Abstract
Synergy between Islam and science and technology refers to the critical and creative integration of the latter into the ethico-intellectual framework of the worldview of Islam, leading to the holistic Islamisation of science and technology rather than to the reductionist techno-scientisation of Islam. If this principle is well understood and properly applied by Muslim scientists and technologists, they will then be able to discriminate the good from much of what currently goes by the name of science and technology and thereby render their work and research to be truly beneficial for mankind. Brief case studies from the fields of engineering, medicine, agriculture, chemistry, biology, economics and ecology are cited to illustrate the proper application of this principle of critical and creative integration.
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Notes
- 1.
Building on the works of Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Osman Bakar, Hossein Nasr, A. I. Sabra, George Saliba, Imre Lakatos, Michael Polanyi, Noam Chomsky, David Bohm and E. F. Schumacher.
- 2.
Accessible online.
- 3.
For detailed documentation and references to all themes and issues raised in this paper, please see my relevant articles published in Islam & Science journal (renamed Islamic Sciences from vol. 11).
- 4.
The ‘factness’ of a fact or the process by which a fact is recognised as such is a function of the method leading to its discovery and of the theory endowing it with significance. For more details, see Polanyi (1974).
- 5.
More details are available in Setia (2007).
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
See also The Nature Institute (n.d.) and Benyus (2002).
- 10.
For details, see Setia (2012).
- 11.
See, e.g. Shiva (1992).
- 12.
- 13.
See Setia (2007).
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Setia, A. (2016). Vision in Action: Operationalising the Islamisation of Science and Technology. In: Kamali, M., Bakar, O., Batchelor, DF., Hashim, R. (eds) Islamic Perspectives on Science and Technology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-778-9_10
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