

By the time we reach Galileo’s advocacy of theheliocentric model, evidence in the form of dataand predictive power of Copernican system washardly any better than it was at the time of Coper-nicus’ death. The question rises once again: In theabsence of observational data and lack of predictivepower of the theory, what were the grounds forGalileo’s confidence in the validity of the Coper-nican system? It is indeed the case that Galileo’sobservations through the telescope brought to lightshortcomings in the Ptolemaic/Aristotelian systemthat were not known before. This strengthened thecase in favor of the Copernican model by defaultbut not by positive evidence. In the words of Lang-ford:

Despite his stunning findings, Galileo stillhad no real proof that the Copernican sys-tem was anything more than a theory. Hisobservations militated more against Ptolemyand Aristotle than for Copernicus. The ap-pearance of the sunspots in the telescope didseem to question the distinction between ce-lestial and terrestrial matter. The moons ofJupiter and the phases of Venus did provethat at least some planets revolve arounda physical center other than the earth. El-ements of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic systemhad therefore definitely been shown to befaulty.23

Blackwell sums up the matter in succinct terms:

[O]n the scientific side, everyone involvedrealized that no strict proof had yet beenfound for Copernicanism. Galileo’s observa-tions with the telescope, and in particular hisdiscovery of the phases of Venus, made thenew theory more probable, but not conclu-sive. He fully realized this, and for the re-mainder of his life he searched without suc-cess for definitive proof.24

It appears that “privileging of an aestheticallybased theory” played no less a role in Galileo’s

advocacy of the Copernican system than it hadplayed in Copernicus’ own advocacy. Evidence thatthis is indeed the case comes from an unlikelysource—Galileo’s complete rejection of the best ev-idence available during his lifetime in support ofthe Copernican system. This evidence was the plan-etary laws of motions proposed by Kepler. Keplerwas acutely aware of the fact that his work com-plemented that of Galileo and taken together theirwork strengthened the case in favor of the helio-centric model. Consequently, it is no surprise thatthe junior scientist (Kepler) did everything he pos-sibly could to get Galileo’s attention, approval andsupport. What is surprising is the fact that the se-nior scientist (Galileo) stubbornly rebuffed all ofKepler’s efforts. Holton describes Galileo’s responseto Kepler’s overtures in these words:

Now it would have been very logical forGalileo to reciprocate, because Kepler’s lawsclearly showed the superiority of the Coper-nican way of imagining the system of theworld. But contrary to every reasonable ex-pectation, Galileo kept his distance from Ke-pler, always tried to brush him off, and neveraccepted Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.And that, for a long time, was a madden-ing puzzle in the history of science. Howcould Galileo avoid using Kepler’s support-ive findings as a weapon, when he was so be-leaguered by his enemies? What caused thisfailure of imagination? Galileo never tried toexplain his strange rejection of Kepler, andeven this shows that it must have had a deep-seated cause. 25

Holton suggests that the reason why Galileospurned all of Kepler’s overtures was because theacceptance of Kepler’s findings required Galileo toabandon a personal commitment to a particularunderstanding of aesthetics—and Galileo was notwilling to abandon this personal commitment evenif it meant rejecting Kepler’s work.

To Galileo, as to Aristotle and also to Coper-nicus, all motion in the heavens had to pro-ceed in terms of the superposition of cir-cles, for example in a circular epicycle car-ried along a circular deferent. The circle,and uniform motion along the circle, werethe very signatures of uniformity, perfection,


eternity. Kepler had initially thought so, too,but then had been driven by the data andagainst his better instincts to announce, ashis first law, that the planets are in ellipti-cal motions around the sun. Therefore theywere not in what Galileo regarded as “nat-ural” motion but were continually changingtheir speed as they moved.

To Galileo, who was still under the spell ofcircularity, the ellipse was a distorted circle—a form unworthy of celestial bodies.26

In sum Galileo’s advocacy of the Copernican sys-tem in spite of the fact that it could not be sup-ported by empirical data and his rejection of Ke-pler’s findings in spite of the fact that they weresupported by empirical data can be traced back tothe same cause—”the privileging of an aestheticallybased theory.” Galileo’s “enchantment with the cir-cle”27 played a greater role in generating his ownrevolutionary insights (and rejecting the empiricallyvalid findings of Kepler) than either accumulateddata or the predictive power of a theory. As is thecase with Copernicus, it is patently obvious thatsomething more than “rationality” (as commonlyunderstood) was at work in Galileo’s scientific in-quiry.

As he is providing different examples of some-thing more than “rationality” being an integral partof scientific inquiry, Holton is also constructing anexplanatory tool that can help us to make sense ofthis phenomenon. Holton posits that all great scien-tists have a particular faculty, the “thematic imagi-nation,” that makes it possible for them to privilegean aesthetically attractive theory in the absence ofsupporting data. He describes the workings of thethematic imagination in these terms:

[It is] the practice of quietly letting a fun-damental presupposition—what I have calleda thema—act for a time as a guide in one’sown research when there is not yet a goodproof for it, and sometimes even in theface of seemingly contrary evidence. This canamount to a willing suspension of disbelief,the very opposite of what one usually takesto be the skeptical scientific attitude.28

The thematic imagination and a “willing suspensionof disbelief” that accompanies it is an essential part

of scientific inquiry. As far as Holton is concernedit is practically impossible to talk about a “scien-tific imagination” that is also not infused with the“thematic imagination”. Speaking specifically aboutGalileo, Holton notes: “[T]he primacy of the cir-cle was to Galileo one of those irresistible thematicpresuppositions, without which his scientific imagi-nation could not operate.”29 Further evidence pro-vided by Holton demonstrates that it is not onlyin the relatively distant past and in the specific caseof Galileo that we have cases where the scientificimagination cannot operate without the aid of thethematic imagination.

It is not only in the relatively distant past thatwe find examples of thematic commitments beingthe basis of groundbreaking scientific discoveries.Holton notes:

[I]t can turn out that when a thematicallyand intellectually compelling theory is givena chance, better data, gathered with its aid,will eventually reinforce the theory. That isthe meaning behind a remark Einstein madebefore the test of General Relativity: “Now,I am fully satisfied, and I do not doubt anymore the correctness of the whole system,may the observations of the eclipse succeedor not. The sense of the thing is too evi-dent.30

In other words, Einstein considered the aestheticmerits of his theory to be a more reliable crite-rion for judging its soundness than empirical data.The fact that this was not hyperbole or a quixoticlapse on Einstein’s part is made clear by what hap-pens when the initial data seemed to question thesoundness of his theory:

When a discrepancy of up to 10 percent re-mained between the first set of measured de-viations of light and the corresponding cal-culations based on his theory, he responded,“For the expert this thing is not particularlyimportant, because the main significance ofthe theory doesn’t lie in the verification oflittle effects, but rather in the great simpli-fication of the theoretical basis of physics asa whole.31

It was not only Einstein who continued to em-brace General Relativity theory in the absence


of data and on the basis of aesthetics. Holtonnotes:

And even before more data came in, whichdecreased the discrepancies, other scientistsjoined Einstein’s camp, persuaded, in thewords of H. A. Lorentz, that his grandscheme had “the highest degree of aestheticmerit; every lover of the beautiful must wishit to be true.32

A look at the history of science (a study of how ac-tual, living scientists actually did their work) leaveslittle doubt that as important as the accumulationof data is for science, it does not occupy the cen-tral role that has been assigned to it in the textbookversion of science. Looking at the circumstance inwhich Copernicus, Galileo, and Einstein came tonot just formulate but also advocate their respec-tive scientific hypotheses it is obvious that the sus-pension of disbelief played a major (actually themajor) role. Holton notes that time and again inthe history of science we find instances of scien-tists letting “their best work grow and mature outof an unlikely idea that they prevent from beingdestroyed at the hand of iron rationality.”33 The“hand of iron rationality” requires that empiricaldata and predictive powers of a theory always andeverywhere be the determinant criteria for affirm-ing a particular hypothesis. From this perspectiveall belief in a hypothesis has to be suspended untiland unless there is corroborating empirical evidence.But the actual history of science shows that very of-ten it has been the suspension of disbelief, not thesuspension of belief that has proven to be the cat-alyst for revolutionary scientific breakthroughs. Be-ginning with a cautionary note, he goes on to de-scribe the critical role that thematic presuppositions(and the willing suspension of disbelief that thesepresuppositions entail) have played in the history ofscience:

The graveyard of science is crowded with thevictims of some obstinate belief in an ideathat proved unworthy. But we must face thestrange fact that there are genial spirits whocan take the risk, and persevere for long pe-riods without the comfort of confirmatorysupport, and survive to collect their prizes.

By studying their private notes we now knowthat Isaac Newton, John Dalton, and GregorMendel, among many others, refused to ac-cept “data” that contradicted their thematicpresuppositions, and were proven right in theend.34

It is obviously the case that science is not solelythe result of the “thematic imagination”—to makesuch a claim would be absurd. Such a claim wouldbe as absurd as the claim that science is solely theresult of “rational” thought, empirical observationsand repeatable experimentation. It is certainly thecase that scientific knowledge cannot attain a desig-nation as such in the absence of all of these things,but it is just as certainly the case that no scien-tific hypotheses would ever emerge to be tested, ob-served etc. in the absence of the intuitive capacities.I am not making the claim that Holton’s under-standing of the “thematic imagination” is equivalentto Iqbal’s understanding of “intuitive feeling”—thismay very well be the case but it is not one I amin a position to argue at this point.

The claim that I am making is that Holton’s ex-position of the role of the “thematic imagination” inscientific inquiry supports Iqbal’s observation thatintuitive feeling and rational thought are intimatelyrelated to each other—the intimacy is such thatboth need each other’s mutual rejuvenation. Theother claim that I am making is that even thoughtheir role is different in each case, both elements—the intuitive and the cognitive—are present in bothreligious faith and scientific inquiry. In short, it isnot only the case that faith has a cognitive element,it is also the case that rationality has an intuitiveelement. These observations by Iqbal, the evidencethat he presents to support them, and the evidencethat has emerged since his death all point in onedirection—we are indeed living in an era “whenReligion and Science may discover hitherto unsus-pected mutual harmonies.” And with these discover-ies, actually based on these discoveries, a new visionof the relationship between faith in God, revela-tion and resurrection and knowledge of space, timeand causality can be formulated. To the degree thatIqbal has been successful in demonstrating the cog-nitive in faith and the intuitive in thought, we can


judge how successful he could be in demonstratingthe relationship between kalam and science.

Endnotes

1. Al-Ghazali, Deliverance From Error: Five Key Texts Including His Spir-itual Autobiography, al-Munqidh min al-Dalal. Translated and annotatedby R.J. McCarthy. (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 1980), 60.

2. Kalin, Ibrahim. “Three View of Science in the Islamic World” inGod, Life and the Cosmos: Christian and Islamic Perspectives. Eds. Ted Peters,Muzaffar Iqbal, Syed Nomanul Haq. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002),47.

3. Ibid.

4. Kalin, 48.

5. Kalin, 45.

6. Kalin, 47.

7. Kalin, 61

8. Kalin, 47

9. Kalin, 67–8.

10. Muhammad Iqbal. The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam.(Lahore, Pakistan: Institute of Islamic Culture,1996), xxi. Do not confuseor conflate Muhammad Iqbal, now deceased, with contemporary MuzaffarIqbal, Editor of Islam and Science www.cis-ca.org/journal.

11. Iqbal, xxi

12. Ibid.

13. Iqbal, xxi-xxii

14. Iqbal, xxii.

15. Iqbal, 1.

16. Iqbal, 17.

17. Iqbal, 2.

18. G. Holton, Einstein, History, and Other Passions: The RebellionAgainst Science at the End of the Twentieth Century. (New York: AddisonWesley, 1996), 59.

19. Ibid

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. Holton, 59ff.

23. Langford, J. Galileo, Science and the Church. (Ann Arbor, MI: Uni-versity of Michigan Press, 1987), 46.

24. Blackwell, R. “Could there be another Galileo case?” In The Cam-bridge Companion to Galileo. Ed. Peter Machamer. (Cambridge, England:University of Cambridge Press, 1998), 352.

25. Holton, 97.

26. Holton, 101.

27. Ibid

28. Holton, 96.

29. Holton, 101.

30. Holton, 60.

31. Ibid

32. Ibid

33. Holton, 96.

34. Holton, 96–7.

From Religion and Science to Kalam and Science

Documents

Transcript of From Religion and Science to Kalam and Science