Islam dan Filsafat Sains

by Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

Gagasan “sains Islam” atau “Islamisasi ilmu” yang marak sejak beberapa tahun silam telah menghasilkan cukup banyak literatur, baik dalam bentuk buku maupun artikel di jurnal-jurnal keislaman yang terbit di Indonesia. Untuk orang yang meyakini gagasan tersebut, paling tidak ada satu kesepakatan pengembangan gagasan tersebut merupakan sebuah upaya jangka panjang dan perbincangan tentang masalah ini berlumlah selesai.

Buku yang ditulis oleh seorang menggagas awal masalah “Islamisasi ilmu” ini berupaya berjalan lebih jauh. Yaitu dengan membincangangkan beberapa hal yang tidak tersentuh sebelumnya, dan sekaligus menempatkan perbincangan tentangnya dalam konteks yang lebi luas dan indigenous. Di samping berusaha menjernihkan makna ilmu (‘ilm) sebagai sebuah konsep Qurani, buku ini juga membahas secara singkat namun mendalam beberapa landasan metafisika Islam sebagai kerangka untuk merumuskan filsafat sains Islam.

Prof. Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas adalah pendiri International Institute of Islamic Thought Civilaziton (ISTAC) di Malaysia, dan pengarang Konsep Pendidikan dalam Islam (1984) serta Islam dalam Sejarah Kebudayaan Melayu 1990).

Genres: Islam, Science, Philosophy

99 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, born September 5, 1931 in Bogor, Java, is a prominent contemporary Muslim thinker. He is one of the few contemporary scholars who is thoroughly rooted in the traditional Islamic sciences and who is equally competent in theology, philosophy, metaphysics, history, and literature. His thought is integrated, multifaceted and creative. Al-Attas’ philosophy and methodology of education have one goal: Islamization of the mind, body and soul and its effects on the personal and collective life on Muslims as well as others, including the spiritual and physical non-human environment. He is the author of twenty-seven authoritative works on various aspects of Islamic thought and civilization, particularly on Sufism, cosmology, metaphysics, philosophy and Malay language and literature.



Al-Attas was born into a family with a history of illustrious ancestors, saints, and scholars. He received a thorough education in Islamic sciences, Malay language, literature and culture. His formal primary education began at age 5 in Johor, Malaysia, but during the Japanese occupation of Malaysia, he went to school in Java, in Madrasah Al-`Urwatu’l-wuthqa, studying in Arabic. After World War II in 1946 he returned to Johor to complete his secondary education. He was exposed to Malay literature, history, religion, and western classics in English, and in a cultured social atmosphere developed a keen aesthetic sensitivity. This nurtured in al-Attas an exquisite style and precise vocabulary that were unique to his Malay writings and language. After al-Attas finished secondary school in 1951, he entered the Malay Regiment as cadet officer no. 6675. There he was selected to study at Eton Hall, Chester, Wales and later at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, England (952 -55). This gave him insight into the spirit and style of British society. During this time he was drawn to the metaphysics of the Sufis, especially works of Jami, which he found in the library of the Academy. He traveled widely, drawn especially to Spain and North Africa where Islamic heritage had a profound influence on him. Al-Attas felt the need to study, and voluntarily resigned from the King’s Commission to serve in the Royal Malay Regiment, in order to pursue studies at the University of Malaya in Singapore 1957-59. While undergraduate at University of Malay, he wrote Rangkaian Ruba`iyat, a literary work, and Some Aspects of Sufism as Understood and Practised among the Malays. He was awarded the Canada Council Fellowship for three years of study at the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal. He received the M.A. degree with distinction in Islamic philosophy in 1962, with his thesis “Raniri and the Wujudiyyah of 17th Century Acheh” . Al-Attas went on to the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London where he worked with Professor A. J. Arberry of Cambridge and Dr. Martin Lings. His doctoral thesis (1962) was a two-volume work on the mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri.



In 1965, Dr. al-Attas returned to Malaysia and became Head of the Division of Literature in the Department of Malay Studies at the University of Malay, Kuala Lumpur. He was Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1968-70. Thereafter he moved to the new National University of Malaysia, as Head of the Department of Malay Language and Literature and then Dean of the Faculty of Arts. He strongly advocated the use of Malay as the language of instruction at the university level and proposed an integrated method of studying Malay language, literature and culture so that the role and influence of Islam and its relationship with other languages and cultures would be studied with clarity. He founded and directed the Institute of Malay Language, Literature, and Culture (IBKKM) at the National University of Malaysia in 1973 to carry out his vision.



In 1987, with al-Attas as founder and director, the International Institute of Islamic Thought a

Reviews

[S.M.Y Kayseri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This monograph offers an entire alternative paradigm in philosophy. I think this monograph served as an introduction for his later deeper analysis of epistemology and ontology, so what follows below are what I have digested from this initial discussion on knowledge and reality.

al-Attas insisted that knowledge originated from God, guaranteeing an objectivity that can never be yield through the inductive man-made edifices (1), and it is acquired through sound senses, sound reasons, intuitions and report (2). Sound senses would yield into perceptions and observations through five external senses (3). Sound reason would be the spontaneity that synthesizes reason and sensual data, producing an experience which is a form of external reality rather than the Reality itself (4). What makes possible for intuition to cognize a parcel of external reality also makes it possible to be expanded into the apprehension larger levels and scope of reality. Thus intuition is not merely direct apprehension of truth, but also expanded into direct apprehension of religious truths also (5).

Then he proceeded to define the epistemological framework. Intellect, according to al-Attas, is the active, conscious entity that withholds, retains and articulate symbolic forms of reality; a supra-sensuous entity, that what is indicated and referred when we say "I" (6). And these symbolic forms of realities when articulated, is nothing but the words (7). Knowledge is defined as the arrival of the soul into meaning, and thought is the movement of the soul towards meaning. Meaning then would be the relation of a thing clarified in the understanding (8). Relation is important in al-Attas' concept because he believes that there must be essential relations between things that must remain as such, if it's not the case and in constant flux, then recognition of meaning is impossible.

Moving on to ontology, al-Attas affirmed the primacy of existence. What this means is that for al-Attas, Existence is the primal stuff of reality; particular existence are part of the perpetual movement of ontological self-expression, merely the modes and aspects of reality of Existence (this would become more understandable later). Only after through mental abstractions, individuations and specifications are added, forming into concepts or essences of things. A thing has dual aspects to its reality; a thing is a thing because it partakes of something of Reality and this is what constitute the primal stuff of it, and this something is Existence. This is the being-existent of all things. But what makes a thing as it is specifically, cognized as objects of diversity and multiplicity, would be the being-distinct of it, which is secondary and modification of the ontologically prior being-existent (9). A particular existence, thus, is the totality of specifications and individuations resulted from the contraction and determination of Existence, just as the waves and brine are more specific forms of the Sea.

"What are the existents in the external world and independent of the mind are really (intelligibles) realities in the process of actualization in particular and individual forms, which are modes and aspects of a single and all-encompassing Reality." (10) The existents then, according to al-Attas, are particular forms of reality than Reality itself. Just like the words are not the objects they named, but rather points towards them, so does the existents as represented in our minds. al-Attas gave a parable where a typical signpost with the arrows and words pointing to a direction would be immediately followed, but what if the signpost changed into a magnificent edifice, a great work of art? Instead of going towards the direction the statue is pointing, people would stop and admire the statue, instead of pointing towards the something which its primary role, the statue expanded into the very object of wonder and amazement.

If Reality is singular and united, how can being-distincts and multiplicities which are essentially made out from changes possible? The only way out from this jettison would be to conceive the world of creations to be in a perpetual state of perishings whenever it comes into existence, while being continually replaced by new similars. Thus changes really occurs through this perpetual annihilation of the phenomenon, but not just it alone, because then it would only amounts into a constant flux, which make the cognisation of a consolidated and united Reality still impossible.

There must be something that persists while the changes occurs, in order to attribute an important (or really the only) attribute of Reality, Causation (11). There must be something that we can cognize to be persistent (12) while the firewood changes into charcoal so it would yield into a proper experience; that state A has changed into B, which is the quintessential formula of everything that is experienced. Even if we are to monitor the process down to the infinitesimal moment, there would never be found a discrete event where we could say the firewood has changed into charcoal. It would be divided into an infinity of events in time e.g. firewood-charcoal (FC)-1, FC-2, FC-3....ad infinitum, and even the moment between FC-1 and FC-2 could be divided into FC-1.000...., FC-1.0000....yet another ad infinitum, but nowhere could be found in external world causation except in the mental realm. The attribution of causality to external events is a mental process which is utterly in poverty in potency, while in reality Causation are caused by God’s dynamic will.

And thus change and causation does not occur at the level of phenomena (by monitoring the burning of firewoods) but at the level of permanent intelligibles that has been imprinted onto the soul. Permanent intelligibles contains the inherent possibilities of all future state of existents, thus change really are the unfolding of the potential states of a thing. It is through the dynamic Breath of the Merciful that fuels the actualization of a thing’s potentialities. Through this, al-Attas has provided an escape from the impasse, affirming both permanence and change. The conception of the permanent intelligibles, I believe, are what missing from the conceptual maps of the great thinker, Immanuel Kant.

The implication from having this model is that it affirms his prior statement that intuition has the capability to comprehend higher levels of existence, opening the ways for the cognizations of Relevations and things Unseen, simply because the soul possesses the capability to cognize the permanent intelligibles. Put into practice and contemplation, it could be trained into a state of ascension that is able to apprehend the direct religious truths, the noumenal. While Kant locked the firmament with his Critique, al-Attas opened it wide for the wanderlust of His Seers.

****

(1) Wholesale reliance to induction is an epistemological trap, whereby no universality can ever be derived from it. Examples includes the Bertrand Russell’s chicken (Doesn’t mean he feed me today, I will forever be kept alive. It’s a poultry farm, anyway, but the chicken doesn’t know) and Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s concept of black swans; highly improbable events which is only rationalised and recognised in hindsight. The triumph of the induction is a relatively new phenomenon, which I believed started from Comte’s positivism, but the West has been progressively developing a probabilistic worldview since the time of Luther. It was this probabilistic thinking, on top of Western latent dualism, which contributed to the hypertrophy of inductive methods.

(2) Knee-jerk reflexive abhorrence towards the status of authority is a modern experience, and not given a priori. It is a result of probabilistic thinking of the West, who produced it out from their traumatic divorce from religious authorities. The probabilistic thinking arise from their worldview of becoming, but out from perpetual flux, nothing can arise at all. There must be something universally true that embodies the world, which is impossible to be produced out from the inductive thoughts of Man. If a necessary thing is impossible to be produced, it must then be discovered. And this is the role of Revelation, which is revealed in time regarding the a priori universal and necessary truths.

(3) It might be argued that sound senses is a much weaker foundation of knowledge compared to inductive edifices, but that is the Skeptics talking through you. Sound senses must remain as one of the primary input of knowledge, but not necessarily the only one. It is based from the perception of the Islamic philosophers and mystics on the self-evidence of existence. Existence is given in propria persona, it is so pervasive that it is indefinable; it is simply experienced. As Sadra said, "The knowledge of existence is the most evident of all things; it is primary, self-evident, and more fundamental than any other knowledge." (Fazlur Rahman, 1975). Sound senses is the sign of something being experienced, its concomitants, rather than the thing itself, and this is given by itself adequately.

(4) pg. 118. The forms of the external object which al-Attas meant, which is being perceived in the experience do not appeal to the representationalist account. The representationalist account started from indeterminate external sensible data which then synthesized by the a priori form of understanding, and only then being presented in the consciousness. This run directly against the notion of self-evidence and adequate givenness of existence, whereby most of the experiences are experienced directly and non-positionally. It also caused the experience to be infected with possibility of subjectivism. Such representation of experience only occurs in positional attitude of consciousness, during reflectional thinking. The form of the external object are perceived in propria persona, not as haphazard sensuous data, but as an instantiation of Idealities in specie. Thus the redness that appears is Redness as appeared in specie, not as a result of being churned and re-presented in consciousness. The transcendental object, which is the subtratum of the particular experience remains elusive.

(5) Intuition, as far as I know, are being conceived as a passive and inert principle since Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. It is conceived as merely one of many gears in understanding. Islamic philosophy conceived it as something more dynamic, more in al-Attas’s Intuition of Existence. This is only possible if the object of intellection is in reality not restricted to only sensuous objects, for its true object is the transcendental object, which knows no specific stage or bounds, except as a pure principle of intentionality. Our consciousness is intended towards something, either a real object or a mere phantasy; they only differs in their degrees of intuitive fulfilment. Thus the phantasy only merely imaginatively fulfilled, while the real objects are being fulfilled intuitively. Yet, the difference in degrees do not eliminate the intentionality behind our perceiving of them, they both still given adequately. Thus our intuition is a pure potentiality functioning as a fenestration that able to open both ways; towards the sensual and intelligential realms.

(6) pg. 122. The “I” is the reality behind its many connotations of qalb, ruh and nafs. The terms are the many modes of relations with the various levels of existence. As this “I” is necessarily an Ideal principle yet possessing real concepts, it inhabits an awkward position as the synthesis between the two. But as al-Attas has elucidated, the principle exists in many mode depending on the relating domains. I conceive the dual nature of “I” is due to its position as a particular Exterior Archetype. It functions as simultaneously the receptacle of Idealities and its theatre of manifestation. Its parable is that of a Mirror, through its essential properties allow the attributes of the Gazer can be manifested through it. Another parable would be the wave imprinting lines to the shores. The dynamic nature of the waves is the Breath of the Merciful, through the Shore that is the Exterior Archetypes and the lines imprinted as the Particular Images.

(7) pg. 122. Al-Attas is defending the universal nature of words, as words are the main vehicle in expressing our thoughts. If the intellect perceives the a priori form within, its external apparatus too must retain its universal character. Against the privation of language, Wittgenstein has sufficiently demonstrated that no matter how novel the created-language, it is still be able to be taught to other, hence there’s no such thing as a private language. So, we indeed know the meaning behind the person is sad or in pain, without the need to actually feel them. Language operates on a communal and rule-making principle, which everyone immediately grasped the intended meaning, confusion only arrives at the level of judgment. Words unfolds itself into an asymptote with apparently indefinable limit, but the end of the sphere remains existing and the word retains its meaning without the need to define the limit first. (“Knowledge is limitless and its definition can only amount to a description of its nature, pg. 124). And thus, everyone except the philosophers understand the words of love, pain and sadness. Words are units of articulated thoughts, which derived from the intellect, of which its subjects are eternal a priori laws.

(8) p. 123. “The meaning of meaning is the recognition of the place of anything in a system. Recognition occurs when the relation of the thing has with others has been clarified and understood.”

(9) Phenomenological analysis would confirm this. In the Fourth Investigation, Husserl discovered that while complex meaning-words such as Bismarck can be broken down into more simple meanings, like a male, thick moustache, iron-fist- which eventually arrived to the elementary meaning of something. Yet, this something while possess no other meaning except that it exists, it is already pregnant with the potentialities to become a Bismarck. This something-ness thus can be seen as an immediate particularization of the mere pervasive Existence. On top of this something-ness, further specification through instantiation of Idealities in specie occurs until it arrives to a particular existence.

(10) The position of things existing independently of mind is a sore topic. As Kant mentioned in the Critique, “"It always remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us... must be accepted merely on faith, and that if we think otherwise, we would be left with no concept of those things at all." To deny the existence of things existing independently of mind is to affirm gross subjective idealism, while to deny their knowledge edge closer to transcendental idealism of Kant. Kant affirmed on how experiences are only possible as objects of our cognition as a result of synthesis between sensibility and understanding. Sensibility without understanding is blind, while understanding without sensibility is empty. But Kant is deafeningly silence regarding the objects of possible cognition when they are not related to the perceiving subject. We should observe the irreducible nature of relation between subject and object, and this is due to the necessary intentional nature of our consciousness. Things that are being perceived directly by us are instantiated/actualized Realities, but we do observe the “halo of intuition” surrounding the focus of attention and how they opened into a horizon. This horizon subsequently recedes into imaginative existence (the spontaneous tracing of the mountain-range, the clouds and the landscape we are perceiving) and then to merely symbolic existence (that the things beyond our direct perceptions are anticipated of their existence, but yet to be unfolded in perception). We can also trace that the things in our attention are prominent in their real contents, but as we moved away from the center, their real contents reduce yet the Ideal conditions of temporality and spatiality remains. And when we shifted our attention, the new locus are being ensouled with more real contents onto the empty Ideal structures, while at the prior point, the real contents recedes away leaving mere symbolic existence of the Ideal structures. With such elegance, al-Attas solved the jettison.

(11) pg. 123. “For recognition to be possible there must be specific differences in thins, there must be essential relation between things and, moreover, these must remain as such”

(11) pg. 139.


S.M.Y Kayseri
Written in 27th of July 2021
Edited and supplemented on 2nd of July 2024

[Muhammad]

Filsafat Sains

[Shofyhanm · Rating 5 out of 5]

its so a good book because you will see an entire knowledge of Islam philosophy