Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

Islam and Modern Science: Contemporary Issues • 201asserted with increasing emphasis that science is intricately linkedwith ideology in its emphasis, scale of priorities, and control anddirection of research. They observed that science promotes certainpatterns of growth and development, as well as a certain ideology.The key phrase in Sardar’s formulation is the neutrality of science, aconcept that has been seriously challenged by a host of scholars, bothMuslim and non-Muslim, in recent years.Sardar in particular and his associates in Ijmalis in generaldeveloped their discourse on the following assumption:The purpose of science is not to discover some greatobjective truth; indeed, reality, whatever it may be andhowever one perceives it, is too complex, too interwoven, toomultidimensional to be discovered as a single objective truth.The purpose of science, apart from advancing knowledgewithin ethical bounds, is to solve problems and relieve miseryand hardship and improve the physical, material, culturaland spiritual lot of mankind. The altruistic pursuit of pureknowledge for the sake of ‘truth’ is a con-trick. An associatedassumption is that modern science is distinctively Western. Allover the globe all significant science is Western in style andmethod, whatever the pigmentation or language of the scientist.(Sardar 1989, 6)Working with this main assumption, Sardar then developed asecond premise for his exploration:My second assumption follows from this: Western scienceis only a science of nature and not the science. It is a sciencemaking certain assumptions about reality, man, the mannaturerelationship, the universe, time, space and so on. It isan embodiment of Western ethos and has its foundation inWestern intellectual culture. Different constellations of axiomsand assumptions may lead the sciences of two different societiesto highly divergent interpretations of reality and the universe,interpretations which may either be spiritual or materialisticaccording to the predisposition of the society. (Sardar 1989, 6)Sardar and his associates situated science in the social andutilitarian realms, reducing it to no more than a tool for “solvingproblems and relieving misery.” However, higher science dealing with