Category Archives: science

Gödel’s Theorems and The Limits of Reason

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The central aim of the Enlightenment (read the Age of Reason) was to achieve a moral inversion and place humanity above Deity and correspondingly, reason above Revelation. Reason alone was sufficient, according to the Enlightenment philosophers, to decide all matters. Descartes said in his discourse on the scientific method that he would take nothing for true except that which “he knew to be such.” This is to say that the mind of man, aided by its principal faculty of reason, is the vessel in which the verity of transcendental truths would be established. Their ideological nemesis was to demonstrate that the instruments of reason, observation and logic, were powerful enough to encompass all of reality. Liebnitz struggled with this for years while professing the virtue of the infinitesimal calculus. The testimony of history is that the finitude and insufficiency of reason has been repeatedly established across many disciplines even in times before the Enlightenment. The most recent and perhaps most decisive arguments in recent times are the assertions of Gödel about the inherent limits of mathematics.

Gödel’s theorems on the incompleteness and undecidability of mathematical systems are among the deepest and most significant discoveries of the twentieth century. They represent a dramatic failure of one of the fondest hopes of European Enlightenment philosophers. This was their core faith that all human knowledge can be obtained by using observations and logic; in particular, revelation, tradition, and received wisdom are nothing but an accretion of superstitions which must be discarded to make progress. Our goal in this essay is to explain how Gödel’s results represent a mathematical tombstone for these hopes.

Geometry was the first rigorous intellectual discipline to be developed by the ancient Greeks. It is a testimonial to their brilliance that Euclid’s methods are still taught to our children, twenty four centuries after their discovery. The axiomatic-deductive methodology of mathematics leads to logical certainty without requiring empirical confirmation – we do not asses the validity of the Pythagorean Theorem by drawing triangles and measuring their sides. It was entirely natural that the same axiomatic and deductive methodology was adopted to study natural science by the Greeks. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a big mistake. Unlike mathematics, scientific hypotheses require empirical observations for validation.

Axiomatic deductive methods lead to a deadlock in a controversy that lasted for centuries: does the eye generate the light with which we see objects, or does light come from the object to our eyes? Mathematical style proofs were available for both propositions, and there seemed to be no logical way to resolve the controversy. Then Ibn-ul-Haytham (born 965) used a dazzling series of observations, including the fact that eyes get burnt from staring at the sun, to definitively resolve the dispute. Replacing logic by observations laid the basis of the scientific method, and has been called the most important discovery of the second millennium by historian Richard Powers.

The natural methodology for science is empirical and inductive – it is based on observing patterns of nature and guessing at the causes which create these patterns. Scientific hypotheses (like gravity) represent our best guesses at explaining what we observe (like the falling apple). It is only after we abandon the quest for logical certainty that it become possible to make progress in achieving scientific knowledge. Even though Aristotle was among the most brilliant humans to walk on this planet – his writings are still studied at leading universities today – he failed to understand this difference between natural science and mathematics. After coming to the wrong conclusion that heavier stones would fall faster than lighter ones, he never picked up two stones and dropped them to test his theory. Observational tests are essential for science, but not part of the methodology of geometry.

The bitter conflict between science and the Catholic Church that resulted from the burning of Bruno at the stake, and the trial of Galileo, led to an extreme antipathy to religion among European scientists. A concerted effort was made to prove that science led to certainty, whereas religion was mere superstition. This effort, which became known as the “philosophy of science”, initially concentrated on the problem of induction. If we observe a pattern in the real world, can we be sure that this pattern will continue? For example, having observed sunrise every day for millions of years, can we confidently predict sunrise tomorrow? After much effort, it was discovered that this problem cannot be solved. Despite repeated strong empirical confirmations of patterns, exceptional and unexpected events – sometimes called Black Swans – can always arise. After centuries of stability, a one-time earthquake or volcano can destroy everything.

Failure to solve the problem of induction led the “logical positivists” in the early twentieth century to a new approach to proving the certainty and superiority of scientific knowledge. They argued that science appears to be based on induction, but we can reformulate it to make it follow axiomatic deductive methodology of mathematics which does lead to certainty. Logical positivism was spectacularly successful and succeeded in dominating the philosophy of science in the second quarter of the twentieth century. Later, in the second half of the 20th century, it had an equally spectacular crash, when many of its basic ideas were disproven. Even A. J. Ayer, one the most enthusiastic exponents of positivism, eventually had to admit that “it was all wrong”. Current consensus among philosophers of science is that uncertainty is an inherent feature of scientific theories.

Among the many fronts on which logical positivism failed, one of the most crucial was mathematics itself. Discoveries in physics led to the understanding that the real world is wild and wacky, with particles and phenomenon that defy common sense: Quantum jumps from one state to next without passing intermediate states, spontaneous emergence of matter from nothing, backwards motion in time, particles randomly choosing slits to pass through and many other baffling concepts are routinely used by theoretical physicists. While logic and observations might fail in this wild real world, surely in the stable and sedate world of the natural numbers 1,2,3,4 … logical reasoning would lead to us to certainty and complete truth? The attempt to prove this intuition engaged the efforts of several mathematicians and logicians in the early part of the twentieth century.

German logician Kurt Gödel finally achieved spectacular and entirely unexpected results in this area. His first result was the Incompleteness Theorem. This showed that no matter how we formulate the axiomatic-deductive machinery, there will always exist true statements about numbers which this machinery cannot prove. This means that the “whole” truth about numbers will forever remain out of the grasp of logical reasoning. The second was the Undecidability Theorem, which proves that logic cannot be used to decide the truth or falsity of certain statements. One famous example is Euclid’s Parallel Postulate. Whether it is true or false is a matter of choice, not logic. If we choose to deny this postulate, we create a non-Euclidean geometry which has its own valid and useful insights, quite different from the Euclidean world we studied in school.

The Enlightenment hopes that man could reach truth purely by observations and logic, cannot be fulfilled even in the limited domain of mathematics. Gödel proved what poets have always known, that transcendental truths are beyond the reach of reason:

Iqbal easily transcended the realms of logic
But he could not plumb the depths of the mysteries of love.

==(free translation of couplet from Allama Iqbal, Poet Laureate of the East)

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12th, 2015 by Dr. Asad Zaman: author page on LinkedIn. Links to Other Works: Index.

Godel’s Theorem and the Limits of Reason

RSIA02 Value of Knowledge

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RSIA02 Value of Knowledge continues from previous post (RSIA01: Islamic Approach to Knowledge, sections 1 & 2), this post contains sections 3 & 4 of the First Lecture (ISM01.doc). A lot of supplementary materials and teachings aids, quizzes, outlines, etc. are available from: Intro Stats L01: Islamic Knowledge. The previous post links to a 90m Video Lecture. An alternative, 42m Video Lecture, which provides a summary of the main points covered, is linked below:

Section 3:   Allah T’aala Grants Knowledge to Whom He Chooses.

2:255 …He knows all that lies open before men and all that is hidden from them, whereas they cannot attain to aught of His knowledge save that which He wills [them to attain]. His eternal power overspreads the heavens and the earth …

2:257 God is near unto those who have faith, taking them out of deep darkness into the light – whereas near unto those who are bent on denying the truth are the powers of evil that take them out of the light into darkness deep:

In particular, He gives the light of knowledge to those who have faith. Those who deny God are led from light into darkness. This means that a lot of what appears to be the knowledge of non-Muslims is actually ignorance. One of our goals in this text will be to establish this fact.

Another important consequence of this is that we must seek knowledge from Allah, by dua, and by Istighfar – It is essential to cleanse our hearts of sins, for the Noor of Allah will not enter into hearts darkened by sin. Knowledge is worship, and the ink of the pen of the scholar is valued over the blood of a martyr. Allah T’aala has told us to ask Him for increase in knowledge:

20:114 High above all is Allah, the King, the Truth! Be not in haste with the Qur’an before its revelation to thee is completed, but say, “O my Lord! advance me in knowledge.”

4.   Thirst for Knowledge is Part of Islam

Because of the importance given to it in the Quran and Hadeeth, the early Muslims were filled with a thirst for knowledge, and a desire to acquire knowledge. An important element in the quick rise to power of Islam was the Muslim’s thirst for knowledge, inspired by the Divine message. The Muslims were eager to search out knowledge from all sources. They adapted useful elements of knowledge from the Greek, Indian, Chinese, Persian and other civilizations. This process of “Islamization” of knowledge has been successfully carried out by the Ummah many times in the past. One important aspect of the decline of the Muslims has been the loss of this thirst for knowledge. Ignorance and illiteracy is widespread in the Ummah, where once everyone was taught to read the Quran.  Teachers have the responsibility to inspire students to achieve, while students have the responsibility to put all their effort and sacrifice into the acquisition of knowledge.

There is a tremendous amount of material in the Quran and Hadeeth related to the virtues of knowledge. The very first lines which were revealed contained the order to read, and glorified the bounties of the Lord who taught man, by the means of the pen, that which he did not know. Thus, the role of Allah as a Teacher is one of his greatest bounties. All of this material is to motivate us to be enthusiastic in our acquisition of knowledge.

2:31 And He taught Adam all the names …

2:34  And when We said unto the angels: Prostrate yourselves before Adam, they fell prostrate, all save Iblis. He demurred through pride, and so became a disbeliever.

Allah T’aala created Adam A.S. and gave him knowledge, which was one of the reasons for his superiority to the angels. It was to acknowledge this superiority that the angels were ordered to prostrate before Adam. It was the refusal to acknowledge this superiority that led to the rebellion of Iblees. So knowledge is one reason why human beings are superior to angels.

Similarly, the Prophet Mohammad S.A.W. stated that the superiority of the person with knowledge over the worshipper is like the superiority of the Prophet himself over an ordinary Sahabi. (Hadeeth 30, Muntakhib Ahadeeth Ilmo Zikr).

Similarly, it is stated that Allah T’aala makes the path to Jannah easy for the seeker of knowledge. The angels spread their wing in his honor. All the creature on Earth and the fishes in the sea seek forgiveness for this seeker of knowledge. The superiority of the Alim over the Abid is like the superiority of the moon of the fourteenth over the stars. The Prophets do not leave behind material wealth and possessions, but their knowledge; whosoever learns the knowledge of Deen, inherits the treasure of the Prophets. Hadeeth 25, Muntakhib Ahadeeth, Ilm o Zikr.

Because of the commandment to seek knowledge, Muslims created a civilization which valued knowledge above all other things. The library of Baghdad contained over 800 million volumes. There are immense Muslim contributions to virtually all branches of knowledge. Unfortunately, Muslim students today are largely unaware of the important role of Muslims in the development of modern sciences. As detailed in “The Theft of History,” by Jack Goody (2012) Europeans have appropriated scientific inventions of other civilizations, such as algebra, surgery, optics, the heliocentric theory,  and many others, and claimed them as European inventions {see Is Science Western in Origin?}.  Furthermore, they have asserted that Europeans are uniquely equipped with the ability to think rationally and scientifically.  Blaut (2000) has documented that popular and influential thinkers and historians like Weber, White, Mann, Hall, and Landes agree on the idea that “Europeans were uniquely capable of creative and scientific thought.” The idea that European civilization is unique and supreme is called “Eurocentricism.”  This idea is built into European teachings, and is absorbed by Muslim students, who see no references to Muslim predecessors in their study. This an obstacle to developing confidence and expertise which is a pre-requisite for creation of innovations and advances in the frontiers of knowledge.

There is now a substantial amount of recent work which documents the origins of Science in the Muslim civilization {see Islamic Origins of Science}. Especially important is the open and empirical attitude of the Quran. El-Masrafy has traced the impact of the Quran on European intellectuals in  “The Enlightenment Quran.” A brief popular exposition of origins of science in Islamic civilization is available in Arab Science: A Journey of Innovation by the Qatar Foundation: http://www.grouporigin.com/clients/qatarfoundation/introduction.htm See also the supplementary document: Muslim Achievements in the Sciences.

End of Sections 3 & 4. The next post in this series is RSIA03 Training the Heart 

Q & A: Islamic Approach to Statistics

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Questions which arose in discussion below are typical of those which arise because of ideas we have absorbed from our Western education. A western education trains us to believe in a theory of knowledge which must be UNLEARNED first, before the ideas that I am presenting start to make sense. I will try to provide some answers to questions which were presented to my by some of the group discussions of “Real Statistics: An Islamic Approach to Knowledge”. This topic was presented and discussed in depth on 9/22/19 at ISOSS: Real Statistics, Islamic Approach — See link for 1hr Urdu Talk and 1hr Q&A session after the talk.

1.       When a teacher will firstly announce that he is going to teach stats for Muslims, the first obstacle he gets in his way is the business of stats with Islam. Why are you mixing a pure scientific approach with a religion?

The way statistics is done currently, it is designed to deceive. The most popular book, which has sold more copies than all other statistics textbooks, is Darrell Huff’s “How to Lie with Statistics”. The so-called pure “scientific” approach pretends to be objective, but actually HIDES many subjective judgments underneath a cover of objectivity. The goal of Islam is to lead us to the TRUTH. This requires UNCOVERING what statistics really does, which is very different from what is taught in textbooks of statistics.  See “The Illusion of Objective Knowledge“, and “Statistics as Rhetoric” for a counter-argument.

2.       Why are we mixing religion with a pure objective scientific knowledge?? Due to this mixture, we have to deny the western knowledge, upon which in reality the whole world is running.

The idea that there is such a thing as “pure objective scientific knowledge” is an illusion. This was first made clear by Thomas Kuhn in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions“. He showed that scientific progress occurs in a sequence of revolutions. For example, everyone believe in Ptolemy’s theory, and does scientific astronomy under the assumption that Earth is the center of the universe. But then this whole picture of the universe is changed. Similarly, Newtonian Physics is replaced by Einsteinian Physics. It is not that these are one-time exceptional events. Every month, new journals of physics come out which reject previous theories and advance new ones in their place. The laws of physics are based on Intuition and on Social Consensus, not on objective reality. This is because we have to GUESS at the laws, they are not visible in the objective external reality. So, most philosophers of science no longer make the claim that science is purely objective knowledge.

Is it true that the whole world is running on scientific knowledge? The amount of devastation done to the planet by science and technology far exceeds the benefits. If you calculate the costs of the destruction of species, plants, and environments, which took millions of years to produce, destroyed for a measly few million bucks.  The looming environmental catastrophe threatens to make the planet un-inhabitable for human beings. It was science and technology which provided the capability to kill 50 million human beings in the two world wars, wreaking havoc on a scale never before seen in human history. Science and technology distract us from the realities of human existence, which depend on character — honesty, integrity, courage, love – qualities which are not taught in the textbooks. Read my post on “Higher Goals of Education” to see how these lessons have been removed from a Western education.  It is actually corporate greed which led to massive deception in the Global Financial Crisis, wiping out lifetime savings of millions, and leading to the highest level of homelessness and hunger in the USA since World War 2. How could advanced science and technology prevent this from happening.

3.    What is the problem with arithmetic mean? Is it western or is it Islamic? If it is western, and it is wrong? Then why and what is the Islamic replacement? Similar is the case of Islamic unit root and Islamic cointegration??

It all depends on HOW YOU USE the arithmetic mean. This is not taught in statistics textbooks. It is GUARANTEED that if you use ONE NUMBER to represent 1000 numbers (by taking their average) there will be loss of information. One number cannot take the place of one thousand numbers. This is exactly what the arithmetic mean does. So one must look at HOW it is used, to see whether this involves deception or not. This is not typically taught, with the result that it is easy to use the mean to deceive people. The issue is not whether to use mean or median, these are tools. The Islamic approach involves teaching the USE of these concepts in ways that AVOID deceiving people. This requires teaching people HOW to use them correctly. To see how arithmetic means are used to deceive people and to make policies favorable to the rich and powerful, see my post on GNP as Statistical Rhetoric. 

Unit Roots and Cointegrations are hallucinations imposed upon the data by a set of assumptions which are not satisfied by any data set in the real world. These can ONLY be defined for stationary time series, which means that the series must be generated in the same way FOREVER. No real time series goes on forever, and over long periods of time conditions keep changing so stationarity does not hold. For any real world finite series, you can fit both unit root and non unit root models equally well to them; this is a mathematical theorem. So that it is possible to “Get Any Result You Want From a Unit Root Test” – this was the title of an M.Phil. Thesis written by my student Abdul Ghaffar Shah. This is the kind of deception created by standard theoretical statistical method, which pay no attention to how they can be used. For a deeper understanding of why conventional econometrics is a fraud, because it makes assumptions which never hold true in real world applications, see my post and lecture on “A Realist Approach to Econometrics“.

4.       If  arithmetic mean is wrong, then their replacement are median and mode, which are again the fruits of western knowledge.

It is question of learning how to USE statistics for solution of real world problems in way that is truthful and honest, and beneficial for mankind. Cigarette companies used statistical consultants to manipulate data to show that cigarettes did not cause cancer, causing deaths of millions. Similarly, drug companies today use fabricated statistics to sell huge numbers of fake, useless, and harmful drugs today in the West. The idea the we can do OBJECTIVE statistical analysis looking only at the numbers, while somebody else uses our analysis to solve real world problems is wrong. We cannot separate the theory from the practice. This is the MAIN problem with statistics as it is currently taught. You are taught how to calculate mean, median, and mode of a series of numbers. You are never taught how this is ACTUALLY used in solving real world problems. When we start studying real world problems, we discover that most of the things we learned in statistics do not apply.See “My Journey from Theory to Reality” which explains how statistical theories are based on assumptions which are almost always wrong when applied to real world data sets. As a result, they create misleading results. For a deeper discussion of how an Islamic approach leads to a methodology for doing statistics which is very different from the current conventional methodology, see my post on “Real Statistics (4/4) The Illusion of Objectivity“.

5.       I just want to understand that by rejecting knowledge of science and technology as to how we can live life in this modern era because even I am writing this text using western knowledge as they developed computer science and softwares like WhatsApp etc.

The problem is that shock-and-awe of West is so great that questioning any part of Western knowledge appears shocking. Surely we should be able to use our OWN judgment about what is good and what is bad, and how to use Western technologies. All of the useful things that have been developed have their costs and benefits. We should learn to examine them, instead of uncritically accepting everything, just because it is from the advanced and developed West, while we are backwards and under-developed — this too is an illusion created by Western education. See “Deep Seated Inferiority Complex.” What I have said is the we need to change our approach to education. I did not call for abandoning the use of computers.

6.       How an Islamic approach to education differs radically from the Western approach? Is the difference in purpose? Is the difference in material?

Do the lessons in the first module: Principles of an Islamic Education to find out. There is a difference in purpose — we want to use education to learn how to become human beings, whereas a western education is designed to turn us into human resources. See my talk at Iqra University on “How to become a Human Being, instead of a human resource“. Because the purpose is different, the material also becomes different. In particular, we have to start by defining our GOAL in life. Then we have to evaluate knowledge to see if it will help us to achieve that goal — in which case it is useful knowledge. If the knowledge we acquire will turn us into machines for making money, without having emotions about all the destruction that we are causing in the lives of people (see the movie TIGERS about how Nestle sells baby milk powder while knowing it will kill millions of babies), then this knowledge is harmful knowledge. To understand this better, see my post on “Learn Who You Are!“. 

FINALLY – for an in depth study of how an Islamic approach creates a revolution in the entire approach to education, register for a free online learning module on Principles of Islamic Education, by filling out Google form “Registration: PIE“. If you go through the lessons given there, you will achieve much better understanding of these issues. The answers given above only scratch the surface.

IE2019 Final Q4: Logical Positivism

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Q4: Explain what is logical positivism, and why this philosophy emerged and became dominant in the West. Explain why this philosophy is wrong.

The first three questions on the Final Exam for Islamic Economics 2019 were treated in earlier posts — see: Q1: Economics & The Purpose of Life, Q2: Useful Knowledge, and Q3: Eurocentric History. This post is about the fourth question on logical positivism. First, note that “Epistemology” means “Theory of Knowledge” — this defines what knowledge is, and how it can be obtained. Logical Positivism (LP) is a theory of knowledge which was developed in the early twentieth century, and became wildly popular. Only a short time afterwards, it had a spectacular crash, as philosophers rejected it completely by the middle of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, it exercised a tremendous impact on modern social sciences, shaping their foundations. What appears very surprising is that these foundations were not re-examined and replaced by better ones, even after the collapse of logical positivism. There is an explanation for this, and it is very important for all of us, including those who have no taste for philosophy, to understand this explanation. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that at the current time:

Logical Positivism has become the common religion of mankind

Western epistemology is built on ideas which are encapsulated in this philosophy. Anyone who had a western education — and that means nearly all educated people today — absorbs this philosophy by the method and the substance of this education. This is a learning-by-doing, without any explicit discussion of philosophy. When a teacher comes in and starts teaching you a subject, then you are being taught that the subject matter is “knowledge” and the method of teaching is the method by which you acquire knowledge. To clarify the issue, consider three possible definitions of knowledge:

  1. Knowledge consists of objective, factual information about external reality, which carries certainty, and is the same for all observers.
  2. Knowledge consists of learning how to live the good life. This involves understanding what the good life is, and acting in ways to achieve this goal.
  3. Knowledge consists of learning which deeds please Allah, and acting upon this knowledge.

The first is the LP definition of Knowledge. The second is a Socratic version, and the third is the Islamic view. If we look at the structure of university education, across the world, we will see that it strongly supports the LP view of knowledge, by implementing it in practice. Logically, it seems clear that the second definition, Socratic knowledge, is the best for general use. The Islamic definition is a special case of the Socratic one. If we arrive at the conclusion that God exists, and Islam is the true revealed religion of God, then this defines the good life, and knowledge is defined as how to live the good life according to Islam.

The first question that we all must face and answer is: what is the best use that we can make of our unique and precious lives? Surely, knowledge about this is the most valuable of all types of knowledge that exist. It is only after we determine the purpose of our lives that we can ask whether or not we should learn chemistry, biology, or history. It does not make sense to start studying these subjects without having any clarity about how we should lead our lives. Yet, this is precisely what we do in the course of our Western education — we never learn the answers to the most important questions, while we learn in great detail answers to questions which are of no practical importance in our daily lives. {See “Recovering from a Western Education”}. It is due to the influence of fallacious logical positivist theories of knowledge that a modern education fails to inform us about the most important and pressing questions we face in our lives.

There are several complex issues which need explanation in order to clarify the important role that has been played by LP in constructing a theory of knowledge which is now widely believed, even by Muslims, even though it is strongly in conflict with Islamic theories of knowledge.

First the research program which led to the emergence of Logical Positivism was launched a long time ago — David Hume stated the LP position very accurately when he wanted to burn all books which did not contain objective fact and logical reasoning. It has been a long-standing intuition among European intellectuals that science is the only valid type of human knowledge, and that science is essentially different from all other types of knowledge in that it is objective, equally true for all, and independent of any subjective influences. LP provided what seemed to be a solid proof of this intuition. On deeper examination, this proof proved to be fallacious. But despite the failure and collapse of LP, the intuition remains in place, and continues to be widely believed.

Second How did this philosophy  (LP) emerge, even though it is a seriously mistaken understanding about the nature of science and the scientific method? A brief sketch of the long and complex history is provided in my earlier post on “The Emergence of Logical Positivism“. Briefly, after rejecting Christianity as a source of perpetual warfare, Europeans wanted to construct knowledge to build societies (politics, economics, law, and all social sciences) on neutral grounds, to which all people could agree, regardless of religious background. This was necessary in order to create the consensus required to build communities and nations. The emergence of modern, secular society is firmly founded on principles on which all “rational” people should agree; principles which have no subjective element which might lead to dispute because different people have different experiences, different emotional reactions, different moral judgments.

Third: The Creation of Secular Knowledge. Creation of principles to which all rational people will agree, regardless of religious background, requires the creation of fields of “secular knowledge” — knowledge built on the basis of facts and reason, with no input from subjective sources. Necessity is the mother of invention, and historical necessity compelled European intellectuals to invent ‘secular knowledge’, objective factual knowledge about the external world, which was accessible by the means of observations and logic alone, without recourse to any subjective elements.  For a number of reasons discussion in “European Transition to Secular Thought”, religion eventually lost the battle to science, with the result that secular objective knowledge became the only kind of knowledge that command the respect of European intellectuals.

Fourth:  The problem with ‘secular knowledge’ is that the vast majority of knowledge that we need for the conduct of our personal and social lives, is a combination of objective and subjective elements. There is a large collection of  objective “facts”, like the external geography of the world, to which all reasonable humans would agree. But knowledge which could help us decide how to live our lives, either on a personal or social level, inevitably contains subjective elements. To avoid religious disputes, Europeans were forced to pretend, to themselves and to others, that such subjective elements were not present in the body of secular knowledge constructed over the past few centuries.  A lot of the subjectivity was buried under the conception of “Rationality” — all ‘reasonable’ men should agree to be rational. Post-modernity is the name for the realization that a lot of subjective elements have been hidden in the body of knowledge used to construct secular modern societies. The consensus that was achieved was based on taking certain elements of Christianity, common across different factions, for granted. Recognition of this has led to claims the secular modernity is just “Christianity in disguise”. Influential post-modern thinker Michel Foucault’s work showed that ‘universal scientific truths’ that modern human sciences (biological, psychological, social)  offer, actually varied substantially over time, and were strongly shaped by historical experience. This engagement of social science with historical context shows the lack of objectivity which is claimed for these sciences. Timothy Mitchell, in the Rule of Experts, states that “The possibility of social science is based upon taking certain historical experiences of the West as the template for a universal knowledge.” Thus, what poses as objective knowledge is actually dependent on a large number of ethical assumptions, as well as cultural and institutional context, which are based on the European historical experience.

SUMMARY: Logical Positivism was a philosophy which created the impression that the body of secular knowledge created by the West over the past few centuries is objective factual knowledge of external realities, which are common for all rational observers, and have no subjective elements. In fact, scientific knowledge involves using observations to guess at the nature of the hidden reality — for example, the falling apple provides us with a clue about the hidden and invisible force of gravity. Logical positivism attempted to take guesswork out of scientific methodology, in order to claim certainty and objectivity for scientific knowledge. The philosophy was proven to be wrong because hidden and unobserved forces and objects play an essential role in science, and cannot be removed from the picture or reduced to observable manifestations. Despite the fact the LP has failed as a philosophy, the underlying spirit which led to the creation of this philosophy remains very much alive, and continues to drive the production of knowledge in the West. There is a strong desire to assert certainty and objectivity for scientific theories, and also for the social sciences, which leads to the hiding of the subjective elements. Western social science claims for itself an objectivity, certainty, and factuality, which it does not have. Nonetheless, Muslims scholars have accepted these false claims, and as a result have been trapped into accepting Western ideas which are diametrically opposed to Islam. The failure to recognize the conflicts led to a  “Crisis in Islamic Economics” due to the failure of attempt to create Islamic Economics by merging the Western discipline with Islamic concepts. An extensive discussion is given in my paper on “Islam’s Gift: An Economy of Spiritual Development“. For more history, and further references, see “The Rise and Fall of Logical Positivism.“

The Emergence of Logical Positivism

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[bit.ly/AZelp] This post provides some details on Logical Positivism, an issue raised briefly in section 2: Flawed Foundations of Modern Economics, in my paper on “Islam’s Gift: An Economy of Spiritual Development”. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, March 2019. For another approach, see my paper on  Logical Positivism and Islamic Economics . The Video (23m) linked below was part of Lec 11 of Islamic Economics 2019 (bit.do/ie2019) at IIIE, IIUI:

Summary of lecture on Emergence of Logical Positivism:

“Oh would some Power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us.” Just as we cannot see our own faces, so some insights about European history are only easily visible to outsiders. The philosophy of logical positivism is one of these areas, where the internal European account of what it is and how it emerged is radically different from the external account I will present below. To put it in one sentence, this philosophy is an effort to make Science a Religion, and even the common religion of all mankind. The purpose of this post is to explain this point of view. First, we must start with the story of the loss of faith in Christianity in Europe. Again, there is a radical difference between the internal European account, and an external outsider perspective.

European Loss of Faith in Christianity

Internal, European Account: According to the internal, European account, Christianity (like all religions) was just a collection of superstitions: stories about unobservables like angels, God, afterlife, which were not empirically verifiable. When the Enlightenment began, Europeans learned to reason for the first time, and they understood that religion was just superstition. Then they rejected religion and have made tremendous progress by using the light of reason, instead of superstition. This cover story is extremely powerful, because it seems to be proven by the historical facts – Europeans conquered 85% of the globe by early 20th Century, proving their superior ability to reason, and demonstrating the validity of the cover story. De-constructing this story and providing a satisfactory counter-narrative requires hard work.

The External, non-European Account: The real story of how Europeans lost their faith in Christianity is far more complex. We aim to explain some crucial elements of it here.  In 1492 a triplet of climactic events occured with devastating consequences which continue to reverberate in the corridors of history. One: Columbus sailed for the Americas, giving Europeans access to vast lands and materials. Two: The Reconquest of Islamic Spain was completed, giving Europeans access to millions of books containing knowledge gathered from around the globe and developed in the Islamic Civilization; this sparked the Enlightenment. THREE: But most importantly for our current account, Rodrigo Borgia purchased the papacy in 1492 and named himself Alexander VI. (see European Transition to Secular Thought – bit.do/etst1a). This was a critical moment within a chain of events described in The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman in “Chapter Three – THE RENAISSANCE POPES PROVOKE THE PROTESTANT SECESSION: 1470–1530”. She writes that:

From roughly 1470 to 1530, … a succession of six popes (displayed) an excess of venality, amorality, avarice, and spectacularly calamitous power politics. Their governance dismayed the faithful, brought the Holy See into disrepute, left unanswered the cry for reform, ignored all protests, warnings and signs of rising revolt, and ended by breaking apart the unity of Christendom and losing half the papal constituency to the Protestant secession. Theirs was a folly of perversity, perhaps the most consequential in Western history, if measured by its result in centuries of ensuing hostility and fratricidal war.

The breakup of the church shattered the ideological unity of Europe and led to major wars, as well as political power struggles between Protestants and Catholics with extremes of cruelty towards each other. For example, one of the key fratricidal events was the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre . All this bloodshed and violence between Protestants and Catholics led to public dis-enchantment with religion as whole, and the idea that religion is the root of all warfare and conflict. This idea is still prevalent among secular modern thinkers, although countless deadly twentieth century wars show it to be false.

Trauma of Loss of Faith

Loss of faith is massively traumatic event. A Creator who knows and cares for us, makes our lives meaningful, and the eternal perspective offers strong solace against temporary tragedies of our mundane existence. Bertrand Russell describes how accepting the cold, harsh and cruel universe requires us to build our lives “on the firm foundation of unyielding despair.” The trauma of loss of faith had a dramatic impact on European intellectuals, as we now describe.

Rejection of Heart and Soul: One of the most significant impacts of this trauma was the rejection of the HEART as a source of Knowledge. This is exemplified by Descartes’ logic: “I think therefore I am”, whereas “I feel therefore I am” related far more closely to our life experience. But this second statement was not acceptable. The heart had been proven to be a deceiver – it testified to the existence of God, and gave us faith in unknown and unknowable mysteries, and hence it must be rejected. Henceforth, the Enlightenment Philosophers vowed to never to trust their hearts, and instead, only trust what they could touch, and see, and arrive at with cold logic. They rejected the heart and intuition, and made a commitment to use of REASON and EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE only as sources of knowledge.

Deification of Science

When you reject religion, you lose answers to the most important questions we face in our lives, such as the meaning of our lives. As I have explained in “Origins of Western Social Sciences”, the Social Sciences originated in the attempt to find new answers to questions previously answered by religion. In particular, faith in religion was replaced by faith in Science: in the IDEA that science will solve all problems of mankind. This is, on the face of it, an absurdity; only the trauma of loss of faith can explain how one could come to believe such a thing. We lead unique lives, every human being is unique and distinct, and every moment that we experience is like none before, and none after. The idea that we should search over previous experience for patterns to guide us today, actually blinds us to the unique potentials which exist now, which never existed in the past, and will not exist in the future. The idea the “science” could be a guide in terms of teaching us how to live our lives and to realize our human potentials, is a non-starter. Nonetheless, having lost faith in their religion, Europeans had no option but to put their faith in the potential of science to solve human problems. This faith persists today, even though science has brought humanity to the brink of destruction via an environmental catastrophe.

The Philosophy of Science: The project to turn science into the new religion of man led to extreme distortions in European ways of thinking (see Deification of Science for links to many readings). In particular, it led to the search for a philosophy of science which would prove that ALL scientific knowledge – based on observations and logic alone, with no intuition and emotion involved – would lead to objective facts which were certain. The worship of science also led to the ELEVATION of objective over the subjective. Science is based on the sacred facts out there, and not on wishy washy subjective opinions which vary from person to person and can change whimsically.  In fact, this was a huge reversal of priorities. What is most important for you and me are the questions of how we should lead our lives; who to befriend, what to believe, how to behave. The answers are necessarily subjective and personal, dependent on local and unique circumstances and environment; they are not “scientific” – universal laws applicable to all. This most important knowledge was ruled to be un-important, subjective, normative, as part of the process of deification of science.

Emergence of Logical Positivism

It was these underlying trends that set the stage for the emergence of logical positivism. This philosophy asserts that all knowledge is based on observations and logic. Observations are objective, out there, verifiable, unquestionable and certain. Logic is the mortar we use to put together these bricks to construct the towering skyscrapers of scientific knowledge. The counterpart methodology to this worldview is the Axiomatic/Deductive scheme of geometry. Axioms come from observations and are CERTAIN. Logic leads to certainty in deductions.

Elimination of Unobservables: There were many technical problems with the idea that science was based only on observables and logic. Many scientific objects like gravity, electrons, magnetism, were not observable. For details about how these problems were resolved, see my paper on  Logical Positivism and Islamic Economics (December 30, 2013). International Journal of Economics, Management and Accounting, Vol 21, No. 2, pp1-18. The central device used by positivists was to replace unobservables by observable manifestations; for example, replace unobservable preferences by observable choices, or onobservable gravity by the observable elliptical orbits of planets. This point will be discussed in greater detail later. Logical Positivism achieved dual goal of philosophers of science, which European intellectuals had been searching for, for centuries. This philosophy showed that SCIENCE leads to truth and certainty. At the same time, RELIGION is pure superstition, because it is centrally based on unobservables. Because it fulfilled a DEEP psychological need of Western intellectuals, it became wildly popular and widely accepted, despite many fundamental weaknesses, which eventually led to its downfall.

One of the most important consequences of logical positivism was the elimination of morality from the scope of human knowledge. Since morality is a feeling of the heart, and is not observable or empirically verifiable, positivists said that there is no such thing – it does not exist. Every human being can feel whatever they feel according to their personal tastes and upbringing, regarding moral issues. This exclusion of morality from the realm of knowledge has had disastrous consequences. One of these consequences was the exclusion of morality from education; see The Higher Goals of Education. Recently, evidence has emerged that all human beings share common moral principles. Surveys show agreement over seven basic moral principles (and more evidence on agreements over moral judments is available – see literature on Fairness). This is in line with Islamic teachings that all human beings are born in Islam, which is the natural deen. Knowledge of morality is implanted in hearts of human beings as part of our nature.

(to be continued) –

This is complex topic, for which I have provided a thumbnail sketch of some important ideas which are not readily available elsewhere.  See European Transition to Secular Thought – bit.do/etst1a for more details about how Europeans lost their faith in Christianity and the lessons that we Muslims should learn from this history. For more on LOGICAL POSITIVISM: My webpage linked below provides a large collection of links to articles related to various aspects of logical positivism

Collection of Articles & Video-Lectures on Logical Positivism

On the lighter side, I came across a great cartoon put-down of the Vienna Circle, which was responsible for the development of this philosophy.

Is Science Western in Origin?

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{bit.ly/AZiswo} In my experience as a teacher, I have learned that the first task I face is to get my students to set high goals for themselves — to reach for the stars. As the Quran (53:39) says, you can only get what you strive for. If the students set themselves low goals, they will achieve very little. There are two major barriers that I must overcome, in order to achieve this goal.

The First Barrier: The system of education is DESIGNED to make student feel like they are incompetent, stupid, incapable of great achievements. This is because students are forces to memorize large amount of alien in-digestible matter which no one could understand, and without any concern for whether or not students understand the subject matter. This leads the students to believe that the “knowledge” that they are being taught is beyond their abilities to learn, and that real knowledge will always be out of their reach. The students do not realize that the fault lies with the subject matter and the methodology being used to teach, and not with their own internal minds and capacities. Many of my lectures are devoted to trying to inspire students to overcome this barrier and to set high goals for themselves; see for example: The Ways of the Eagles , Exploding the Myths which block our Minds , and  Unlock Your Infinite Potential 

The Second Barrier: Centuries of defeat of the East, Colonization by the West, and an Educational system designed by Macaulay to create admiration, awe, and respect for the West, and contempt and dis-respect for our own heritage.  This creates a Deep-Seated Inferiority Complex , which must be overcome if we are to aim at high goals. This inferiority complex is created by a biased Eurocentric history: for a collection of articles on this theme, see “Islamic WorldView and Fighting Eurocentricism.” The main idea of Eurocentric history is that the whole world was in darkness until the sun of reason first arose in the West in the sixteenth century, ending their dark ages. Since this Enlightenment of Europe, the Europeans have made fantastic progress, leaving the rest of the world far behind. All good thing known to man have been invented in the past few centuries by Europeans. For a short essay which debunks this myth, see “The Dark Side of the Enlightenment Project“.

Among the greatest of the Western inventions is “SCIENCE” – Science is a European invention, and other races and cultures don’t really have the capacity or capability to create science or even to understand what it is.  Exploding this myth is very important to overcoming the second barrier. In a previous post, I have explained the “Islamic Origins of Science“, which shows how science originated in the Islamic Civilization, how it was transmitted to Europe, and how this borrowing was hidden and concealed to create the impression that Europeans have invented science. The book linked below: C.K. Raju: Is Science Western in Origin? provides a great deal of detailed information about the non-Western origins of science. In particular it shows how Copernicus was just a translator of Arabic works on astronomy, and not the revolutionary thinker that he is considered to be by the Europeans. This is because the real story of his borrowing from Islamic sources is concealed.

This book by CK Raju on “Is Science Western in Origin?” is very important in this context. It starts out by explaining that the process of colonization is, in the first place, the conquest of “knowledge“ — the colonizers define the world for us. Even though we have achieved political independence, mentally, we are still enslaved. Then the book provides historical evidence for how West appropriated knowledge originating in other cultures, claimed it for its own, by creating false histories, suppressing the true origins, and naming copiers as inventors. This book provides some of the narratives and evidence that we need to liberate ourselves from the chains of Eurocentric history.

POSTSCRIPT: I have now written a brief summary, provided in two blog posts, corresponding to the two major segments of the book. The “Greek Strategy” denied all intellectual contributions of the Islamic Civilization over a 500 year period by either pushing them back to the Greeks (making them appear to be much wiser than they were) or pulling them forward to European plagiarists, who were claimed to be creators rather than copyists.

  1. The Myth of Greek Origins of All Knowledge: http://bit.ly/AZGreek
  2. Theft of History: Western Plagiarists and Islamic Revolutionaries: http://bit.ly/AZPlag

Here is a short video by Roy Casagrande which shows how Western authors ascribe nationalities and identities in a way that keep creativity for the West: Roy Video – Marwa Elshakry explains When Science Became Western: Historiographical Reflections 

The Islamic Origins of Science

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[Short Link for this page: http://bit.do/azdos ] For later posts, related to this topic, see “Overcoming Shock-and-Awe of Western Science“, and “Is Science Western in Origin?”

Chalmers in his book “What is this thing called Science?” explains why he is studying the subject. He wants to prove the superiority of scientific knowledge to all other types of knowledge. However. he frankly acknowledges at the outset that the book DOES NOT SUCCEED in its objective — it is unable to find a clear cut definition of science which would prove the superiority of scientific knowledge. This book summarized centuries of Western debate on the subject, as well as the current state of the dialog. He also notes that some participants in this debate, after centuries of Western failure to define science, have come to the conclusion that it cannot be done — scientific knowledge is NOT some special mode of knowing the world which is privileged above others.

One thing that is hidden in Western accounts is the issue of WHY does it matter? Why is it important to prove that scientific knowledge is superior to other forms of knowledge? If we reflect on our lives, we note that most of the knowledge we have of living, loving, spiritual and emotional is NOT scientific. Clearly, the most important things that we know, that make us human, are not derived from science. Then why this urge to prove the superiority of scientific knowledge? Why not accept that is it just one form of knowledge, like any other?

To this question, I offer a radical answer, very different from anything found in the Western intellectual tradition.

Science was invented in the Islamic Civilization — by Ibnul Haytham. This was a distinct and radical advance over Greek methodology which was based on axiomatics instead of empirics. The essence of science is that it reaches beyond the appearances to grasp the underlying reality which generates this appearance. THUS it is a way to reach an understanding of the Creator by looking at the Creation. Extending this methodology to natural sciences — to use study of how light behaves to deduce principles of optics — etc is the essence of Science. Similarly, many underlying HIDDEN UNOBSERVABLE causes and objects are revealed by science.  This position is closely related to the REALIST philosophy of science which is discussed and REJECTED by Chalmers — although the reasons for his rejection are not valid, but this would take us far way from the main points I am trying to make here

After the fall of Islamic Spain, the West acquired a VAST treasure of knowledge in the form of millions of books in Cordoba Library as well as other collections. This is what led to the ending of the dark ages of Europe, and the beginning of the Enlightenment. However, the West had a HUGE AMOUNT of difficulty in ABSORBING, assimilating and HARMONIZING this ALIEN body of knowledge with their own belief systems. The Catholic Church set up CENSORSHIP BOARDS which did a very strict control on translations of Arabic and Islamic books to ensure that no heresies were introduced. Every book had to be approved by the Church Censors before it could be published. The INQUISITION was set up to terrify and torture people and keep them away from the forbidden types of knowledge contained in the Islamic books. See “Is Science Western in Origin?” by CK Raju for further details about this.

Ultimately, the Catholic Church FAILED in its efforts to keep out the dangerous Islamic Knowledge. The book “The Enlightenment Quran” shows the crucial role played by translations of the Quran in influencing the thoughts of leaders of the Enlightenment. [See also Thomas Jefferson’s Quran to see the amazing impact of the Quran on the founding & constitution of America.] One of the impacts was the creation of the Protestant Movements, which shattered the unity of Medieval Church. Ultimately, fighting among Christian factions led to general dis-enchantment with religion in Europe, which led to the rise of SECULAR thought which continues to have monumental and extremely harmful effects on humankind and our planet.

Even though the Catholic Church failed to keep science out of Europe, it SUCCEEDED in its efforts to HIDE the Islamic roots of science. Copernicus was just a translator of Arabic Scientific works; he became known as a revolutionary because he was forced to hide the origins of his writings – he had seen one of his friends, Scultetus, tortured and punished for ten years for heretical writings, and did not want to suffer from a similar fate. He did not publish his writings until he was on his deathbed.  Newton was strongly influenced by Islamic ideas, to the extent that he hid his true religious beliefs to avoid being labeled a heretic. All of his three laws of motions, and much of mathematics, was available to him from the Islamic scientific works. He stated that he had “stood on the shoulder of giants” – however, European history of science hides the fact that these were intellectual giants of the Islamic civilization.  NOTE that the key accomplishment of Newton was to look at the motion of the planets and deduce the existence of gravity. This is the KEY to scientific methodology – deducing the existence of hidden unknown objects and causal laws from the surface appearances.

The enormous battle that took place between Science and Religion, spread out over centuries, has shaped European mindset. The victory of Science over Catholic religion did not end the animosity between the two, and hence the effort, spread over the centuries, to prove the superiority of scientific knowledge. In effect, after abandoning religion, the secular thinkers adopted SCIENCE as their new religion, and put their faith in the idea that Science would eventually provide a solution to all human problems. When we try to prove the superiority of scientific knowledge, we are participating in this program, the goal of which is to prove that all problems we face as human being can be solved by science — and we need not rely on religion for this purpose.

However what is most AMAZING and IRONIC is what I have discovered only recently. The West NEVER actually understood the nature of science which they imported from the Islamic Civilization !!!   It was clear that the Muslims paid a LOT MORE ATTENTION to empirical observations than the Greeks ever did. The Greeks did not think much of lowly CONTINGENT observations as a means to knowledge. These can change from time to time irregularly and cannot form the basis of a GRAND knowledge which spans the universe and the centuries. For the first time, the Europeans tried to make sense of how empirical methods can be used to advance knowledge. They made repeated efforts and repeatedly failed. The first major misunderstanding was expressed by Francis Bacon, in the form of INDUCTION. This fails to understand the essence of the scientific method, already described earlier. The erroneous idea of induction persists in modern econometrics, which is based on the false belief that if we see a pattern in a cluster of points, we can predict that this pattern will continue. This is why regression methodology so often leads to false and meaningless results (spurious regressions).

Later, Leibniz, Descartes, Hume, Kant and many others major Western philosophers tackled the problem of how we can get knowledge from observations — the heart and essence of science — but failed to understand the methodology of science. It is possible to discuss this in detail, and explain the errors made by these giants of Western philosophy, but that is not our purpose here. Chalmers is a good guide in this area. The MAIN reason for their inability to understand scientific methodology was because the battle between science and religion led them to assume that: SCIENTIFIC reasoning is the opposite of RELIGIOUS reasoning. This was taken for granted from the beginning, and continues to be assumed in all Western investigations of the philosophy of science. This automatically blocks the understanding of the key concept of science, which actually allows us to deduce the existence of God from the extremely well-ordered, and precision-tuned universe we see around us.

TO THIS DAY, as Chalmers clearly states in his state of the art book — the West DOES NOT UNDERSTAND “What is this thing called SCIENCE?”. This point is of EXTREME IMPORTANCE — because TODAY we can launch a REVOLUTION in the social sciences by starting with a CORRECT understanding of science and applying it to the study of human beings and societies. An immediate objection to this will arise in the mind of the reader – if Western philosophers have failed to understand science, how could it be that the West has made such spectacular progress in science? To understand this, we must differentiate between theory and practice. Chalmers states that scientists are very poor philosophers. Scientists learn by apprenticeship to other scientists, learning-by-doing. Just like a superbly fluent speaker and writer of a language may have no conception of the rules of grammar for the language, so the scientists know how to do science, but cannot articulate the methodology which lies at the root of what they do. However, misunderstanding scientific methodology has had a tremendous impact on Social Science – this is because in social science an effort was made to follow the philosophers’ ideas about how to do science, leading to very deep and fundamental flaws in the social sciences. In particular, modern economics is based on a logical positivist methodology, and is completely wrong. See my post on “The Emergence of Logical Positivism” for a detailed explanation. Similarly, positivist foundations have led to a hopelessly bad methodology for econometrics and statistics; see “A Realist Approach to Econometrics“, and “Real Statistics: An Islamic Approach“.

I am in the process of creating an entirely different approach to economics. In my recent course on Advanced Microeconomics, I have explained how ALL of modern economic theory — utility maximization by consumers, profit maximization by firms, supply and demand equilibrium for determination of prices — IS STRONGLY REJECTED by empirics — if we study consumers, we find that they do not maximize utility ( see my paper: The Empirical Evidence Against Neoclassical Utility Theory: A Survey of the Literature). Similarly, there is very strong empirical evidence that firms do not maximize profits, and that prices are not determined by forces of supply and demand. Nonetheless, because modern economic theory is based on an AXIOMATIC methodology which goes back to the pre-scientific Greek Methodology and is NOT based on scientific methodology which pays close attention to empirical evidence, it comes to completely wrong conclusions.

I recently taught a course on economics in which I explained how nearly everything found in current modern economics textbooks is wrong, and how we can replace it with correct knowledge. One lecture within this sequence is linked below. This lecture details the ideas presented briefly above — that is the origins of science in Islamic Civilization,and the failure of the West to understand science.

The video is slightly less that one hour. I have also explained the fundamental methodological mistake made by economists in particular and social scientists in general, in using a misunderstanding of science to analyze human beings and society in a number of short articles. These are available from this link:

https://sites.google.com/site/azamanpublications/positivism

Today, the biggest problem of the Ummah is that we have become mesmerized by the IDOL of Western Knowledge — Although it is a bitter thing to say, the Ummah as a whole currently believes that the Western knowledge they acquired over the past few centuries is SUPERIOR to what was given to us in the form the Wahy — The Quran re-assures is that it is FAR BETTER than anything that others can gather. Unfortunately we have lost trust in this promise of the Quran — EVEN TODAY the Quran provides us with far better solutions to our human problems than the latest finding of Western Science. But Muslims as a whole no longer believe this and keep searching for solutions within the Western intellectual traditions. For a more detailed discussion of how shock-and-awe of the West has made Islam a stranger to Musllims, see “Diagnosis: Absorption of Secular Thought“.

May Allah bless us with the Noor of Eeman and GUIDE US all from out the Darkness and into the Light.