Understanding & Awareness

The Worldview of Tauhid-1
By: Murtadha Mutahhary

Every path and philosophy of life is based on a belief, outlook, and value system vis-a-vis being or on an explanation and analysis of the world. The kind of conception that a school of thought presents of the world and of being, the manner in which it contemplates it, is considered the intellectual foundation and support of that school. This foundation and support is termed the world view. All religions, customs, schools of thought, and social philosophies rest on a world view. A school’s aims, methods, musts and must nots all result necessarily from its world view.

The ‘hukama’ [Scholars] divide wisdom into theoretical wisdom and practical wisdom. Theoretical wisdom is the realization of being as it is, and practical wisdom is the realization of the practice of life as it should be. What should be derives logically from what is, especially what is as primary philosophy and metaphysics are charged with explaining it.

World Feeling versus World Knowledge
The term “world view” contains the idea of sight, but we must not fall into the error of interpreting world view as world feeling. World view means world knowledge or cosmology; it relates to the well known question of knowledge, which is an exclusively human property, as opposed to feeling, which man shares with other animals. Therefore, world knowledge is exclusive to man and is a function of his reflection and intellection.

Many animals are more advanced than man from the standpoint of world feeling; they are furnished with certain senses that man lacks (for instance, it is said that some flying creatures have a sort of radar, a sense that man lacks, or that, although some animals have a sense in common with man, it is much better developed in the much as the eagle’s eyesight, the dog’s or the ant’s sense of smell, and the mouse’s hearing). Man’s superiority over other animals lies in his knowledge of the world, that is, in a kind of insight into the world. The animals feel the world, but man explains it as well. What is knowledge? What connection is there between feeling and knowledge? What elements other than sense enter into knowledge? Where do those elements come from and how do they enter the mind? What is the mechanism of the act of knowing? By what standard are valid and invalid knowledge distinguished? These are a series of questions that go to make up an independent essay. What is certain is that sensing a thing is different from knowing it. Everyone sees a stage, a play, and everyone sees it in the same way; yet only a few individuals will explain it, and sometimes they will explain it variously.

Three World Views
World views or schemes of world knowledge (the ways man defines or explains the world) generally fall into three classes: scientific, philosophic, and religious.

Scientific World View
Science is based on two things: hypothesis and experiment. In the scientist’s mind, to discover and explain a phenomenon, one first forms a hypothesis, and then one subjects it to concrete experiment, in the laboratory. If the experiment supports the hypothesis, it becomes an accepted scientific principle. As long as no more comprehensive hypothesis, better supported by experimentation, appears, that scientific principle retains its standing. The more comprehensive hypothesis with its advent clears the field for itself. Science thus engages in discovering causes and effects: Through concrete experiments, it discovers a thing’s cause or effect; then it pursues the cause of that cause or the effect of that effect. It continues this course of discovery as far as possible.

The strengths and Weaknesses of Scientific Worldview
The work of science, in being based on concrete experiments, has advantages and shortcomings.

The Main Weaknesses
But precisely because of these qualities, the compass of science is also limited to experiment. It advances as far as can be subjected to experiment. But can one bring all of being in all its aspects within the confines of experiment? Science in practice pursues causes and effects to a certain limit and then reaches a point where it must say “I don’t know.” Science is like a powerful searchlight in the long winter night, illuminating a certain area without disclosing anything beyond its border. Can one determine by experiment whether the universe has a beginning and an end or is limitless in time? Or does the scientist, on reaching this point, consciously or unconsciously mount the pinions of philosophy ill order to express an opinion?

From the standpoint of science, the universe is like an old book the first and last pages of which have been lost. Neither the beginning nor the end is known. Thus, the world view of science is a knowledge of the part, not of the whole. Our science acquaints us with the situation of some parts of the universe, not with the shape, mien, and character of the whole universe. The scientist’s world view is like the knowledge about the elephant gained by those who touched it in the dark. The one who felt the elephant’s ear supposed the animal to be shaped like a fan; the one who felt its leg supposed it to be shaped like a column; and the one who felt its back supposed it to be shaped like a throne.

Another shortcoming of the scientific world view as a basis for an ideology is that science is unstable and unenduring from a theoretical standpoint, that is, from the standpoint of presenting reality as it is or of attracting faith to the nature of the reality of being. From the viewpoint of science, the face of the world changes from day to day because science is based on hypothesis and experiment, not on rational and self-evident first principles. Hypothesis and experiment have a provisional value; so the scientific world view is shaky and inconsistent and cannot serve as a foundation for faith. Faith demands a firmer, an unshakable foundation, a foundation characterized by eternity.

The scientific world view, in accordance with the limitations that the tools of science (hypothesis and experiment) have inevitably brought about for science, falls short of answering a series of basic cosmological questions that an ideology is obliged to answer decisively, such as: Where did the universe come from? Where is it going? How are we situated within the totality of being? Does the universe have a beginning and an end in time or in space? Is being in its totality right or a mistake, true or vain, beautiful or ugly? Do inevitable and immutable norms preside over the universe, or does no immutable norm exist? Is being in its totality a single living, conscious entity, or is it dead and unconscious, man’s existence being an aberration, an accident? Can that which exists cease to exist? Can that which does not exist come into existence? Is the return of that which has lapsed from existence possible or impossible? Are the universe and history exactly repeatable, even after billions of years (the cyclical theory)? Does unity truly preside, or does multiplicity? Is the universe divisible into the material and the nonmaterial, and is the material universe a small part of the universe as a whole? Is the universe under guidance and seeing, or is it blind? Is the universe transacting with man? Does the universe respond in kind to man’s good and evil? Does an enduring life exist after this transient one?

Science arrives at “I don’t know” in trying to answer all these questions because it cannot subject them to experiment. Science answers limited, partial questions but is incapable of representing the totality of the universe.

The importance of the scientific world view lies in its practical, technical value, not in its theoretical value. What can serve as the support for an ideology is a theoretical value, nota practical one. The theoretical value of science lies in the reality of the universe being just as it is represented in the mirror of science. The practical and technical value of science lies in science’s empowering man in his work and being fruitful, whether or not it represents reality. Today’s industry and technology display the practical and technical value of science.

One of the remarkable things about science in today’s world is that, to the extent that its practical and technical value increases, its theoretical value diminishes. Those on the sidelines suppose that the progress of science as an illumination of the human conscience and as a source of faith and certitude relative to reality (which is how science represents itself) is in direct proportion to the extent of irrefutable concrete progress, whereas the truth is just the opposite. An ideology requires a world view that, first, answers the basic cosmological questions of relevance to the universe is a whole, not just to some certain part; second, provides a well-grounded, reliable, and eternally valid comprehension, not a provisional, transient one; and third, provides something of theoretical, not purely practical and technical value, something revealing reality. The scientific world view, for all its advantages from other standpoints, fails to fulfill these three conditions.

In the next issue, the author discusses in brief the other two worldviews, namely, the Philosophical worldview, and Religious worldview, and then he identifies the proper criteria for a right worldview, and after that he takes up the main subject i.e. The Worldview of Tauhid, which continues further into the future issues of Al-Mizan.
————-Editor