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2. Ways of Understanding Nature

Before we can explore how nature has been viewed in diverse times and places, we need to know just what the word “nature” refers to in the present context. For example, nature often means that which is not constructed by the artifice of humans; a tree is natural, but a house made from trees is not. Or nature might refer to our own environment on the earth’s surface, primarily considering the ecological biosphere but including also the air, soil, rock, and water that sustains life. Or again, there is a long-running debate about whether humans are to be included as a part of nature, as opposed to nature being everything else that is not humanity. In this work, however, nature is intended to be a very inclusive term. All parts of the natural world (living, non-living, human, and created-by-humans) are included, and “world” is interpreted as the entire universe in this context. Put differently, we may equate nature with cosmos (using an older word) or with material reality. The fact that “cosmos” and “material reality” have rather differing philosophical connotations is intentional here; nature might partake of either connotation, and this is precisely the issue we intend to explore.

Concepts of nature have varied radically in different cultures and at different times. To get a sense of the range and richness of such differing apprehensions before we engage in our main project, in this chapter we will look at three of the many possible interesting cases. Forming an appreciation of this variability will be helpful in evaluating the validity of unfamiliar conceptualizations as we proceed later.

Greek Ideas of Nature in Antiquity

The interest of the ancient Greeks in nature, and the way in which they approached nature, varied greatly over the centuries. Not only did their ideas evolve with time, but they also often proposed contesting ideas between the various schools at the same time, with varying degrees of scientific, philosophical, and religious content. The nature concepts of Greek civilization are interesting on their own merits, but they are also highly important due to their influence on later civilizations such as those of the Romans, Islam, and Europe. Not surprisingly, many of the basic underlying presuppositions of modern science have their roots in the thinking of these Hellenic nature philosophers.

Some of the earliest thinking about nature came from the Ionian philosophers. Prior to their work, Greek approaches to nature seem to be mythic and poetic rather than philosophical. In Homer, for example, the forces of nature are personified by the wills of anthropomorphic gods. The Ionians adopted a more rational approach, asking what we could know of the order underlying appearance in the world. For them, the fundamental question to ask turned out to be: what is the universal substance of which all things are made. Thales, the earliest of them, believed that all things originate in water. We may presume that for Thales and his audience water was not the prosaic chemical compound that we think of but rather the life-giving and protean archetypal fluid. But this fluid-ness presents a problem, because we have no clear way to understand how rocks or fire arise from a substratum of water. The ideas of Anaximander address this problem. He proposes that all things are made from a kind of universal principle, an even more protean and unformed substance having no specific properties of its own, which he refers to as the “Boundless” and considers imperishable. Anaximander devised a pictorial model of swirling eddies in the Boundless, separating out propertied substances from which the world is made. An issue with these ideas is the lack of any clear explanation of how these substances that do have properties might arise from the formlessness for the Boundless. Perhaps to address this issue, the third major Ionian thinker, Anaximenes, proposed that all things are made from air. He supplemented this proposition with the idea that air undergoes condensation and rarefaction so as to produce the variety of properties that we see in material substances in the world. This advanced Ionian philosophy by providing a kind of mechanical explanation for how the universal substance could give rise to variety.

These mechanical looking models should not mislead us into thinking that the Ionian philosophers proposed a mechanistic world. The universal substance of Anaximander “envelopes everything, produces everything, governs everything. It is the supreme divinity, possessing a perpetual vitality of its own.”16 Part of the inherent property in the primal substance featured in all of the Ionian systems is some sort of inner directedness toward the ultimate forms it takes. Despite the mechanical rarefactions and condensations of Anaximenes’ air, he continues “in thinking of the primitive substance as divine […] an immanent God identical with the world-creative process itself.”17 And yet, many Ionian explanations of particular phenomena such as lightning and earthquakes are presented as mechanical and pictorial models, as well as important features of their overall cosmological schemas. We see then a key tension in the Ionian conception of nature: the explanations seem to involve what we might think of as causes, but the behaviors are always eventually traced back to inherent properties of the universal substance, which are equated to the divine and have no further explanation. The decisive innovation introduced by Ionian philosophy was the assumption that nature does present an underlying order and regularity that can be explored by the use of reason, and this program was taken as far as it could go based on the limitations of the essential question that the Ionians were asking.

A rather different approach was taken by the Pythagorean school. In addition to their religious and political dimensions, the Pythagoreans developed a nature philosophy based on number. Numbers, and mathematical relationships more generally, are the fundamental basis for the workings of the world. Their thinking is difficult to understand from a modern perspective, because genuine mathematics, number mysticism, speculative reasoning, and observation are all combined indiscriminately into a system composed of parts that seem incompatible yet were synthesized together. One of the key elements of this synthesis was the famous relationship discovered between mathematics and music. All of the consonant musical intervals on the scale are formed by plucking strings whose lengths are integer ratios (2/1 for the octave, 3/2 for the fifth, and so on). This profound connection between number and harmony was central to the Pythagorean work, and it was indeed based on observation of the real world. The investigations of the Pythagoreans into music continued to find broader and deeper relationships to number, and they also performed important work in astronomy (as well as mathematics itself).

There are at least two reasons why Pythagoras and his followers are important. One reason, of course, is the immense influence that the idea of mathematics governing nature has historically enjoyed; we will be returning to this theme often, but the work of Kepler alone is enough to make the point (not to mention virtually all of contemporary physics). The second reason is more directly related to our present story. The Ionian philosophers had identified the key question concerning nature as being about the substance of which it is made, but the emphasis of the Pythagoreans on number shifted the key question away from substance and onto form. The numbers have no substance, yet they are the central concept because they govern the behavior of things. The substanceless numbers are in some sense more real than the substance itself, which merely provides a medium through which the number relationships can manifest themselves. This idea of the superiority of form was to become quite important in Greek thought, and at this very early juncture it provides an alternative formulation to the concept of nature set forth by the Ionians.

Reflection on the issues raised by postulating an underlying universal substance, when the world we observe shows a huge degree of variety, greatly influenced Greek thinking on nature. The question of Becoming, how the things of the world arise from an eternal unchanging Being, was answered in many different ways. Opposing views were proposed by two early giants of Greek philosophy, Heraclitus and Parmenides. For Heraclitus, change was the central feature of reality. All things are process and transformation, not static Being. There is an eternal principle, which he identifies as fire, but this principle itself is the principle of creation, destruction, and transformation. The true underlying order he calls Logos, but it’s not clear whether this is within the comprehension of humans. Parmenides, in contrast, maintains that all change is merely illusion and that static Being is the only true reality. The implications of this position are far-reaching: if all that we see is change, and change is an illusion, then everything that we infer from the evidence of the senses is unreliable opinion. The only truth that we can know comes from reason, not the senses. Hence, Parmenides does give us a physical theory of the Ionian kind, but he labels it as merely opinion. These two radical contrasting views were both incapable of leading to any further progress in formulating a concept of nature, but they stimulated thinking by clearly outlining the problem.

This problem of Becoming was addressed by the next generation of philosophers, who devised at least three distinct concepts of nature to solve it. The most direct solution was that of Anaxagoras, who believed that every distinguishable substance possessed its own elemental being. Thus, Being in general was divided into an infinite variety of eternal substances, eliminating the problem of how one substance could transform into another since no transformations occurred, only processes of mixing and replacing. The question now becomes identifying what guides these processes, and Anaxagoras proposed the existence of the Nous (mind, reason, purpose) as the animating principle that acts on the inert and mindless elements to form them into the world we know. In this way, Anaxagoras has now introduced a kind of teleological thinking into Greek nature philosophy, but left many problems by doing so (e.g. is the Nous material or immaterial? in what way does the Nous act? etc.). A much different kind of solution to the problem of Becoming was proposed by Empedocles. He limits the number of uncreated and indestructible elements to four, chosen on the basis of their contrasting properties: earth, water, air, and fire. These four elements are combined together and dissolved apart by the counteracting forces that he terms Love and Strife, which seem to be primarily mechanical in action (attraction and repulsion) despite their poetic names. An important innovation of Empedocles is the idea that any particular material (bone, for example) is characterized by a specific ratio of elements. This introduction of proportions and integer ratios exhibits the influence of Pythagoras. It is this Pythagorean influence that also tempers his tendency to view nature mechanistically. “There is, then, Empedocles concludes, some sort of archetypal intellect identified with Being […] its thoughts are ‘not to be uttered,’ but it is the fount from which Love draws the ratios and harmonies for its operations.”18 A third solution to the problem of Becoming, proposed by Leucippus, was to ascribe the unchanging Being to an infinite number of small indivisible bodies, the atoms. All change, then, was due to the movement of the atoms including their coming together into larger objects (or detaching as objects break apart or decay). The atoms exist in a void (which Parmenides had denied existence), and this solved the problem of how motion could occur. Unlike the somewhat similar ideas of Anaxagoras, the motions of the atoms are inherent properties of the atoms themselves and governed only by necessity, i.e. cause and unalterable rules. This rids the system of any hint of duality, but leaves Leucippus with an entirely materialistic concept of nature. We will look more closely at materialism in a later chapter.

Another line of thought accepted the conclusions of Parmenides and set out to defend these conclusions and explore their implications. The most famous member of this school was Zeno of Elea, with his well-known paradox proving that motion is impossible. But this line of thought proves sterile for the understanding of nature, ending in the sophistry of Gorgias (who proves that even Being does not exist). Since there is no point in studying nature, Gorgias and his fellow sophist Protagoras reduce philosophy to rhetoric. Their opponent Socrates is still concerned with a search for truth, but his interests are also in the affairs of humans such as ethics and politics. The concept of nature in this intellectual culture has become unimportant and irrelevant.

Meanwhile, other sources (outside philosophy) of study and information about the natural world were becoming more organized and important. Medicine, for example, was developing its own methodology and conclusions, sometimes independently of those considering nature as a whole and sometimes in concert with them. A good deal of empirical knowledge was acquired (bone and muscle anatomy, for example, and the course of certain diseases), but some of the medical theory (such as the four humors) seems to draw on more general cosmological ideas. The doctors and the philosophers were in agreement that rational necessity (rather than the whims of the gods) governed things, but methodologically the doctors were generally more interested in empirical observation given their agenda of curing the ill. Thus, although medicine did not have the explicit goal of developing a broad understanding of nature, it did indirectly influence the Greek concept of nature through its methods and point of view. Another influence was the development of mathematics, which was making steady progress and slowly becoming more independent of its philosophical roots. This process would later culminate in mathematics as a separate discipline with important applications in astronomy and statics. At about the time that the sophists were beginning to dominate the cultural discourse of Athens, Archytas of Tarentum was making important advances both in mathematics itself and in the Pythagorean program to unite philosophy, mathematics, and nature.

The humanistic concerns of Socrates are combined with the old questions about nature and the cosmos (including the role of mathematics) in the philosophy of Plato. Plato generalizes the Pythagorean idea of mathematical form governing the behavior of matter, and his ideal Forms (or Ideas) include ethical, physical, conceptual, esthetic, and other Forms as well as geometric and numerical Forms. The Forms are eternal and perfect, existing outside of time, space, and matter. Matter itself is formless and chaotic. The world as we know it, i.e. nature, is the result of the perfect Forms impressing themselves on the recalcitrant matter. Plato’s concept of nature, then, is that it is an imperfect imitation of the ideal Forms, involving change, growth, decay, and approximation. That which is intelligible in nature is merely a dim reflection of the pure intelligibility of the Forms themselves, and true knowledge can only be knowledge of these Forms. Thus, we can gain true knowledge only through the use of reason; study of the empirical world is useful, but only to gain clues providing grist for reason to work on. In Plato’s cosmology, an active principle (identified in the Timaeus as the Demiurge or Craftsman) is required to bring order to matter, using the patterns offered by the Forms. There are two crucial elements inherent in Plato’s vision of nature: the role of teleology and the role of mathematics. Because nature is a partial realization of perfect Forms, the world is filled with meaning and purpose, and much of the structure and action in the world exists to fulfill these purposes. Because the Forms are often mathematical, the manifestation of the Forms in visible nature gives rise to mathematical regularities there.

Aristotle modified Plato’s system in several significant ways. One important difference is that, although he agreed with Plato on the existence and importance of Forms, Aristotle identified the Forms inherently with the actual material things that manifested the Forms rather than some detached immaterial state. From this crucial difference, two corollary differences follow: First, the process of manifesting the Form becomes centrally important, and so teleology becomes one of the major components of Aristotle’s concept of nature. Second, the empirical study of the natural world played a much more prominent role in Aristotle’s thought than Plato’s. The emphases on empiricism and teleology lead in turn to the other major deviation from Plato, namely the considerably less important role of mathematics in Aristotle’s thought. Many of these ideas are illustrated by considering how Aristotle would envision the growth of a plant from its seed. Within the seed lies the inherent purpose of becoming the eventual plant, and the growth of the plant is caused by the need for the seed to fulfill this purpose. The natural motions of the stars in circles or of falling rocks toward the ground or of flames leaping upward illustrate again the same way of thinking. Assigning a causal purpose to the qualitatively observed changes in the world constituted an explanation in the philosophy of Aristotle, and this shaped the concept of nature that he developed. Mathematics is not an effective language for explaining qualitative changes, whereas teleological reasoning was well suited for the verbal and logical methods preferred by Aristotle and for the complicated organic phenomena that he empirically observed in such detail.

Although I have focused attention on the approaches to nature developed by Plato and Aristotle as if these were isolated, in both cases we should bear in mind that the nature philosophies were parts of a broader system of thought that included epistemological, ethical, political, ontological, and religious components. These parts are interconnected, and in particular it’s somewhat artificial to separate the religious aspect from the concept of nature, since the divine Nous provides the animating purpose and the source of harmony and form in nature. The world is in some sense an organic creature with a mind and soul, and this element of their concept of nature is found in a great deal of the Greek thinking both before and after these two philosophers. We’ll return to this point again later. Lastly, in the case of Aristotle, the total collection of work aimed to systematize all knowledge and thought into an overarching synthesis that included nature, humanity, logic, and spirit. Much subsequent work was an elaboration of or a reaction to this corpus.

One strand of development in the Greek view of nature was largely independent of Aristotle’s work, however, and this concerned the role of mathematics. Mathematics itself developed considerably, becoming more creative, rigorous, and systematic in the work of Apollonius, Archimedes, and Euclid. The major application of mathematics to the natural world was in astronomy, owing to the high degree of regularity in the celestial motions and large amount of observational information accumulated. Although the Babylonians had employed sophisticated mathematical algorithms to this problem, the great innovation of the Greeks was to devise what we would call mathematical models, i.e. to devise a theoretical concept of how the sun, moon, and planets must move, work out its mathematical implications, and compare these to the actual motions. From the early work of Eudoxus to the culminating system of Ptolemy, this project dominated astronomy, but the attempts of Aristotle’s followers to give a physical explanation for these basically mathematical pictures gave rise to issues that would survive the end of antiquity. An aspect of the Greek concept of nature was forming that did not quite cohere effectively.

The work of Archimedes in statics and hydraulics was a rigorous application of mathematics to natural phenomena. Such work was a more modern-looking and less mystical version of the old Pythagorean concept. Although the investigations of Archimedes were brilliant successes, they were too isolated to greatly affect the general Greek concepts of nature (though they did sow the seeds of much later science). Archimedes also performed some practical engineering work, and the practice of engineering and applied science (metal working, agriculture, etc.) in general formed another aspect of the Greek approach to the world in late antiquity. The most famous practitioners in this tradition were Vitruvius and Hero of Alexandria (the latter best known for his small steam-driven device). Yet another practical tradition that continued to make progress in improving knowledge of the world was found in medicine, including the knowledge of human anatomy discovered by dissection. But the knowledge resulting from these kinds of practical pursuits, though important, was not incorporated into any larger vision or theoretical structure. Such knowledge must have influenced the Greek view of nature indirectly, but it remained fragmentary and isolated, not really contributing to a new coherent concept of nature.

This latter project remained the province of philosophy, either that of Plato and Aristotle (and their commentators) or that of three new rival schools that arose: Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Neoplatonism. None of these philosophies, however, regarded understanding the world as their highest priority. Epicureanism and Stoicism were both primarily ethical philosophies, concerned with the right way to live; both devised concepts of nature as a means toward the end of promoting virtue and equanimity in their followers. Neoplatonism was primarily a mystical philosophy with the aim of transcending the material world altogether, and thus did not put much effort into nature philosophy, although some Neoplatonists explored further the idea of mathematics as a more fundamental reality underlying physical nature itself. The Epicureans and the Stoics did put forth substantial views of nature, and these views were almost completely different from each other. Epicurus was a materialist and an atomist in the tradition of Democritus. The major innovation of his system was the introduction of chance (“swerve” in the paths of the atoms) in contrast to the totally deterministic (reason and necessity) system of Democritus. The motivation of Epicurus in adding an element of chance to atomism was to allow free will and therefore moral responsibility to the system. The Stoics, whose views varied somewhat with different teachers and times, adopted the old idea that a void could not exist; all space was filled by their two continuous and intermixing substances, an inert material substrate and an animating vital spirit (pneuma) that gives form in accordance with reason. In the Stoic conception, the universe with its pneuma is a living being, of which the human with its soul is a microcosm. The pneuma is corporeal, and in that sense Stoicism is also materialistic even though forms arise through the action of an Intellect, unlike the Epicurean idea of only blind forces acting.

Nature in Chinese Thought

Although Chinese thinking about nature was not entirely static, it was remarkably stable over a period of two thousand years. In traditional Chinese culture, the elements of philosophy, religion, science, social structure, and political order were highly integrated, so looking at their concept of nature in an isolated way is not sensible. Another complication is the somewhat varying influences of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism on their attitudes toward nature. Yet another complication is the presence of occasional voices and movements that lie outside the main current of cultural thought in China, such as the naturalistic tendency found in the Mohist movement or the skeptical writings of Wang Ch’ung. We can present here only a brief and simplified description of the major trends in Chinese thought concerning nature.

One of the primary cornerstones of Chinese thinking is that it is correlative rather than causal when considering the relationships between events, things, ideas, etc. There are connections between things (north and feminine, for example) that are not either causal or logical relations but rather these connections are said to exist inherently in the make-up of the universe; such correlations are simply a part of the way things are, not the result of anything acting on the things or mutual actions of the things on each other. One major consequence of this correlative thinking is the importance of microcosm/macrocosm interpretations of nature. “A basic feature of systematic thought about the external world as it arose in China is that the body and the state were miniature versions (not just models) of the cosmos.”19 In this view, the human is a microcosm of the entire universe, the macrocosm, and there are a host of correlations between the two. Human society, identified with the state, is also a microcosm of the macrocosmic world. These three realms (human, society, cosmos) are linked together by many particular correspondences and also linked together by the person of the Emperor, who must perform the correct rituals to maintain order in the cosmos and in the society. Beyond its political implications, the microcosm/macrocosm view influenced the understanding of natural phenomena. Various organs and parts of the body are associated with parts of the greater world and their processes and functions operate in the same manner. Just as stagnant water gives rise to stench and decay in a pool, so stagnation of the body’s vital fluids leads to illness in a person. The emphasis is much more on process than on structure (anatomy in the body, physical characteristics in the world). “…organs and tissues figured in medical doctrines as mere correlates of the body’s systems of functions, mainly useful in diagnosis and in schemata that aligned parts of the body with physical features of the macrocosm. […] circulation is fundamental not only to the body’s growth but to its maintenance, irregularities in it are responsible for pain and disease. Somatic blockages are analogous to failures of circulation in the universe and the state.”20 In astronomy, the order observed in the celestial realm exemplified the desired order in a properly functioning Confucian society/state, and the particular sky events as recorded or predicted formed the basis for the calendar, presented by the Emperor as a mandate for the existence of a new year. Clearly, the Chinese interpretations of astronomical phenomena were heavily influenced by the microcosm/macrocosm view.

There remains a question of what governs all these correlated events and ideas. Once again, the answer involves inherent properties and relations as opposed to external causal influences. More specifically, the Chinese conception of nature is an organic one, in which processes and events unfold in accord with their inherent tendencies, and relationships are maintained by preexisting harmonies. “…the philosophia parennis of China was an organic materialism. You can illustrate this from the pronouncements of philosophers and scientific thinkers in every epoch. Metaphysical idealism was never dominant in China, nor did the mechanical view of the world exist in Chinese thought. The organicist conception in which every phenomenon was connected with every other according to a hierarchical order was universal among Chinese thinkers.”21 No central directing intelligence is required or found in this paradigm. Changes and processes simply occur as they are meant to, in conformance with their own inner natures and in relationship to all other changes and processes occurring similarly. Immaterial agents and entities are not a part of orthodox Chinese philosophy, but this fact must be qualified in two ways: First, a strain of older animistic thinking did survive in Chinese culture and sometimes became integrated into the orthodoxy. For example, to say that the inner nature of water is to flow downhill can be closely related to (or even shade into) the attribution of a “desire” to flow downhill on the part of the water or the spirit that animates and governs the behavior of the water. The second qualification is that the substances of which all things are made, although material, have a surprising and peculiar set of properties compared to material substances found in many other cultures. These properties will be more apparent soon, when we examine more closely the details of the system that evolved, but an important point to reiterate is that Chinese thought was much more concerned with process and function than with substance per se. This emphasis governed the questions that were asked and the conceptualization of “material substance” that ultimately was formulated.

The basic substance underlying existence in Chinese thought is called ch’i, but to simply call it a substance is rather misleading. The word does not have any simple equivalent in English, though it is sometimes rendered as “vital principle” or “energy” and so on. “The most basic stuff that makes the cosmos is neither solely spiritual nor material but both. It is a vital force. This vital force must not be conceived of either as disembodied spirit or as pure matter.”22 So although ch’i is a kind of substance, it transcends dualities of matter and spirit, of active and passive, of structure and function. All of these potentialities are inherent in the concept of ch’i, but in order to develop them further we need a more extensive set of ideas. The undifferentiated unity allows no further discussion; the primary bifurcation of this unity is into the great archetypal polarity, represented in Chinese thought by yin and yang. Each has a large set of correspondences (earth, feminine, north, moist, cool, etc.; sun, masculine, south, dry, hot, etc.) and these can be used to describe the state and action of the ch’i as it circulates, vivifies, and imparts form to its own self in the continuous foundation of the universe and the human being. Once again, it is movement, process, and function that dominate this analysis, rather than static structures or properties of substances. In addition to the duality of yin and yang, a further set of descriptive categories is provided by the wu hsing, the five phases (sometimes translated as five elements, five agents, and so on). The five phases (earth, fire, water, wood, and metal) are once again not merely static substances, but rather they are modalities of transformation for the ch’i itself, and once again each of the five has associated with it a long set of correspondences. Together, the concepts of ch’i, yin and yang, and the wu hsing comprised a powerful and flexible system with which to describe the universe, the body, and the state, along with their correspondences and interrelationships. “A fully developed cosmological doctrine, in which yin-yang and the five phases became categories of ch’i, tools for analyzing its complex configurations and processes, appeared in the first century B.C.”23 From its origins in the Han dynasty, this system lasted almost two millennia and was applied in medicine, political theory, alchemy, astronomy, and ethics. Indeed, it is still used in traditional Chinese medical practice.

This complex set of ideas served to answer questions that arose within the context of China’s organicist paradigm. Given that actions occurred spontaneously in accordance with the harmonious unfolding of their inner natures, we want to know how to explicate these inner natures to understand the world (or behave correctly), and this system is designed to offer such understanding. The other great concept in Chinese thought, which underlies all the rest that we’ve discussed, is the Tao. The Tao, or Way, cannot be described or explicated itself, but it is the metaphysical foundation for all of the processes and functions encompassed by the ch’i, yin and yang, and the wu hsing. Lastly note that all of the myriad correspondences implied by the microcosm/macrocosm picture can be described, worked out, and categorized within this system. But the correspondences are not correspondences of static structure; the Chinese concept of nature (which includes the human and society as well as the cosmos) deeply emphasizes dynamic process at all levels. Their concept of time and change, though prominently featuring cyclic thinking (such as the changing of the seasons) and not having anything like time as a linear dynamical variable, does clearly offer a sense of time as having reality and directionality, a sense that novelty occurs even as an ideal of stability is sought.

The correlative basis and great complexity of this system hide two other important aspects of the Chinese attitude toward nature. One aspect is the strongly empirical side of their thinking. In astronomy, for example, precise observations were recorded for thousands of years. In medicine, a large amount of empirical information about symptoms and treatments was accumulated and passed on, also being folded into the system described above. The alchemists certainly included an empirical element in their work, and the state sponsored data collection on rainfall, seismic activity, etc. But another important aspect of Chinese attitudes toward nature stems from the mystical Taoist influence on their culture, namely the receptivity, openness, and love of nature that lie underneath the many complex correspondences, and an intuitive grasp of natural processes derived ultimately from union with nature, decreasing the separation to nothing. Although mixed with many other influences, this attitude remains a part of the Chinese concept of nature through the years.

These multiple influences give the Chinese concept of nature a deep richness and subtlety. The Confucian concern with the correct functioning of society and the role of the state reinforced the idea of a microcosm/macrocosm relationship, for example. And the absolute power of the Emperor deployed by a complex bureaucracy, to which almost all intellectuals belonged, shaped the idea of correlated but uncaused relationships. Also, the membership of the intellectuals in a bureaucracy that owed all of its power to the Emperor tended to maintain stability in the ideas about nature, as did the cultural trait of imputing authority to ancient sages as opposed to recent innovations. Interestingly, many practical workers, such as engineers, shipbuilders, metalworkers, and rural medical practitioners were barred from membership in this bureaucracy, so these highly skilled people were generally not literate and their knowledge had little effect on the theoretical ideas of the more literarily inclined state-sponsored intellectuals (alchemists also fell into this category). Hence, a great deal of the first-hand knowledge about the workings of nature in China was not well integrated into the rest of its intellectual culture, and yet was clearly present in the culture overall.

While some areas, like dynamics and anatomy, were not much emphasized, a number of particular disciplines were highly developed in China. Astronomy, for example, engaged in an unbroken series of precisely recorded observations that lasted millennia. A sophisticated coordinate system was used to record this data, and constantly improved mathematical algorithms were devised in order to make predictions based on the regularity of the night sky. This mathematics, however, was not geometrical (but instead arithmetic/algebraic), and the Chinese did not attempt to create any kind of model for the motions of celestial bodies. Such a project would have been antithetical to their entire view of the world; the order and regularity of these sky events simply arose from the broader order of the entire cosmos, micro and macro alike. That this order could be described with mathematics was interesting but not extraordinary, because order was naturally to be expected everywhere in accordance with the Tao and the organicist conception of nature. From it came the accompanying order to the calendar, presented each year by the Emperor to the people as a sign of his maintaining of this proper cosmic balance in the state and in nature itself. To ask for some sort of other underlying source of the order and regularity found in astronomical observations would have made no sense, because the observed order was simply a manifestation of what was inherently there in all of nature, even when disguised by locally unbalanced tendencies (this is why an unexpected event was considered a bad omen for societal affairs).

Chinese cosmology has already been described in some detail. The major elements of cosmology were the macrocosm/microcosm paradigm, the material organicist conception of the world, the role of ch’i, yin and yang, and the wu hsing, and underlying all of these the ineffable Tao. Like any genuine cosmology, in the traditional sense of the word, this conception penetrates into the specific understandings developed in all of the particular sciences. This is seen in astronomy, and we have already discussed the influence of the Chinese cosmology on medicine. These cosmological ideas were combined with a store of empirical knowledge, resulting in a sophisticated medical practice that developed its own diagnostic methods based on observable symptoms and its own treatments such as acupuncture, moxibustion, and herbalism. One of the basic ideas of this medicine was that of disease as a disruption in the natural balance and harmony of the body (along with its relation to the world). Balance in the yin and yang plus proper flow of the ch’i through the body are essential to good health, so problems with these things as demonstrated by observed symptoms were treated accordingly (prescribing a yang herbal regimen to remedy a yang deficiency, for example).

The herbal remedies were supplemented by mineral-based drugs supplied by the alchemists. One of the major overarching projects of Chinese alchemy was to prolong human life, producing the long-sought elixir (this goal eventually became incorporated into European alchemy by way of Arab alchemy). Although Chinese alchemists are sometimes represented as superstitious and uncritical practitioners of a degenerated form of Taoism, they actually produced a good deal of genuine chemical knowledge (e.g. ammonium chloride, ammonium carbonate, and potassium nitrate) and developed instrumentation and techniques that also influenced the Arabs and hence the west. The theoretical ideas that guided the alchemists, though much different from the understanding of modern chemistry, were complex and sophisticated, related to the overall cosmology of China but more independent of it than the sciences supported by the state bureaucracy, retaining more of the archaic elements from prehistorical culture. At an empirical level, though, quantitative methods were employed and recorded. Chinese alchemy, though never incorporated into the mainstream of Chinese culture, was an influential and successful enterprise, affecting medicine, metallurgy, and even (as we shall see) warfare.

Mathematics became highly developed, but only in certain areas such as algebra and arithmetic. Deductive systematization did not become important, with the emphasis remaining on practical calculational methods (especially simplified algorithms that could be implemented by relatively unskilled members of the bureaucracy; the state collected and used large amounts of quantitative information). Geometry in general was not developed to any large extent until after contact with the west via the Jesuits. Although not having geometry did not hinder work in astronomy or engineering, it may have inhibited the study of optics to some extent. The role of number in Chinese culture was important and had a quasi-mystical significance, as shown by the importance attached to the four directions, the five phases, the nine heavens (as well as, mathematically, the nine numbers of a magic square), and the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching. This aspect of number also reinforced the correlative thinking of Chinese cosmology and thereby permeated the thinking of all intellectual culture. The extent of the mutual influence of numerical significance and practical mathematical computation is not clear, but both certainly had a role beyond mathematics itself.

Engineering, although important and supported by the state, was not part of the official Imperial bureaucracy. For this reason, engineers were not literate and have thus left few records of their thinking. Their accomplishments, however, in areas such as massive hydraulic and irrigation projects, weapons technology, the iron chain suspension bridge, and shipbuilding were highly impressive. Cloth and paper making, metal work (including iron casting many centuries before Europe), temperature control in the porcelain furnaces, and a host of other accomplishments attest to the practical technological skill of the Chinese. We do not have a clear understanding of how this body of technological knowledge was related to the cosmological conception of nature developed within the literate elite, but it’s fair to speculate that both were fed by the empirical strain of Chinese thought and by the strong appeal to tradition.

We’ll finish by looking at a few of the most famous results and accomplishments of the Chinese. The invention of the compass is certainly prominent among these accomplishments, and this invention was the result of their study of magnetism. Magnetic phenomena were less mysterious in the context of China’s idea of nature than in that of Europe, because the non-causal relationship of things separated by distances was already a part of Chinese thinking. That a bar magnet should orient itself in a certain direction, subject to no apparent push, was a natural outcome of their organicist and correlative thinking. They also studied this phenomenon empirically with great thoroughness, working out the details of declination at an early date. That the Chinese soon put their knowledge of magnetic properties to practical use in the compass is not surprising given their usual practical attitude. A different accomplishment for which they are known is the development of acupuncture. This technique is now becoming more often used in the west, and controversies over its efficacy and mechanism in particular cases don’t detract from its status as a major success of the Chinese medical tradition. Once again, we see the combination of Chinese cosmological theory and a great deal of empirical observation as leading to the results under discussion. Yet another major accomplishment of the Chinese was the great astronomical clock tower of Su Sung, built in 1088 at least three centuries before any similar clock in Europe, and which “was preceded by the elaboration of a special theoretical treatise by his assistant, Han Kung-Lien, in which the trains of gears and general mechanics were worked out from first principles. He did not have Euclid, but he could do that.”24 Here, the integration of cosmological conceptions and practical know-how is seen in the purpose of the device as well as in its construction. Finally, we consider the perhaps most famous Chinese invention of all, gunpowder. Gunpowder eventually resulted from the studies of the alchemists, who mixed saltpeter (potassium nitrate) together with sulfur for various purposes as early as the 7th century, as recorded in alchemical treatises from that time. They noticed that these mixtures burned violently, and the later additions of carbon sources into the mixture enhanced the effect. Reports of such combinations appear by the middle of the 9th century, and by the end of the 10th century gunpowder as we know it has been given a name (huo yao) and is being used in warfare to make simple bombs. The further evolution of gunpowder’s use in military technology doesn’t concern us here. What is interesting about this story is the advanced and advancing state of alchemical knowledge that it suggests at these early dates, a suggestion that can be generalized to the sophistication of the entire Chinese encounter with nature.

Nature Concepts in 12th Century Islamic Civilization

Prior to the time of Muhammad, Arab tribesmen had already developed a stock of knowledge concerning nature in order to survive in the harsh desert environment. Knowledge of plants and animals was obviously useful, for example, and knowledge about the night sky was needed to navigate. The world-view of these Arabs had an element of animism, so nature was also a living presence to them. The Islamic revelation, embodied in the Quran, did not add any specific pieces of information regarding nature, but it profoundly reoriented the entire approach to nature experienced by a believer. The Quran “provided the earliest stimulus for reflection on nature. The Quran contained a large number of verses that called attention to the harmony, symmetry, and order present in the natural world […] This invitation to reflect on nature was such an insistent theme of the Quran that no one could ignore it…”25 Into this intellectual milieu stimulated by the Islamic revelation, a huge amount of new information and novel traditions of thought were soon introduced by the rapid conquest of many ancient and learned cultures. The learning, including the approach to nature, of the Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, and Hindus were all added to the growing intellectual tradition of Islamic civilization. This legacy was reworked and synthesized in the light of the Islamic revelation (though not without conflict and controversy), and used as the basis for a great deal of original work by Muslim thinkers. The result of this process was the Islamic concept of nature that emerged during the early Middle Period, from about the 11th to the 13th centuries.

Among the early intellectual traditions of Islam was a method of theological inquiry that came to be known as kalam. The basis of kalam was an absolute belief in the Quranic revelation, but the Quran leaves a number of important questions unanswered. Issues such as how to reconcile predestination and free will, or whether God’s total justness is consistent with both omnipotence and the presence of evil in the world, were growing in importance. Although the Quran served as the starting point and fundamental touchstone for grappling with these issues, a rational analysis was also needed to deal with them fully. Once these sorts of discussions started, several different schools arose proposing different views. Although the initial discussions were centered on purely theological issues, it became inevitable for the conversation to expand into cosmological doctrines as well, and in this way kalam disputation entered into the development of the Islamic concept of nature.

Meanwhile, an entirely different tradition was also developing, based on the entry of Greek philosophy into Islamic culture. An extensive translation movement from the 8th to the 10th centuries brought many Greek philosophical texts into the Arabic speaking world, even as Arabic itself evolved into a more precise, flexible, and powerful instrument for working with ideas. These Greek works on metaphysics, logic, mathematics, and natural sciences inspired a new approach to learning within Islamic culture, the tradition known as falsafah. The adepts of this tradition, the faylasufs, were dedicated to a life of reason and critical inquiry. Their view of nature emphasized the orderly workings and unchanging principles of the universe, and hence the faylasufs became important builders of the Islamic scientific tradition. The emphasis on rationality and inherent order in falsafah, however, were not easily reconciled with the fundamental revelatory basis of Islam. For many Muslims, challenging the authority of Muhammad and the Quran by putting the authority of rational thought uppermost was offensive. “The Socratic tradition could not rest content with being bound to limit its questioning within a framework which was imposed by a historical intervention such as Islam. Nor could the Quranic tradition accept subordination for its conclusions to the authority of private human speculation.”26 After a considerable amount of controversy and accommodation, taking place over several centuries, a modified falsafah developed in ways that were more integrally related to the evolving Islamic culture. Although certain segments of society continued to mistrust and resent falsafah, it had become an important part of the mainstream of Islamic civilization by the 12th century, and a crucially important contributor to their concept of nature. Within the overall tradition of falsafah were embedded a number of particular sciences (astronomy, mathematics, medicine, optics, and alchemy) that flourished for several centuries, the most advanced in the world of that time.

The role of nature within Islam was somewhat problematic. The central message of Muhammad concerned humans, and how they should relate to God and to each other. Hence, ethical study and teachings along with interpretation of the Shariah law (culminating in a complex system of jurisprudence known as fiqh) became paramount. Furthermore, because Islam is profoundly historical, in the sense that the revelation to Muhammad was a specific historical event though it has cosmic significance, the study of history is also considered of great importance. Only the Quran and the hadith (sayings of the Prophet) were irrevocably worthwhile in Islam, and for some Muslims nothing else had any worth at all. And yet, nature did have a valid place in Islamic culture, based on both the Quran and the hadith themselves. “Muslim religious doctrine promotes a concept of the entire material universe as a sign of God’s activity, […] Thus, in order to understand God, it is necessary to investigate every aspect of his creation—all phenomena that exist in the world […] study of [God’s] activity is thought to provide knowledge of the right path toward the proper life….”27 The study of nature also offered practical benefits, in areas such as medicine for example. These motivations, along with innate curiosity, assured the development of nature concepts within Islam, even if overshadowed by the study of fiqh law, Arabic grammar, and so on. Another factor that hindered the study of nature in Islamic culture, however, was the educational system. Areas like astronomy, mathematics, and medicine were not taught in the organized system of madrasa schools; these advanced fields could only be learned by apprenticeship with established scholars at observatories, hospitals, royal courts, and settings of that sort. Despite all this, the study of nature reached heights in the Islamic world that Europe would not see for half a millennium. More importantly, the concept of nature they ultimately developed was fully integrated into the fabric of their entire culture.

In the sophisticated cultural milieu of the 12th century, all forms of knowledge and behavior, including the understanding of nature, were grounded in the fundamental basis of Islamic life, the Quranic revelation. Nature was accordingly understood as a manifestation of Divine will, and any particular study or discipline was interpreted within this context. “Islam and science discourse existed within the larger intellectual tradition of Islam and although there were many foreign currents that ran through the warp and weft of the tradition, it remained integrally linked to the Islamic worldview […] science in the Islamic civilization was part of a larger tradition of learning that arranged different disciplines in a hierarchical structure like the branches of a tree. The trunk of the tree in this case was none other than the central concept of Islam: the Oneness of God (Tawhid). Because of this central unifying concept, all branches of knowledge, including the natural sciences, were linked through an inalienable nexus with the metaphysical concepts of Islam. Each branch of knowledge was a contributing tributary to the main stream.”28 An important characteristic of this hierarchy of knowledge was that the physical and the metaphysical were organically related within it, not compartmentalized separately in the way that the modern world typically thinks. Empirical studies, metaphysical insights, mathematical models, and religious experiences all blended together in their emerging concept of nature.

This intrinsic connectedness is seen most clearly in the centerpiece of the Islamic nature concept, cosmology. The Quran itself contains a number of verses outlining cosmological processes, and these verses formed the basis for earliest kalam treatment of cosmological questions. The contact with Greek thought introduced the idea of an eternally existing universe, as opposed to a universe that was created at a specific beginning of time. The fundamental conflict between these two formulations drove a great deal of cosmological thinking in the falsafah traditions. These tensions were ultimately resolved, in part by invoking the emanationist ideas of Plotinus, and an Islamicized version of Hellenic thinking evolved, though the subject always remained one of ongoing debate. The epitome of this work is found in the thinking of the great scholar Ibn Sina (Latinized as Avicenna), who successfully synthesized Aristotle with the Quuranic revelation. Ibn Sina emphasized the distinction between essence and existence, so that these two attributes were both found only in the Necessary Being (that is eternal) but not in material reality (that is merely contingent). “But Ibn Sina’s concept of ‘Necessary Being’ is used here as an ontological principle, in the context of a cosmology where modalities of necessity and contingency play a crucial role. However, it is the close affinity of Ibn Sina’s Necessary Being to the Quranic God and of his single order of reality to the general thrust of Quranic teachings that makes this Hellenized scheme a compelling and powerful case of a fundamental recasting of the Greek legacy […] In sum, Ibn Sina’s cosmology rests on two fundamental premises: (i) that a material entity can emanate from an intelligence, and (ii) that there is in some sense a unity in the entire universe which is dependent upon the fact that the Necessary Being is the ultimate cause of every entity.”29 Islamic cosmology, however, like other traditional cosmologies, was not concerned only with the origin of the universe but also with the purpose of the universe and with the role of humans within this purpose. Humans constitute a microcosm of the greater cosmos, and serve as a link between the spiritual and material realms of existence. Cosmology, with its metaphysical and religious overtones joined to more physical ideas, served as one of the most important links between the concept of nature and the central concerns of Islam.

Astronomy was one of the most important of the Islamic sciences, relating genuine observations of nature with mathematical calculations and models yet also making contact with the more speculative cosmological ideas. Knowledge of the night sky had a long history in Arab culture, was explicitly referred to in the Quran, and was the subject of the earliest translations of Greek and Persian texts. Ptolemy’s Almagest was quickly incorporated into Islamic astronomy, and its observational data continuously improved. The Muslim astronomers were excellent at measurement and observation, establishing major observatories at Isfahan, Maragha, and Samarkand plus a large number of smaller installations (Rayy, Shiraz, Baghdad, Rakka, Cairo, Ghazna, etc.). These observatories were outfitted with improved instruments of various sorts, such as large measuring arcs, sophisticated versions of the sundial, astrolabes, quadrants, and celestial globes. The astrolabe, in particular, was perfected to a high degree. Increasingly precise measurements were compiled into extensive astronomical tables (known as zij) and were used for both practical and theoretical purposes. Practical uses included improvements of the calendar, timekeeping, and establishing the direction toward Mecca (all needed for purposes of Islamic ritual and prayer). Theoretical issues involved the improvement of Ptolemy’s complex model of the planetary movements, which employed epicycles, deferents, and equants. Better data induced Muslim astronomers to look critically at the assumptions and methods of the Ptolemaic system, resulting in a literature that extended over several centuries. A particularly pressing question involved the lack of uniform circular motion resulting from the use of equants. This problem was solved by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, who developed a mathematical construction that preserved uniform circular motion, now popularly referred to as the Tusi Couple (there is evidence that Copernicus was influenced by Ibn al-Shatir’s use of the Tusi Couple in astronomy). The zij tables were also useful in astrology, further connecting the order in the night sky to order at all levels of the cosmos. Islam produced many thinkers who made important contributions to astronomy, among the most noted being al-Biruni, Ibn Qurra, al-Battani, al-Khwarizmi, al-Tusi, al-Haytham, al-Shirazi, al-Urdi, Ibn Bitruji, al-Juzjani, and al-Shatir. The relationships between astronomy and mathematical work, Aristotelian physical thinking, and the metaphysical conception of order in the cosmos made astronomy a central element in the concept of nature in Islamic thought.

Mathematics itself was one of the most sophisticated parts of the Islamic intellectual tradition. Ideas of logical structure and geometry were inherited from the Greeks, advanced computational methods from the Babylonians, and advanced number theories came from India. The idea of zero, and its use as a place-holder in a decimal number system, was adapted from Hindu thought, improved upon, and ultimately transmitted to European culture as the famous “Arabic numerals” that we still use today. Important advances in working out the use of this number system to make computations simply and efficiently (i.e. arithmetic) were pioneered by Muhammad al-Khwarizmi, one of the greatest mathematicians in history. Al-Khwarizmi is also famous for another major achievement, namely the development (in some ways, the invention) of algebra. Both “algebra” and “algorithm” are words based on terms coined by al-Khwarizmi. Islamic mathematicians like al-Haytham, al-Tusi, and Omar Khayyam also made important advances in geometry and trigonometry. “It was only much later, in the nineteenth century, that the medieval Muslims were understood to have defined what came to be called Euclidean geometry, and that, without realizing it, they had pointed the way toward the discovery of independent non-Euclidean disciplines.”30 Algebra continued to advance, with a variety of solutions found for second and third degree equations, and Khayyam also systematized these advances. The mathematics of conic sections, inherited from Alexandrian Greek culture, was also studied and advanced by Muslim mathematicians. Mathematics, along with its intrinsic importance, played roles that were both physical and metaphysical in Islamic culture. Mathematics was applied to understanding musical acoustics and optics, as well as astronomy. But in addition, the Neoplatonic and Pythagorean understanding of mathematics as the mystical substratum of reality was also deeply embedded in Islamic culture and related to the cosmic order revealed in the Quran.

In the study of music, especially, the physical and metaphysical aspects of mathematics blend together. Muslim studies of music continued along the lines begun by the Pythagoreans, relating musical intervals to mathematical integer ratios. Studies of this sort were written by al-Kindi, al-Farabi, and the Ikhwan al-Safa (Breathren of Purity), unifying musical intervals with cosmological and astronomical ideas by means of mathematical ratios. Meanwhile, another area in which mathematics played a prominent role was the study of light, optics. The study of optics was arguably one of the premier Muslim contributions to science. Al-Kindi studied the reflection of light and visual perception, while al-Razi and Ibn Sina wrote on optics from an Aristotelian perspective. The towering figure of Islamic optical investigations, however, is Ibn al-Haytham (Latinized as Alhazen). Al-Haytham performed experimental studies and mathematical analyses of refraction and reflection of light, formation of rainbows, parabolic mirrors, and visual perception. His theory of visual perception was close the modern idea, involving image formation by the eye of light emanating from the perceived object. Al-Haytham’s work in the areas of rainbow formation and the camera obscura were later continued by al-Farisi, who considerably improved the explanation of rainbows (which had also interested the Ikhwan al-Safa). The work of al-Haytham also influenced the thinking of European figures such as da Vinci and Roger Bacon.

Medicine was another discipline for which many treatises were translated almost from the time of the Prophet. Gondeshapur, in Persia, was already an important center of medical information and practice when the Arabs conquered it in 638. The Greek medical heritage of Hippocrates, Galen, and Dioscorides became available, along with knowledge of Indian medicine and the practical skills of the Nestorian community. In addition, the wealthy and well-organized Caliphate established large hospitals where medical expertise was concentrated, improved, and transmitted to students. Many prominent faylasufs were actually primarily physicians. Two of the prominent early examples of this category are Ibn Sina and al-Razi (Latinized as Rhazes). They both wrote encyclopedic medical reference texts, and Al-Razi is also noted for his work on smallpox. Muslim physicians continued to improve on the legacy they had inherited from Greek and Hindu sources, investigating human anatomy, contagious diseases, and pharmacology, eventually establishing a literature critical of the old sources and writing new medical texts based on their own discoveries. Among the more prominent figures in this movement were Ibn Rushd, Ibn al-Nafis, Ibn al-Khatib, al-Zahrawi, and Ibn Zuhr; among their accomplishments were studies of blood circulation, the anatomy of the eye, the idea of contagion, and the development of advanced surgical techniques and instruments. Also worthy of note is the vast pharmacological compendium written by Ibn al-Baytar, with more than a thousand medicinal plants included. In addition to the simple herbal remedies, Muslim pharmacology also began to include prepared drugs based on alchemical processes.

Alchemy was an important, if sometimes esoteric, part of the Islamic intellectual tradition, and the application of alchemy to pharmacology was only a small part of the entire field. The Muslims inherited the strong tradition of Alexandrian alchemy from Hellenic culture and later added to this the alchemical ideas if India and China. The ancient sources of alchemy in craft traditions, metal smelting, and shamanic practices had already been transformed by contact with both philosophical and mystical currents by the time it entered Islam. All these aspects of alchemy, both practical and esoteric, were retained and amplified within Islamic culture, and new elements of experimentation and quantitative thinking were added. The most important early figure by far in Islamic alchemy was Jabir ibn Hayyan (Latinized as Geber), who lived in 8th century Baghdad and to whom many treatises are attributed. The central idea of Jabir’s work is “balance,” a concept that seems to refer simultaneously to numerical amounts of differing elemental principles of substances and to spiritual and physical attributes of these substances. Some of the later alchemical investigators, such as al-Biruni, al-Khazini, and al-Razi emphasized more the quantitative aspects of the balance idea. Other alchemists, however, emphasized the more esoteric aspects of the work, in which the changes of material substances directly reflect changes in soul of alchemist himself. Alchemy in this sense is directly related to the cosmological doctrines of humans as a microcosm of the universe, and Jabir’s work is related to the Quranic verses dealing with the balance. In contrast, al-Razi “demonstrated a firm preference for proof through experiment […] basic alchemical processes such as distillation, calcination, crystallization, evaporation, and filtration gained precision […] the standard alembics, beakers, flasks, funnels, and furnaces began to resemble those of modern times.”31 Islamic alchemy cannot be simply reduced just to chemistry, or to magic, or to psychology, or to philosophy, or to spiritual purification, or to any single aspect; all of these elements operate together in alchemy, which in many ways makes it a paradigmatic example of the Islamic concept of nature.

It’s difficult to make generalizations about a culture that spanned many centuries, included lands from Spain to India, had many different social classes, and ideologically competing elites (the pious ulama scholars, the faylasufs, the courtly literary adibs, the Sufi mystics, and so on). “…the Shariah-minded guardians of the single godly moralistic community maintained a frustrated tension with the sophisticated culture of Islamdom, which they could successfully condemn but not effectively destroy.”32 And yet, the faylasufs did manage to forge a synthetic concept of nature that was characteristically Islamic and highly successful, even if not the centerpiece of the culture. The centerpiece of the culture, of course, was the Quranic revelation, which (along with the Arabic language) held the civilization together. The activities of falsafah needed to accommodate and ultimately merge with these central aspects of Islam, but falsafah also provided numerous practical services in support of them. The faithful needed to know precisely the times of the day for prayer and the direction of the Ka’ba from any geographical point, information provided by the astronomers and mathematicians. Mathematicians also supplied techniques for the division of inheritances in accordance with the dictates of the Quran, and the times for religious observances in the lunar calendar. But beyond these practical considerations, the faylasufs offered an understanding of nature integrated with the overall Islamic vision of reality. It was not a static or simple understanding, as evidenced by al-Ghazali’s critical response to Ibn Sina in order to revitalize the spiritual roots of Islam, but the fundamental idea remained consistent.

This fundamental idea was a concept of nature which was not separate from the concepts of ethical behavior, spiritual reality, historical sense, or even legal rules. All of these aspects of Islamic culture were combined into a hierarchical system stemming from the Quranic revelation. “…they all sought to explain the cosmos in the light of revelation, in particular, in the light of the doctrine of al-Tawhid, the Unicity of God, which made it impossible for two cosmic orders to co-exist. This fundamental principle acted as a prism through which all theories were passed in order to test their validity. It was this powerful doctrine, situated at the very heart of the Quranic message, that made it possible for the Muslim scientists to transform those Greek theories about nature which conflicted with revelation […] It was through the inherent power, simplicity, and uniformity of this principle that was operative in all realms of knowledge that a coherent Islamic worldview appeared.”33 Nature did not exist as a separate thing apart, but instead nature was like all else a manifestation of the divine will such that all parts of nature had a proper place and meaning within the overall order of reality.