93)Boxing day sale at the Teaching Company!

This past week I revelled in the purchase of a number of university-level courses from the Teaching Company, whose web address is on my 'Suggested Links' section of this blogsite. I had been waiting quite a few months for them to go on sale and seized the opportunity when it presented itself.

I bought the following titles, among others(for detailed course descriptions, go to the site itself; its worth a check):

1)Human prehistory and the first civilizations
2)Nature of Earth: An introduction to Geology
3)Science and Religion
4)Superstring Theory: The DNA of Reality
5)Philosophy and Religion in the West

These are all DVD courses, complete with summary booklets, and I can look forward to a great 2007. Nothing gives me more pleasure than to take my own sweet time watching and learning about these subjects in detail in the Medical Sciences library at my alma mater, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, which has become a place of deja vu and intellectual pilgrimage for me.

Expect to read on this blogsite any ideas and thoughts I consider to be germane to the title of my blogsite.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

92)Three scintillating blue supergiant stars make their appearance again.

I blogged earlier about these three stars, that seem to be strung like a pearl necklace, which make up the belt of the Orion constellation in our Milky Way galaxy(Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka).

These three blue supergiant stars are hotter and much more massive than our Sun, signifying that they are also much further advanced in the life cycle of a star than our Sun is. This scintillating picture of the three stars was the Astronomy picture of the day for today, December 29th 2006 on the NASA website, and I chose to include it on my blogsite again, even though my post no. 83 talks about them in some detail. The three stars are 15 thousand trillion kilometers away from planet earth. Their Arabic names speak to a long gone era of dominance in scientific endeavour in the Muslim world (over a millenium ago):

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061229.html

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

91)The 'ayat' as a verse of scripture and the 'ayat' as a sign in nature.

The previous post, no. 90, is a perfect coming together or confluence of a 'composition' by the Natiq, or Speaking prophet, and a 'composition' by the Universal Soul. Both wellsprings of knowledge, as the Al-Sijistani-Khusraw cosmological doctrine goes, receive 'tayyid' or inspiration from the Universal Intellect and incorporate a 'composition' around that Intellect, the Natiq using words, sentences and the Arabic language to fashion a scripture, the Universal Soul using fundamental particles of matter to fashion a material universe that moves and acts in multiple dimensions, including time.

The timeless, instantaneous intellect that inspired the Prophet to fashion his composition 1400 years ago is the same timeless, instantaneous intellect that inspired the Universal Soul to fashion its composition 12-14 billion years ago, and man to use his sequential, rational intellect in the 20th century to uncover the 'ayat' or sign in nature that exactly matches the written 'ayat' or verse of scripture. Of course, to comprehend the deepest allegorical significance of either of the two 'ayats' or signs, we would have to go to another wellspring of knowledge, the Founder of interpretation, or 'Asas', whose role it would be to 'unincorporate' both ayats to reveal the true nature of the Intellect that inspired their creation in the first place. The cycle from Unity to multiplicity and multiplicity back to Unity, within the totality of "God's creation", would then be complete.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand "God's creation":Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

90)"Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together before We clove them asunder?"

This is an almost surreal picture of a prolific star-forming region in the Pelican nebula, located in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan, 2000 light years away from planet earth(20 million trillion kilometers away) in our Milky Way galaxy. Pieces of mountain-shaped dust clouds can be seen pinching off to eventually coalesce into stars, some of which will also form their own planets:

Quran, Chapter 21, Verse 30: Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together before We clove them asunder, and of water fashioned every thing? Will they not then believe?

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061227.html

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

89)'Ayats'(Signs) in the Universe series: previous postings.

As I began to put my thoughts down on this blogsite, some of my posts took on a decidedly personal flavour in so far as my appreciation of various objects and events(also known as signs or ayats) in the universe were concerned. I therefore created a specific grouping of posts and titled them "'Ayats'(Signs) in the Universe series". So far I have written 6 such posts and they are numbered 19, 29, 31, 38, 39 and 41 on the blogsite. The topics covered are varied and include:
1)a natural, pristine lakefront scene(19);
2)the goings-on inside a living cell(29);
3)the dynamic earth and the plate tectonics revolution(31);
4)the glorious, life-giving process of photosynthesis(38);
5)speeding angels and the relativity of time and space(39);
6)the beauty and evil of the HIV/Aids virus(41).
I have also been considering post number 7 in this series, in which I have been giving some thought to an event in nature, a possible metaphor for the cascading sequence of intellect, starting from the first and only created being, encompassing all existents, the Universal Intellect, and ending in the intellect wrapped up in the tiniest, most fundamental particles of diversified matter. More about that later.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

88)Snowflakes, a beautiful, symmetric 'ayat'(sign) in creation and one of its marvels.

The seat of sequential, discursive intellect discussed in my last post(no. 87), the human brain, is what allows us to carry out logical, rational experiments on one of Allah's prettiest signs('ayats') in nature, the formation of snowflakes. In an interview to Spiegel magazine in October 2006, Mowlana Hazar Imam said the following about the religion of Islam:

"Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason."

My thoughts on the full extent of "God's creation" are outlined in post number 62 of this blogsite.

The subject of snowflakes is a fitting one for those of us who live in the Northern hemisphere at this time of the year:


Atmospheric science

Fake flakes

Dec 19th 2006
From The Economist print edition

A sprinkling of labs around the world are trying to grow snow crystals

THERE is something about snowflakes that scientists cannot leave alone. Johannes Kepler, the man who worked out the orbits of the planets, wrote a book about them as a new-year present for his patron. Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton's low-born rival who came up with insights about gravity that Newton may have stolen, first applied the microscope to them. And René Descartes once wrote, “So perfectly formed in hexagons, and of which the six sides were so straight, and the six angles so equal, that it is impossible for men to make anything so exact.” But in this as in so many things, Descartes was wrong. For John Hallett of the Desert Research Institute in, appropriately, Nevada, is really rather good at making snowflakes.

Dr Hallett is one of a small band of latter-day snowflake researchers. He makes his flakes in a chamber that mimics the swirling balance between wind and gravity in which natural snowflakes form. He then compares flakes grown in these controlled conditions with natural flakes, and is able to infer what was going on in the places where those natural flakes formed.

The details are surprisingly complicated. Experiments done in the 1930s by Ukichiro Nakaya, a Japanese scientist, showed that whether snow forms in the flat and flowery shapes that grace Christmas cards, or as hexagonal prisms that look like cross sections through pencils, depends on the temperature. The six-petalled ice flowers grow in air warmer than -3°C. Between -3°C and -10°C, prisms form. Between -10°C and -22°C, it is ice flowers again, and below that, prisms once more.

Dr Hallett is building on Nakaya's work to look at how such things as humidity affect the process. It may sound esoteric, but he hopes that understanding the conditions needed for particular sorts of flake to form will enable meteorologists to give out accurate warnings of air-pockets that pilots should avoid in order to prevent their aircraft icing up. And if that were not practical enough, others are looking at the role snowflakes have in catalysing the transformation of ozone into normal oxygen.

Ozone is a version of oxygen with three atoms per molecule, whereas normal, everyday oxygen has only two. At ground level ozone is a dangerous pollutant, but at altitude it blocks the passage of harmful ultraviolet light. Understanding the role of snowflakes in catalysing the change from one sort of oxygen to the other should provide insights into how ozone is distributed in the atmosphere.

Another way of growing snowflakes is to use an electric field. This is the approach employed by Ken Libbrecht, of the California Institute of Technology. Starting with a small piece of frost on an electrode, he has grown ice stars and flowery stalks of impressive beauty. The method works because the electrical field polarises the electric charge on water molecules in the air around the icy tip and then draws them in electrostatically. At about 1,000 volts this effect races away—the more pointed the tip, the stronger the field becomes, and as more water molecules attach themselves to it, the tip becomes more pointed.

Unlike Dr Hallett's convection-grown snowflakes, Dr Libbrecht's electrically generated crystals have no obvious applications. Sadly, they do not even offer much insight into thunderstorm snow. But they do demonstrate the importance of unstable conditions in imparting to snowflakes their famous diversity.

Exact mathematical explanations of this diversity are some way off, but people are working on them. Jon Nelson, of Ritsumeikan University, in Japan, has calculated that the most important property involved is the surface tension of the tiny clusters of water molecules from which snowflakes form. This can vary in non-obvious ways as temperature alters. That variation, he believes, dictates the way snow crystals grow. His model predicts that these clusters will change size at the temperatures at which newly forming snow alters from flower mode to prism mode, and vice versa. And, yes, this, and the instability that Dr Libbrecht demonstrates, is probably sufficient to make every snowflake different.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

87)The seat of sequential, discursive intellect in man.

Brainbox
Dec 19th 2006
From The Economist print edition

A history and geography of the brain

THE reason that people have brains is that they are worms. This is not a value judgment but a biological observation. Some animals, such as jellyfish and sea urchins, are radially symmetrical. Others are bilaterally symmetrical, which means they are long, thin and have heads.

Headless animals have no need for brains. But in those with a head the nerve cells responsible for it—and thus for sensing and feeding—tend to boss the others around. That still happens even when a long, thin animal evolves limbs and a skeleton. Bilateralism equals braininess.

A healthy human brain contains about 100 billion nerve cells. What makes nerve cells special is that they have long filamentary projections called axons and dendrites which carry information around in the form of electrical pulses. Dendrites carry signals into the cell. Axons carry signals to other cells. The junction between an axon and a dendrite is called a synapse.

Information is carried across synapses not by electrical pulses but by chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. One way of classifying nerve cells is by the neurotransmitters they employ. Workaday nerve cells use molecules called glutamic acid and gamma aminobutyric acid. More specialised cells use dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine and a variety of other molecules. Dopamine cells, for example, are involved in the brain's reward systems, generating feelings of pleasure.

Many brain drugs, both therapeutic and recreational, work either by mimicking neurotransmitters or altering their activity. Heroin mimics a group of molecules called endogenous opioids. Nicotine mimics acetylcholine. Prozac promotes the activity of serotonin. And cocaine boosts the effect of dopamine, which is one reason why it is so addictive.

Apart from specialised nerve cells, there is a lot of anatomical specialisation in the brain itself. Three large structures stand out: the cerebrum, the cerebellum and the brain stem. In addition, there is a cluster of smaller structures in the middle. These are loosely grouped into the limbic system and the basal ganglia, although not everyone agrees what is what.

Most brain structures, reflecting the bilateral nature of brainy organisms, are paired. In particular, the cerebrum is divided into two hemispheres whose only direct connection is through three bundles of nerves, the most important of which is called the corpus callosum. (Many parts of the brain have obscure Latin names.)

This anatomical division of the brain reflects its evolutionary history. The brains of reptiles correspond more or less to the structures known in mammals as the brain stem and the cerebellum. In mammals, the brain stem is specialised for keeping the heart and lungs working. The cerebellum is for movement, posture and learning processes associated with these two things. It is the limbic system, basal ganglia and cerebrum that do the interesting stuff that distinguishes mammalian brains from those of their reptilian ancestors.

Soul-searching
The limbic system is itself divided. Some of the main parts are the hippocampus, the amygdala, the thalamus and the hypothalamus. The largest of the basal ganglia is the caudate. The pineal gland, which lies behind the limbic system, is the only brain structure that does not come in pairs. The 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes thought it was the seat of the human soul.

Descartes, however, was wrong. It is in fact the cerebrum's outer layer, the cerebral cortex, that is man's true distinguishing feature. The cerebral cortex forms 80% of the mass of a human brain, compared with 30% of a rat's. It is divided into lobes, four on each side. The rearmost one, called the occipital, handles vision. Then come the parietal and temporal lobes, which deal with the other senses and with movement. At the front, as you would expect, is the frontal lobe.

This is humanity's “killer app”, containing many of the cognitive functions associated with human-ness (although that most characteristic human function, language, is located in the temporal and parietal lobes, and only on one side, usually the left). Man's huge frontal lobes are the reason for the species' peculiarly shaped head. No wonder that in English-speaking countries the brainiest of the species are known as “highbrow”.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

86)The underlying rationale for my blogsite on the link between science and religion in Islam.

The entire basis of my blogsite relating to the link between science and religion in Islam stems from the following thoughts and utterances, all taken from different parts of the blogsite, each one of which will be accompanied by the post numbers with which it is associated:


The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being.(Aga Khan III). Post 22, signature post.

Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation.....(Aga Khan IV). Posts 9, 31, 50, 70, 72, 79.

The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine will.(Memoirs of Aga Khan III). Posts 10, 21, 34, 72, 81.

Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God.(Memoirs of Aga Khan III). Posts 10, 21, 34, 72.

....Universal Soul, of which the Universe is, as much of it as we perceive with our limited visions, one of the infinite manifestations. Thus Islam's basic principle can only be defined as mono-realism and not as monotheism. Consider, for example, the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar". What does that mean? There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life and to the soul. Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its reflection in the pool of a fountain; there is certainly a reflection or image of the sun, but with what poverty and with what little reality; how small and pale is the likeness between this impalpable image and the immense, blazing, white-hot glory of the celestial sphere itself. Allah is the sun; and the Universe, as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its power, are nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain.(Memoirs of Aga Khan III). Posts 10, 21, 34, 72.

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.(Albert Einstein). Post 16.

"The spiritual and material realms are not dichotomous, since in the Ismaili formulation, matter and spirit are united under a higher genus and each realm possesses its own hierarchy. Though they require linguistic and rational categories for definition, they represent elements of a whole, and a true understanding of God must also take account of His creation. Such a synthesis is crucial to how the human intellect eventually relates to creation and how it ultimately becomes the instrument for penetrating through history the mystery of the unknowable God implied in the formulation of tawhid". (Dr Azim Nanji, Director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies.) Post 18

Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason.(Aga Khan IV). Posts 60, 61, 62, signature post.

"In fact this world is a book in which you see inscribed the writings of God the Almighty"
(Nasir Khusraw). Posts 26, 72.

'Tarkib' is composition as in the compounding of elements in the process of making more complex things, that is, of adding together two things to form a synthesis, a compound. Soul composes in the sense of 'tarkib'; it is the animating force that combines the physical elements of the natural universe into beings that move and act. Incorporating is an especially apt word in this instance. It means to turn something into a body, as in 'composing'. But it is actually the conversion of an intellectual object, a thought, into a physical thing. Soul acts by incorporating reason into physical objects, the natural matter of the universe and all the things composed of it(Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani, 10th century Ismaili cosmologist, from the book by Paul Walker). Post 48.

"Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world. The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same. Every wonderful sight will vanish, every sweet word will fade. But do not be disheartened. The source they come from is eternal, growing, branching out, giving new life and new joy. Why do you weep? The source is within you and this whole world is springing up from it"(Jalaluddin Rumi). Post 72.

The material universe is part of the structure of truth, the ultimate nature of which it is the goal of religion to reach.(Yours truly, Nasser Hadi Velshi). Blog title post.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

85)A cosmic show of lights on December 13th 2006.

When the sun set off a tsunami-like shock wave from an earth-sized sunspot as it did on December 13th 2006:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061213.html ,

this is what happened as a result in Iowa, U.S.A. on the evening of December 14th 2006:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061218.html

Its called an aurora and resulted when an energetic cloud of particles blasted out of the sun and collided with planet earth's magnetosphere. It is unusual to see such brilliant colours over Iowa, which is really in the middle of nowhere. Usually, one sees them travelling towards the earth's magnetic poles but, because this was an extremely large solar flare(unusually large, even for the sun), the colourful display was seen in many spots on earth.

The sun is often depicted in mystical poetry as representing the first created being, or Intellect; it also symbolises the Light of God. Since the gargantuan flare occured on December 13th 2006, the 70th birthday of our present Imam, I'm asking myself if this was not some massive celebratory blast from the sun on this joyous occasion.

I blogged before about a green aurora seen from another location:

"This is a glorious green picture that one sees sometimes during an aurora at one of the earth's magnetic poles. Energetic particles from the sun interact with the earth's magnetic field, causing the resultant high energy atomic particles like protons and electrons to rain down at the earth's magnetic poles. When these highly energetic particles impact air molecules, they cause the air molecules to lose electrons temporarily. Among the air molecules, when oxygen in particular re-acquires these electrons, they emit the green light you see in this awesome picture: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060906.html "

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

84)Evidence on the expanding universe and its composition.

Some facts about the universe discovered by modern science thus far:

"The universe, 13.7 billion years old (accurate to 1 percent), composed of 73 percent dark energy, 23 percent cold dark matter, and only 4 percent atoms, is currently expanding at the rate of 71 km/sec/Mpc (accurate to 5 percent) and underwent episodes of rapid expansion called inflation, and will expand forever.":
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040711.html


A force from empty space, the Casimir effect:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061217.html


The Force of Empty Space:

Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 4549

According to quantum mechanics, the vacuum is not empty, but teeming with virtual particles that constantly wink in and out of existence. One strange consequence of this sea of activity is the Casimir effect: Two flat metal surfaces automatically attract one another if they get close enough. The Casimir force is so weak that it has rarely been detected at all, but now a team reports in the 23 November PRL that they have made the most precise measurement ever of the phenomenon. They claim that their technique, using an atomic force microscope, has the capacity to test the strangest aspects of the Casimir effect, ones that have never before been tested.

The simplest explanation of the Casimir effect is that the two metal plates attract because their reflective surfaces exclude virtual photons of wavelengths longer than the separation distance. This reduces the energy density between the plates compared with that outside, and--like external air pressure tending to collapse a slightly evacuated vessel--the Casimir force pulls the plates toward one another. But the most puzzling aspect of the theory is that the force depends on geometry: If the plates are replaced by hemispherical shells, the force is repulsive. Spherical surfaces somehow "enhance" the number of virtual photons. There is no simple or intuitive way to tell which way the force will go before carrying out the complicated calculations.

Since the discovery of the theory by Casimir 50 years ago, there have been only two previous documented detections of the effect. One was in 1958 and had 100% uncertainty, and the second was last year [Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 5 (1997)], when the theory was verified to within 5%. Umar Mohideen and Anushree Roy, of the University of California at Riverside, claim their new results verify the theory to within 1%.

Mohideen and Roy exploited the exquisite sensitivity of the atomic force microscope (AFM), which can sense forces as small as 10-18 newtons(ten to the power minus 18). In an AFM, the force causes a slight deflection of a microscopic cantilever, which is detected with a laser system. The team affixed an aluminum-plated, 200-µm-diameter sphere to the cantilever and recorded the deflection as it approached a flat, aluminum-plated surface to within 100 nm. They corrected the raw data for several small effects, including the electrostatic force between the surfaces caused by a small excess charge on the sphere. Because the approach was so close, the team also had to correct the theoretical curve to account for the microscopic roughness of the metal surfaces, which they measured using the AFM in a more traditional mode. They applied a further correction to the ideal theory to account for the lack of perfectly reflecting surfaces.

Mohideen says the new method is superior to previous ones because the electrostatic corrections to the data amounted to only a few percent of the size of the Casimir force, whereas in the previous experiment, those corrections were 5 times the Casimir force. But the real importance of the new technique, says Mohideen, is that its precision can be dramatically improved, allowing studies of the weird geometry dependence of the Casimir effect and even its predicted dependence on temperature.

Lawrence Ford, of Tufts University in Medford, MA, says the work is important because any fundamental theory requires verification by more than one research group. But in addition, the latest measurements included separations six times smaller than the experiment last year, so that the researchers could put the corrections to a much more rigorous test. Verifying the theoretical corrections to Casimir's original theory assures physicists that "[we] really understand what's going on," says Ford.

Precision Measurement of the Casimir Force from 0.1 to 0.9 µm
Umar Mohideen and Anushree Roy
(U. California at Riverside)
Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 4549 (issue of 23 November 1998)

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

83)Al-Nitak, Al-Nilam, Mintaka, Betelgeuse, Al-Deberan: Arabic-named stars in nearby constellations in space.

The belt of Orion is made up of three stars aligned in a straight line and their names(in Arabic) are Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, showcasing the significant muslim contribution to Astronomy during what is called the golden age of Islam. Other stars, called Aldeberan and Betelgeuse(also in Arabic), are found nearby as well, the former in the nearby Hyades constellation and the latter in the Orion constellation, girded by the belt of Orion.If you place your mouse on top of this picture:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060720.html

you will see the different constellations light up, showing the relative positions of Betelgeuse, Aldeberan and the straight line 'belt' made up of the three stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka.

Here is an excellent close up of the three Arabic-named stars making up the belt of Orion:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap051013.html

Last Saturday, December 9th 2006, the space shuttle went up into space to do some work at the international space station. The plume of smoke coming off the rocket was tracked up into space and the tail end of this plume of smoke ended up right next to the three stars making up the belt of Orion(as seen in two dimensions). They look like they are next to each other but, when the scenario is looked at in 3 dimensions, they are actually very far apart!. The international space station orbits barely 200 or so kilometers above the earth whereas the Orion constellation of nebulae and stars discussed above is about 1500 light years away from earth, or 15,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers away!!!!!.That would be 15 thousand trillion kilometers away from earth.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061216.html

Astronomy was a natural early science for muslims to pursue during the golden age of Islam because the times for the 5 daily prayers, as well as the sightings of the new moon for the beginning and end of the fasting month of Ramadan, and Chandraat for Satpanthi Ismailis, were and are all required to be determined astronomically.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

82)My response to my friend's thoughts.

Interesting post, Arun. Early and medieval muslims took very seriously the advice of the Prophet when he said: "Seek knowledge, even in China" and "One hour of contemplation on the works of the Creator is better than a thousand hours of prayer". Consequently, intellectual offerings from ancient Greece, China, India and other places were translated, studied and devoured, incorporated, then further advanced by muslim scholars until the practice was brought to an end by the orthodoxy. It was and continues to be an inspiring example of intellectual pluralism. Neoplatonism was naturally an attractive conceptual framework for the new monotheistic religion of Islam because it comprised the universal ideals of Plato infused with the monotheistic juices of Judaism and Christianity.

Regarding the knowledge influence from Ancient Greece:

Academic Papers
Plato, Platonism, and Neo-platonism

Dr Nader El-Bizri

This article was originally published in Medieval Islamic Civilization, An Encyclopaedia, Vol. II, p. 614-616, ed. Josef W. Meri, Routledge (New York-London, 2006).


Abstract:

The school of philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century CE, based on the teachings of Plato and the commentators on his work, received a new intellectual impetus when its texts became available to scholars in the Islamic civilization through translations from Greek to Arabic, starting from the 9th century CE. Philosophers and thinkers in Islam assimilated this philosophical legacy, and innovatively expanded the theoretical and practical applications of its ideas, as well as brought new directions to its conceptual unfolding, which resulted in significant intellectual contributions, particularly in philosophy and ethics.


Key words:

Neoplatonism, Syriac, Plotinus, Plato, Republic, Phaedo, Symposium, Aristotelian, Stoic, neo-Pythagorean, Enneads, Nous (intellect), methaphysics, Platonists, creatio ex nihilo, the World Soul, Laws, Sophist, Timaeus, history of ideas in Islam, al-Madina al-Fadila (The Virtuous City), Corpus Platonicum, Tandhib al-akhlaq (The Cultivation of Morals), Ibn Miskawayh, Liber de Causis (Kitab al-Khayr al-Mahd), al-Kindi, Ikhwan al-Safa’, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, al-Sijistani, al-Kirmani, Suhrawardi, Ibn ‘Arabi, Mulla Sadra.


Plato, Platonism and Neo-platonism:

Neoplatonism was a philosophical movement that primarily belonged to the Hellenist Alexandrian and Syriac schools of thought. Its founder, Plotinus (ca. 205-270 CE), an Egyptian of Greek culture, was pro­foundly influenced by Plato’s Republic, Phaedo, and Symposium, as well as being inspired by Aristotelian, Stoic, and neo-Pythagorean doctrines. Plotinus’ own monumental corpus, the Enneads, was partly drafted in response to the objections raised by Aristotle against Plato’s theory of ideas. Therein, Plotinus ar­gued that the Platonic forms subsist in what Aristotle referred to as Nous (intellect). Giving a metaphysical primacy to abstract ideas, the realm of the intelligible was construed as being the ground of the ultimate reality, which was radically independent from sensible beings. This ontology led to a belief in the existence of absolute values rooted in eternity. Further elabora­tions of Plotinus’s teachings were undertaken by his disciple, Porphyry of Tyre (ca. 232-305 CE), and were supplemented by the work of the latter’s pupil, the Syrian Iamblichus (ca. 250-330 CE). However, Proclus (ca. 411-485 CE) introduced the most rigor­ous systematization of this tradition.

The impetus of Neoplatonism in philosophy confronted many chal­lenges following the closing of the Athenian Academy (ca. 526 CE) by the Roman Emperor Justinian. The momentum of this tradition was renewed with the philosophers of the medieval Muslim civilization who imbued it with monotheistic directives. Follow­ing Socrates, in a critique of the Sophists, Platonists believed that knowledge cannot be derived from appearances alone, and that it can only be properly attained through universal ideas. Heeding the medita­tions of Parmenides, they held that the realm of being was unchanging, eternal, and indestructible; while following Heraclitus, they took the sensible realm as being subject to a constant flux of transformational becoming. Establishing a distinction between truth and belief, they asserted that the intelligible was apprehended by reason and the sensible by mere opinion. With this Platonist heritage, the ethical code of goodness became a cosmological principle.

Eventually, Neo-Platonists held that The One, as the indeterminate perfection of absolute unity, simplicity, and goodness, imparts existence from itself due to its superabundance. This event was grasped as being a process of emanation that accentuated the primacy of Divine transcendence over creation and represented an alternate explication of generation that challenged the creatio ex nihilo doctrine. Endowed with vision, the One, as the First undiminished Source of exis­tence, imparts Nous, the immanent changeless Intel­lect, as its own Image. From this effused Nous issues forth the World Soul, which acts as a transition be­tween the realm of ideas and that of the senses. Refracting itself in materiality, the Soul generates all sensible composite beings, while matter represents the last station in the hierarchy of existence as the unreal substratum of the phenomenal universe. Emanation, as a processional descent, was itself to be followed by an ascent that expressed the longing of the rational soul to return to its Source and a yearning to inhabit the realm of ideas. This reversible movement acted as the basis of the moral code of the Neoplatonist system, which advocated a dualist sepa­ration of mind and body, as well as affirmed the immortality of the soul.

Philosophers in medieval Islam came to know Plato through the Arabic translations of his Laws, Sophist, Timaeus, and Republic. His influence on the history of ideas in Islam is most felt in the domains of ethics and political philosophy, whereby his views offered possibilities for reconciling pagan philosophy with monotheistic religion in the quest for truth and the unveiling of the ultimate principles of reality. His Republic and Laws presented an appealing legislative model that inspired political thought in Islam, particularly the line in thinking that is attested in al-Farabi’s (ca. 870-950 CE) treatise al-Madina al-Fadila (The Virtuous City), which gave prominence to the role played by philosophy in setting the legal arrangements and mores of the ideal Islamic polity. The Corpus Platonicum also impressed humanists like Ibn Miskawayh (ca. 940-1030 CE), who, in his Tahdhib al-akhlaq (The Cultivation of Morals) espoused the Platonic tripartite conception of the soul, along with its ethical-political ramifica­tions. As for the Neoplatonist doctrines, these found their way into the intellectual history of Islam through Plato’s dialogues, as well as being channeled via the tracts known as Aristotle’s Theology and Liber de Causis (Kitab al-Khayr al-Mahd). Although both texts were erroneously attributed to Aristotle, the former reproduced fragments from Plotinus’s Enneads, and the latter rested on Proclus’ Elements of Theology. This misguiding textual transmission led to imbuing Aristotelianism with Neoplatonist leitmo­tifs, which impacted the thinking of authorities such as al-Kindi (d. ca. 873 CE), Ikhwan al-Safa’ (tenth century CE), al-Farabi (d. ca. 950 CE), and Ibn Sina (d. 1037 CE), who in their turn influenced the onto-theological systems of al-Sijistani (d. 971 CE), al-Kirmani (d. 1020 CE), Suhrawardi (d. 1191 CE), Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240 CE), and Mulla Sadra (d. 1640 CE).

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

81)Some thoughts from a friend and colleague on creationism and evolution.

A medical colleague of mine, who also happens to be an amateur astronomer, penned these thoughts recently. It made me think about the following excerpt from the Memoirs of our 48th Imam, Aga Khan III:

"There is a fundamental difference between the Jewish idea of creation and that of Islam. The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine will."

"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God."

Evidence from science points clearly to creation being "perpetual and constant": how else could one explain the fact that, at this very moment, a new star(sun) and two or three orbiting planets are forming in the Orion nebula, not far from our own solar system in the Milky Way galaxy.

The Islamic view of creation being perpetual and constant could also be compatible with the modern scientific conception of chemical evolution as well as some aspects of Darwinian evolution.



My friend's recently-penned thoughts:

Despite my science background I believe in creation (by GOD) AND evolution working in concert. I do not buy the theory that organisms arose from a primordial soup with electric arc! There has to be a supreme "power" to start the life process. The problem with logical science as we know is NOT all events are logical even simple day to day medical maladies like arthritis are poorly explained by science.Even Darwin was a firm believer in the teleological argument: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleological_argument


If organisms arose spontaneously in primordial earth. Why do scientists only get "crude" proteins in an experiment using ingredients thought to be present in the "primordial soup"?

Aquinas and the scholastics.
The most notable scholastics (circa 1100-1500 CE) who put forth teleological arguments were Averroes (Ibn-Rushd) and Thomas Aquinas. Averroes was writing in Spain from an Islamic perspective in the latter half of the 12th Century, and his influence was very considerable in interpreting many of Aristotle's ideas for the first time in Latin, thereby directly helping to make Aristotle available to Aquinas. Averroes was a transitional philosopher, partly a priori neo-Platonic, and partly a posteriori Aristotlean. As a result of his overlapping of the two modes in interpreting Aristotle, and also as a result of what would be known today as a strong disagreement between a deistic and theistic viewpoint in religious circles of that era, Averroes' work was highly controversial and fairly quickly became officially banned in both the Christian and Islamic world. Despite the lingering Platonic influence, Averroes' teleological arguments can be characterized as primarily Aristotelean and presuming one God. He argues based mainly upon Aristotle's Physics, in essence that the combination of order and continual motion in the universe cannot be accidental, and requires a Prime Mover, a Supreme Principle, which is in itself pure Intelligence.

This would set the stage for Aquinas in the 13th Century, whose arguments were much more thoroughly Aristotlean, a posteriori and empirically based than his predecessors. Aquinas makes a specific, compact and famous version of the teleological argument, the fifth of his five proofs for the existence of God in his Summa Theologiae:

"The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that they achieve their end, not fortuitously, but designedly. Now whatever lacks knowledge cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is directed by the archer. Therefore, some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God."


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4b/Darwins_first_tree.jpg
Darwin spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, helping his father treat the poor of Shropshire. In the autumn he attended the University of Edinburgh to study medicine, but was revolted by the brutality of surgery and neglected his medical studies.

Charles Darwin came from a Nonconformist background. Though his father and grandfather were Freethinkers, lacking conventional religious beliefs,[109] he did not initially doubt the literal truth of the Bible.[110] He attended a Church of England school,[111] then at Cambridge studied Anglican theology. He intended to become a clergyman,[112] and was fully convinced by William Paley's teleological argument that design in nature proved the existence of God.[113] However, his beliefs began to shift during his time on board HMS Beagle. He questioned what he saw—wondering, for example, at beautiful deep-ocean creatures created where no one could see them, and shuddering at the sight of an ichneumon wasp paralysing caterpillars as live food for its eggs — a contradiction, in his view, of Paley's vision of beneficent design.[114] While on the Beagle Darwin was quite orthodox and would quote the Bible as an authority on morality, but had come to see the history in the Old Testament as being false and untrustworthy.[115]

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

80)Protein synthesis in a dramatical setting.

I found this amazing youtube video depicting a theatrical production of how proteins are synthesised in living cells. How creative!

This is, of course, an introductory run up to my next post in the 'Ayats'(Signs) in the Universe series, which will be post number 7 in the series.

Regarding objects and events in the material universe, our 48th Imam says in his Memoirs: "Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine will.":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9dhO0iCLww

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

79)Uncovering more marvels of creation.

".....Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation....."
Aga Khan 4, Aga Khan University, 1983

They may be ugly, but they're really deep
Scientists discover many new species in the inky water under Antarctica

ANNE MCILROY
From Monday's Globe and Mail

In the dark ocean beneath the Antarctic ice, researchers have found scores of species they've never seen before, including strange jellyfish and other gelatinous organisms that thrive without light.

It is too early to say exactly how many new species were discovered in the Antarctic, many in the Weddell Sea, where ice crushed the ship of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton in 1915.
The scientists saw more strange creatures than familiar ones, says Ron O'Dor, an expert in octopuses and squid from Halifax's Dalhousie University and the chief scientist in charge of producing the first marine life census of the planet by 2010.

Experts who weren't on the expedition may be able to identify some of the mysterious organisms spotted beneath 700 metres of ice, more than 200 kilometres from the open ocean. But most will probably turn out to be species new to science.

Dr. O'Dor was on a cruise to the Arctic last year that made a number of finds, including a pink octopus that had never been seen that far north. But the Antarctic waters were darker, he said in a recent telephone interview from Britain where he was attending a conference. The thick ice blocks the sun, so no light gets through.

This is the sixth year of the marine census, an ambitious project that involves 2,000 researchers from 80 countries trying to get a handle on what is living in the world's oceans.
The researchers have conducted expeditions to previously unexplored deep-sea vents, underwater mountains, coral reefs, the Arctic and the Antarctic.

They have used satellites to track sharks, squid, sea lions, albatrosses and other tagged animals travelling thousands of kilometres.

Among the highlights from the discoveries made this year:

A school of fish the size of Manhattan off the New Jersey coast. About 20 million herring were travelling together.

A shrimp believed extinct for 50 million years ago was found on an underwater peak in the Coral Sea near Australia. It is has been nicknamed Jurassic Shrimp. It is the same colour as modern shrimp, but looks bulkier.

Sooty shearwaters average 350 kilometres a day in their search for food. A satellite tracked the movements of the seabirds as they made a giant figure eight over the Pacific Ocean, from New Zealand to Japan, Alaska, California and back. The journey took 200 days, and in some cases, a breeding pair made the trip together.

A new species of rock lobster in Madagascar that may be the largest in the world. Its body spans half a metre.

A new species of furry crab near Easter Island, nicknamed the Yeti Crab.

A giant single-cell organism in the Nazare Canyon off Portugal. Protozoans can usually be seen swimming in a drop of water under a microscope. This one, found 4,300 metres beneath the surface, was a centimetre in diameter.

The deep ocean is free of sharks, which live at 1,500 metres or above.

Scientists working on the marine census also learned more about zooplankton, the tiny drifters that are at the mercy of the ocean's currents. They identified 500 species, including a transparent jellyfish they didn't know they had captured until they held its gooey body in their hands. These "sea bugs," as they are sometimes called, are essential to life as we know it, and include flying snails, swimming worms and shrimp-like creatures that paddle with oar-like feet. They are food for bigger fish and marine animals and also help moderate the climate by transporting carbon to the bottom of the sea.

Another team found 10 to 100 times more species of bacteria than they expected to, including rare microbes that may be relics from the early days of the planet.

Some of the census work is done away from the sea. Analysts, for instance, have concluded that only 2 per cent of the world's coral reefs are protected.

Historians reconstructed the changing abundance of marine life in 12 estuaries and coastal areas around the world. They used archives from Roman times in the Adriatic Sea, the medieval period in Northern Europe and colonial times in North America and Europe. They found that 90 per cent of important species have been depleted.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

78)All caught up!

The previous 77 blogposts were made over a period of about 9 months(March 16th to December 9th 2006) on the well-managed and supremely protected F.I.E.L.D. Ismaili Heritage website. They now become the archive for my new, individual blogsite at http://easynash.blogspot.com/

From here on in, posts made on this site will be cross-posted to the F.I.E.L.D. Ismaili Heritage website and vice versa.

If you wish to contact me, I am at easynash@gmail.com

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

77)Symbolism and allegory in the natural world.

Is there an event in nature, an 'ayat' or a 'sign', that can serve as an allegory for the emanation of hierachical knowledge starting from the celestial inspiration of Universal Intellect and ending in the multi-dimensional world of the material universe? Is there a ubiquitous event, similar to the process of photosynthesis I described in an earlier post, that one can seize upon as a metaphor for the created order that our present Imam recently referred to as "God's creation"? Keep an eye out for my thoughts on this, which will make up no. 7 in my Ayats(Signs) in the Universe series.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

76)The cascading sequence of intellect.

Someone on another website asked whether ginans, which are well known as a poetic and mystical tradition, can also be classified as an intellectual tradition. My response:

Thats an interesting question. I see an uninterrupted continuum of intellect starting from the first created being, Intellect, in its purest, most unified and undiversified spiritual form, going down to the intellect wrapped up inside each individual fundamental particle in the multi-dimensional, ultradiversified material universe. In this respect ginans are very high up in this cascading sequence because they mostly deal with issues of tawhid, knowledge of the heart as opposed to the mind and about the manifestation of transcendence in creation. I think they are definitely an intellectual tradition but they deal mainly in issues relating to suprarational knowlegde and intellect.

Further down in the cascading sequence is the kind of rational intellect and knowledge I(for example) was able to acquire in the western, secular tradition with reductionistic subjects like biology, chemistry, physics, geology, astronomy, etc that I was brought up with. Nevertheless, I am an extremely lucky fellow because, in my readings over the years, I discovered a far less reductionistic and more holistic Ismaili cosmological doctrine that allowed me to synthesise all the reductionistic subjects I learned about in my western education into a unified vision of the material universe, using the eastern Iranian as opposed to the Arabic cosmological model, enabling me to see it as one component of the structure of truth, the ultimate nature of which it is the goal of religion to reach.

If I am able to transcend the 'zahir' of the material universe and penetrate into its 'batin', then I beleive I will be starting to speak the same language of the heart that the ginans are so well known for.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

75)Signs('Ayats') in the Universe: Astronomy.

This was the picture that made people fall in love with astronomy and which fuelled the golden age of astronomy we find ourselves in currently:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap051224.html

Astronomy is a humbling science because it shows us distances and sizes so vast and so incomprehensible to the human mind that it forces us to think about and speculate about who or what is beyond this universe and to start to consider "He who is above all else......."



This picture was taken on December 7th 2006 from a telescope in Turkey. In the early-morning sky three planets(children of the sun) can be seen: Mercury at about 1 o'clock on the upper right side; Jupiter at about 6 o'clock just below the dark cloud bank; Mars at about 3 o'clock just above the dark cloud bank and to the right of Jupiter. These three planets are seen from their sister planet the earth and all four planets are kept in perfect orbit around their parent star(the sun) by its immense gravitational pull:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061209.html



In our efforts to help "the whole of the Ummah.....become full and even leading participants in the Knowledge Society of the 21st Century"(Aga Khan 4), I bring your attention to this little bit of knowledge about the material universe: The planet Mars has two tiny moons orbiting around it, Phobos and Deimos. Below is a close-up picture of the moon Phobos, which is shaped like a Prince Edward Island potato. Unfortunately, Phobos is not stable in its orbit around its parent planet because it is orbiting too closely to it and the gravitational attractive tidal forces of the much larger planet are slowly(very slowly!) pulling the moon towrds it so that in about 100 million years, the moon will likely crash onto the surface of planet Mars. Nothing lasts forever in the material universe:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061203.html


The material universe is part of the structure of truth, the ultimate nature of which it is the goal of religion to reach.
easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

74)Sayings: Aga Khan 4

Excerpt of address made by Mowlana Hazar Imam to the graduating students at the Aga Khan University, December 2nd 2006:

"That quest for a better life, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, must lead inevitably to the Knowledge Society which is developing in our time. The great and central question facing the Ummah of today is how it will relate to the Knowledge Society of tomorrow.

If we judge from Islamic history, there is much to encourage us. For century after century, the Arabs, the Persians, the Turks and many other Islamic societies achieved powerful leadership roles in the world—not only politically and economically but also intellectually. Some ill-informed historians and biased commentators have tried to argue that these successes were essentially produced by military power, but this view is profoundly incorrect. The fundamental reason for the pre-eminence of Islamic civilizations lay neither in accidents of history nor in acts of war, but rather in their ability to discover new knowledge, to make it their own, and to build constructively upon it. They became the Knowledge Societies of their time.

Those times are over now. They are long gone. But if some people have forgotten or ignored this history, much of the Ummah remembers it—and, in remembering, asks how those times might be recaptured. There may be as many answers to that question as there are Muslims—but one answer which can be shared across the whole of the Ummah is that we must become full and even leading participants in the Knowledge Society of the 21st Century."(Aga Khan 4).

Excerpt from a speech by Mowlana Hazar Imam in Lahore, Pakistan on December 5th 2006 regarding pluralism, knowledge, intellect, knowledge society:

"Stressing the need for the promotion of pluralism of Islamic civilisation, the prince said the spirit of the knowledge society was the spirit of pluralism — a readiness to accept the other, indeed to learn from him, to see difference as an opportunity rather than a threat.

He said AKDN had set up an institute in London which was teaching an MA course in Islamic civilisation. He said Ummah also needed to move into the knowledge society.

He said AKDN was planning to set up a network of schools in 14 to 16 countries of Asia and Africa, adding these educational institutions would provide world-class education. These schools would ultimately be linked to the university system, he said"(Aga Khan 4).



Regarding the above-quoted excerpts during the recent visit to Pakistan, the theme of knowledge has now become a standard theme in the Imam's speeches as well as farmans. I think back to the farman in Toronto in June 2005, the convocation address at American Cairo in June 2006, the interview to Spiegel magazine in Oct 2006, the AKU convocation speech and the speech in Lahore, Pakistan in Dec 2006. There have been many more in other speeches and farmans, of course, but the acquisition of knowledge in all its nuances, from the rational knowledge provided by a solid education to the transcendental knowledge of the divine, is now a recurrent theme in the Imam's thoughts and messages. All the Imam's educational institutions, from the schools and academies to the universities in Africa and Asia, are designed to impart a solid education in rational knowledge, which can lay the groundwork for incitement towards more esoteric and suprarational forms of knowledge.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

73)Chemical evolution and the dynamic universe of Islam

This kind of discovery by scientists gives us fascinating clues about the origins of life in the material universe. It also requires a belief in chemical evolution, which is very compatible with the religion of Islam postulating a dynamic as opposed to a static universe:

From the Toronto Star:
Meteorite may hold clues to life

The meteor opens a window into the kind of material from which the solar system was formed, Johnson Space Center scientist suggests Dec. 1, 2006.

EDMONTON — They don’t look like much — 47 fragments of black, pale-flecked rock that altogether don’t weigh much more than a small roast.
But according to an article published in a major science magazine Thursday, a meteorite stored at the University of Alberta contains tiny, carbon-based globules that may offer important clues about how life began on Earth.

“These represent the right tools, the right building blocks, for life to develop,” said Chris Herd, a professor of Earth sciences and curator of the university’s meteorite collection.

In a paper published in the journal Science, NASA researchers say the meteorite found on Tagish Lake in the Yukon has been found to contain organic compounds that formed in the distant reaches of space as the solar system was being born.

The scientists say compounds such as those found in the meteorite may have been responsible for seeding the earth with the building blocks of life.

While such compounds have been found in space debris before, scientists thought they may have been picked up after the meteorite entered the atmosphere.

But powerful electron microscopes at the Johnson Space Center in Texas helped prove the compounds in the Tagish Lake material had formed in space.

Scientists say the Tagish Lake meteorite, carefully plucked off the surface of that frozen lake in January 2000, comes from long, long ago and far, far away — 4.5 billion years and the extreme corner of what is now the solar system.

But what really has them excited is the sample’s purity.

The meteorite was collected shortly after it landed and has remained frozen ever since, preserving the tiny globules almost perfectly.

“Their structure has actually remained intact since they were formed,” said Scott Messenger, a NASA cosmochemist from the Johnson Space Center who co-authored the article in Science magazine.

“This may be the cleanest meteorite we have.”

The meteor opens a window into the kind of material from which the solar system was formed.

The meteorite is unusually rich in carbon molecules that have formed into hollow bubbles so tiny that a trillion of them would weigh less than a grape.

That’s important for two reasons: all living things are built from carbon compounds and all living things need to arrange those compounds into membranes that protect what’s inside the organism from what’s outside.

“Astrobiologists consider forming a membrane to be one of the most important and difficult steps in forming the first cells,” said Messenger.

“These globules are premade membrane structures. They may have nothing to do with life per se, but they’re organic-rich, they’re about the right size and they’re hollow.”

Some scientists theorize that the original chemical compounds from which life formed came from outer space.

It’s common to find carbon-based compounds in meteorites. Amino acids — the building blocks of DNA — have also been found.

It’s estimated that 40,000 tonnes of meteorite debris and comet dust hit the Earth each year. That total would have been higher in the planet’s early years.

Messenger said the importance of the Tagish Lake meteorite discoveries cut across a variety of scientific disciplines — and have left him with a sense of awe.

“To be able to look at these little globules and conclude that they formed before the Earth formed in a completely different type of environment, it’s really kind of profound.”

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

72)Sirat al-Mustaqim: 'Zahir' harmonizing with 'Batin'.

How does Ismailism encourage us to look at objects, events and people in the material universe?:

Ismailism, by my understanding, encourages us to look at material objects and beings in the universe and see the essence behind them. It encourages us to always search for the 'batin' within the 'zahir'. This is the magical and mysterious endeavour that we are encouraged to embark upon as we study rationally the world around us and use it as a springboard to melt ourselves into the suprarational reality encompassing it. This is what I think is meant by the phrase "Sirat Al Mustaqim" being sharper than a sword and finer than a hair. There is this intimate and intense interplay between the 'zahir' and the 'batin' that applies to everything in the perceptible universe and no less to the religious hierachy in the perceptible world. If we only look at the Imam in his zaheri sense and leave it at that, then we only look at the oyster shell but forget to search for the pearl inside it; we end up forsaking the more important half of the Ismaili worldview, namely, the 'batin'.

So it is that when we look at how the material universe operates in the minutest detail and at the tiniest, most microscopic levels, we are enthralled at how "God reveals to us the marvels of his creation"(Aga Khan IV) and we remember that, "in fact, this world is a book in which you see inscribed the writings of the Almighty"(Nasir Khusraw). We also do not forget that "Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God."(Aga Khan III).

We also learn that the 'zahir' is nothing when compared to its corresponding 'batin': "Allah is the sun; and the Universe as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its power, are nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain"(Imam Hasan, as quoted by Aga Khan III in his 'Memoirs'). The matter is finally put to rest in the reassuring words of a renowned sufi poet: "Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world. The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same. Every wonderful sight will vanish, every sweet word will fade. But do not be disheartened. The source they come from is eternal, growing, branching out, giving new life and new joy. Why do you weep? The source is within you and this whole world is springing up from it"(Rumi).

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

71)A celebration of intellectual pluralism: continuing education from the Institute of Ismaili Studies.

The influence of the wisdom of the ancients on medieval Islamic scholars: a celebration of intellectual pluralism:

Academic Papers from the Institute of Ismaili Studies.
Plato, Platonism, and Neo-platonism

Dr Nader El-Bizri
This article was originally published in Medieval Islamic Civilization, An Encyclopaedia, Vol. II, p. 614-616, ed. Josef W. Meri, Routledge (New York-London, 2006).

Abstract
The school of philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century CE, based on the teachings of Plato and the commentators on his work, received a new intellectual impetus when its texts became available to scholars in the Islamic civilization through translations from Greek to Arabic, starting from the 9th century CE. Philosophers and thinkers in Islam assimilated this philosophical legacy, and innovatively expanded the theoretical and practical applications of its ideas, as well as brought new directions to its conceptual unfolding, which resulted in significant intellectual contributions, particularly in philosophy and ethics.

Key words: Neoplatonism, Syriac, Plotinus, Plato, Republic, Phaedo, Symposium, Aristotelian, Stoic, neo-Pythagorean, Enneads, Nous (intellect), methaphysics, Platonists, creatio ex nihilo, the World Soul, Laws, Sophist, Timaeus, history of ideas in Islam, al-Madina al-Fadila (The Virtuous City), Corpus Platonicum, Tandhib al-akhlaq (The Cultivation of Morals), Ibn Miskawayh, Liber de Causis (Kitab al-Khayr al-Mahd), al-Kindi, Ikhwan al-Safa’, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, al-Sijistani, al-Kirmani, Suhrawardi, Ibn ‘Arabi, Mulla Sadra.

Plato, Platonism and Neo-platonism
Neoplatonism was a philosophical movement that primarily belonged to the Hellenist Alexandrian and Syriac schools of thought. Its founder, Plotinus (ca. 205-270 CE), an Egyptian of Greek culture, was pro­foundly influenced by Plato’s Republic, Phaedo, and Symposium, as well as being inspired by Aristotelian, Stoic, and neo-Pythagorean doctrines. Plotinus’ own monumental corpus, the Enneads, was partly drafted in response to the objections raised by Aristotle against Plato’s theory of ideas. Therein, Plotinus ar­gued that the Platonic forms subsist in what Aristotle referred to as Nous (intellect). Giving a metaphysical primacy to abstract ideas, the realm of the intelligible was construed as being the ground of the ultimate reality, which was radically independent from sensible beings. This ontology led to a belief in the existence of absolute values rooted in eternity. Further elabora­tions of Plotinus’s teachings were undertaken by his disciple, Porphyry of Tyre (ca. 232-305 CE), and were supplemented by the work of the latter’s pupil, the Syrian Iamblichus (ca. 250-330 CE). However, Proclus (ca. 411-485 CE) introduced the most rigor­ous systematization of this tradition.

The impetus of Neoplatonism in philosophy confronted many chal­lenges following the closing of the Athenian Academy (ca. 526 CE) by the Roman Emperor Justinian. The momentum of this tradition was renewed with the philosophers of the medieval Muslim civilization who imbued it with monotheistic directives. Follow­ing Socrates, in a critique of the Sophists, Platonists believed that knowledge cannot be derived from appearances alone, and that it can only be properly attained through universal ideas. Heeding the medita­tions of Parmenides, they held that the realm of being was unchanging, eternal, and indestructible; while following Heraclitus, they took the sensible realm as being subject to a constant flux of transformational becoming. Establishing a distinction between truth and belief, they asserted that the intelligible was apprehended by reason and the sensible by mere opinion. With this Platonist heritage, the ethical code of goodness became a cosmological principle.

Eventually, Neo-Platonists held that The One, as the indeterminate perfection of absolute unity, simplicity, and goodness, imparts existence from itself due to its superabundance. This event was grasped as being a process of emanation that accentuated the primacy of Divine transcendence over creation and represented an alternate explication of generation that challenged the creatio ex nihilo doctrine. Endowed with vision, the One, as the First undiminished Source of exis­tence, imparts Nous, the immanent changeless Intel­lect, as its own Image. From this effused Nous issues forth the World Soul, which acts as a transition be­tween the realm of ideas and that of the senses. Refracting itself in materiality, the Soul generates all sensible composite beings, while matter represents the last station in the hierarchy of existence as the unreal substratum of the phenomenal universe. Emanation, as a processional descent, was itself to be followed by an ascent that expressed the longing of the rational soul to return to its Source and a yearning to inhabit the realm of ideas. This reversible movement acted as the basis of the moral code of the Neoplatonist system, which advocated a dualist sepa­ration of mind and body, as well as affirmed the immortality of the soul.

Philosophers in medieval Islam came to know Plato through the Arabic translations of his Laws, Sophist, Timaeus, and Republic. His influence on the history of ideas in Islam is most felt in the domains of ethics and political philosophy, whereby his views offered possibilities for reconciling pagan philosophy with monotheistic religion in the quest for truth and the unveiling of the ultimate principles of reality. His Republic and Laws presented an appealing legislative model that inspired political thought in Islam, particularly the line in thinking that is attested in al-Farabi’s (ca. 870-950 CE) treatise al‑Madina al-Fadila (The Virtuous City), which gave prominence to the role played by philosophy in setting the legal arrangements and mores of the ideal Islamic polity. The Corpus Platonicum also impressed humanists like Ibn Miskawayh (ca. 940-1030 CE), who, in his Tahdhib al-akhlaq (The Cultivation of Morals) espoused the Platonic tripartite conception of the soul, along with its ethical-political ramifica­tions. As for the Neoplatonist doctrines, these found their way into the intellectual history of Islam through Plato’s dialogues, as well as being channeled via the tracts known as Aristotle’s Theology and Liber de Causis (Kitab al-Khayr al-Mahd). Although both texts were erroneously attributed to Aristotle, the former reproduced fragments from Plotinus’s Enneads, and the latter rested on Proclus’ Elements of Theology. This misguiding textual transmission led to imbuing Aristotelianism with Neoplatonist leitmo­tifs, which impacted the thinking of authorities such as al-Kindi (d. ca. 873 CE), Ikhwan al-Safa’ (tenth century CE), al-Farabi (d. ca. 950 CE), and Ibn Sina (d. 1037 CE), who in their turn influenced the onto-theological systems of al-Sijistani (d. 971 CE), al-Kirmani (d. 1020 CE), Suhrawardi (d. 1191 CE), Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240 CE), and Mulla Sadra (d. 1640 CE).

Primary Sources
al-Farabi (Alfarabius). De Platonis Philosophia. Edited by Franz Rosenthal and Richard Walzer. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1943.
Galenus, Claudius. Compendium Timaei Platonis. Edited by Paul Krauss and Richard Walzer. London: The War­burg Institute, University of London, 1951.
Plato. Plato Arabus. Edited by Paul Krauss and Richard Walzer. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1943.
Further Reading
Krauss, Paul. “Plotin chez les arabes.” Bulletin de 1’Institut d’Égypte 23 (1941): 236-295. Netton, Ian Richard. Muslim Neoplatonists: An Introduc­tion to the Thought of the Brethren of Purity. London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1982.
Rosenthal, Franz. “On the Knowledge of Plato’s Philoso­phy in the Islamic World.” Islamic Culture 14 (1940): 398- 402.
Walzer, Richard. “Aflatun.” In The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Vol I. Leiden: Brill, 1960.
Greek into Arabic: Essays in Islamic Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

70)Sequential, rational intellect of the mind versus timeless, instantaneous intellect of the heart

Various definitions and explanations of intellect and reason, showing, among other things, the clear difference between timeless, instantaneous intellect of the heart and the rational, cogitative, sequential intellect of the human mind(compiled by Khalil Andani):

1)Here is a relevant verse from the Qur'an, cited by Nasir-i Khusraw, hujjat-i Khurasan in his Khawaan al-Ikhwaan : "It is He who created you from dust, then from a sperm drop, then from a blood clot, then He brings you forth as a child, then lets you reach your age of full strength, then lets you become old - though some of you die before - and then lets you reach the appointed term; and that haply you may find the intellect (la'allakum ta'qilun)."

2)Inna fee khalqi alssamawati waal-ardi waikhtilafi allayli waalnnahari waalfulki allatee tajree fee albahri bima yanfaAAu alnnasa wama anzala Allahu mina alssama-i min ma-in faahya bihi al-arda ba-‘ada mawtiha wabaththa feeha min kulli dabbatin watasreefi alrriyahi waalssahabi almusakhkhari bayna alssama-i waal-ardi laayatin liqawmin ya-‘aqiloona:
Behold! in the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the alternation of the night and the day; in the sailing of the ships through the ocean for the profit of mankind; in the rain which Allah sends down from the skies, and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is dead; in the beasts of all kinds that He scatters through the earth; in the change of the winds, and the clouds which they Trail like their slaves between the sky and the earth; (Here) indeed are Signs for the people of intellect.

3)Inna anzalnahu qur‘anan ‘arabiyyan la'allakum ta-‘aqiloona
We have sent it down as an Arabic Qur’an, in order that ye may intellect. - Holy Quran 12:2

4)Kathalika yubayyinu Allahu lakum ayatihi la‘allakum ta-‘aqiloona
Allah thus makes clear to you His Signs that you may intellect. -Holy Quran 2:242

5)Wama alhayatu alddunya illa laAAibun walahwun walalddaru al-akhirati khayrun lillatheena yattaqoona afala ta-‘aqiloona
What is the life of this world but play and amusement? But best is the home in the hereafter, for those who are righteous. Will ye not then intellect? - Holy Quran 6:32

6)The intellect is not reason. Reason proceeds discursively, through language, and like a bridge, joins two banks, knower and known, without removing the river in between. The intellect knows intuitively and (as noted above) identifies the knower with what he knows, causing one to become the other. -Huston Smith, (Introduction to Frithjof Shuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions, Quest Books, 1993)

7)Reason, the reflection of the intellect upon the human psyche, can then be both an instrument for reaching the divine truth found in revelation which is super-rational but not irrational and a veil which hides it from man and becomes the means of rebelling against God and His revealed religion. - Seyyed Hossein Nasr, (Sufi Essays, Revelation, Intellect and Reason in the Quran, Suny Press, Albany, New York, 1972, pp. 52)

8)The beginning of all things, their origin, their force and their prosperity, is that intellect (‘aql), without which one can profit from nothing. God created it to adorn His creatures, and as a light for them. It is through intellect (‘aql) that the servants recognize God is their Creator and that they themselves are created beings …It is thanks to intellect (‘aql) that they can distinguish what is beautiful from what is ugly, that they realize that darkness is in ignorance and that light is in Knowledge. - Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, (al-Kulayni, Usul al-Kafi, Vol. 1, pp. 34)

9)Intellectus/nous is that which is capable of a direct contemplative vision of transcendent realities, whereas reason – the translation of the Latin ratio and the Greek dianoia – is of an indirect, discursive nature; it works with logic and arrives at mental concepts, only, of those realities. With the intellect, then, one is able to contemplate or ‘see’ the Absolute; with reason, one can only think about It. - Reza Shah-Kazemi, (Justice and Remembrance: Introducing the Spirituality of Imam Ali, I.B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, 2006, pp. 23)

10)“If everything that appears to us were just as it appears, the Prophet who was endowed with such penetrating vision, both illuminated and illuminating, would never have cried out, “Oh Lord, show us things as they are!” - Jalal al-Din Rumi, (quoted in William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi .Albany, 1983, pp. 19)

11)In explaining the intellect and its relation to ‘seeing’ the Absolute, it is helpful to contemplate upon Meister Eckhart’s Sermon on the ‘Eye and the Wood’. “As I was coming here today I considered how to preach to you clearly so that you would understand me properly, and I hit upon an analogy. If you can understand it, you will be able to grasp my meaning and get to the bottom of all that I have ever preached about. The analogy is with my eye and wood. When my eye is open it is an eye; when it is shut it is the same eye; and the wood is neither more nor less by reason of my seeing it. Now mark me well: Suppose my eye, being one and single in itself, falls on the wood with vision, then though each thing stays as it is, yet in the very act of seeing they are so much that one that we can really say ‘eye-wood’, and the wood is my eye. Now, if the wood were free from matter and wholly immaterial like my eyesight is, then we could truly say that, in the act of seeing, the wood and my eye were of one essence. If this is true for material things, it is all the more true of spiritual things.” - Meister Eckhart, (Meister Echkart – Sermons and Treatises, II:104-103, translated and edited by M. O’C. Walshe, Longmead, Element Books, 1987, 1989)

12)A religious scholar once asked Ali b. Abi Talib, “O Prince of Believers! Do you see the Lord when you devote yourself to worship?” Ali replied, “Beware! I would not worship a God that I could not see.” “Then how did you see Him”, asked the scholar. Ali said, “Beware, the eyes cannot see Him with the glance; it is rather hearts that see Him through the realities of faith (haqa’iq al-iman).”[1]

13)Neither My heaven nor My earth embraces Me, but the heart of My faithful servant (mumin) does embrace Me. - Hadith-i Qudsi

14)Qalb al-mu'min 'Arsh al-Rahman
The heart of the faithful is the Throne of the All-Merciful.

15)The seat of intelligence is the heart and not the head, as affirmed by all traditional teachings. The word heart, hrdaya in Sanskrit, Herz in German, kardia in Greek, and cord/cordis in Latin, have the root hrd or krd which like the Egyptian Horos, imply the centre of the world or a world. The heart is also the centre of the human microcosm and therefore the “locus” of the Intellect by which all things were made. - Seyyed Hossein Nasr, (Knowledge and the Sacred, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1989, pp. 150)

16)Intellect ('aql) in the heart is like a lamp in the centre of the house. - Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib, (quoted in Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide in Early Shi’ism, (State University of New York Press, Albany, 1994, pp. 48)

17)According to a famous hadith of the Prophet: The first thing created by God was the Intellect (‘aql).[2]

18)God – may He be Glorified and Exalted – created Intellect (‘aql) first among the spiritual entities; He drew it forth from the right of His Throne, making it proceed from His own Light. Then he commanded it to retreat, and it retreated, to advance, and it advanced; then God proclaimed: ‘I created you glorious, and I gave you pre-eminence over all my creatures.’ - Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, (Al-Kulayni, Usul, vol. 1, pp. 23-24)

19)The Intellect is the substance of (God’s) unity and it is the one (al-wahid), both cause and caused, the act of origination (al-ibda) and the first originated being (al-mubda al-awwal); it is perfection and perfect, eternity and eternal, existence and that which exists all in a single substance. - Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, (Kitab al-Riyad, pp. 221-222)

20)The Logos or Buddhi or ‘Aql, as the Intellect is called in various traditions, is the luminous center which is the generating agent of the world – “for it was by the Word that all things were made” – of man, and of religion. It is God’s knowledge of Himself and the first in His Creation. -Seyyed Hossein Nasr, (Knowledge and the Sacred, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1989, pp. 147)

21)The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry. The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah’s creation. Indeed, it is man’s intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation. - Mawlana Hazar Imam, (AKU Convocation Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)

22)Have they not travelled in the earth so that they should have hearts with which to intellect, or ears with which to hear? For surely it is not the eyes that are blind, but blind are the hearts which are in the breasts. - Holy Quran 22:46

23)By the Nur-i Imamah we mean the inner or metaphysical reality of the manifest Imam which the Imam of the Time often refers to in his Farmans. The notion of the Nur-i Imamah (Light of Imamate) as the Universal Intellect (‘aql-i kull) is rooted in Fatimid Isma‘ili theosophy but there are other interpretations as well. Specifically, the Isma‘ili theosophy found in the literature of the Alamut period, namely the works of Nasir al-Din Tusi and other authors (i.e. Abd al-Karim al-Shahrastani and Hassan bin Sabbah) define the Imam as the locus of manifestation (mazhar) of the Universal Command (amr-i kull) or Divine Word (kalimat) – a metaphysical reality superior to the Universal Intellect. It is then the figure of the Pir or Hujjah (Proof of the Imam) who serves as the locus of manifestation of the Universal Intellect. This particular doctrine corresponds more to the theosophies of Sufism and Christian gnosis where the Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ, respectively, are regarded as manifestations of the Universal Intellect.

24)Excerpt of speech made by Mowlana Hazar Imam at the founding of the Aga Khan University In Karachi, Pakistan in 1983: ..........In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect. Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible. With it, there are no barriers. Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation.....

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

69)Excellent 1-hour youtube flick on Islam's Golden Age.

Excellent youtube one hour presentation on the golden age of Islamic discovery:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjZ0up5R76g

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3

68)Symmetry in nature; Symmetry as a product of the human mind.

This is an interesting piece. Symmetry in nature, a creation of God, is sometimes mirrored in the symmetry seen in some types of Islamic art, calligraphy and architecture, a creation of the mind of man, and both can be symbols depicting the transcendent nature of the divine.

Excerpt from the book "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Briane Greene:

"Symmetry may seem to be just an unimportant repetition of structure, but its influence on the scientific vision of the universe is profound. Albert Einstein based all of his revolutionary theories of physics on the principle that the universe is symmetrical-that the laws of physics are the same at each point of space and each instant of time. Because the laws of physics describe how events occurring at one place and time influence events at other places and times, this simple requirement binds the universe together into a coherent whole. Paradoxically, as Einstein discovered, it implies that we cannot sensibly talk of absolute space and time. What is observed depends upon who observes it-in ways that are governed by those same underlying symmetry principles.

It is easy to describe particular kinds of symmetry-for example, an object has reflectional symmetry if it looks the same when viewed in a mirror, and it has rotational symmetry if it looks the same when rotated. Respective examples are the external shape of the human body, and the ripples that form on a pond when you throw a stone into it. But what is symmetry itself? The best answer that we yet have is a mathematical one: Symmetry is "invariance under transformations." A transformation is a method of changing something, a rule for moving it or otherwise altering its structure. Invariance is a simpler concept; it just means that the end result looks the same as the starting point.

Rotation through some chosen angle is a transformation, and so is reflection in some chosen mirror, so these special examples of symmetry fit neatly into the general formulation. A pattern of square tiles has yet another type of symmetry. If the pattern is moved sideways (a transformation) through a distance that is a whole- number multiple of the width of a tile, then the result looks the same (is invariant). In general, the range of possible symmetry transformations is enormous, and therefore, so is the range of possible symmetrical patterns.

Over the last one hundred and fifty years, mathematicians and physicists have invented a deep and powerful "calculus of symmetry." It is known as group theory, because it deals not just with single transformations, but with whole collections of them-"groups." By applying this theory, they have been able to prove striking general facts-for example, that there are precisely seventeen different symmetry types of wallpaper pattern [Ref : Video: BB17 OU Just17] (that is, repeating patterns that fill a plane), and precisely two hundred and thirty different types of crystal symmetry. And they have also begun to use group theory to understand how the symmetries of the universe affect how nature behaves.

Throughout the natural world, we see intriguing symmetrical patterns: the spiral sweep of a snail's shell; the neatly arranged petals of a flower; the gleaming crescent of a new moon. The same patterns occur in many different settings. The spiral form of a shell recurs in the whirlpool of a hurricane and the stately rotation of a galaxy; raindrops and stars are spherical; and hamsters, herons, horses, and humans are bilaterally symmetrical. Symmetries arise on every conceivable scale, from the innermost components of the atom to the entire universe. The four fundamental forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces) are now thought to be different aspects of a single unified force in a more symmetrical, high-energy universe. The "ripples at the edge of time"-irregularities in the cosmic background radiation -recently observed by the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite help to explain how an initially symmetrical big bang can create the structured universe in which we now find ourselves.

Symmetrical structures on the microscopic level are implicated in living processes. Deep within each living cell there is a structure known as the centrosome, which plays an important role in organising cell division. Inside the centrosome are two centrioles, positioned at right angles to each other. Each centriole is cylindrical, made from twenty-seven tiny tubes (microtubules) fused together along their lengths in threes, and arranged with perfect ninefold symmetry. The microtubules themselves also have an astonishing degree of symmetry; they are hollow tubes made from a perfect regular checkerboard pattern of units that contain two distinct proteins. So even at the heart of organic life we find the perfect mathematical regularities of symmetry.

There is another important aspect of symmetry.Symmetrical objects are made of innumerable copies of identical pieces, so symmetry is intimately bound up with replication. Symmetries occur in the organic world because life is a self- replicating phenomenon. The symmetries of the inorganic world have a similarly "mass produced" origin. In particular, the laws of physics are the same in all places and at all times. Moreover, if you could instantly permute all the electrons in the universe-swapping all the electrons in your brain with randomly chosen electrons in a distant star, say-it would make no difference at all. All electrons are identical, so physics is symmetrical under the interchange of electrons. The same goes for all the other fundamental particles. It is not at all clear why we live in a mass-produced universe, but it is clear that we do, and that this produces an enormous number of potential symmetries. Perhaps, as Richard Feynman once suggested, all electrons are alike because all electrons are the self-same particle, whizzing backward and forward through time. (This strange idea came to him through his invention of "Feynman diagrams"-pictures of the motions of particles in space and time. Complex interactions of many electrons and their antiparticles often form a single zigzag curve in space-time, so they can be explained in terms of a single particle moving alternately forward and backward in time. When an electron moves backward in time, it turns into its antiparticle.) Or perhaps a version of the anthropic principle is in operation: Replicating creatures (especially creatures whose own internal organisation requires stable patterns of behaviour and structure) can arise only in mass- produced universes.

How do nature's symmetrical patterns arise? They can be explained as imperfect or incomplete traces of the symmetries of the laws of physics. Potentially, the universe has an enormous amount of symmetry-its laws are invariant under all motions of space and time and all interchanges of identical particles-but in practice, an effect known as "symmetry breaking" prevents the full range of symmetries from being realised simultaneously. For example, think of a crystal, made from a huge number of identical atoms. The laws of physics look the same if you swap the atoms around or move them through space and time. The most symmetrical configuration would be one for which all of the atoms are in the same place, but this is not physically realisable, because atoms cannot overlap. So some of the symmetry is "broken," or removed, by changing the configuration into one in which the atoms are displaced just enough to allow them to stay separate. The mathematical point is that the physically unrealisable state has a huge amount of symmetry, not all of which need be broken to separate out the atoms. So it is not surprising that some of that symmetry is still present in the state that actually occurs. This is where the symmetry of a crystal lattice comes from: the huge but unseen symmetries of the potential, broken by the requirements of the actual.

This insight has far-reaching consequences. It implies that when studying a scientific problem, we must consider not only what does happen, but what might have happened instead. It may seem perverse to increase the range of problems by thinking about things that don't happen, but situating the actual event inside a cloud of potential events has two advantages. First, we can then ask the question "Why does this particular behaviour occur?"-because implicitly, this question also asks why the remaining possibilities did not, and that means we have to think about all the possibilities that don't occur as well as the ones that do. For instance, we can't explain why pigs don't have wings without implicitly thinking about what would happen if they did. Second, the set of potential events may possess extra structure-such as symmetry-that is not visible in the lone state that is actually observed. For example, we might ask why the surface of a pond is flat (in the absence of wind or currents). We will not find the answer by studying flat ponds alone. Instead, we must disturb the surface of the pond, exploring the space of all potential ponds, to see what drives the surface back to flatness. In that way, we will discover that nonflat surfaces have more energy, and that frictional forces slowly dissipate the excess, driving the pond back to its minimal energy configuration, which is flat. As it happens, a flat surface has a lot of symmetry, and this, too, can best be explained by thinking about the "space" of all possible surfaces.

This, to me, is the deepest message of symmetry. Symmetry, by its very definition, is about what would happen to the universe if it were changed-transformed. Suppose every electron in your head were to be swapped with one in the burning core of the star Sirius. Suppose pigs had wings. Suppose the surfaces of ponds were shaped like Henry Moore sculptures. Nobody intends to perform actual experiments, but just thinking about the possibilities reveals fundamental aspects of the natural world. So the prosaic observation that there are patterns in the universe forces us to view reality as just one possible state of the universe from among an infinite range of potential states-a slender thread of the actual winding through the space of the potential. "

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4.
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3