Translation of Speech of NM Hussain
Topic: Postmodern science
amITy Meet on 20th April 2008
Translator: Riyas K
Assalamualikum…
Today IT field is not only confined to careerism, but it also contributing towards the development of the society. Normally it is saying that difference between literate and illiterate is also there in the difference between cyber literate and cyber illiterate. Cyber world is the latest media of knowledge and information. Early it was printing media, visual media etc.
But right after the launching of cyber world, revolution of information has happened. Today cyber illiterate people can’t know what’s happening in the world. But for literate peoples can get it clearly. So we must investigate how can we utilize this revolution to the betterment of ourselves, our community etc.
Two or three decades before, IT field was only a private enterprise. It was just to pass information between different army camps of America, named ARPANET. And America made it public with some goals and clear intensions. One goal is the dominance or control over other countries. In order to make the dominance active, they have made all possibilities of hardware development in the IT field closed. So National Security Agency (NSA) and Microsoft made an agreement in this respect. Agreement is to know in advance any hardware developing activity occurring around the world. But later, America had to face threat from software field rather than hardware, which challenges their concept of dominance and foreign policies. A counter information system started to grow. They couldn’t plan it in advance.
So two decades before, IT field was an Imperial information system, which just acted as machinery aimed only to produce and propagate informations which are in sync with the policies of developed and dominant countries. But now Cyber world developing fastly making challenges to imperial information system. And this is the major threat nowadays western countries are facing. So for cyber literate peoples can grab positive impacts of this state and it can utilize for the betterment of the society.
Science we are learning from textbooks of schools, college levels, and PhD levels are just modern science. And now in the countries where modern science has originated, it is changing day by day. Modern science advances to post modern there. Modern science started right after the industrial revolution era and lasted upto 1950’s.It is a special vision over life, universe, human being, culture and science. And this vision sustaining now in our country also.
But in the countries, where these concepts originated, this vision and thought getting redirected to back. Instead new thoughts and vision are originating regarding science, human beings and the universe. This is what we meant by postmodern science. Postmodern science is approaching clarity day by day. There is a gap between developed and developing countries regarding knowledge. So post modern science has not known to most of our brothers. We all depending on textbooks for Science related study. But textbooks are only sanitized version of knowledge and it will not be upto date. Means textbooks deliver simplified form of knowledge and it cannot incorporate updations regularly. Therefore to know what is going on in science, cyber world is the source of information. It is incorporating latest studies in this respect.
Science is the study of universe. And the holy Quran regularly compelling us to think and investigate about the universe. We can see a lot of lines in Quran to Think, learn, investigate, travel, read etc. Eventhough Quran is not a scientific book; Quran was arranged in a way to compare with any scientific books. Science and technology developed in very pace in the Islamic civilization, only because of the Quranic teaching and encouragement. Fritjof Capra, a famous particle physicist, in his book “Turning Point” discusses western civilization, its development, its faults and future. And he had drawn a graph of different civilizations. It is shown in the graph that within a short period of time, only Islamic civilization achieved large development. Greek, Chinese civilization graphs were sloping down (http://www.wplus.net/pp/Julia/Capra/Cpt1.htm). This is just due to the importance given by the holy Quran to thought, study and travel. For example, an important Indian medical textbook “charaksamhitha” was translated to Arabic even in 8th century. Islamic civilization, in its live stage, absorbed all the knowledge and informations around the world within a short span of time. Thereby it achieved its pace. Also, Europeans has got the science from Arabians Civilization. This is a well-known fact in the history of science and technology. And this portrays Quranic positive attitude and interest on scientific thought, investigation and study. Later on, this pace has paralyzed in the Arabian civilization and Europe entered into the track.
And it is well known that the word “European” or “western” was unknown to peoples lived before 10th century. So Europe or western has only history of 10 centuries. But, for example, Egypt was in its peak of scientific and technological advance, for a period of BC 1500 to BC 5000. Majority of archeologists are studying about the wonderful planning and design behind Pyramidal architecture. And Pyramid is the single archeological object, which is being studied by largest number of archeologists. BC3000 was the era of Pyramid.
When science was developing in Europe, a secularized vision of life existed there. Therefore, its impact was secularized science. Basic tenets of secularized science are
· Conquest of nature. When human beings were started to acquire knowledge, some bad concepts started to develop in mentality. Technological advancement like electrcity, train, telescope, microscope etc. made human beings to think that nothing is impossible. Thereby, it made human beings omni-potent. Means that for human beings, everything is possible. This is the basic reason behind the conquest of nature.
· Exploitation of nature. We normally use the word Exploitation very positively. But actually it is the remnant of modernization. So modern science started to exploit the nature in large extend.
· Omnipotent man. Man can do anything. Only time is a challenge for human beings to make all possible. So in future, there will be nothing unknown to man. For example, advancement in biotechnology making man to say that even death can be controlled. Basically all the activities of living beings are under the control of DNA.DNA is a super programme of all the activities. DNA contains programme of ageing. So if we can delete the programme of ageing, the man will be as such in his live state, without death. This is the thought of man in the period of advancement of biotechnology. “Brave New World”, a book written by Aldous Huxley, describes such dramatic scientific and technological advancements.
So scientist starts to think that everything is possible. Latest branch “Logical positivism” of philosophy declares that only scientifically proved facts are truth. Therefore at that stage, scientists believed that no God exist, because it cannot be proved scientifically or experimentally. So they declared that it is not a scientific truth.
Now what happened to aforementioned basic tenets of modern science? Upto 1950 modern people believed that abovementioned facts are the truth and no other truths exist. But Modern Science starts to grow. Studies in the micro world, for example physics, especially quantum physics made the matters too complex even in subatomic level. Man becoming distressed and thereby compelled to think about the existence of God. Now, all the roots of thought of no–God theology have faded away from the western sphere of scientists.
And in macro world study, means study of the universe, for example study of planetary objects, a change occurred. When we started to study planetary objects, it was just confined to a limited area. But as technological advancement occurring (for example telescope), man came to know that number of planetary objects increasing. Thereby it became too complex to study. So as knowledge increasing, man is becoming too pessimistic than optimistic. Now spectroscopic telescope invented which can be used to analyze emitted rays from objects and to determine the status and distance of the object from earth. Now the study becoming too complex as man came to understand that even stars are of different type. For example red giants, super nova, black hole etc. and even a star passing through different stages. And even they found that some stars traveling in much higher speed than light. So there is no way to study such stars as we can only study through light reflection.
So technological advancement made the universe too complex. Basic tenets start to fail. They came to know that universal picture is in reverse manner of their understanding. Thereby changing the mode of science. We know that early Encyclopedia’s are there to know all the informations. But now, instead, as modern science starts to grow, Encyclopedia’s of Ignorance starts to publish. Actually, our ignorance is just like drops of the sea except one drop. But in order to realize the ignorance, substantial knowledge is required. As Imam Shafi (Rahmathullahi Alaihi) said: “Ignorance is not a problem. But Ignorance of ignorance is a big problem.” .So modern scientific growth compelled the man to realize his ignorance. The Nobel Prize winner, Alexis Carrel, wrote the book “man, the unknown”, (1930) which proclaim that man know nothing.( http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0303critic/030310carrel/Carrell-toc.htm)
Therefore basic tenets of modern science were challenged as it starts to grow. Some points are
· Now no scientist is there to say that conquer the nature. Instead, they say that we have to live in harmony with the nature. Respect the nature. Environmental catastrophes like ozone depletion are just due to the attitude of conquest the nature.
· No scientist nowadays says to exploit the nature. Instead they start to advice that great care has to be given when any resource of nature is being utilized. And live without disturbing the ecosystem.
· Now the feeling that man is omnipotent has disappeared. He came to know his limits and his limited range of knowledge. And he came to realize that with his knowledge, man cannot solve his major problems.
· The feeling that any knowledge can be acquired is also getting lost.
· Feeling that any problem can be solved by science is also faded away. Because science is only one of many truths. For example, there’s a belief that those facts, which cannot be proved experimentally, are not truths. But majority of real facts, which we all believe, cannot be proved experimentally. For example, EMS is a communist is a big truth and fact, which cannot be proved experimentally. It’s not a scientific truth; at the same time it is a big truth, which will not change even after generations. So scientific truths are only one of the many truths and it is prone to change. Also important truths of the nature cannot be proved scientifically. Thereby belief that science is the underlying scale of truth started to lose and it’s perished.
· Belief that artificial products are superior to natural products started to disappear. For example, Decade before, it’s encouraged to give artificial milk to babies than original maternal milk. But now, it’s proved that man cannot produce milk artificially which is in close quality to the original. Oxford scientists challenged Nestle scientists to produce milk artificially, which must be at least close to original quality. But Nestle dropped the attempt and even didn’t attend the public debate. Another example is the plastic which human being developed will produce cancer in seven ways. And in America one out of three women and one out of two men have cancers (Survey by Centre for Disease Control: 2006,USA).
So we are naming cancerous civilization as modern. And no one now has belief that man is producing products superior to nature.
We can see that technology is just the prematured imitation of different processes of nature.
· Submarine technology we have developed is just like the technology of fish.
· Aircraft technology is just the technology of Bird.
· Even ultra modern Camera technology cannot achieve the technology of our eye. With our eye, we can easily shift our view to the sky from the close paper. Camera focusing is a big challenge nowadays.
Therefore technology is just the primitive and poor imitation of natural technology (Bionics). Even modern scientists cannot realize the complexity behind the natural technology. For example, Robotic engineers spend the largest amount of money to achieve bipedal movement at least in its primitive form. They came to realize that bipedal movement is one of the complex functions of human body. The early we have felt that technology behind the movement of lizard through the wall is just vacuum technology. But in previous year, it’s invented that behind its leg thousands of microspores are there and static electricity is the basic reason behind the movement. And it also may be changed. So technology of nature is perfect.
We can see the perfection of natural technology by just noting the light of Fireflies. Natural technology achieved maximum light with minimum heat. Even at its peak of modern science, man cannot develop light which is as bright as light of Fireflies at the same time with minimum heat. Associated scientist says that it is not possible.
Another fact is regarding IC chip. Major problem is its heat dissipation. So scientists start to think how to avoid heat while fabricating high capacity chips. They utilized technology of heat dissipation in the feathers of butterflies. Light incident on the feather will disperse fastly, thereby avoiding heat problem. This technology is going to be applied in chip fabrication.
All of the basic tenets of modern science getting perished and superiority over the nature are also getting lost in full sense. But our brotherly scientists still believe in the above false tenets, even the cradle of modern science starts to realize the truth.
Anti-science movements are developing in the western countries. Animal liberation movement and Earth liberation movement are two active movements of UK and USA. Organizers behind Such movements were actually distressed as they realized the bad effects of modern science, its implication to life. They say that life of human beings cannot be saved if we can’t jump out of modern science. They say, “When you met a scientist, you just kill him. You are saving the life of thousands of animals. You are saving the life of thousands of human beings. You are saving this earth itself”. And those movements are the domestic terrorist groups in the list of FBI of USA. Animal liberation movement demand not to experiment on animals. It was a wrong concept of modern science. Their point is only human beings affect blood cancers. Cancer cannot be noticed in the blood of any species of animals among thousand species. And all species have blood and have the same physiology. And thereby they are challenging the important concept of modern science that animals can be used for study related to human beings.
Hence tenets of modern science getting perished. And as science moving to post modern era, science itself is going to be ignored. Because of that, we can see a lot of cult, spirituality movements in the western sphere. And peoples are getting converted to Islam in large number in UK and USA. These all facts display that western world is at a turning point. They are changing to another view over life.
I am concluding this speech.
Assalamualikum…
Qn: Which methodology of Muslim scientists of Islamic scientific peak era is to be followed by Today’s IT professionals?
Ans: In Islamic civilization science is just one of many enterprises of man. But in Europe, Science became a dominant enterprise of man. They used science for some specific goals of their civilization. 75% of modern physicists are working for war related research. 75% of modern biologists are working for war related research. And 70 % of modern chemists are working for research on chemical weapons. There will be a war purpose behind all of the discoveries of modern world. Byproducts of war related researches are actually got us as scientific products and inventions. For example, Cryptography was developed when tried to decrypt messages during war. Western utilized science not to grab knowledge and achieve advancement in the life of human beings, but to conquer new geographical areas and thereby making dominance. Modern science we have now is war science. In Islamic civilization, there are no such purposes behind science. Science is to understand the universe thereby realizing the creator and share the advantages to all human beings. So if science is moving with such Islamic purposes, it will achieve great peaks than the modern science. But we cannot just escape from the misdirected modern science. In this scenario, we can try to develop Islamic science. We IT professionals will do projects for various western clients. It will be a part of a broad project. We will not be normally aware of the final product. And it may be related to war. So we must try not to do war related, destructive projects. We must try to direct projects to go human friendly. As I said early, print media will not be enough to understand what is happening in the western. Early said matters cannot be found in any paper. I’m reading Hindu newspaper for last 10 years. But it published the word Animal liberation front and earth liberation front just only once. We can get more details from the website. As we are connected to cyber world, we must propagate to our society what actually happening in western world, especially in science and technology, their latest views, their new vision over life etc. All branches of knowledge started war against modernity. Economics changing to humanomics. We must try to get latest informations. And I feel this is the greatest contribution that IT professionals can do.
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