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Islam and mathematics
Feb 19 (The News) - Mathematics possesses not only truth but supreme
beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to
any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of music, yet
sublimely pure and capable of perfection such as only the greatest art possesses
- Bertrand Russell
One is reminded of the warning given by St. Augustine:
"The good Christians should be beware of mathematicians. The danger already
exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the
spirit and to confine men in the bonds of hell."
The Roman jurists framed
the law: "To learn the art of geometry, an art as damnable as mathematics are
forbidden." Twelve hundred years later, Sh. Ahmad Sirhindi called mathematicians
idiots and their admirers worse idiots and the meanest creatures because he
thought that mathematics and its learning could not be of any use in the
salvation of men in the life hereafter.
These fulminations against
mathematics belong to the medieval age, known for its obscurantism, dogmatism
and irrationalism. George Sarton divides his History of Science into ages, each
age associated with one towering thinker, lasting for half a century. Thus the
period from 450 BC to 400 BC is the Age of Plato, from 400 BC to 350 BC is the
Age of Aristotle and so on.
From 750 AD to 1100 AD is the period lasting
for 350 years is completely dominated by the Muslims. It is an unbroken
succession of the Ages of Jabir, Khwarizmi, Razi, Masudi, Wafa, Bruni and Omar
Khayyam. It is only after 1100 AD that the first western names appear - Gerard
of Cremona and Roger Bacon. But the honours are still shared by another two
centuries by the names of Ibn Rushd, Nasiruddin Toosi and Ibn
Nafis.
After 1350, however, the Muslim world sinks into a long dogmatic
slumber with only occasional flashes of scientific brilliance like that at the
court of Ulegh Beg at Samarkand at the end of the 15th century.
History
bears out the fact that scientific brilliance is always accompanied by
mathematical efflorescence. In fact mathematical discoveries pave the way for
spectacular advances in science. No nation has ever achieved greatness with
attaining mastery over mathematics. When the Muslims dominated the world of
science, they were supreme in mathematics.
Musa al-Khwarizmi (780-850)
was one of the scientific minds of Islam, who influenced mathematical thought
more than any medieval scholar. He compiled not only the oldest book on
arithmetic, but also the astronomical tables. His magnum opus was hisab al-jabr
wa'l-muqabala. It was translated in Latin in the 12th century and was used till
the 16th century as the principal textbook on algebra in the European
universities.
By introducing an unknown quantity and then finding it,
algebra became the open-sesame for the discovery of the unknown - the be-all and
end-all of all sciences.
The great poet; and perhaps greater
mathematician Omar Khayyam (1048-1122) and Nasiruddin Toosi (1201-1274) showed
that every ratio of magnitudes whether commensurable or incommensurable, might
be a number, rational or irrational. The magnitude of this achievement becomes
particularly clear when we recall that the complete recognition of negative or
irrational numbers was attained only slowly and that too after the beginning of
Renaissance in Europe.
Allama Iqbal credited Toosi for being the first
to question the Euclidean postulate on parallelism. Omar Khayyam was the first
to prove a number of theorems of Non-Euclidean geometry which were discovered by
Lobchersky, Riemann and Gauss independently of one another during the mid-19th
century.
Omar Khayyam preceded them by seven centuries, whereas Einstein
utilised the Non-Euclidean geometry to usher in a new world of science. There
was no one to pick up the clue left by Omar Khayyam. He also began to use graphs
to combine algebra and geometry to solve the cubic equations.
It may be
remembered that it was the genius of Descartes who performed the tour de force
of combining algebra and geometry, along with founding new philosophy with the
dictum: "I think, therefore I am."
There was no thinker in the Muslim
world to follow Omar Khayyam and uphold rationalism, because Imam Ghazali had
already written Tahafat Al Falsafah (Refutation of Philosophy). Of course, Ibn
Rushd did write Tahafat-al-tahafa (Refutation of Refutation). Unfortunately the
Muslim world rejected him, whereas the Europeans picked him up. The Europeans
became Averoists, one and all i.e. followers of Ibn Rushd.
Al Biruni hit
upon the great mathematical idea of function, which, according to Spengler, is
the symbol of the West of which no other culture gives even a hint. The idea of
function introduces the concepts of inter-dependence and movement, seeing the
world as a conglomeration of inter dependent processes.
This concept is
the essence of dialectics. It is unfortunate that this revolutionary idea
remained untapped by the Muslim world which was hibernating for centuries under
the spell of dogmatism and irrationalism. A dynamic idea cannot flourish in a
static society. It was by the middle of the 17th century that the tables were
definitely and decisively turned against the Muslim-world.
Descarte's
geometry was published in 1637. Ahmad Sirhindi died in 1624, but he condemned
mathematics in the strongest terms. By condemning mathematics, we stepped out of
onward march of science and technology.
One-ninth of the Quranic verses
stress tadabbur, tafakkur and taaqul (deliberation, thinking and reasoning). The
Quran stands for the supremacy of reason. Having turned our back on reason, we
have fallen an easy victim to obscurantism and dogmatism. Our worldview is
medieval. Islam has been transformed from algebra of revolution to arithmetic of
stagnation.
There can be no blossoming of mathematics and hence science
and technology unless and until a weltanshauung based on tafakkur and tadabbur
is ushered in the world of Islam.
Islam is not a closed system as the
orthodox would have us believe. Such a view annuls the universality of Islam.
Islam is a faith in which God provides mankind anew, every morning, the riches
whereby we can solve the new problems that may arise that day.
As the
Quran puts it, every day has its own glory. At one end, Islam relates itself to
the immeasurable greatness of the Divine and at the other end to the
immeasurable diversity of the humankind. Pluralism is its dynamic
force.
- By Prof Khwaja Masud
The writer is a former principal of Gordon College, Rawalpindi.
Email: khmasud22@yahoo.com
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| Education News | | Updated: 24 May, 2012 |
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