“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them”
Galileo Galilei, 1632
Many in today’s society regard science as the ultimate source of truth, or at least the means for approaching truth. Others contend that religion is the only source of truth as it is ordained by God and is immutable throughout time. Science surrenders to the inescapable filter of our perceptual experiences, and the fickle nature of inductive reasoning. Religion is combated by reductionist materialist claims about the physical world and its observable nature. Nevertheless, more broadly speaking, truth today emerges from consensus, and rarely gains traction when individually discovered. What is more, faith and reason play an indelible role in this pursuit of truth- faith is needed to obtain the certainty characterising truth in the first place, and reason is needed to ground it. That is, faith without reason is dogma and reason without faith is bottomless materialism. Reason and faith thus constitute internal states, feeding into an internal journey to truth. Rene Descartes in Discourse on Method and Ibn Tufayl in Hayy Ibn Yaqzan both approach this internal journey methodologically, albeit in opposite directions. Whereas Tufayl goes from the bottom up, building his knowledge sequentially, Descartes goes from the top down, demolishing all preconceived notions, thereby seeking a secure foundation with which to ground his knowledge. This essay will discuss the method each thinker uses, their commonalities and differences, finally exploring how the internal harmony of faith and reason manifests itself in an external harmony of science and religion in Galileo Galilei’s Letter to Madame Christina.
Science is traditionally thought to rest upon the faculty of reason, and religion on the faculty of faith. I will begin by defining these terms for heuristic purposes. Science is first and foremost human knowledge, as it consists of the human pursuit of an understanding of reality; the scientific method is then the systematic, organized and directed nature of the process through which we attain this knowledge. What is more, the scientific method employs reasoning to get from the hypothesis to the conclusion. The conscious use of reason is logic and mathematics. Positivist positions view religion as a subjective phenomena far removed from scientific treatment (Mcpherson, 1954). Indeed, religion includes more parameters, just as biology or psychology include more parameters than physics, and is therefore less objective. It is, however, far from just a subjective, mystical or solely private practise. Defined more broadly, religion is a progressively revealed unifying force that details both a world view, and a schema for relationships between humans and between humans and God. Faith, in this context, is the force of belief required to actualise the world view and scheme for the different relationships religion reveals. More broadly speaking, faith is a prerequisite for a secured attitude towards one’s reality- it is necessary for certainty, and, by extension, for truth. Faith and reason can be understood to have the same mandate, namely to uncover some truth about our internal and external realities.
Descartes was one of the leading figures in the scientific revolution, making significant contributions to geometry, science and epistemology. The Discourse on Method was originally published as a prefatory piece to three other discourses, one on optics, one on geometry, and one on meteorology. At the start of the Discourse on Method he says that science rests on “unstable foundations” (Descartes, 5), and he wishes to rebuild a system of precise and complete knowledge. He resolves to search for knowledge within himself, as he believes that one can find much more truth in individual reasoning on matters that are important to oneself (Descartes, 6). He wishes to polish his sullied system of knowledge, learning how to distinguish true from false, in order to “go forward with confidence in life” (ibid). Descartes devotes all his mental faculties to introspection, leaving books to explore his own mind. Thereupon, he carefully devises an intricate method, the so-called “Cartesian Method of Doubt”, with an internal purpose of grounding his own knowledge.
The Cartesian Method of Doubt rests on the concept of foundationalism, where the basic structure is that you think about everything you believe in, discount all of it by subjecting it to doubt, ultimately precipitating a set of basic beliefs with which to build a solid edifice of thought. Once this is established, he can confidently put philosophy into practise and contribute to social progress. That is, what precedes the scientific method is ensuring that the objects of observation, analysis and hypothesising can be ascertained in the first place.
To begin with, he doubts the reliability of sensation, as our senses often deceive us, such as when we see things from a distance. Secondly, he doubts things that could be altered in a dream state, such as whether your hands are truly your hands or not. Thirdly, he invokes a hypothetical evil demon to question even a priori truths. At last, the only thing immune from doubt is his existence, since there has to be a subject doing the thinking involved in the Method of Doubt in the first place, just as there has to be a runner doing the running or a cook doing the cooking. That is, the content of thinking includes the concept of an “I”, and this is where the famous “cogito ergo sum” is voiced. Now that through his scrupulous method he is convinced that he exists, he wishes to know in what this certitude consists, which leads him to the Truth Rule. The Truth Rule is a rule that ensures true conclusions upon clear and distinct perception (Descartes, 19). The existence of God would be one statement that is “true”, as Descartes claims we perceive God’s existence clearly and distinctly. Metaphysical certitude is therefore only achieved through clear and distinct perception. Faith plays an indispensable role in the truth rule itself, and therefore in his foundationalism in general, as Descartes must have faith in what it claims, and its reasoning. What, therefore, fills the explanatory gap between clear and distinct perception and the attainment of truth? A benevolent deity. A benevolent deity must necessarily exist qua the truth rule, in order for clear and distinct perception to preserve truth in the first place, since a deceptive deity, or even an indifferent one, would not comply with the rule. A theological assumption, therefore, precedes his foundationalism in a circular way that cannot be escaped, since even if the concept of a deity were not introduced, an element of faith would still factor in since certainty inherently assumes faith in a propositions truth value. Once a stable foundation has been established, he can confidently share his subsequent discourses with the world. This feat was only achieved through the interplay between faith and reason. His introspective methods will go on to corroborate scientific theories later developed, illustrating the point that internal journeys to truth herald external discoveries of truth. The trajectory, however, does not always have to be top down; it can also be constructed bottom up, with an observation of one’s surroundings leading to a recognition of patterns that guide the agent to truth. This is the method Hayy practises in Hayy Ibn Yaqzan .
The new born Hayy Ibn Yaqzan is found alone on a desert island and is adopted and raised by a doe. His upbringing is therefore removed from all human contact and civilisation. As such, his journey reflects a thought experiment in which his path to truth must necessarily be an internal one.
Hayy begins his journey “studying animals and plants” (Ibn Tufayl, 115), and he is soon after amazed by the nature of fire and how it illumines its surroundings. Naively experimenting with what was a completely foreign phenomenon to him, he quickly realises that it is harmful and powerful, burning everything it comes into contact with. His fascination with fire parallels Descartes’s fascination with light in part five, though Descartes launches himself in the study of nature after he has secured his foundation for knowledge. His work on light prefigures his discourse on Optics, where he shares Ibn Tufayl’s belief in the integral role light plays in the world, as for him light is the quintessence of life; the sun and the stars are sources of light, the sky the transmitter of light, heavenly bodies objects that reflect light, and human beings perceivers of light. On a metaphorical level, light symbolises faith, but also knowledge, which may further hint at their synergy. As light is the first natural phenomena he is drawn to, his quest to flourish from this starting point evokes the synergy between faith and reason in the first place.
Hayy then hypothesizes that fire is the secret to life, and that its absence must characterise death. To test his hypothesis he kills a beast in order to see whether or not the heart chamber, which had been empty in his late mother, would be filled with some fire-like substance. His results support his hypothesis and satisfy his conviction that when the internal “heat†animals have departs, the animal dies. This discovery arouses a desire in him to study the physiology and anatomy of all other living things, and he continually refines his understanding of life around him, to the point that he is “improving the quality of his mind until he had reached the level of the finest natural scientists†(Ibn Tufayl, 117). The fact that the scientific modus operandi obtains without instruction signals its innate property. What is more, it is an internal mental process that can be validated by consensus, but is solidified through faith in one’s ability to test hypotheses, and consequently in the conclusions that arise therefrom.
The mind used to test and refine these hypotheses relies on inputs from the external world, which are then synthesised into an understanding. However, the conclusions Hayy reaches imply that we have a priori mental faculties, which when combined with sensory observations reveal a posteriori truths about the physical world. As a result, truth becomes an internal struggle projecting out into the world and making sense of it. For example, Tufayl writes that Hayy knew by necessity that all that comes into being must have a cause†(Tufayl, 127)- that is, he can somehow through observing that B always follows A, infer that A causes B. David Hume will go on to say that there is a necessary connection between the two that we cannot account for, but nevertheless impose on the natural world. Immanuel Kant will, however, side with Tufayl and say that the explanatory course runs from the mind to the world, where our minds organise the world around us into cause and effect in order to make experience possible in the first place (interestingly enough this shift in thinking, namely from going from world to mind as oppose to mind to world is termed the Copernican Revolution). Thus, reaching truth is not only curtailed by our psychology, but also enabled by it.
Once the concept of causality is solidified, Hayy then goes on to conclude that everything must have a cause, since it was implausible that “all this had come from nothing, or in no respect emerged from nothingness but always existed” (Tufayl, 130). However, it would also not make sense for the origin of the universe to come before the origin of time (ibid), for if the universe had come to be in time, the “necessary consequence existence by itself, but must have had a Maker to give it being” (ibid). This maker would have to be immaterial, since if it were material, it would be in time and itself in need of a cause, and so forth ad infinitum. Hayy thus concludes that the world has a “non-corporeal Cause” (ibid), unperceivable by the senses, unfathomable by the imagination and devoid of any physical characteristics. Moreover, this Maker is aware of and concerned with its creation. From this point onwards he abstracts further and reaches an understanding of divinity and theology, all from simple observations of the world around him followed by inquiry and experimentation. His ponderings and conclusions are coupled with faith in a benevolent creator, as well as faith in the soundness of his reasoning and the validity of his inferences.
Understanding then becomes the kernel of his endeavor, as his upward progression of thought parallels an ascending sense of understanding. This understanding is contagious if one opens one’s heart, as Absal does when he meets Hayy. He says that “reason and tradition were at one within him…now he had a heart to understand” (Tufayl, 160). Truth is something everyone can partake in, even if it can not be fully grasped in scope, but rather in design. As truth is one, this understanding is reached regardless of the path taken, as long as both reason and faith are applied. In Discourse on Method Descartes hints at the unique role understanding plays in uniting sensation with knowledge by saying that “There is just this difference: the sense of sight assures us no less of the truth of its objects than do the senses of smell or hearing, whereas neither our imagination nor our senses could ever assure us of anything if our understanding did not intervene” (Descartes, 21). Thus, there is something independent of the sensory world that allows the human mind to realize and comprehend science.
One could argue that Hayy’s journey undermines science, as it implies that all scientific understanding can be reached independently without collaboration and communication with others. Although in practise, scientific knowledge relies on an interpretive framework and the objectification of internal experience, Hayy’s achievements retreat to the pure nature of the scientific method- a “systematic, organized, directed and conscious application of our mental faculties” (Hatcher, 1979). In this way his journey breaks away from Descartes’s emphasis on the communal nature of science, as well as the intuitive conception one has of science today- labs, conferences and a worldwide scientific dialogue. Hayy’s method for finding truth is necessarily internal (as he is socially isolated) in order to prove its effability- it illustrates how living in a Muslim state does not ensure unwavering faith in God. This is clearly shown at the end when Hayy unfolds his understandings and discoveries to the highest religious authorities and scholars and they fail to recognise his message. We read that, “The moment he rose the slightest bit above the literal or began to portray things against which they were prejudices, they recoiled in horror from his ideas and closed their minds” (Tufayl, 163). An internal marriage of faith to reason, achieved in isolation, allows Hayy to reach his spiritual and epistemological potential, surpassing even the most devout Muslim believers.
Now that these bidirectional, internal methods for nearing truth, solidified through faith and grounded by reason have been explored, I will transition to a discussion of how the harmony of these internal states can translate into an external harmony of science and religion. In the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, Galileo’s goal is to convince his readers of the compatibility of science, more specifically Copernicanism, and scripture. He asserts that, “[he does] not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them” (Galilei, 5). This is to show that complementary faculties of faith and reason have been conferred for an ordained purpose. Furthermore, as “Those truths which we know are very few in comparison with those which we do not know.” (Galilei, 6), there is an even stronger impetus to use the the entire toolbox to unravel the mysteries of the universe. The harmony of science and religion then becomes a sort of checks and balances, where whenever science disagrees with faith it is subject to doubt, and vice versa. Furthermore, the science and religion both have elusive features- they are both mysteries for us to unravel and no human can claim authority to them. Indeed, Galileo affirms that “ it is not in the power of any created being to make things true or false, for this belongs to their own nature and to the fact” (Galileo, 17).
It follows that truth is one, and we are endowed with a toolkit, that is, different systems of knowledge, with diverse parameters, with which to apprehend truth. There can be no opposition between science and religion because that would contradict the oneness of truth. Reason alone is valid, but not exhaustive- it has a limited scope exemplified by both the volatility of scientific theories, and the Kuhnian model of complete paradigms being shattered. So too with religion, bottomless faith yields to incoherence- “he who maintains the truth will have many sense-experiences and rigorous proofs on his side, whereas his antagonist cannot make use of anything but illusory appearances, quibbles and fallacies” (Galilei, 35). As such Galileo claims that both cognitive abilities must be employed to fortify truth.
As signaled by the Golden Age of Arabic Science, as well as the Enlightenment period, the arc of science bends towards progress. Descartes specifically heralds the many advancements in public health that philosophy, and by extension science, can offer. Progress is therefore a linear path moving upwards, where even scientific understanding itself can be viewed as ever-progressing. In that light, Hayy’s burgeoning knowledge, from an understanding of nature to an understanding of God, follows the similar logical progression of science insofar as it approaches truth. In the same vein, our understanding of phenomena such as disease or natural catastrophes is constantly growing, but it does not amount to anything unless there is faith in its validity.
As one can see through the discussion of Descartes and Hayy’s bidirectional paths to truth, where one, through faith, establishes a strong foundation on which to build knowledge (top-down), and the other, sequentially builds knowledge culminating in faith in God (bottom-up), their methodologies play a critical role. These methodologies lend themselves to internal journeys that reach out to the agents’ external realities, but employ the scientific method both with cognitive and physical matter. Furthermore, although truth may appear to both vary between individuals and differ in its manifestation, its essence is one. Prejudice and close mindedness can obscure sight, as is seen with the religious scholars both Hayy and Galileo encounter. An open mind, therefore, welcomes the internal, synergy of faith and reason and gradually approaches external, consilient truth at the intersection of science and religion through a scientific method. Both science and religion, aimed at progress when conjoined, propell social change, through the generation, application and diffusion of comprehensive teachings about the human condition and social and material reality. Thus, truth is a unifying cynosure for humanity, and is relative in relation to humanity’s progressive understanding. The onus is on the individual to emancipate herself from prejudices and harness the capacities she has. To bridge the conflict even further, Baha’i writings proclaim that religion is “divine in origin, all-embracing in scope, broad in its outlook, scientific in its method, humanitarian in its principles and dynamic in the influence it exerts on the hearts and minds of men” (Effendi, 1933). With this conception of religion, it becomes even more plausible that Descartes and Hayy’s methods of doubt and inquiry inherently contain the interaction between faith and reason, beckoning to the harmony of science and religion.
Works Cited:
Mcpherson, Thomas. “Positivism and Religion.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 14, no. 3, 1954, p. 319., doi:10.2307/2104104.
Hatcher, William S. “Science And The Bahai Faith.” Zygon�, vol. 14, no. 3, 1979, pp. 229–253., doi:10.1111/j.1467-9744.1979.tb00359.x.
Letter to Madame Christina of Lorraine Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Galileo Galilei
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo Galilei
Ibn Ṭufayl, Muḥammad ibn ʻAbd al-Malik, and Lenn Evan Goodman. Ibn Tufayls Hayy Ibn Yaqẓān a Philosophical Tale. University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Descartes, René, and René Descartes. Discourse on Method ; and Meditations on First Philosophy. Hackett Pub., 1998.