In IKIM Views of 13 November 2007, we have explained that in the Islamic intellectual and scientific tradition the cosmos is often regarded as the Created Book, somewhat analogous to the Qur’an as the Revealed Book.
The basis of its being so regarded, we have also clarified, is the fact that all the individual entities and events comprising the World of Nature, like the verses in the Qur’an, are considered by the Qur’an to be God’s signs and symbols (ayat).
Since the Author of the two books is one and the same, being Himself One (wahid) and Unique (Ahad) in the Absolute sense, the Created Book as a totality is also expected to reflect such a unity-being a unified system of signs and meanings-just like the Revealed Book with its unity of message and teachings.
For those who subscribe to such an understanding, doing science essentially becomes attempts to read and interpret the Open Book of Nature correctly. And as such, a scientist cannot but also be attentive to the Revealed Book in his very act of reading the Created Book.
Yet, as we have pointed out, the Qur’Än speaks of its verses, or its signs and symbols, as partly comprising those that are clear and established (al-muhkamat), and partly comprising those that are obscure and ambiguous (al-mutashabihat).
The Created Book then, being analogous to the Revealed Qur’an, also comprises signs and symbols-which we call ‘things’-that are clear and established in their meanings, and those that are obscure and ambiguous.
Thus, in reading the book, one has basically to deal with the various signs and symbols which are arranged in such a way that they convey a certain meaning or message.
Nevertheless, since not all of the signs and symbols are clear and established, there must be a correct method to read the book in order to interpret such signs and symbols correctly and thus be able to know their true meaning(s).
However, in any true epistemic act, one cannot start from either what is unclear or what one is ignorant of, using it to grasp what is clear and understandable.
As such, knowing as an act has often been formulated asthe progress of one’s mind from ‘what-has-already-been-known’ (al-ma‘lum) to ‘what-is-still-unknown’ (al-majhul). (See also our article in IKIM Views of 26 September 2006.)
Therefore, to qualify as a valid form of epistemic act, any correct method of reading to be applied to the Books must reflect such a guiding formula.
Since tafsir and ta’wil are generally the twin methods of reading applied in dealing with the signs and symbols of the Qur’an, and since the tafsir-ta’wil method reflects the aforementioned formula, Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas has proposed that Muslim scientists appropriate this method in their act of doing science.
Ta’wil basically means getting to the ultimate, primordial meaning of something through a process of intellection. Such being the case, the detecting, discovery and revealing of the concealed meanings of the ambiguous signs and symbols in the Qur’an is referred to, in the science of the Qur’an, as ta’wil (allegorical interpretation).
Yet, in order to be valid, such an interpretation ought to be based upon tafsir, meaning the interpretation of those signs and symbols which are clear and apparent.
By way of analogy, the interpretation or the study and explanation of the obscure and ambiguous aspects of the things of the empirical world, must be grounded upon what is already known and established.
However, there seems to be at least two levels of application of this tafsir-ta’wil method in the context of the phenomenal world.
At one level, the method is applied to an empirical thing, or a group of such things, in the context of its relation to other such things, or other group(s) of such things. Yet, at this level, the very nature of those things as a whole are not considered in their totality.
At another level, they are dealt with in totality, whether or not they as a whole are by their nature clear and established.
With regard to this latter level, as the things of the empirical world are physical in nature, they are all generally ambiguous because they appear to our consciousness to point to themselves, as if they each have an independent, individual and self-subsistent reality, and not to that of which they are simply signs and symbols.
In other words, considered as a unified whole in the manner a book is supposed to be, the Universe as a grand system of signs and meanings, is more ambiguous and less established than the Qur’an and its conceptual system.
As a result, one’s dealing with the former book-which will surely involve one’s study, interpretation, and understanding of it-especially with regard to matters of ultimate and absolute significance, ought to be guided by the teachings expounded in the latter book, teachings which, in their conceptual and metaphysical forms, are referred to as the worldview of Islam.