Reason and Experience: The Representation of Natural Order in the Work of Carl von Linné (review)

Miracle stories in sacred texts have been a source of both fascination and heated debate across religious traditions. Qur'anic miracle stories are especially interesting because they are part of a discourse that also de-emphasises the miraculous. By looking at how three scholars have engaged with Qur'anic miracle stories, I here investigate how these narratives have been interpreted in diverse and fruitful ways. The first part of the article analyses how two medieval scholars, al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) and Ibn Rushd (d. 595/1198), engaged with the implications of miracle stories. Taking his cue from miracle stories, al-Ghazālī offered a sophisticated critique of natural determinism and suggested that the natural order should be perceived as a constantly renewed divine gift. In contrast, Ibn Rushd dismissed al-Ghazālī’s critique as sophistry and maintained that accepting the possibility that the natural order might be suspended was an affront to human knowledge and science. In the second part, I turn to Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1870–1960), whose interpretation offers a crystallisation of al-Ghazālī’s insights as well as, surprisingly, an indirect confirmation of Ibn Rushd's concerns about human knowledge and science. Nursi redefines the miraculous in light of miracle stories, and interprets them as reminders of ‘everyday miracles’ and as encouragements to improve science and technology in God's name.

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Universal Social Culture

American Journal of Islam and Society ◽

10.35632/ajis.v11i1.2452 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 13-24

Author(s):

Muhammad Al Ghazali

Keyword(s):

Natural Order ◽

Human Society ◽

Social Culture ◽

Philosophy Of Life ◽

Empirical Survey ◽

Islamic Thought ◽

The Individual

Shah Wali Allah's (1703-63) ideas and profound intellectual legacycontinue to atrract scholastic interest. Despite many works on his legacy,significant facets remain unknown. As his futuristic ideas hold great promisefor modem and future Islamic thought, his works should be analyzed.We will focus on one such idea: his synthesis of reason, revelation,and empiricism. Building on evidence from an inductive survey of socialphenomena to support the claims of revelation and staying within thedoctrinal framework of revealed guidance, he constructs a universal socialcultute paradigm and says that all Qur'anic injunctions and instructionsof the Prophet are compatible with the demands of human nature.His view of the individual and human society is an integral facet ofhis philosophy of life and is one of the most original parts of his legacy.He sees life as a display of the grand divine scheme in natural order andSocial organization. Although his exposition of humanity's social developmentseems to be in the nature of a humanist and sometimes assumes theform of an empirical survey, his final conclusions confirm the fundamentalpostulates of religion. Some modem exponents of his social doctrinessuggest that his ideas are not original and say that he might havetaken them from Ibn Sin$ or Ibn Khaldiin. However, a totalist view ofhis framework of thought shows that this is an unwamted assertion ...

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Boltzmann’s Theory

10.1093/oso/9780198816171.003.0010 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Olivier Darrigol

Keyword(s):

Statistical Mechanics ◽

Natural Order ◽

The Past

In this last chapter, the reader will find synthetic reflections on Boltzmann’s sources, on the basic components of his theory, and on the ways it was received. The basic components are arranged according to the natural order in which they occurred in Boltzmann’s theory making: constructive tools, chief constructions, crucial predictions, underlying concepts, bridges between different approaches. To fully understand his enterprise, one must embrace his theory as an entire whole organism. This is a difficult and time-consuming task, which this book is meant to ease. In the past, Boltzmann’s readers fortunately did not need a historian’s thoroughness in order to benefit from his multiple constructs and insights. These elements, even taken out of context, had enough power to propel diverging theoretical projects from Boltzmann’s times to ours. In many ways, Boltzmann’s theory anticipated the richness, diversity, and residual opacity of modern statistical mechanics.

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IV.—On Mineral growth, at ordinary temperatures, and under ordinary conditions

Mineralogical Magazine and Journal of the Mineralogical Society ◽

10.1180/minmag.1877.005.1.05 ◽

1877 ◽

Vol 1 (5) ◽

pp. 158-184

Author(s):

T. A. Readwin

Keyword(s):

Natural Order ◽

Mineral Growth ◽

Close Relationship ◽

At Will

“Plants live, and grow ; Animals live, grow, and move; Minerals, neither live, grow, nor move.”For so long a time, has this been an article of almost universal belief, that any nonconformity therewith, is looked upon with more or less of grave suspicion.In what follows, it is proposed to show that there is a rather more natural order in which the aphorism may appropriately run; namely :—Minerals grow, Plants live and grow, Animals live, grow, and move at will. “The three kingdoms of nature,” as they are not at all inconveniently called, exist in close relationship; so very close, indeed, that some naturalists think they are not really apart from each other.

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Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?: How Eighteenth-Century Science Disrupted the Natural Order. By Susannah Gibson. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. $34.95. xv + 215 p.; ill.; index. ISBN: 978-0-19-870513-0. 2015.

The Quarterly Review of Biology ◽

10.1086/688107 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 91 (3) ◽

pp. 354-354

Author(s):

Elof Axel Carlson

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Eighteenth Century ◽

Natural Order ◽

Oxford University ◽

Century Science ◽

Oxford University Press

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The Radical Goals of Slave Morality in Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality

The Review of Politics ◽

10.1017/s0034670520000182 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 82 (2) ◽

pp. 247-268

Author(s):

Thomas Meredith

Keyword(s):

Natural Order ◽

General View ◽

Human Being

AbstractThis paper offers a new account of Nietzsche's critique of morality in the first treatise of his On the Genealogy of Morality. According to the general view, Nietzsche places political revenge at the center of slave morality: the priest invents slave morality in order to rule the noble. I argue that this view is incomplete, for Nietzsche's deeper critique reveals that the priest's revenge is not purely political but also radically ontological. Ultimately, the priest aims at supplanting not just the noble but also the rule of nature. This reading reveals the priest's attempt to transform the natural order of rank through imagining the human being as subject to the omnipotent God of monotheism, i.e., the “just God.” This interpretation not only broadens our understanding of Nietzsche's critique of morality but also clarifies its purpose, namely, to show us how the demand for morality can blind us to the world's truths.

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