ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Three Views of Science in the Islamic World The Sacred versus the Secular: The Metaphysics of Science The last major position on science of which we can give here only a brief summary is marked off from the other two positions by its emphasis on metaphysics and the philosophical critique of modern science.

Represented chiefly, inter alia , by such thinkers as Rene Guenon, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Naquib al-Attas, Osman Bakar, Mahdi Golshani and Alparslan Acikgenc, the metaphysical view of science considers every scientific activity operating within a framework of metaphysics whose principles are derived from the immutable teachings of the Divine revelation.

In contrast to philosophy and sociology of science, metaphysics of science provides sciences with a sacred concept of nature and cosmology within which to function.[^35] At this point, the sacred view of nature taught by religions and ancient traditions takes on a prime importance in the formation and operation of physical sciences, and all of the traditional sciences, regardless of the historical and geographic setting they were cultivated in, were based on such principles which had enabled them to produce highly advanced sciences and techniques while maintaining the sacredness of nature and the cosmos.

The traditional natural sciences, Nasr and others argue, derived not only their work-ethics and methodology but also metaphysical and ontological raison d'etre from the principles of Divine revelation because they were rooted in a conception of knowledge according to which the knowledge of the world acquired by man and the sacred knowledge revealed by God were seen as a single unity.

As a result, the epistemological crisis of the natural and human sciences that we try to overcome today did not arise for the traditional scientist who did not have to sacrifice his religious beliefs in order to carry out a scientific experiment, and vise versa. The traditional metaphysics envisages reality as a multi-layered structure with different levels and degrees of meaning.

The polarity between the Principle and Its manifestation, which is translated into the language of theology as God and His creation, gives rise to a hierarchic view of the universe because manifestation already implies a domain of reality lower than its sustaining origin.