Science, philosophy and religion as categories for the arab mind : past and present

Abstract EN

One cannot deny or ignore the huge contributions made by the Arabs in the area of science and philosophy during the golden era of the Islamic civilization.

This era attests to the capacity of the Arabs to challenge the impediments of progress, and to overcome the difficulties that prevented them from mobilizing their creative energies in various fields.

Not only enabling them to accommodate to the cultural environment left behind by the retreating Greco-Roman civilization, but also to develop an intellectual and technical world of genuine Arab character, a world that complies with the religion, the language, and the spiritual and moral characteristics that define what could be called the distinctive Arab identity. The aim of this paper is not to praise the achievements of Arabs in the various and diverse branches of science and philosophy.

This has been the aim of many writers since the sunset of the Arab-Islamic civilization.

Nor does this paper aim at mourning the collapse of the Arab-Islamic civilization, since I am fully aware that every civilization has its specific spatio-temporal fourishment and decline.

This was proposed for example by Ibn Khaldun (732-808 A.H., i.e.

1332-1406), and Oswald Spengler (1880-1963).

Both described civilizations as organisms that arise, grow and prosper, and then come into age and perish, even though I equally agree with Arnold Toynbee's (1889-1975) claim that a civilization does not perish by destiny, but by 'suicide'.1 This happens when it becomes unable to meet the requirements of spiritual leadership, thus losing creativity and falls into the abyss of political conflict, or into what was called by the American senator William Fulbright (1905-1995) 'The Arrogance of Power'. The paper primarily aims at taking ah objective look at the factors that have led to the launching of the Arab cultural project and at its flourishing in the Middle Ages, as well as at identifying the 'local' elements of originality with regard to what was produced by the Arab mind in science and philosophy, something that - has been often overseen by historians and philosophers of science of later epochs under the influence of their special historical situation.

In other words, I will try to determine the exact position of the Arab-Islamic civilization in the course of the development of the human civilization in general. The results of my efforts will be used in order to answer a pivotal question, namely if it is possible - in the light of the current 'locality' - to launch a contemporary Arab civilizational project, which can be comparable to the great project of our ancestors?.