Green is Graceful: Some Practical Lessons from the History of Islamic Science and Technology

If “Small is Beautiful” characterizes the system of “economics as if people mattered” envisaged by E. F. Schumacher in his visionary book Small is Beautiful, then “Green is Graceful” would characterize the system of “science and technology as if culture and nature mattered” nurtured throughout in the 1001-year history of Islamic science and technology. And the whole purpose of learning about this history is to revive it by drawing practical lessons from it in order to bring back culture and nature into the centre of science and technology in the contemporary age. The current global concern about the manner in which modern western (kafir) science and technology (coupled with the liberal capitalist political economic system supporting it ) have systematically wrought havoc on both the natural and cultural worlds over the past century or so, provides a golden opportunity for thinking Muslims to address that concern by developing an alternative science and technology rooted in and directed by Islamic values, in the way much of Schumacher’s alternative economic thought was inspired by Buddhist values. And the surest way to demonstrate that these values are not mere pie-in-the-sky idealism but real, viable and practical is to study the manner in which these values have been realised in history before the relatively recent “westernization of the world.”

Before we go further to look at what Muslim scientists and technologists can learn from the history of Islamic science and technology, we all have to really sit back and do some reflection about the meaning of science. For our purpose here, it is sufficient to take the current definition of science at face value, namely, science as the systemic study of nature, and then to do a bit of conceptual analysis on it. And so we find that this definition only makes sense if the cognitive pursuit of science and its pragmatic realization in technology do not entail the diminishment of nature and its eventual desolation and disappearance altogether. And since science is done by scientists who are basically people like other people, then the the scientific pursuit should not result in the impoverishment and destruction of human culture either. Hence the intellectual curiousity of science and its resultant technological utility demand a concomittant moral responsibility toward nature as the object of study and toward people as both the agent and beneficiary of this study. Thus the thinking scientist can go on reflecting on the meaning of science in this or similar way and thereby come to terms with his or her own particular area of scientific and technological work by asking in all seriousness: “Is what I am doing right now really contributing to the preservation of nature and culture?” And “Am I pursuing a science that integrates intellectual curiousity, technological utility and moral responsibility?” If your answer to these and similar questions is yes in all seriousness and sincerity, then you are doing Islamic Science, otherwise you are doing KAFIR science, even if you pray five or ten times everyday before going into your lab or office!

With that self-critical, introspective mode of thinking firmly in place, we may now look into our long technoscientific history to see what we can learn and revive to build a contemporary, green and graceful science and technology, and hence address in a constructive manner one of the great civilizational challenges of our sorry age.

For further reading, please download this paper here: Green is Graceful: Some Practical Lessons from the History of Islamic Science and Technology