Scientific Instruction and the kinds of intellect

6. Man is essentially ignorant. He becomes learned through acquiring knowledge

There are various kinds of intellect:

1. The discerning intellect

This lets us arrange our actions in an orderly manner

2. Experimental intellect

This helps us acquire from our fellow men ideas

3. Speculative intellect

This helps us obtain perception of the existent things as they are, whether they are absent or present

Man’s ability to think comes to him only after the animality in him has reached perfection.

It starts from discernment. Before man has discernment, he has no knowledge and is counted one of the animals.

His origin, the way in which he was created from a drop of sperm, a clot of blood, and a lump of flesh, still determines his mental make-up.

Whatever he attains subsequently is the result of sensual perception and the “hearts” - that is, the ability to think - God has given him.

In recounting the favor He bestowed upon us, God said: “He gave you hearing, vision, and hearts.”

In his first condition, before he has attained discernment, man is simply matter. He is ignorant of all knowledge.

He reaches perfection of his form through knowledge, which he acquires through his own organs.

Thus, his human essence reaches perfection of existence.

One may compare the word of God when His Prophet began to receive the revelation.

“Recite: In the name of your Lord who created, created man out of a clot of blood. Recite: Your Lord the most noble who taught with the calamus, taught man what he did not know.” 35

That is, He let him acquire knowledge he did not yet possess, after he had been a clot of blood and a lump of flesh.

Man’s nature reveals to us the essential ignorance and acquired character of the knowledge that man possesses.

The verse of the Qur’an:

• refers to it at the very beginning and opening of the revelation
• establishes through it the fact that man has received from God as a favor the first of the stages of his existence, which is humanity and its two conditions, the innate one and the acquired one.

7. Scientific instruction is a craft

Skill and mastery of a science is a result of habit.

• This habit enables its possessor to:
  • comprehend all the basic principles of that particular science
  • become acquainted with its problems
  • evolve the details of it from its principles.

As long as such a habit has not been obtained, skill in a particular discipline is not forthcoming.

Habit is different from understanding and knowing by memory.

Understanding of a single problem in a single discipline may be found equally in someone well versed in the particular discipline and in the beginner, in the common man who has no scientific knowledge whatever, and in the accomplished scholar.

Habit, on the other hand, belongs solely and exclusively to the scholar or the person well versed in scientific disciplines.

This shows that scientific habit is different from understanding.

All habits are corporeal, whether they are of the body, or, like arithmetic, of- the brain and resulting from man’s ability to think and so on.

All corporeal things are sensibilia. Thus, they require instruction.

Therefore, a tradition of famous teachers with regard to instruction in any science or craft is necessary.

The fact that scientific instruction is a craft is also shown by the differences in technical terminologies.

Every famous authority has his own technical terminology for scientific instruction, as is the case with all crafts.

This shows that technical terminology is not a part of science itself.

If it were, it would be one and the same with all scholars.

One knows how much the technical terminology used in the teaching of speculative theology differs between the ancients and the moderns.

The same applies to the principles of jurisprudence as well as to Arabic philology and to jurisprudence.

It applies to any science one undertakes to study.

The technical terminologies used in teaching it are always found to be different. This shows that the (terminologies) are crafts used for instruction, while each individual science as such is one and the same.

The tradition of scientific instruction at this time has practically ceased to be cultivated among the North Africans [the Maghrib]. This is because:

• that civilization has disintegrated
• its dynasties have lost their importance

This has resulted in the deterioration and disappearance of the crafts.

Al-Qayrawan and Cordoba were centers of sedentary culture in the Maghrib and in Spain, respectively.

Their civilization was highly developed. The sciences and crafts were greatly cultivated and very much in demand in them.

Since these two cities lasted a long time and possessed a sedentary culture, scientific instruction became firmly rooted in them.

But when they fell into ruins, scientific instruction ceased (to be cultivated) in the West, Only a little of it, derived from (al-Qayrawan and Cordoba), continued to exist during the Almohad dynasty in Marrakech.

Sedentary culture, however, was not firmly rooted in Marrakech because of the original Bedouin attitude of the Almohad dynasty and because of the shortness of time between its beginning and its destruction.

• Sedentary culture enjoyed only a very minor continuity there.