The History and Philosophy of Islamic Science

The essays presented inThe History and Philosophy of Islamic Science discuss the principles behind the different sciences cultivated in the Islamic world from the third century of the Islamic era onwards and the place of science in relation to other branches of Islamic learning. In defining what Islamic science means, Professor Osman Bakar shows how these sciences are organically related to the fundamental teachings of Islam. Covering all the natural and mathematical sciences,The History and Philosophy of Islamic Science illustrates what Islamic science shares with modern science. Professor Osman Bakar also highlights where the Islamic approach to science differs from the secular, modern approach.

‘[Osman Bakar’s book] marks a most valuable contribution both to the effort of revealing the Islamic intellectual and spiritual approach to science, and to the concomitant endeavour to highlight the deeper causes of the contemporary crisis in western science and technology...it opens up, with clarity and simplicity, the philosophy of Islamic science.’Islamic Quarterly

Table of Contents

Part One:The Epistemological Foundation of Islamic Science
	Religious Consciousness and the Scientific Spirit in Islamic Tradition
	The Question of Methodology in Islamic Science
	The Place of Doubt in Islamic Epistemology: al-Ghazzali’s Philosophical Experience
Part Two: Man, Nature, and God in Islamic Science
	The Unity of Science and Spiritual Knowledge: The Islamic Experience
	The Atomistic Conception of Nature in Ash’arite Theology
	An Introduction to the Philosophy of Islamic Medicine
Part Three: Islamic Science and the West
	The Influence of Islamic Science on Medieval Christian Conceptions of Nature
	Umar Khayyam’s Criticism of Euclid’s Theory of Parallels
Part Four: Islam and Modern Science
	Islam and Bioethics
	Muslim Intellectual Responses to Modern Science
	Islam, Science and Technology: Past Glory, Present Predicaments, and the Shaping of the Future
Appendix: Designing a Sound Syllabus for Courses on Philosophy of Applied and Engineering Sciences in a 21st Century Islamic University