Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

viii • The Making of Islamic Sciencemodel itself remains anchored in the foundational paradigm thatconsiders religion and science as two separate and distinct entities.The two-entity model has evolved from a specific cultural,historical, and scientific background, and it is supported by episodesfrom the history of interaction between science and Christianity inthe Western world. It is, however, now being claimed that this modelis universal, and can be used to understand the relationship betweenall scientific traditions and all religions (Barbour 2002). While thismodel has been criticized for certain shortcomings, this criticism hasfor the most part itself remained within the two-entity framework(Cantor and Kenny 2001).Since science, as we understand it today, is generally takento be the large scale, organized activity whose roots go back to theEuropean Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, andsince this particular scientific tradition has had a series of conflictswith Christianity, the “conflict model” has gained credibility bothin the scholarly world as well as in the popular mind. Furthermore,since the science begotten by the European Scientific Revolutionhas now spread to all corners of the world, the particular historyof the interaction of science and the religion also seems to haveaccompanied this spread of science: the only adjustment deemednecessary is the substitution of Christianity with Islam or otherreligions of the world.This model is also being applied retrospectively. Thus, thestandard narrative about Islam and science seeks instances ofconflict or cooperation between Islam the religion and the scientifictradition that emerged in the Islamic civilization. This approachmakes no distinction between premodern and modern science asfar as their philosophical foundations are concerned, despite certainfundamental differences between the worldviews that gave birth tothe two scientific traditions.Given this background, we must first ask a basic question: is thetwo-entity model—arising out of a particular cultural, historical,and scientific background—truly applicable to all religions andall scientific traditions? The answer is rather obvious. This modelcan only be applicable to all religious and scientific traditions if, (i)nature—the subject matter of science—and its relationship with