Approach to Science 10th-Century
While al-Razi, al-Farabi and Ibn—Sina
were taking a secular approach to the sciences, others attempted to provide for
the newly developing Arabic and religious sciences.
During the tenth century, a secret society,
known as the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwan al-Safa), divided the sciences and
described their respective merits.The Rasail (Epistles) emphasized and elevate
the philosophical and natural sciences, but there was sufficient material on
the religious sciences to justify their inclusion. They discern three
categories of the sciences :
1.The religious sciences, aiming at
healing the soul and attaining life in the hereafter. There are six
disciplines: (1) revelation; (2) allegorical interpretation of the Quran; (3)
tradition (Hadith); (4) jurisprudence; (5) mysticism; and (6) dream
interpretation and magic.
2- Literary Sciences (Al-Ilm-al-Adab)
which consist of (1) writing,reading, and grammar; (2) poetry; (3) biography
and history; (4) arithmetic and commercial transactions; (5) agriculture; and
(6) animal husbandry.
3. The philosophical sciences, consisting
of (1) mathematics, geometry, astronomy, and music; (2) logic; (3) the nature
sciences mineralogy, botany, zoology, and medicine; (4) politics; (5) the
metaphysical sciences knowledge of God, and (6) the science of soul.
lkhwan al-Safa’s Encyclopaedia
lkhwan al-Safa (The Brethren of Purity,
or Faithful Friends) was a secret association of philosophers and scientists
established at Basra in about 983 with a branch in Baghdad. It used to hold
meetings at which the members would read treatises on scientific, philosophical
and religious subjects. The chief aim of this group, it is said. was to forward
the salvation of their immortal souls through mutual assistance and by
remaining faithful to one another. The other explanation is that they were
called the Brethren of Purity because, after Plato, they were first and
foremost who believed in purifying effect, of the study of philosophy, of soul.
In religion, the Brethren has leanings
towards Mutazilism and Shi'ism and their association is essentially of a
political idea.
The theory of knowledge of the Brethren
was worked out more or less on Plantonic lines. Which is fundamentally base on
the notion of the pualism of soul and body; by soul they understood to mean the
spiritual element developed in man. The ultimate purpose of knowledge,
according to them, is to purify the soul by conducting it from the sensible to
the spiritual, from the :oncrete to the abstract. Like Socrates, the Brethren
maintained that all real
knowledge is potentially present in the
soul of the individual. The position of he teacher was similar to that of a
midwife. Teaching was not to put something in the soul from within but to help
it give birth to the truths that tlready lay embedded in it.
For the purification of the soul it was
very necessary that an individual thould undergo a hard discipline in abstract
sciences such as logic and nathematics. But the movement of the soul from the
particular to the iniversal, concrete to abstract, or that of sensible to the
supersensible, was a gradual process. Mathematic was removed further than logic
from what was sensible. Logic took an intermediate position between physics and
metaphysics. In physics we have to deal with bodies; in metaphysics, with pure
spirits or thought.
In the metaphysical views of the Brethren
we find very clear traces on Neoplatonic doctrines. Like Plotinus they believed
that God is above all knowledge and above all the categories of human thought.
From God, the highest being, who was exalted above all distinctions and
oppositions both, of the material and the mentalkind, the world is derived by
way of emanations. This certainly is a Neoplatonic doctrine to explain the
origin of the world. The various grades of emanation have been categorised by
the Brethren as follows: (1) Intelligence (2) The- Worldly Soul, (3) The
Primitive Matter, (4) Nature, (5) The Spatial Matter, (6) The World of Spheres,
(7) The Elements of the Sublunary World, (8) Minerals, Plants and Animals.
These then, were called by them, the
eight essences which, together with God the absolute one, complete the series
of original essences corresponding to the cardinal numbers, i.e., nine in all.
All this books are more like a piece of mythology rather than philosophy to the
modern reader.
The central point in this doctrine is the
heavenly origin and the return of the soul to God. The individual souls are
only part of ‘the world soul’ to which they return purified after the death of
the body just as the world soul will return to God on the Day of Judgement.
Death is called the minor resurrection and the return of the world soul to God
as the major resurrection.
The Brethren had their own idea of
Insan-i-Kamil i.e., the ideal or the perfect man. The object of all philosophy
as well as of every religion is to make the soul become like God so far as it
is humanly possible.
The human soul has emanated from the
worldly soul, and the souls of all the individuals taken together constitute a
substance which may be called ‘The Absolute Man’ or ‘The Spirit of Humanity’.
The specific requirements for the ideal man of the Brethren are interesting to
note for they relieve their electicism evidently at its best, ‘The. ideal man’
should be of East Persian
origin in Education, Arabian in faith,
Hebrew in astuteness, a Greek in natural sciences, an Indian in the
interpretation of mystries, but above all a Sufi or a mystic in his whole
spiritual outlook.
As one goes through the contents of the
Encyclopaedia hurriedly, one may find separate treatises dealing with problems
of great philosophical and religious interest. Titles of some of the treatises
with their serial numbers are as follows: Development of the Individual soul
(27); The Contemplation of Dfiflfh and Life (29); The World as a Man on a Large
Scale (34); thought and Its Object (35); The Soul's Love and Longing for God
(37); The Way to God
(43); Immortality of the Soul (44);
Resurrection, etc.
The Rasail were considered heretical and
were bumt in Baghdad in 1150 at
the best of the Abbasid Mustanjid. Inpite
of the charge, the treaties continued to circulate and exercised and influenced
Muslim Philosophy.
The Tree Of Islamic Knowledge and Science
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