Al Ghazali: The Great Skeptic

After Prophet Muhammad (570 – 632) and Rashidun Caliphate (632 – 661) era, in terms of epistemological course, Muslim has been divided into 2 (two) schools of thought, namely: Mu’tazili and Asy’ari. Simply put, Mu’tazili was the rationalists relied on reason and human intellectual power, free will and embrace of Greek legacy of science, in contrast Asy’ari embraced religious source of Al Quran and hadith, no-natural-law principle and occasionalism.

In the height of Mu’tazili’s sway in Abbasid caliphate (750-1258), Muslim was very dynamic society and left many legacies to the world. With caliphate endorsement, Muslim interpreted and learned knowledge from all sources, particularly from Hellenism. They developed math, chemistry, physics, medicine, and even epistemology. If now Muslims tell about their scientific achievement, all transpired in this era.

As mentioned above, along with Mu’tazili, another path of Islam also thrived, Asy’ari. They were afraid with eclectism in Muslim way of life. For them, Muslim should only embrace Quran and Hadith. Moreover scientific method can’t seek Truth and sufism was a better approach.

Al-Ghazali a.k.a Algazel (1058 – 1111) was the star of Asy’ari. He was once a prominent Islamic jurisprudence in Baghdad under Nizam al-Mulk. After experiencing personal crisis, he doubted the senses and reason in seeking truth and subscribed to Asy’ari. He landed his faith in Sufism and severed his connection with earthy matters. And Al-Ghazali exerted his great influence to ward off Mu’tazili’s progressive thought. He threw cold water to Muslim great passion of science.

For this reason, he took responsible for the diversion of the course of Muslim society from rational society to irrational one, from dynamic community to static one, from world-class scientists to, at last, fiercest terrorists. To some extents, he was one to blame for the backward of Islam among other civilizations.

But, is it true Al Ghazali totally wrong on his conviction? Absolutely not!

Sometimes skeptics were not really anti-science, they even made science perfect and real. An in this part Al Ghazali had a great contribution.

To encapsulate the main idea of Al-Ghazali skepticism is as follows:

First, we can’t accept any causality automatically; causality is non-permanent.

In his own words, Al-Ghazali said: “The connection between what is habitually believed to be a cause and what is habitually believed to be an effect is not necessary, according to us [al-Ghazali]

Second, causality that we believe is a product of past experience.

He said: “The continuous habit of their occurrence repeatedly, one time after another, fixes unshakably in our minds the belief in their occurrence according to past habit.”

And the all causalities happen only under God’s will and it didn’t need to repeat by itself.

Al Ghazali’s denial of causality cast a spell and resounded beyond his time. Later the western philosophers defined it as Problem of Induction. Inductive inference is made by observing past occurrences. People think there is no black swan, because for some time people can only see white swan in their limited circumstances. But when black swan was found in Australia, the conviction of all-swans-are-white collapsed.

This very idea is expounded by Nassim Nicolas Thaleb in his best-seller book, Black Swan. People simply can’t predict. It’s true some causality repeats until today, but there’s no guarantee it will be the same tomorrow. The tumbling of stock market, economic crisis, world war, 9/11, Arab spring can only be explained by black swan approach.

Finally, Al-Ghazali did make great understanding of knowledge, even though it seemed he refuted scientific method and hinged foolishly on God.

Let’s test Al-Ghazali’s conviction of God’s factor in modern science.

Despite making much headway, human thought is still limited to make out “natural law”. Isaac Newton (1643 – 1727), the king of science, concocted remarkably the movement of celestial bodies of earth and sun, but later Henry Poincare (1854 –1912) found that the calculation didn’t match with reality. He suggested the movement was in chaotic order (and this laid foundation of chaos theory), rather than predictable path. And nobody knows whether this diversion throws the earth outside solar system or makes the earth swallowed by the sun which can be taken place any time.

And it implied that our earth can still evolve the sun without slipping the necessary orbit is because of something unknown … and it can be GOD!

Source:

1. http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ma/works/ma-gz-ps.pdf
2. http://www.ghazali.org/articles/gz1.htm
3. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/books/chapters/0422-1st-tale.html?pagewanted=print
4. http://ptrow.com/articles/ChaosandSolarSystem5.htm