علم الزمن والوقت
Sir Arthur Eddington described this epistemological crisis saying: “all that is difficult for modern science in today’s world is relentlessly neglected under the pretext that it is not objective”.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr commented on this distortion with a mental image in which he stated “It seems a problematic for an audience of deaf people who listen to a concerto and testify that they have heard nothing and rely for their applause on general acceptance as a proof of objectivity” (Islam and the Plight of Modern Man), (Muqadimat Aliha Min Halwa).
Science in this context tends towards quantity and exaggerates in denying all that is of quality, therefore it makes measuring its only and preferred tool to judge things; without excepting time, space and even human himself from this exaggerated quantitative tendency, as Henri Poincaré says in his book “time and space” that the unmeasurable cannot be a subject of science”.
We can represent this dialectic between quantum and quality, by analyzing the time you spend talking to your mother: is it subject to a highly strict quantitative considerations, according to a specific schedule? Is it ethical to check your watch when she’s talking to you? Can we call that “a psychological time” or “religious time” in the usual manner? Or maybe it has other further dimensions, subject to the will of the Almighty Allah, and the purpose is to attain His satisfaction and a hope to be in heaven … In the positivist/ materialistic science, we are used to believe that when the Almighty Allah enters the classroom, the scholar leaves it, however, when the scholar enters the classroom he would necessarily take the Almighty Allah out (look – The exclusion of religion is the origin of the dominant times in Western thought, under the thesis of principals of programming).
I carried out a model search in “qualitative time” about the standards of time and dealings including time, I explained that they are all human organs and that a machine is not a requirement to determine a specific standard, measurement or time, and that all attempts to oblige people to comply to the absolute mechanical accuracy makes sharia lose its spirit, and tends towards unbearable assignments. (Philosopher Al-Kinidi wrote a research entitled “On sighting the crescent is not determined by investigation, but by approximation” however unfortunately it is missing).
If the specialty means “fragmentation” and “division” as the opposite to intelligence and emanation; contemporary history has praised specialization in all fields, beginning with Taylorism in the division of labor, and ending up with researchers and scientists in their specialized universities and specialized research centers… the matter did not stop in this case, it rather tended to be an example and a model of progress and development, and described others as backwardness and regression.
Time was not spared from the act of “specialization”, as it was fragmented by writers who were loyal to their ideas, although they were very superficial, and know the truth only from a corner after it has been darkened, and know about life nothing but something that lost life to become a subject of study and a subject of research …
In this regard, René Guénon notes “absence of sciences of quantitative nature pertaining to time, with the same degree as geometry for space” (The Crisis of the Modern World).
I would like to say: as a matter of priority, we note a scarcity of sciences of qualitative nature related to our field of our research and interest; i.e. time. Indeed, some of these sciences had existed in the past, then were assassinated within the arrival of contemporary quantitative renaissance, when separation was announced between “science and religion”, “reason and revelation” “human and non-human”, “matter and spirit” (Alija Izetbegovic: Islam between East and West, and El-Messiri: the encyclopedia, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr: Ideals and Realities of Islam).
Written by: Dr. Mohamed Babaami
Translated by: Toufik Achour
Date: 02/01/2023
The Article title in Arabic: (اضغط للوصول إلى المقال) الكيف والكم، أو الموضوعية وآلة التخصص والتفتيت
