What is a Science, Mom?
After (our) Muslim learners get their epistemological (how we know), ontological (what really exists) and cosmological (how it all fits together in a grand system) foundations down in our Foundations course we then shift our attention to what it means for something to be a science. In the Introduction to the Sciences course they explore a host of questions related to a science. What is a science? What is the relationship between knowledge and a science? What kinds of sciences are there? The goal is to familiarize them at a basic level with what unites all sciences, from fiqh to physics, and what makes them different. We also go over the strengths and weaknesses of using a science at all – after all it doesn’t take a science to know that if you always leave your room messy, your mother will get upset at you and that that is not a good thing – or does it? In fact one of the ways we explore these and related ideas is by asking if that experience (of mom getting upset due to recurrently messy room) has any commonality with how physics is done?
We’ll let you think about that one.
Observing Questions
One of the core observations that unites both traditional Muslim scholarship and recent Western scholarship on the philosophy of science is that any science has certain central questions it seeks to answer. Put another way, the central questions lie at the heart of a science.
But here’s the thing. It turns out that by exploring these central questions, and in the process becoming aware of what they are for each science that we study, students are able to see how the questions of that science relate to the most important quetstion of all: how does answering this set of questions get me closer to Allah and help me secure my eternal abode in Jannah?
Furthermore, it allows the students to place all these questions in a hierarchy – which they discuss among themselves in the class – relative to that most importat question.
To this end, one of the exericses we do in this course is the “Observing Questions” activity. I’ve attached it here for your review. We use this activity to form the basis for further discussions on what the students think the hierarchy of the sciences should be. We even cut out each question and then have discussions – some very lively ones at that – about where each question should go on our “cosmological map”, as a visual aid to understanding that hierarchy (they learn the “cosmological map” in Foundations – we’ll have a separate post on that soon insha Allah).
For now, here are the instructions for the activity (it’s best done as a group):
Imagine that you are standing in front of Allah on the Day of Judgement. That is how we know the level of importance of anything. Read through the following list of questions. You will then do two things:
I – Discuss and group the questions into three levels of importance: (1) High (2) Medium and (3) Low.
II – Once you have done the above, put the questions in each group into a list based on highest to lowest priority, where the question on the top is the most important, and the questions become less important as you go down the list. (Keep in mind that just because a question is near the bottom of the list, does not mean it is not important. It just means that the question above it is more important).
Take a look at the activity below. I have done this now with not just my own children but with other homeschoolers, and we have incredible discussions. There’s so much more that could be said, but for now, just… observe questions!
