I am currently going through the lectures from the course "Great ideas of Classical Physics", one of the many courses I bought from the Teaching Company during their recent Boxing day sale;
http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=1295&id=1295&pc=SiteIndex
It is a formidable course, with an excellent, articulate lecturer. I am finding it most enjoyable and fulfilling. Of course, I was at my alma mater much of this past weekend sucking all this stuff in. About the lectures on the laws of motion, it says the following:
"The course opens in ancient Greece with Aristotle's commonsense analysis of motion. His ideas held sway until the early 1600s, when Galileo challenged them with one of the simplest yet most profound experiments of all time—he rolled marbles down an inclined plane.
The technique allowed Galileo to explore the action of gravity "in slow motion" to show that, contrary to Aristotle's claims, all objects fall at the same rate regardless of mass, and that the speed of a falling object steadily increases—it accelerates.
A generation after Galileo, Newton united the laws of heavenly and earthly motion in a grand synthesis that marked the full dawn of classical physics. The exploration of Newton's three laws of motion and his universal law of gravitation forms the core of the first half of the course."
This course, as with many other courses created in the western world, skips an important period between the time that Aristotle lived(a few hundred years BC) and the era of Galileo and Newton(16th and 17th centuries). To find this skipped information(relating to the period of the 7th to 13th centuries) I have to search many disparate and diverse sources. I and a billion point four other people await anxiously the righteous and rightful closing of this gaping hole in the pantheon of world knowledge. See also posts 3 and 9 on this blogsite. About this gaping hole in the recorded pantheon of world knowledge, Mowlana Hazar Imam(aka Aga Khan 4 or IV for you search engine groupies) has said the following:
"What does it (the West) know about the Islamic world? Is anything taught in secondary education? Does anybody know the names of the great philosophers, the scientists, the great theologians? Do they even know the names of the great civilizations?" [Interview 2 Feb. 2002"]
"The faith of a billion people is not part of the general education process in the West - ignored by school and college curricula in history, the sciences, philosophy and geography." [Houston Speech 2002]
"The basic problem is the enormous lack of knowledge of the Islamic world in the general world-culture. It's a rather remarkable thing and a very sad thing to me, that over a billion people, their 1400 year history, of civilizations, are simply not part of general education in the general Western world. It's a remarkable knowledge gap." [PTV Interview]
"From the seventh century to the thirteenth century, the Muslim civilizations dominated world culture, accepting, adopting, using and preserving all preceding study of mathematics, philosophy, medicine and astronomy, among other areas of learning. The Islamic field of thought and knowledge included and added to much of the information on which all civilisations are founded. And yet this fact is seldom acknowledged today, be it in the West or in the Muslim world, and this amnesia has left a six hundred year gap in the history of human thought." [Brown Univ. 1996].
"One of the first and greatest research centres, the Bayt al-Hikmah established in Baghdad in 830, led Islam in translating philosophical and scientific works from Greek, Roman, Persian and Indian classics. By the art of translation, learning was assimilated from other civilizations." [Speech 16 March 1983]
"It is no exaggeration to say that the original Christian universities of Latin West, at Paris, Bologna and Oxford, indeed the whole European renaissance, received a vital influx of new knowledge from Islam -- an influx from which the later western colleges and universities, including those of North Africa, were to benefit in turn." [Speech 16 March 1983]
"The tapestry of Islamic history is studded with jewels of civilization; these jewels poured forth their light and beauty; great statesmen, great philosophers, great doctors, great astronomers; but these individuals, these precious stones were worked into a tapestry, whose dominant theme was Islam, and this theme remained dominant regardless of the swallowing up of foreign lands, foreign cultures, foreign languages and foreign people." [Speech 30 Jan 1970]
"Above all, following the guidance of the Holy Quran, there was freedom of enquiry and research. The result was a magnificent flowering of artistic and intellectual activity throughout the ummah" [Speech 16 March 1983]
"An institution dedicated to proceeding beyond known limits must be committed to independent thinking. In a university scholars engage both orthodox and unorthodox ideas, seeking truth and understanding wherever they may be found. That process is often facilitated by an independent governance structure, which serves to ensure that the university adheres to its fundamental mission and is not pressured to compromise its work for short-term advantage. For a Muslim university it is appropriate to see learning and knowledge as a continuing acknowledgement of Allah's magnificence. As one looks back over the history of learning and of advancement, one sees time and again that centres of learning flourished in strong, outward-looking cultures. Great universities and libraries benefited from the nurturing conditions provided by self-confident civilisations and in turn gave back to those civilisations the useful products of scholarship. The strong university was not a sign of government's weakness, but rather its aspirations and its strength. In the great expansion of Muslim culture from the 8th through the 11th century, centres of learning flourished from Persia to Andalusia. I do not have to tell this audience about the glories of Al-Azhar established 1000 years ago by the Fatimids. This audience knows full well about the foresight of al-Ma'mun and the Timurid empire and in taking knowledge from all quarters and using it to benefit their society. As Ibn Khaldun wrote, "the Muslims desired to learn the sciences of foreign nations. They made them their own through translations. They pressed them into the mould of their own views. They took them over into their own language from the non-Arab languages and surpassed the achievements of the non-Arabs in them." (Aga Khan IV at the 10th anniversary of the founding of the AKU.)
"It (Surah of Light from the Quran) tells us that the oil of the blessed olive tree lights the lamp of understanding, a light that belongs neither to the East nor West. We are to give this light to all. In that spirit, all that we learn will belong to the world and that too is part of the vision I share with you." (Speech 25 Sept. 1979)
"The truth, as the famous Islamic scholars repeatedly told their students, is that the spirit of disciplined, objective enquiry is the property of no single culture, but of all humanity. To quote the great physician and philosopher, Ibn Sina: "My profession is to forever journeying, to travel about the universe so that I may know all its conditions."" [Speech 16 March 1983]
"At various times in world history, the locus of knowledge has moved from one centre of learning to another. Europe once came to the Islamic world for intellectual enrichment—and even rediscovered its own classical roots by searching in Arabic texts.
Astronomy, the so-called “Science of the Universe” was a field of particular distinction in Islamic civilization.-–in sharp contrast to the weakness of Islamic countries in the field of Space research today. In this field, as in others, intellectual leadership is never a static condition, but something which is always shifting and always dynamic.
Indeed, Islamic culture in past centuries was distinctly dynamic--constantly reaching out-- both to India and the East and to Europe and the West-- for enrichment. Throughout history, confident cultures from every part of the world have been eager to seek new learning, not to dilute inherited traditions but to amplify and extend them. The great civilizations of Islam were prime examples.
More than a millennium ago, as early as the 8th century, the original Abbasids, ruling as Caliphs in Baghdad, set up academies and libraries where new knowledge was honored-- independent of its source. The Fatimids continued this tradition—reaching out from their base in Cairo—established in the 10th century—to welcome learned figures from distant lands. A bit later, Ghazni, in Afghanistan, became another center of learning—again by reaching out.
By the time of the Safavid era—halfway through the second millennium--cultural leaders of all types--mathematicians, scientists, painters, musicians, and writers-- were moving constantly from country to country and court to court-- from the Safavid centers in Iran to the Mughal courts of India, and the Uzbek court at Bukhara in what is now Uzbekistan."(Convocation, American University of Cairo, June 15th 2006)
Most importantly, our present Imam has clarified, in the easiest kind of language possible, the delicate and intimate balance necessary in order to acquire the greatest benefit from different modes of knowledge:
"..........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....."(Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan, 1983).
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
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
104)Ibn al-Haytham(965-1039) or Alhazen: More continuing education from the Institute of Ismaili Studies.
This is an excellent article in the continuing education series for lifelong learning put out by the Institute of Ismaili Studies http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=106752 .
A good chunk of what Ibn al-Haytham and others uncovered in the 8th and 9th centuries regarding the laws of motion and aspects of gravity were later attributed to Galileo and Newton in the 16th and 17th centuries. If one looks at some of the engineering marvels created by muslim scientists during what is often called the golden age of Islam, one can perhaps surmise that they must have worked out and understood some of these universal laws a full 700 years before they were officially attributed to scientists of the European Renaissance:
Lifelong Learning: Articles, January 2007
Ibn al-Haytham or Alhazen
Dr Nader El-Bizri
This is an edited version of an article orignially published in Medieval Islamic Civilization, An Encyclopaedia, Vol. II, p. 343-345, ed. Josef W. Meri, Routledge (New York-London, 2006).
Abstract
Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, known in Latin as Alhazen (b. 965 CE, Basra / d. after 1041 CE, Cairo) was one of the greatest of classical mathematicians, and a revolutionary reformer of the science of optics, as well as being a celebrated astronomer. He was the author of the influential text: Kitab al-manazir (Optics; titled in Latin as: De Aspectibus or Perspectivae), and his theories of light and vision impacted the development of the perspective traditions of European mediaeval scholars and Renaissance theorists of art and architecture. His extensive and advanced mathematical investigations in conics furthered the unfolding of the scientific disciplines of dioptrics and catoptrics, as well as facilitated his prolific and leading research in astronomy and meteorology. He also excelled in his research in infinitesimal mathematics, in arithmetic and number theory.
Download PDF version of article (29 KB)
Key words:
Kitab al-Manazir, imam caliph al-Hakim, Renaissance, science, art, mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, physics, intromission, extromission, Ptolemy, Aristotle, Risala fi’l-makan, Treatise on Light, Optics, conception of place (topos), analytical geometry, law of motion.Ibn al-Haytham
The polymath Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (ca.965-1041 CE), known in Latin as Alhazen, was born in Basra, Iraq. After completing his studies in Iraq, he settled in Egypt, wherein he was commissioned by the Fatimid imam caliph al-Hakim (1021 CE) to design a dam on the Nile. Although his prolific contributions covered a variety of disciplines in mathematics, astronomy, and mechanics, his impact was greatest in the field of optics. His chef-d’ouvre Kitab al-Manazir (The Optics, ca. 1027 CE), which was translated into Latin as De aspectibus (ca. 1270 CE), decisively shaped the emerging theory of perspective in medieval and Renaissance science and art. His influence is noticeable in medieval scholars such as Roger Bacon, John Peckam, and Witelo, and in Renaissance theorists such as Leon Battista Alberti and Lorenzo Ghiberti.
In medieval science in Islam, Kamal al-Din al-Farisi’s Tanqih al-Manazir (The Revision of the Optics) advanced the most substantive critical interpretation of Ibn al-Haytham. His theory of vision constituted an outstanding achievement in optics in the period between Claudius Ptolemy and Johannes Kepler. He resolved the ancient Greek dispute over the nature and causation of vision, which had either been derived, in physical terms, from the intromission of the form of a visible object into the eye or from the mathematical model of the extromission of a cone of light from the eye. Following physicists like Aristotle, Ibn al-Haytham argued that vision occurs by intromission of the luminous form of the visible object into the eye. However, in elucidating this process, he employed the model of the cone of vision as formulated by mathematicians such as Euclid and Ptolemy. He thus demonstrated that vision results from the intromission of a luminous form by way of the rectilinear propagation of light through a transparent medium; there is a virtual cone whose vertex is in the centre of the eye and whose base is on the surface of the visible entity. He also held that visual perception is not a mere sensation but is primarily an inferential act of discernment and judgement.
Moreover, he supplemented his Optics with Treatise on Light (Risala fi l-Daw’), which further investigated the essence and comportment of luminosity and its radiant dispersion through various transparent and translucent media. His ocular observations were founded on anatomical examinations of the structure of the eye, as well as being supported by experimental installations devised to detect errors and illusions in visual perception and to explore phenomena like the camera obscura (the darkroom principle behind the pinhole camera). Ibn al-Haytham also investigated meteorological aspects related to the rainbow and to the density of the atmosphere, as well as inquiring about the nature of celestial phenomena such as the eclipse, the twilight, and moonlight. In this endeavour, he relied on his accounts of refraction and on catoptrical experimentations with spherical and parabolic mirrors and magnifying lenses.
He also presented a thorough critique of the conception of place (topos) as set in Aristotle’s Physics, wherein it was stated that the place of something is the two-dimensional boundary of the containing body that is at rest and is in contact with what it contains. In contrast with this definition, Ibn al-Haytham rather attempted to demonstrate in his Risala fi’l-makan (Treatise on Place) that place (al-makan) is the imagined three-dimensional void between the inner surfaces of the containing body. Consequently, he showed that place was akin to space in a manner that prefigures Descartes’ extensio. Building on the legacy of Euclid, and partly informed by the works of the mathematician Thabit ibn Qurra (d. 901 CE), Ibn al-Haytham further systematised the arts of analytical geometry (linking algebra to geometry), infinitesimal mathematics, conics, and number theory. In addition, he studied the mechanics of the first law of motion according to which it is held that a body moves perpetually unless prevented from doing so by an external force that arrests it or alters its direction. In examining the attraction between masses, he also seems to have been tangentially aware of the magnitude of acceleration due to a principle akin to the force of gravity. A pioneer in his pursuits, he also strived to develop rigorous experimental methods of controlled scientific testing in view of verifying theoretical hypotheses and substantiating inductive conjectures.
Top of page
Primary Sources
Ibn al Haytham, Kitab al-manazir. Edited by Abdelhamid I. Sabra. Kuwait: National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters, 1983.
-- The Optics of Ibn al-Haytham, Books I-III, On Direct Vision. Translated by Abdelhamid I. Sabra. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1989
-- Majmu‘ al rasa’il. Haydar Abad: Da’irat al-Ma‘arif al-‘Uthmaniyya, 1937.
Further Reading
Beshara, Saleh O. Ibn al Haytham’s Optics: A Study of the Origins of Experimental Science. Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1977.
Nasif, Mustafa. al-Hasan bin al-Haytham. 2 vols. Cairo: Matba’at al nuri, 1942-1943.
Rashed, Roshdi. Les mathématiques infinitésimales du IXe au XIe siècle: Ibn al-Haytham, Volumes II-IV. London: al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 1993-2002.
Sabra, Abdelhamid I. "The Physical and the Mathematical in Ibn al-Haytham’s Theory of Light and Vision." In The Commemoration Volume of Biruni International Congress in Tehran. Vol. 38. Tehran: High Council of Culture and Arts, 1976.
-- "Sensation and Inference in Alhazen’s Theory of Visual Perception." In Studies in Perception: Interrelations in the History of Philosophy and Science. Edited by Peter K. Machamer and Robert G. Turnbull. Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1978.
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
A good chunk of what Ibn al-Haytham and others uncovered in the 8th and 9th centuries regarding the laws of motion and aspects of gravity were later attributed to Galileo and Newton in the 16th and 17th centuries. If one looks at some of the engineering marvels created by muslim scientists during what is often called the golden age of Islam, one can perhaps surmise that they must have worked out and understood some of these universal laws a full 700 years before they were officially attributed to scientists of the European Renaissance:
Lifelong Learning: Articles, January 2007
Ibn al-Haytham or Alhazen
Dr Nader El-Bizri
This is an edited version of an article orignially published in Medieval Islamic Civilization, An Encyclopaedia, Vol. II, p. 343-345, ed. Josef W. Meri, Routledge (New York-London, 2006).
Abstract
Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, known in Latin as Alhazen (b. 965 CE, Basra / d. after 1041 CE, Cairo) was one of the greatest of classical mathematicians, and a revolutionary reformer of the science of optics, as well as being a celebrated astronomer. He was the author of the influential text: Kitab al-manazir (Optics; titled in Latin as: De Aspectibus or Perspectivae), and his theories of light and vision impacted the development of the perspective traditions of European mediaeval scholars and Renaissance theorists of art and architecture. His extensive and advanced mathematical investigations in conics furthered the unfolding of the scientific disciplines of dioptrics and catoptrics, as well as facilitated his prolific and leading research in astronomy and meteorology. He also excelled in his research in infinitesimal mathematics, in arithmetic and number theory.
Download PDF version of article (29 KB)
Key words:
Kitab al-Manazir, imam caliph al-Hakim, Renaissance, science, art, mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, physics, intromission, extromission, Ptolemy, Aristotle, Risala fi’l-makan, Treatise on Light, Optics, conception of place (topos), analytical geometry, law of motion.Ibn al-Haytham
The polymath Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (ca.965-1041 CE), known in Latin as Alhazen, was born in Basra, Iraq. After completing his studies in Iraq, he settled in Egypt, wherein he was commissioned by the Fatimid imam caliph al-Hakim (1021 CE) to design a dam on the Nile. Although his prolific contributions covered a variety of disciplines in mathematics, astronomy, and mechanics, his impact was greatest in the field of optics. His chef-d’ouvre Kitab al-Manazir (The Optics, ca. 1027 CE), which was translated into Latin as De aspectibus (ca. 1270 CE), decisively shaped the emerging theory of perspective in medieval and Renaissance science and art. His influence is noticeable in medieval scholars such as Roger Bacon, John Peckam, and Witelo, and in Renaissance theorists such as Leon Battista Alberti and Lorenzo Ghiberti.
In medieval science in Islam, Kamal al-Din al-Farisi’s Tanqih al-Manazir (The Revision of the Optics) advanced the most substantive critical interpretation of Ibn al-Haytham. His theory of vision constituted an outstanding achievement in optics in the period between Claudius Ptolemy and Johannes Kepler. He resolved the ancient Greek dispute over the nature and causation of vision, which had either been derived, in physical terms, from the intromission of the form of a visible object into the eye or from the mathematical model of the extromission of a cone of light from the eye. Following physicists like Aristotle, Ibn al-Haytham argued that vision occurs by intromission of the luminous form of the visible object into the eye. However, in elucidating this process, he employed the model of the cone of vision as formulated by mathematicians such as Euclid and Ptolemy. He thus demonstrated that vision results from the intromission of a luminous form by way of the rectilinear propagation of light through a transparent medium; there is a virtual cone whose vertex is in the centre of the eye and whose base is on the surface of the visible entity. He also held that visual perception is not a mere sensation but is primarily an inferential act of discernment and judgement.
Moreover, he supplemented his Optics with Treatise on Light (Risala fi l-Daw’), which further investigated the essence and comportment of luminosity and its radiant dispersion through various transparent and translucent media. His ocular observations were founded on anatomical examinations of the structure of the eye, as well as being supported by experimental installations devised to detect errors and illusions in visual perception and to explore phenomena like the camera obscura (the darkroom principle behind the pinhole camera). Ibn al-Haytham also investigated meteorological aspects related to the rainbow and to the density of the atmosphere, as well as inquiring about the nature of celestial phenomena such as the eclipse, the twilight, and moonlight. In this endeavour, he relied on his accounts of refraction and on catoptrical experimentations with spherical and parabolic mirrors and magnifying lenses.
He also presented a thorough critique of the conception of place (topos) as set in Aristotle’s Physics, wherein it was stated that the place of something is the two-dimensional boundary of the containing body that is at rest and is in contact with what it contains. In contrast with this definition, Ibn al-Haytham rather attempted to demonstrate in his Risala fi’l-makan (Treatise on Place) that place (al-makan) is the imagined three-dimensional void between the inner surfaces of the containing body. Consequently, he showed that place was akin to space in a manner that prefigures Descartes’ extensio. Building on the legacy of Euclid, and partly informed by the works of the mathematician Thabit ibn Qurra (d. 901 CE), Ibn al-Haytham further systematised the arts of analytical geometry (linking algebra to geometry), infinitesimal mathematics, conics, and number theory. In addition, he studied the mechanics of the first law of motion according to which it is held that a body moves perpetually unless prevented from doing so by an external force that arrests it or alters its direction. In examining the attraction between masses, he also seems to have been tangentially aware of the magnitude of acceleration due to a principle akin to the force of gravity. A pioneer in his pursuits, he also strived to develop rigorous experimental methods of controlled scientific testing in view of verifying theoretical hypotheses and substantiating inductive conjectures.
Top of page
Primary Sources
Ibn al Haytham, Kitab al-manazir. Edited by Abdelhamid I. Sabra. Kuwait: National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters, 1983.
-- The Optics of Ibn al-Haytham, Books I-III, On Direct Vision. Translated by Abdelhamid I. Sabra. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1989
-- Majmu‘ al rasa’il. Haydar Abad: Da’irat al-Ma‘arif al-‘Uthmaniyya, 1937.
Further Reading
Beshara, Saleh O. Ibn al Haytham’s Optics: A Study of the Origins of Experimental Science. Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1977.
Nasif, Mustafa. al-Hasan bin al-Haytham. 2 vols. Cairo: Matba’at al nuri, 1942-1943.
Rashed, Roshdi. Les mathématiques infinitésimales du IXe au XIe siècle: Ibn al-Haytham, Volumes II-IV. London: al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 1993-2002.
Sabra, Abdelhamid I. "The Physical and the Mathematical in Ibn al-Haytham’s Theory of Light and Vision." In The Commemoration Volume of Biruni International Congress in Tehran. Vol. 38. Tehran: High Council of Culture and Arts, 1976.
-- "Sensation and Inference in Alhazen’s Theory of Visual Perception." In Studies in Perception: Interrelations in the History of Philosophy and Science. Edited by Peter K. Machamer and Robert G. Turnbull. Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1978.
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
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
103)Book recommendation.
Title: Intellectual traditions in Islam:
"All the contributors to Intellectual Traditions in Islam highlight, in their different and individual ways, the pivotal role of the intellect in the formation of Islamic culture and civilisation, and its continuing relevance for the Muslim world today. By demonstrating the extent to which some of the seminal achievements of Islamic civilisation, especially in the areas of legal, theological, philosophical, scientific and mystical thought, were underpinned by a vigorous culture of intellectual inquiry and debate, this publication seeks not only to promote a better understanding of Islam but also to encourage further debate on the dilemmas facing contemporary Muslim societies as they enter a new era of unprecedented political, economic, technological and cultural change in world history."
Synopsis, Contents and Bibliography:
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=100631
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
"All the contributors to Intellectual Traditions in Islam highlight, in their different and individual ways, the pivotal role of the intellect in the formation of Islamic culture and civilisation, and its continuing relevance for the Muslim world today. By demonstrating the extent to which some of the seminal achievements of Islamic civilisation, especially in the areas of legal, theological, philosophical, scientific and mystical thought, were underpinned by a vigorous culture of intellectual inquiry and debate, this publication seeks not only to promote a better understanding of Islam but also to encourage further debate on the dilemmas facing contemporary Muslim societies as they enter a new era of unprecedented political, economic, technological and cultural change in world history."
Synopsis, Contents and Bibliography:
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=100631
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
Monday, January 8, 2007
102)Big Dipper and Little Dipper in the night sky.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070108.html
The above is another photograph from the NASA website depicting 2 eminently recognisable star regions in space, the Big Dipper(lower group of stars) and Little Dipper(upper group of stars). If you place your mouse on the picture, the shapes of these two groupings will light up. In the desolate deserts of the middle east, navigation using the stars became the norm and many of these celestial landmarks bore Arabic names such as:
Big Dipper:
Dubhe:
The traditional name comes from the Arabic for "bear", dubb, from the phrase ظهر الدب الاكبر aż-żahr ad-dubb al-akbar "the back of the Greater Bear".
Merak:
The name is derived from the Arabic maraqq "loins" (of the bear).
Phecda:
The name comes from the Arabic فخذ faxð "thigh" (of the bear).
Alioth:
It also has the traditional name Alioth (from the Arabic word alyat—fat tail of a sheep).
Mizar:
The name comes from the Arabic ميزر mīzar, meaning a waistband or girdle.
Alkaid:
The name derives from القائد البنات النعش, al-qāid al-banāt an-nac meaning "The leader of the daughters of the bier". The daughters of the bier, i.e. the mourning maidens, are the three stars of the handle of the Big Dipper, Alkaid, Mizar, and Alioth.
Megrez
Little Dipper:
Yildun, Gildun, Vildiur, Yilduz, Pherkard, Kochab
Alifa al Farkadain, Anwar al Farkadain
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
The above is another photograph from the NASA website depicting 2 eminently recognisable star regions in space, the Big Dipper(lower group of stars) and Little Dipper(upper group of stars). If you place your mouse on the picture, the shapes of these two groupings will light up. In the desolate deserts of the middle east, navigation using the stars became the norm and many of these celestial landmarks bore Arabic names such as:
Big Dipper:
Dubhe:
The traditional name comes from the Arabic for "bear", dubb, from the phrase ظهر الدب الاكبر aż-żahr ad-dubb al-akbar "the back of the Greater Bear".
Merak:
The name is derived from the Arabic maraqq "loins" (of the bear).
Phecda:
The name comes from the Arabic فخذ faxð "thigh" (of the bear).
Alioth:
It also has the traditional name Alioth (from the Arabic word alyat—fat tail of a sheep).
Mizar:
The name comes from the Arabic ميزر mīzar, meaning a waistband or girdle.
Alkaid:
The name derives from القائد البنات النعش, al-qāid al-banāt an-nac meaning "The leader of the daughters of the bier". The daughters of the bier, i.e. the mourning maidens, are the three stars of the handle of the Big Dipper, Alkaid, Mizar, and Alioth.
Megrez
Little Dipper:
Yildun, Gildun, Vildiur, Yilduz, Pherkard, Kochab
Alifa al Farkadain, Anwar al Farkadain
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
101)The joys of friendship and, whats in a signature?
This post begins off topic but, rest assured, it will end on topic.This morning I met a close friend of mine for a breakfast of french toast, maple syrup and coffee at Le Baguette at the Fairview Mall in Toronto. We meet like this about once every 6 weeks at the same place, same time, for the same breakfast and to transact the same business: My good friend Bryan and I have been buying lottery tickets together for about ten years now and I was giving him $20.00 to replenish my share of the kitty. Bryan is a meticulous man when it comes to buying tickets. That is what I like about our "business" relationship. He ensures that both our names(as they appear on our passports) go on the back of the ticket the minute he buys it. He then e-mails me the numbers on each ticket we buy to store and saves the actual ticket to give to me at our next power breakfast meeting. Its a serious business, this lottery quest. So far we have won negligible amounts of money but the real fun is in the anticipation of the big win almost as much as actually winning it would be.
This morning's meeting was special and had a celebratory air about it. My good friend Bryan had just been given some excellent news by his physician, to the effect that the masses seen on the CT scan of his lung were not malignant tumours but rather loci of chronic infection that would eventually disappear with the appropriate medication. I recall at earlier breakfast meetings over the past 6 months the anxiety on his face as we deliberated on the possible grim diagnosis. Among other things, the subjects turned to wills and executors, places he would have liked to have travelled to but never did, his family in other parts of the world and the trials and tribulations of a 66 year old man living alone in a big, impersonal city.
We had met in Toronto in the mid-1980s and hit it off right away. Interestingly, both Bryan and I hail from the same part of the world: The child of an Afrikaaner father and English mother, Bryan lived near the fabled garden route near Port Elizabeth in the former Cape Province of South Africa. As for myself, the child of Ismaili muslim parents of north-west Indian ancestry, whose ancestors immigrated to South Africa during the 1890s, I lived about 800 kilometers north-west of Bryan in Pretoria, South Africa. Both of us have been back to the old country as tourists and have enjoyed many of its natural splendours and vistas, much of which we did not do when we actually lived there.
As the revelry progressed during our breakfast and the good news of Bryan's medical diagnosis sank in, we began to plot our course for the lottery quest of 2007. Its going to be our lucky year, I opined enthusiastically to Bryan; I could feel it in my bones. We would continue to buy not only Canadian lottery tickets but also tickets from New York state for the megamillions stakes, the U.K. lottery and, if we could find someone trustworthy to buy for us, the Spanish lottery, the largest lottery in the world. We strategised about what disguise outfits and paraphenalia we would buy from the spy shop on Yonge street to hide our true identities as we jubilantly marched up to pick up our big lottery cheques. It was heady and enthusiastic banter, filled with hearty laughter. Mostly, we just enjoyed each others company and strenghtened our bonds of friendship.
In ending this post and coming back on topic, I would ask you to focus specifically on the content of my signature post below, to think about it carefully and try to see the continuum of knowledge from matter to spirit inferred to in the utterances, pearls of wisdom that they are, of our 49th and 48th Imams.
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
This morning's meeting was special and had a celebratory air about it. My good friend Bryan had just been given some excellent news by his physician, to the effect that the masses seen on the CT scan of his lung were not malignant tumours but rather loci of chronic infection that would eventually disappear with the appropriate medication. I recall at earlier breakfast meetings over the past 6 months the anxiety on his face as we deliberated on the possible grim diagnosis. Among other things, the subjects turned to wills and executors, places he would have liked to have travelled to but never did, his family in other parts of the world and the trials and tribulations of a 66 year old man living alone in a big, impersonal city.
We had met in Toronto in the mid-1980s and hit it off right away. Interestingly, both Bryan and I hail from the same part of the world: The child of an Afrikaaner father and English mother, Bryan lived near the fabled garden route near Port Elizabeth in the former Cape Province of South Africa. As for myself, the child of Ismaili muslim parents of north-west Indian ancestry, whose ancestors immigrated to South Africa during the 1890s, I lived about 800 kilometers north-west of Bryan in Pretoria, South Africa. Both of us have been back to the old country as tourists and have enjoyed many of its natural splendours and vistas, much of which we did not do when we actually lived there.
As the revelry progressed during our breakfast and the good news of Bryan's medical diagnosis sank in, we began to plot our course for the lottery quest of 2007. Its going to be our lucky year, I opined enthusiastically to Bryan; I could feel it in my bones. We would continue to buy not only Canadian lottery tickets but also tickets from New York state for the megamillions stakes, the U.K. lottery and, if we could find someone trustworthy to buy for us, the Spanish lottery, the largest lottery in the world. We strategised about what disguise outfits and paraphenalia we would buy from the spy shop on Yonge street to hide our true identities as we jubilantly marched up to pick up our big lottery cheques. It was heady and enthusiastic banter, filled with hearty laughter. Mostly, we just enjoyed each others company and strenghtened our bonds of friendship.
In ending this post and coming back on topic, I would ask you to focus specifically on the content of my signature post below, to think about it carefully and try to see the continuum of knowledge from matter to spirit inferred to in the utterances, pearls of wisdom that they are, of our 49th and 48th Imams.
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
Sunday, January 7, 2007
100)The source of the itch.
You might be interested to know that, of all the literature out in the public domain, these two pieces of writing on Shia Islam have had the most impact on me personally in so far as the subject of religion is concerned:
Book: published in 1996:
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=100518
Short article: written in 1952:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/what-have-we-forgotten-in-islam-aga.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
Book: published in 1996:
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=100518
Short article: written in 1952:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/what-have-we-forgotten-in-islam-aga.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
Saturday, January 6, 2007
99)A place in the Universe where new "heavens" and "earths" are manufactured.
This is a marvellous picture of the Orion Deep Field, which is a composite picture of a well-known constellation in our Milky Way galaxy(the Orion Constellation). It is 1500 light years away(15 thousand trillion kilometers) from planet earth and contains stars at varying stages of their life cycles; old, bluish supergiant stars like Al-Nitak, Al-Nilam and Mintaka, making up the famous belt of Orion, and countless newborn and young stars; A veritable stellar nursery. Read the caption at the bottom of the picture to find the various stars and nebulae. In this constellation we see evidence of a vivaciously dynamic universe and a place where new "heavens" and "earths" are constantly being manufactured:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070106.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
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070106.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
98)Letters to the Editor on the subject of Philosophy and Religion.
Today's Canadian Globe and Mail newspaper(Sat Jan 6th 2007) has 2 interesting letters to the editor in response to an article written earlier and shows the way the monotheistic religions influenced one another during the middle ages, especially in so far as their attempts to infuse their theologies with the rational wisdom and philosophy of the ancients was concerned:
Letters to the Editor:
1)IAN BELL
PhD (ancient and medieval philosophy)
Toronto -- Hal C. Hartmann's statement (Catholicism And Greeks -- letter, Jan. 4) that Greek philosophy was not incorporated into Western culture until the decline of the Catholic Church in the Renaissance is so wholly ignorant of European medieval intellectual history that it cannot be allowed to pass without comment.
The Middle Ages arguably represent the high-water mark of the absorption of Greek philosophy into European culture, with important Catholic thinkers such as Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus all making attempts to incorporate Greek philosophy and science into a Christian philosophy unifying faith and reason.
They did so influenced by earlier Islamic philosophers such as Ibn Rushd (known as Averroes) and Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and in the context of fierce debates about the relationship between faith and reason, and theology and philosophy. Although their work is superseded in many respects by the rise of modern science, it remains of considerable interest both to historians of philosophy and to some contemporary philosophers of religion.
2)MICHAEL SMITH
REV., associate professor of philosophy, St. Peter's Seminary
London, Ont. -- Hal C. Hartmann makes the claim that the Roman Catholic Church has drawn little from Greek culture and thought. Mr. Hartmann seems ignorant of the dialogue between Catholic theology and Greek philosophy that has existed almost from the beginning of the church's history.
For example, St. Augustine (354-430) was a Christian neo-Platonist, and his works were a dominant influence on Western Christian thought for the next 1,000 years. Also, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225?-1274) wrote extensive commentaries on the works of Aristotle. He also drew heavily on Aristotle, among others, to frame his approach to theology.
In this respect the immense contribution of the minoritarian Shia Ismaili muslim community deserves mention: I have posted elsewhere on this blogsite information on the contributions made by Ismaili cosmologist-philosophers like Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani, Nasir Khusraw, Hamiduddin Al-Kirmani, among others, including the Ismaili-affiliated encyclopedist group Ikhwan Al-Safa and the Mutazila, the earliest group of rationalist philosophers to emerge after the death of the Prophet Mohammed. A good chunk of my blogsite deals with the link between philosophy and religion, of which science, the study of the material universe, is an integral part: See posts 1, 11, 20, 27, 34, 44, 46, 48, 49, 55, 62, 63, 64, 65, 71, 86 and 95 and also the following:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/ismaili.htm (Ismaili Philosophy)
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=106472 (Mutazila -earliest rationalists)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/ikhwan.htm (Ikhwan Al-Safa -the original Encyclopedists)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/sijistan.htm and
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/abu-yakub-al-sijistani-cosmologist.html (Al-Sijistani)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/k/khusraw.htm and
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/nasir-khusraw.html (Nasir Khusraw)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/k/kirmani.htm (Hamiduddin Al-Kirmani)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/avicenna.htm (Ibn Sina or Avicenna)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/ibnrushd.htm (Ibn Rushd or Averroes)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/shahras.htm (Al-Shahrastani)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/t/tusi.htm and
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=106512 (Nasiruddin Tusi)
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
Letters to the Editor:
1)IAN BELL
PhD (ancient and medieval philosophy)
Toronto -- Hal C. Hartmann's statement (Catholicism And Greeks -- letter, Jan. 4) that Greek philosophy was not incorporated into Western culture until the decline of the Catholic Church in the Renaissance is so wholly ignorant of European medieval intellectual history that it cannot be allowed to pass without comment.
The Middle Ages arguably represent the high-water mark of the absorption of Greek philosophy into European culture, with important Catholic thinkers such as Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus all making attempts to incorporate Greek philosophy and science into a Christian philosophy unifying faith and reason.
They did so influenced by earlier Islamic philosophers such as Ibn Rushd (known as Averroes) and Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and in the context of fierce debates about the relationship between faith and reason, and theology and philosophy. Although their work is superseded in many respects by the rise of modern science, it remains of considerable interest both to historians of philosophy and to some contemporary philosophers of religion.
2)MICHAEL SMITH
REV., associate professor of philosophy, St. Peter's Seminary
London, Ont. -- Hal C. Hartmann makes the claim that the Roman Catholic Church has drawn little from Greek culture and thought. Mr. Hartmann seems ignorant of the dialogue between Catholic theology and Greek philosophy that has existed almost from the beginning of the church's history.
For example, St. Augustine (354-430) was a Christian neo-Platonist, and his works were a dominant influence on Western Christian thought for the next 1,000 years. Also, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225?-1274) wrote extensive commentaries on the works of Aristotle. He also drew heavily on Aristotle, among others, to frame his approach to theology.
In this respect the immense contribution of the minoritarian Shia Ismaili muslim community deserves mention: I have posted elsewhere on this blogsite information on the contributions made by Ismaili cosmologist-philosophers like Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani, Nasir Khusraw, Hamiduddin Al-Kirmani, among others, including the Ismaili-affiliated encyclopedist group Ikhwan Al-Safa and the Mutazila, the earliest group of rationalist philosophers to emerge after the death of the Prophet Mohammed. A good chunk of my blogsite deals with the link between philosophy and religion, of which science, the study of the material universe, is an integral part: See posts 1, 11, 20, 27, 34, 44, 46, 48, 49, 55, 62, 63, 64, 65, 71, 86 and 95 and also the following:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/ismaili.htm (Ismaili Philosophy)
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=106472 (Mutazila -earliest rationalists)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/ikhwan.htm (Ikhwan Al-Safa -the original Encyclopedists)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/sijistan.htm and
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/abu-yakub-al-sijistani-cosmologist.html (Al-Sijistani)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/k/khusraw.htm and
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/nasir-khusraw.html (Nasir Khusraw)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/k/kirmani.htm (Hamiduddin Al-Kirmani)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/avicenna.htm (Ibn Sina or Avicenna)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/ibnrushd.htm (Ibn Rushd or Averroes)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/shahras.htm (Al-Shahrastani)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/t/tusi.htm and
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=106512 (Nasiruddin Tusi)
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
Thursday, January 4, 2007
97)Another legacy to the pantheon of world knowledge from Islam's golden age.
This is a very bright star that bears the Arabic name of 'Sadr', which lies at the center of the Northern Cross in the constelleation Cygnus the Swan. The name, however, refers to the great ancient celestial bird, and comes from an Arabic phrase that means "the hen's breast." :
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070104.html
http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/sadr.html
This is another fine example of the legacy to the pantheon of world knowledge from the era in Muslim civilization known as Islam's golden age. This star is known as a supergiant, which means that it has almost come to the end of its lifecycle; it may end up as a supernova which explodes and spreads all its contents, such as basic elements like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, iron, etc, made by nuclear fusion in its core, all accross the cosmos. It is 7.5 thousand trillion kilometers away from planet earth. Other stars such as Al-Nitak, Al-Nilam, Mintaka, Al-Deberan and Betelgeuse are discussed in blogpost 83 in the December 2006 archive.
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
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070104.html
http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/sadr.html
This is another fine example of the legacy to the pantheon of world knowledge from the era in Muslim civilization known as Islam's golden age. This star is known as a supergiant, which means that it has almost come to the end of its lifecycle; it may end up as a supernova which explodes and spreads all its contents, such as basic elements like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, iron, etc, made by nuclear fusion in its core, all accross the cosmos. It is 7.5 thousand trillion kilometers away from planet earth. Other stars such as Al-Nitak, Al-Nilam, Mintaka, Al-Deberan and Betelgeuse are discussed in blogpost 83 in the December 2006 archive.
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
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
96)Banter of interest from other websites.
Back and forth between an atheist colleague and myself on the subject of religion:
Atheist:The only trouble is that humans seem to have a [genetic?] predisposition towards magical thinking and superstition---all our mythologies were religions once fervently believed in but which became incongruous with time---one day the religions so fanatically adhered to by Christians, Muslims etc., will become mythologies in the same category as Zeus and Odin---only to be replaced some other mystical belief which will cause humans to kill each other over some petty disagreement over some minutiae.
Me:I am not so pessimistic about religion. I think that those religious systems that are able to achieve a harmonious balance between, on the one hand, knowledge handed down from revelation and that which man acquires through the use of his own rational intellect, ones that profess a dynamic as opposed to a static universe, ones that can easily keep abreast with the torrid pace of scientific and technological progress, ones whose theologies can mix it up nicely with the rationalism of philosophy, and ones that can accept and indeed find strength in cultural diversity and pluralism of interpretations, these religious systems stand a good chance of persisting well into the future, IMHO.
Atheist:Theology is certainly not the answer---religion was/is a primitive attempt to explain the universe, it is the earliest form of philosophy, the earliest attempt to find a 'mission statement'."Revelation" was evidently somehow transmitted from outer space to the intestines of our fore-parents---evidently the messages were not that clear and humans have created at least 2600 gods in the process---the only difference between aetheists and believers is that believers don't believe in 2599 of them, and aetheists don't believe in that one more.
Back and forth with a Jewish colleague of mine about the similarities between Jews and Muslims:
Him:
1) Both are circumcised.
2) Abraham sacrified both sons-Issac in Genesis and Ishmael in the Koran (one written 2000 years before the other)-presumably both are correct.
3) Hallal and Kosher are the same except for the Imam and Rabbi who approve the process.
4) Both are buried immediately after dying.
5) Heads are covered by the "believers".
6) Hashem and Allah are one and the same.
Me:
Lets not forget another similarity, this one pertaining to the Shia tradition specifically and relating to the relationship of the legislator to his executor: The Prophet of Islam said to the first Shia Imam Ali: "You are to me as Aaron was to Moses".
The Sunni-Shia split had not yet occured when the Prophet was reported to have made that utterance. The initial split came only upon the death of the Prophet and the entrenched doctrinal split(the point of no return) came much later when the Sunnis prosletysed that the eternal, uncreated Quran was the only valid source of knowledge whereas the Shias prosletysed a Quran created in time, and a balance between revelation and reason as sources of knowledge, with the balance tipping slightly in favour of revelation.
I am not that familiar with Jewish theology and religious history but Wikipedia says the following:
"Thus Aaron, the typical priest, ranks far below Moses: he is but his mouthpiece, and the executor of the will of God revealed through Moses, although it is pointed out[23] that it is said fifteen times in the Pentateuch that “the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron.”"
"...held Aaron of old up as a mirror, saying: “Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace; love your fellow creatures and draw them nigh unto the Law!”"
Aaron was very close to Moses and was also his brother. Much has also been written about how close the Prophet Mohammed and the Imam Ali were during their lives; they were first cousins and the Prophet later also became his father-in-law and the grandfather to his children and descendants, the future Imams in the Shiite progression.
There is also great similarity in the functions of these two illustrious pairs of people. Moses and Mohammed were the bringers of religious legislation, Aaron and Ali were the executors, explainers and interpreters of these legislations; I guess a modern day analogy(sort of) would be the U.S. Constitutional project, with the legislative branch being the Congress and the executive branch being the Presidency.
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
Atheist:The only trouble is that humans seem to have a [genetic?] predisposition towards magical thinking and superstition---all our mythologies were religions once fervently believed in but which became incongruous with time---one day the religions so fanatically adhered to by Christians, Muslims etc., will become mythologies in the same category as Zeus and Odin---only to be replaced some other mystical belief which will cause humans to kill each other over some petty disagreement over some minutiae.
Me:I am not so pessimistic about religion. I think that those religious systems that are able to achieve a harmonious balance between, on the one hand, knowledge handed down from revelation and that which man acquires through the use of his own rational intellect, ones that profess a dynamic as opposed to a static universe, ones that can easily keep abreast with the torrid pace of scientific and technological progress, ones whose theologies can mix it up nicely with the rationalism of philosophy, and ones that can accept and indeed find strength in cultural diversity and pluralism of interpretations, these religious systems stand a good chance of persisting well into the future, IMHO.
Atheist:Theology is certainly not the answer---religion was/is a primitive attempt to explain the universe, it is the earliest form of philosophy, the earliest attempt to find a 'mission statement'."Revelation" was evidently somehow transmitted from outer space to the intestines of our fore-parents---evidently the messages were not that clear and humans have created at least 2600 gods in the process---the only difference between aetheists and believers is that believers don't believe in 2599 of them, and aetheists don't believe in that one more.
Back and forth with a Jewish colleague of mine about the similarities between Jews and Muslims:
Him:
1) Both are circumcised.
2) Abraham sacrified both sons-Issac in Genesis and Ishmael in the Koran (one written 2000 years before the other)-presumably both are correct.
3) Hallal and Kosher are the same except for the Imam and Rabbi who approve the process.
4) Both are buried immediately after dying.
5) Heads are covered by the "believers".
6) Hashem and Allah are one and the same.
Me:
Lets not forget another similarity, this one pertaining to the Shia tradition specifically and relating to the relationship of the legislator to his executor: The Prophet of Islam said to the first Shia Imam Ali: "You are to me as Aaron was to Moses".
The Sunni-Shia split had not yet occured when the Prophet was reported to have made that utterance. The initial split came only upon the death of the Prophet and the entrenched doctrinal split(the point of no return) came much later when the Sunnis prosletysed that the eternal, uncreated Quran was the only valid source of knowledge whereas the Shias prosletysed a Quran created in time, and a balance between revelation and reason as sources of knowledge, with the balance tipping slightly in favour of revelation.
I am not that familiar with Jewish theology and religious history but Wikipedia says the following:
"Thus Aaron, the typical priest, ranks far below Moses: he is but his mouthpiece, and the executor of the will of God revealed through Moses, although it is pointed out[23] that it is said fifteen times in the Pentateuch that “the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron.”"
"...held Aaron of old up as a mirror, saying: “Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace; love your fellow creatures and draw them nigh unto the Law!”"
Aaron was very close to Moses and was also his brother. Much has also been written about how close the Prophet Mohammed and the Imam Ali were during their lives; they were first cousins and the Prophet later also became his father-in-law and the grandfather to his children and descendants, the future Imams in the Shiite progression.
There is also great similarity in the functions of these two illustrious pairs of people. Moses and Mohammed were the bringers of religious legislation, Aaron and Ali were the executors, explainers and interpreters of these legislations; I guess a modern day analogy(sort of) would be the U.S. Constitutional project, with the legislative branch being the Congress and the executive branch being the Presidency.
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
Monday, January 1, 2007
95)Philosophical Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the buiding of bridges.
Today's Globe and Mail has an interesting article describing "the (Catholic) Church's decision to embrace the intellectual heritage of the Greeks -- the pre-Christian parents of Western civilization."
Blogpost no.71 in my December archive shows the extent to which the wisdom of the ancients also impacted early Muslim civilization;
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=106602
In fact, all three of Judaism, Christianity and Islam made valiant efforts to fuse their respective theologies with the rationalism of ancient philosophy. The fruits of these efforts can today also serve as one departure point for building bridges among the three monotheistic religions:
Keeping faith in western Civilization and its core values.
William Thorsell
ROME -- Our audience with Pope Benedict XVI was scheduled for noon. An hour earlier, we were ushered into a remarkable room atop the Vatican to await him.
This is the marvellous space where the Pope consults with the Cardinals -- and has done so for five centuries. In this context, it is the longevity of the Catholic Church that strikes the mind -- its potency through 1,500 years at the centre of Western civilization -- as the keeper of our core values while empires rose and flagged, reformations erupted, inquisitions responded, schisms divided and scandals undermined.
The Catholic Church has prevailed as no other institution in the world, by virtue of its passion to be sure, but more tellingly by virtue of its unique and even radical embrace of "pagan" values -- the operational values of the West. On Jan. 14, 1506, a man named Felice de Fredis came upon bits of marble while digging on his land in Rome -- the land of the once-Emperor Titus. Some bits. Some marble. Some land.
It was the missing Laocoon -- a legendary sculpture created in Rome around the time of Christ, described by Pliny the Elder as "superior to any other works of painting and sculpture." And, indeed, it is a wondrous work, showing sea serpents ensnaring a priest and his two sons in revenge for the priest's betrayal of certain gods in the siege of Troy. (The myth presages the founding of Rome.) Word of this discovery spread quickly, and Pope Julius II immediately ordered emissaries (including Michelangelo) to examine the site. "Day and night all the Romans set out in procession for that house, like a jubilee. The majority of Cardinals went to see . . ." wrote a correspondent at the time. Felice de Fredis kept the statue in his bedroom as the crowds converged -- and its market value rose.
Within three weeks, Pope Julius purchased the Laocoon and brought it to the Vatican for display (just four months before construction began on St. Peter's Basilica). And so the Vatican Museums were founded 500 years ago -- with the acquisition of a pagan work of Roman art marking a legendary event in the history of Greece and Anatolia.
This is why we were there to meet the Pope -- to celebrate the fifth centenary of the Vatican Museums. But above all, this occasion emphasized the Church's decision to embrace the intellectual heritage of the Greeks -- the pre-Christian parents of Western civilization.
The Hall of Statues in the Vatican venerates the art of the Greeks and pagan Romans, just as the scholarship of the Church through the "dark ages" kept the lamp of Greek philosophy burning. In retrospect, it was a bit of a bargain: If the Romans ultimately accepted Christianity because of its popularity, the Roman church embraced the Greek heritage because of its depth. So the West became whole.
Within four years of acquiring the Laocoon, the great patron Julius II engaged Raphael to work down the hall from Michelangelo, who was illustrating the life of Christ on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In his adjoining rooms, Raphael painted the "School of Athens," depicting the great humanist Agora of Greek discourse with Plato, Socrates and Pythagoras. Christ and Plato in play: What better testifies to the genius of the Catholic Church in marrying its faith with the secular roots of Western thought than this brilliant juxtaposition in art?
What other core religion, ideology or empire so clearly valued its antecedents -- and embraced them with such intelligent passion?
The Vatican Museums and the Basilica of St. Peter's are eloquent material expressions of the Greek aesthetic, just as Catholic scholarship is a step-child of Greek philosophy. Pope Benedict claimed this ground again in his speech last fall at Regensburg, declaring that the heritage of ancient Greece "is an integral part of the Christian faith" -- particularly its faith in reason.
One might say that the glory of this faith is reason. One might say that faith in reason is the glory of the West.
We were called too soon from our reverie to meet the Pope. His attendants and orderlies appeared to be dressed by Armani, even as the Pope's wonderful reddish shoes peeked out from his elegant gown. The Vatican in most of its faces demonstrates excellent taste.
Pope Benedict read a letter extolling the value of art and culture at the centre of spiritual life, and of museums as agents of cosmopolitanism and peace. (Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone had already observed that "Beauty, the product of human genius, is a reflection of the supreme Beauty that is God. Love of Beauty can then become desire for Good, a desire for God.") Of course, beauty has many faces.
The Pope was vigorous and observant as we met him -- "Ah, Toronto!" he said, having just appointed a new Archbishop in the city. Cultural diplomacy is the humanist base on which much of realpolitik thrives. (Canada does very little cultural diplomacy, the Vatican much.)
We are at a time in the history of the West when challenges to our heritage and values arise in a global context -- rather than from within as they did so toxically in the 20th century. Whether from within or without, the centre must hold, and it must hold over millenniums.
With all the ambiguities, contradictions and caveats, it is the Roman Catholic Church that has held for the West.
William Thorsell is director and CEO of the Royal Ontario Museum.
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
Blogpost no.71 in my December archive shows the extent to which the wisdom of the ancients also impacted early Muslim civilization;
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=106602
In fact, all three of Judaism, Christianity and Islam made valiant efforts to fuse their respective theologies with the rationalism of ancient philosophy. The fruits of these efforts can today also serve as one departure point for building bridges among the three monotheistic religions:
Keeping faith in western Civilization and its core values.
William Thorsell
ROME -- Our audience with Pope Benedict XVI was scheduled for noon. An hour earlier, we were ushered into a remarkable room atop the Vatican to await him.
This is the marvellous space where the Pope consults with the Cardinals -- and has done so for five centuries. In this context, it is the longevity of the Catholic Church that strikes the mind -- its potency through 1,500 years at the centre of Western civilization -- as the keeper of our core values while empires rose and flagged, reformations erupted, inquisitions responded, schisms divided and scandals undermined.
The Catholic Church has prevailed as no other institution in the world, by virtue of its passion to be sure, but more tellingly by virtue of its unique and even radical embrace of "pagan" values -- the operational values of the West. On Jan. 14, 1506, a man named Felice de Fredis came upon bits of marble while digging on his land in Rome -- the land of the once-Emperor Titus. Some bits. Some marble. Some land.
It was the missing Laocoon -- a legendary sculpture created in Rome around the time of Christ, described by Pliny the Elder as "superior to any other works of painting and sculpture." And, indeed, it is a wondrous work, showing sea serpents ensnaring a priest and his two sons in revenge for the priest's betrayal of certain gods in the siege of Troy. (The myth presages the founding of Rome.) Word of this discovery spread quickly, and Pope Julius II immediately ordered emissaries (including Michelangelo) to examine the site. "Day and night all the Romans set out in procession for that house, like a jubilee. The majority of Cardinals went to see . . ." wrote a correspondent at the time. Felice de Fredis kept the statue in his bedroom as the crowds converged -- and its market value rose.
Within three weeks, Pope Julius purchased the Laocoon and brought it to the Vatican for display (just four months before construction began on St. Peter's Basilica). And so the Vatican Museums were founded 500 years ago -- with the acquisition of a pagan work of Roman art marking a legendary event in the history of Greece and Anatolia.
This is why we were there to meet the Pope -- to celebrate the fifth centenary of the Vatican Museums. But above all, this occasion emphasized the Church's decision to embrace the intellectual heritage of the Greeks -- the pre-Christian parents of Western civilization.
The Hall of Statues in the Vatican venerates the art of the Greeks and pagan Romans, just as the scholarship of the Church through the "dark ages" kept the lamp of Greek philosophy burning. In retrospect, it was a bit of a bargain: If the Romans ultimately accepted Christianity because of its popularity, the Roman church embraced the Greek heritage because of its depth. So the West became whole.
Within four years of acquiring the Laocoon, the great patron Julius II engaged Raphael to work down the hall from Michelangelo, who was illustrating the life of Christ on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In his adjoining rooms, Raphael painted the "School of Athens," depicting the great humanist Agora of Greek discourse with Plato, Socrates and Pythagoras. Christ and Plato in play: What better testifies to the genius of the Catholic Church in marrying its faith with the secular roots of Western thought than this brilliant juxtaposition in art?
What other core religion, ideology or empire so clearly valued its antecedents -- and embraced them with such intelligent passion?
The Vatican Museums and the Basilica of St. Peter's are eloquent material expressions of the Greek aesthetic, just as Catholic scholarship is a step-child of Greek philosophy. Pope Benedict claimed this ground again in his speech last fall at Regensburg, declaring that the heritage of ancient Greece "is an integral part of the Christian faith" -- particularly its faith in reason.
One might say that the glory of this faith is reason. One might say that faith in reason is the glory of the West.
We were called too soon from our reverie to meet the Pope. His attendants and orderlies appeared to be dressed by Armani, even as the Pope's wonderful reddish shoes peeked out from his elegant gown. The Vatican in most of its faces demonstrates excellent taste.
Pope Benedict read a letter extolling the value of art and culture at the centre of spiritual life, and of museums as agents of cosmopolitanism and peace. (Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone had already observed that "Beauty, the product of human genius, is a reflection of the supreme Beauty that is God. Love of Beauty can then become desire for Good, a desire for God.") Of course, beauty has many faces.
The Pope was vigorous and observant as we met him -- "Ah, Toronto!" he said, having just appointed a new Archbishop in the city. Cultural diplomacy is the humanist base on which much of realpolitik thrives. (Canada does very little cultural diplomacy, the Vatican much.)
We are at a time in the history of the West when challenges to our heritage and values arise in a global context -- rather than from within as they did so toxically in the 20th century. Whether from within or without, the centre must hold, and it must hold over millenniums.
With all the ambiguities, contradictions and caveats, it is the Roman Catholic Church that has held for the West.
William Thorsell is director and CEO of the Royal Ontario Museum.
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
94)Back to back pictures on the NASA website.
Just got back from a smashing party in which the music was provided by a DJ called "Vision of Sound". Most songs he played were accompanied by the corresponding music videos so that when we were not dancing, we were enjoying watching the videos. It was a full evening of fun. Happy New Year to all those who visit this blogsite.
The first thing I noticed when I got on the computer was that the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day website had chosen two pictures at the same time, one for Dec 31st and the other for Jan 1st. Both pictures, IMHO, speak to events essential to life on Earth and, perhaps, elsewhere in the Universe as well:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061231.html
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070101.html
The first picture shows what appears to be a stream of water trickling down a mountain on rocky planet Mars, the 4th planet from the Sun(rocky planet Earth is the 3rd planet from the Sun). The second picture talks about the remnant of a supernova explosion that occured 10,000 years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history. This supernova remnant is 1400 light years, or 14 thousand trillion kilometers, away from planet Earth. When a star reaches the end of its life cycle, it usually explodes and all the elements that have been created inside that star through the process of nuclear fusion(like hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, etc) are flung accross the universe by this immense explosion. This is how our earth is thought to have received its supply of such elements, many of which are essential for life to exist on our planet. The supernova remnant is part of the Veil nebula shown in the second picture above.
The two pictures above featured in NASA's selection for New Years eve and New Years day are connected by the fact that life cannot exist on planet Earth(and likely elsewhere) without the substances and processes that they describe: The human body is made up of 70% water(consisting of elements hydrogen and oxygen) and many organic compounds consisting of differing amounts of elements carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and a few others.
Some of the above processes are captured in the following 'ayat' of the Quran, revealed 1400 years ago to the Prophet Mohammed:
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 beleive?
Science discovered these processes in the 20th century, a testament to the ingenuity of the rational intellect of man.
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
The first thing I noticed when I got on the computer was that the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day website had chosen two pictures at the same time, one for Dec 31st and the other for Jan 1st. Both pictures, IMHO, speak to events essential to life on Earth and, perhaps, elsewhere in the Universe as well:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061231.html
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070101.html
The first picture shows what appears to be a stream of water trickling down a mountain on rocky planet Mars, the 4th planet from the Sun(rocky planet Earth is the 3rd planet from the Sun). The second picture talks about the remnant of a supernova explosion that occured 10,000 years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history. This supernova remnant is 1400 light years, or 14 thousand trillion kilometers, away from planet Earth. When a star reaches the end of its life cycle, it usually explodes and all the elements that have been created inside that star through the process of nuclear fusion(like hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, etc) are flung accross the universe by this immense explosion. This is how our earth is thought to have received its supply of such elements, many of which are essential for life to exist on our planet. The supernova remnant is part of the Veil nebula shown in the second picture above.
The two pictures above featured in NASA's selection for New Years eve and New Years day are connected by the fact that life cannot exist on planet Earth(and likely elsewhere) without the substances and processes that they describe: The human body is made up of 70% water(consisting of elements hydrogen and oxygen) and many organic compounds consisting of differing amounts of elements carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and a few others.
Some of the above processes are captured in the following 'ayat' of the Quran, revealed 1400 years ago to the Prophet Mohammed:
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 beleive?
Science discovered these processes in the 20th century, a testament to the ingenuity of the rational intellect of man.
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
Saturday, December 30, 2006
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
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
Friday, December 29, 2006
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
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
Thursday, December 28, 2006
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
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
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
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
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
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
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
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
Monday, December 25, 2006
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
"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
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
Thursday, December 21, 2006
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
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
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