This paper was prepared for the 9th Annual Conference
of Pakistan Agricultural Scientists Forum held in 1997 at Abbotabad, (Pakistan).
Science has increased food production,
controlled diseases, globalised communication, alleviated man’s miseries
and added tremendously to his physical comforts. On the other hand, it
has also introduced deadliest weapons and poisons and caused environmental
degradation and pollution putting the very existence of mankind at stake.
For both the good and the bad, science has become an inevitable part of
everyday life in modern civilisation. So every nation of the world is willy
nilly trying to maximise its scientific efficiency and performance. Certain
parameters have been set to determine a nation’s scientific potential.
The same parameters are applicable to individual scientific establishments
and institutions also. These are:
i) Supply of Scientific and technical
manpower.
ii) Technical and financial resources.
iii) Supply of scientific and technical
information
iv) Form and organization of the system
These parameters or standards, which
if met adequately, are believed to provide a favourable environment for
ensuring scientific and technical growth of a country. The crucial importance
of these material factors is universally emphasised in the management of
corporate science enterprises. Circumstances may, however, vary from one
country to another and accordingly emphasis on each of these factors shifts
in their inter se prioritisation.
In India, for example, Ranganathan
never felt weary in stressing the importance of information. He conceived
scientific activity as an essentially information process and used to say
very fondly, emphatically and repeatedly that information is the raw
material as well as the end product of all scientific research.
One of his books begins with a mention of ‘Research Consultants’ engaged
by the United States Defence Department during the Second World War. They
were chosen from amongst the working scientists and were deputed to spend
all their time in the libraries sifting and collecting information needed
by their counterparts working in the laboratories. The provision of effective
and quick information support to the researchers saved much of their time,
which they previously used to spend in the libraries. Time thus saved was
now utilised by them in the laboratories which paved the way to early discovery
of the atom bomb by speeding up the discovery process. According to Ranganathan,
high priority accorded to information in the name of research consultancy
established the superiority of the United States in the domain of science
and thus enabled this country to emerge as the leading power of the world.
Then in late fifties, the Russians
took precedence over the Americans in Space Science by launching the first
ever sputnik into space. The United States took it as a big challenge,
rather a threat to their image as a world power. The American President
immediately constituted a Committee headed by Dr. Weinburg, to delve into
the weaknesses of the US Research System which gave the Russians an edge
over them. After a thorough appraisal of the US Science System, the Committee
submitted a Report entitled ‘Science Information & Government’ popularly
known as the Weinburg Report, which pinpointed major weaknesses and shortcomings
in the United States Science System. Most of these, according to the Report,
pertained to the Information component of the System. These weaknesses
were overcome soon and positive results started accruing. Consequently,
the Americans not only caught up with the Russian scientists in space science
but also outstripped them in a very short period of time.
These are, of course, interesting
stories containing very valuable lessons for the science policy makers.
But still these do not reveal the whole truth as these are focussed on
the materials factors only. Improving creativity in scientific researchers
certainly needs congenial material environment and it flourishes and thrives
within the empirical parameters already described. But in the ultimate
analysis creativity sprouts and blooms in the minds of the scientists that
gives birth to new ideas. The psychologists therefore got interested in
the creative process and their interest was quite natural, genuine and
fully justified.
Most of the psychologists have studied
the creative process from a very broad perspective. For them, creativity
of a scientist or an artist is essentially the same kind of mental activity;
you may call it an identical psychological process. This point was made
out in an interesting intertangle of two contemporary creative geniuses.
Havelock Ellis, a great writer, is reported to have once remarked: ‘Einstein
is a great artist!’. On hearing such remarks of a great writer about himself,
Einstein was piqued and it stimulated his scientific curiosity. As a true
scientist, he set out to discover the real intent of the statement made
by Havelock Ellis and started reading his works. After reading some of
his books, he too gave a similar judgement on him saying: ‘Havelock Ellis
is a great scientist’. Obviously this exchange of statements with a counter-statement
was neither just humour nor a mere reciprocation of courtesy. It was, in
fact, their concord on the deep similarities existing between their innate
psychological processes even though their fields of activity were so vastly
different. I need not dwell on this point more than conceding that creativity
of all kinds emanates from the unconsciousness and the diverse forms that
it takes have marked resemblences and similarities.
Brewster Chiselin compiled a book
entitled ‘The Creative Process’1
containing first-hand information on the world’s most outstanding men and
women of his time. They were selected from various fields such as art,
literature and science. He recorded in this book the experiences of thirty
eight persons in their own words as to how they begin and complete their
creative works. Analysing how new creative ideas are born and developed,
he classified them into two main categories: intensive thinkers and
intuition
followers. It was interesting to note that the most of them reported
that they were guided by sudden flashes of intuition and clairvoyance.
Walter Bradford Canon also wrote a
book under the title ‘The Way of the Investigator’2
and devoted one full chapter on the subject: ‘The role of creative scientists
depended on two methods: the method of intensive thinking on the existing
status to find out the next move and the method of seeking assistance of
a sudden and unpredicted insight’. Both these methods according to him
served the scientists in their discoveries equally well. Canon states from
his own personal experience that he invariably had the unearned assistance
of unpredicted insights during his research activity which was a matter
of routine from years of his youth and he always trusted them. He remarks:
The process had been so common and reliable for
me that I have supposed that it was at the service of every one.
Canon also refers in this chapter to a
study conducted by Platt and Baker in 1931 which related to an inquiry
into the appearance of hunches among the chemists in their research work.
The inferences drawn were based on the answers received from 232 respondents.
While recording their evidence regarding their experiences in finding solutions
to the problems, 33% of the researchers admitted that they always received
assistance from hunches and 50% reported that they had such assistance
only occasionally whereas 17% of the respondents said that they never had
any such experience. Among this last category of respondents some researchers
declared that the very idea of hunches was distasteful to them. Without
going into details, it would suffice here to say that psychologists have
been grappling with the creativity question since long and as a result
of their studies they have been advancing arguments in favour of one or
both these methods just described ie the thought aided by intuition and
the unaided thought.
Some of the psychologists have been
merely listing the conditions favouring the creativity process e.g; good
physical state, fresh mind, mastery of the subject, striving for results,
confidence, enterprise, willingness to take chance, eagerness for action,
readiness to break away from routine, etc. Certain conditions have also
been indicated by a few of them that help in the creativity process such
as discussing the problem with other investigators, reading articles pertinent
to the problem as well as pertinent to the methods useful in finding the
solution. Others have tried to corelate creativity to I.Q. or n.Ach. of
the individual scientist. Grahm Wallace3
describes four stages of creative thinking, viz. Preparation, incubation,
illumination and verification which are widely accepted. Abraham A.
Maslow4 differentiates between
creativity associated with great tangible achievements and creativity potential
of the ordinary persons which inheres in the self-actualisation motivation
of every individual.
In short, there is a vast plethora
of literature on the subject to which one may refer according to his interest
and taste. It may, however, come as a great surprise to the psychologists
and scientists belonging to the secular school of thought that some scientists
of the highest stature talk about certain moral values and religious beliefs
in connection with scientific creativity. For example, the Nobel Laureatre
Krebs laid great emphasis on the value of humility saying: ‘perhaps the
most important element of scientific attitude is humility because from
it flow self-critical continuous efforts to learn and to improve’. Similarly,
the Pakistani Nobel Laureatre, Dr Abdul Salam, stated before an interviewer
that the Islamic concept of Tawhid provided for him the basis and
direction of research which led him to a discovery that qualified him for
the Nobel prize. I may be excused here for a little digression from the
subject and to refer to the Qur’anic verse extending open invitation
to men of all other faiths for forging a unity on the concept of Tawhid.
This Qur’anic call, according to Dr. Rafi-ud-Din, has a special
significance for the scientific community as he regards the concept of
Tawh~i#d indispensable to science. He says:
The concept of God (Tawhid), the most
fundamental of all the truths is indispensable to science as a system of
truths. It must be used to illuminate the paths of scientific observation
and inquiry in the worlds of matter, life and mind to reveal new scientific
truths which can never be known in its absence.5
Therefore, the question I am now going
to raise pertains to the role of faith in nurturing scientific activity.
In other words, the question before us is: does Islam develop a special
type of mind-set that helps in the sharpening and strengthening the creative
faculty of the working scientists? My answer is: ‘YES’, and I will now
try to explain what forms the basis of this motif.
Before I proceed to discuss the subject,
let it be very clear that religious motivations are no substitute for natural
endowments or compensation of natural disabilities. For example, bravery
and cowardice are inborn mental dispositions. As bravery is a natural endowment,
so is cowardice a natural disability. But Islamic motivations can certainly
accentuate the bravery of the brave and attenuate the cowardice of the
coward. Allah’s promise of granting eternal life and bliss to the martyr
immediately after his death makes a brave Muslim all the more brave. Likewise
His admonishment for the cowardly behaviour with punishment in the life
Hereafter helps a coward in overcoming his cowardice to a remarkable degree
if he is a true Muslim. In a similar way, the creative faculties of the
scientists are greatly augmented by Islamic motivations and Islamic teachings.
In fact, all true believers in God
among the scientific community, whether Muslim or Non-Muslim, enjoy science
as a God-seeking and God-appreciating activity. Some of them had mystic
experiences in the midst of scientific activity. My own father who had
a strong mystic propensity used to relate a story about his going into
ecstasic state in the classroom while listening to a lecture on the circulation
of blood. The great lengendry negro scientist, George Washington Carver,
known as the Peanut Man in America, called his laboratory as God’s little
Worship’ and always prayed before entering it. A journalist wrote about
him:
To me, it was a delight to meet a man of such
distinction as Dr Carver who enjoyed religion as he does. When I talked
about things of God, his eyes sparkled and his soul caught fire.6
In recording these remarks about Dr. Carver,
the interviewer simply testified that the joy of science and the joy of
religion had mingled together so completely in Carver’s personality that
it was difficult to separate them from one another. This aspect of his
psychology was also reflected in his lectures. He used to describe his
laboratory work as his conversations with God. Linda O. Mc Murry gleaned
one such lecture and gave its account in the following words:
He often described his conversations with the
Creator about the peanut. In one account, he told the Creator: ‘I would
like to know all about the creation of the world’ to which His reply was:
‘Surely you have disappointed me. You are supposed to have reasonable intelligence.’
Then Carver asked to know only ‘all about peanuts’ but still the Creator
declared: ‘All about the peanuts is infinite and you are finite’. As the
Professor narrowed his demands the Creator explained: ‘I’d be glad to give
you a few peanuts. I have given you few brains. Take the peanuts into the
laboratory and pull them to pieces.’ Carver broke the peanuts into their
constituents and the Creator advised him to take parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and
put them together any way you wish so long as you keep the law of compatibility.
When Carver asked: ‘Can I make milk out of the peanut?’ The reply was:
‘Do you have the constituents of milk?’ The professor would then note that
the answer was yes, and hold up a bottle of peanut milk, followed by dozens
of other products. Audiences loved the story which revealed a sense of
humour and belief in the divine inspiration and he used it often.7
Carver used to say that the universe is
a Grand Broadcasting System of God if we only knew how to tune Him in.
We can thus appreciate what a powerful motivation the love of God can generate
for spurring up creativity of the scientist. As a true believer, he enters
the laboratory with reverence and conviction to understand things of creation
as the ‘handiworks’ of God. The hunches of the creative scientists to which
we referred earlier thus turn into mystic experiences as ‘broadcasts’ from
God.
Frithj of Capra, another great scientist, earned world-wide
fame for writing a book entitled ‘Tao of Physics’. He too had a mystic
experience mingling with the scientific thought. But he could not relate
it to God and was therefore led astray. In the preface to the first edition
of this book, published in 1974, he wrote about his mystic experience:
Five years ago, I had a beautiful experience
which set me on a road that has led me to the writing of this book. I was
sitting by the ocean late summer afternoon watching the waves rolling in
and feeling the rhythm of my breathing, when I suddenly became aware of
a gigantic cosmic dance. Being a physicist I knew that sand, rocks, water
and air around me were made of vibrating molecules and atoms and that these
consisted of particles which interacted with one another by creating and
destroying other particles. I knew also that the earth’s atmosphere was
continually bombarded by showers of ‘Cosmic rays’ particles of high energy
undergoing multiple collisions as they penetrated the air. All this was
familiar to me from my research in high energy physics but until that moment
I had only experienced it through graphs, diagrams and mathematical theories.
As I sat on the beach, my former experiences came to life, I ‘saw’ cascades
of energy coming down from outer space in which particles were created
in rhythmic pulses; I ‘saw’ the atoms of the elements and those of my body
participating in the cosmic dance of energy; I ‘felt’ its rhythm and ‘heard’
its sound; and at that moment I knew that this was the Dance of Shiva,
the Lord of Dancers worshipped by Hindus’.8
Frithj of Capra was waylaid by Hindu Mysticism
because, as he himself admits, he was only familiar with Hindu Mysticism
or the Zen of Budha. His intuition was perfectly right but he intellectually
integrated his experience to the Dances of Shiva due to the limitations
of his religious knowledge. Here one is reminded of Holy Prophet’s (sws)
saying that every human being is a born Muslim and it is the upbringing
by his parents turns him into a Jew or a Christian, Had Frithj of Capra
been familiar with the Tawhid of Islam, this Grand Dance of the
Universe would have surely appeared to him as the Grand ‘Tawaf’
of the entire creation of universe around Allah (swt).
Coming to the Islamic view of scientific
creativity, I prefer to conceive it as a form of ‘faith activism’. I think
that all sorts of creativity coming from ‘insights’, ‘hunches’ or ‘unearned
inspirations’ are emanating from the same source: i.e. deeper recesses
of the unconsciousness. These have marked psychological resemblences and
similarities and are essentially manifestation of the same quest for REALITY
in various forms. What the scientists and artists call ‘creativity’, mystics
and religious people name as ‘love for God’.
Let us now ponder on the following
verse of the Holy Qur’an which points to a covenant between man
and Allah (swt) which is deeply rooted in the human unconsciousness:
And [remember] when your Lord brought forth the
children of Adam from their reins, their seed and made them testify to
themselves [saying]: ‘Am I not your Lord?’ They said ‘Yes, verily’. (7:112)
Reminding the same covenant, the precursor of
faith, now lying dormant in human unconsciousness, the Holy Qur’an in
another verse exhorts man to activate it at the conscious level:
Read in the name of your Lord who created. (97:
1)
This is the very first revelation which
flashed on the mind of Muhammad (sws) through the medium of angle Gabriel.
I strongly feel inclined to interpret
this verse as the way shown to man for activating the covenant presently
lying dormant in his unconsciousness. According to the verse, the very
first step towards the Ma‘rifat of Allah (swt) is the study of His
creation. To my mind, this is what the allusion ‘Who Created’ in this verse
signifies. It is through the knowledge of His creation we call science
that we develop an understanding of Allah (swt) at the conscious level
with whom an eternal covenant is already inherent in us. Science is thus
simply a process of faith activation. Creativity in science is thus a means
of coming closer to Him. All search for knowledge, says Iqbal, is essentially
a form of prayer. To explain this point, he quotes the following passage
from the mystic poet Rumi.
This Sufi’s book is not composed of ink and letters,
it is not but a heart white as snow. The scholar’s possession is pen marks.
What is Sufi’s possession? Foot marks. For some while the track of the
deer is the proper clue for him; but afterwards it is the musk-gland that
is his guide. To go one stage guided by the musk-gland is better than the
hundred stages of following the track and roaming about.9
On the analogy of the mystic’s method
expressed as ‘hunt of the musk deer’, Iqbal explains the process of creativity
in science as coming closer to God and gaining power over nature. He says:
The scientific observer of nature is a kind of
mystic seeker in the act of prayer. Although, at present, he follows only
the foot prints of the musk deer, and thus modestly limits the method of
his quest, his thirst for knowledge is eventually sure to lead him to the
point where the scent of the musk deer is a better guide than the foot
prints of the deer. This alone will add to his power over nature and give
him that vision of the total infinite which philosophy seeks but cannot
find.10
Again it is profoundly meaningful that
by combining Dhikr and Fikr, the Holy Qur’an integrates
the act of (scientific) reflection on the things of creation with the act
remembrance of Allah (sws) and establishes a vital relationship between
the two. Just ponder over the following two verses:
Verily in the Creation of the heavens and the
earth and in the succession of night and day, there are indeed messages
for all who are endowed with insight [and] who remember God when they stand,
when they sit, when they lie down to sleep, and thus reflect on the creation
of heaven and the earth: ‘O our Sustainer! You have not created this without
meaning and purpose. Limitless are You in Your Glory! Keep us safe, then,
from suffering through fire! (3:190-191).
For Muslims, then, remembrance of Allah
and reflection on His creation are vitally bound to one another. By remembering
Allah, a Muslim scientist invokes the Source of all creation and creativity
whereas by reflecting on His creation, he discovers Him through His laws
operative in the natural phenomenona of this universe. To remain in constant
contact with Allah (swt), through remembrance and reflection is for the
Muslim scientist the be-all and end-all of all his research activities.
Dhikr
and
Fikr are therefore indispensible to each other in the Islamic concept
of Science.
In Islam, science may therefore be
conceived as a process of faith activism which on its culmination issues
into a special type of religious experience termed as Khashi‘ah by
Holy Qur’an.
The whole process of scientific research
in an Islamic framework may therefore be described as under:
1. It beings with man’s eternal covenant
with Allah (swt) lying dormant in his unconsciousness and he seeks to re-affirm
it at the conscious level through the pursuit of knowledge we call science.
2. The pursuit of knowledge is endless.
As the island of knowledge in the limitless ocean of Creator’s secrets
of creation expands, its frontiers with the unknown also go on increasing
in the same proportion. Man can never achieve or ever hope to achieve full
comprehension and mastery over the secrets of creation. This means that
the urge for scientific knowledge ingrained in the human mind has a far
more subtle purpose of generating faith rather than mere conquest of nature
which is usually assumed by the secular scientists.
3. In the pursuit of knowledge, man
remains ever engaged in an endless game of ‘hide and seek’ with his Creator,
Who is both manifest and hidden. In playing with the elusiveness of God
lies the fascinating joy of science.
4. All sciences are based on the law
of causality. But the chain of cause and effect is infinite in which Allah
(swt) acts as the First and the Last i.e. the ultimate causer of every
cause and the ultimate producer of every effect in the infinite continuum
of cause-and-effect relationships in nature. A Muslim scientist therefore
recognises two levels of causality viz horizontal causality and vertical
causality. At the level of horizontal causality, he discovers cause-effect
relations which he can comprehend and manipulate. But at the vertical level
of causality, he can only attribute them to the omniscient and omnipotent
Creator Who is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. A Muslim Scientist’s
approach and attitude to this universe is, therefore, to quote Bosinian
President, Mr. Alija Izatbegovic, a ‘mixture of scientific curiosity and
religious admiration’. That is why the Holy Qur’an emphasises the
symbiotic relationship between Fikr and Dhikr.
5. In the ‘hide and seek’ game of
the scientists in the continuum of ‘cause-effect’ relationship, he is rewarded
with material advantages and spiritual elevation. Scientific activity,
therefore, bestows on man not only power over nature but also a high-grade
spiritual experience to which the Qur’an refers as Khashyah.
6. This spiritual experience obtained
through scientific method is according to Iqbal the need of our time. The
modern man, who ceased to live soulfully by developing ‘habits of concrete
thought’, demands a ‘scientific form of religious knowledge’ and ‘concrete
living experience of God’. All scientific knowledge obtained from whatever
source it may come is valuable and has a religious significance for us.
But the Muslims have their own way of assimilation of scientific knowledge
by integrating all knowledge with their concept of Tawhid.
7. ‘God-consciousness’ or Taqwa
is the measure of personality growth in Islam. Scientific knowledge must
therefore be assimilated in such a manner that it adds to ‘God-consciousness’
of the individual. This necessitates changes in the style of science education
and science writing.
In the end, I want to share with my
readers a feeling which will surely gladden their hearts. Just imagine
the Holy Prophet (sws) being spiritually in the company of scientists of
all times when he prayed:
O Allah! Show me the reality of thing as they
actually are
In your endless quest for knowledge, try
to seek communion with God as Rumi yearned:
Let this droplet of intellect that thou hast
bestowed on me merge with thy oceans of intellect.
Before concluding, I may refer to a genuine
difficulty of some of us who insist on the dichotomy of science and religion
and emphasise the incompatibility of the permanent nature of religion with
the ephemeral nature of science. I also strongly believe as they do that
the religious laws disclosed through revelation are immutable whereas scientific
laws discovered by human intellect are ever changing; but at the same time
I also believe that human mind cannot be divided into two opposite camps;
Moving from one camp to the other at ease is not only against our basic
principle of Tawhid but also simply impossible. I belong to the
school of thought based on the intellectual tradition set by Allama Iqbal
and Dr. Rafi-ud-Din who believed in the harmony of religion and science
and were great advocates of their integration.
I conclude my discussion with the
prayer that may Allah (swt) guide our scientists in coming closer and nearer
to Him in their scientific pursuits and they serve humanity with the perpetual
insights they receive from Him. And always remember that faith is the gateway
to science and science is nothing else but faith activism.
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