 The member of the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution: “An endeavor is necessary that our scholars accomplish scientific work and innovations with confidence and consciousness” 16th cultural session proposed for the university faculty members was held with the speeches of Dr. Mehdi Golshani, a member of the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution. In this session that was held on Monday, April 9 in the Imam Khomeini Cultural Complex, Dr. Golshani presented briefly the ascending and descending process of science development in Islamic societies, Iran, and the west in different ages and stated: “the great scientists like Abu Reyhan Biruni and khajeh Nasireddin Toosi observed the world with an Islamic vision and were persons that accomplished the scientific affairs with those days scientific methods by all means. The situation was the same in the Islamic world”. He stressed that: “whenever there was an expansion of thought divergence in Iran (such as in Samanian and Ale-Buye era), we observed the most advances in science. However, with Motavakel Abbasi’s caliphate and domination of Ashari theological school- that was contradicted with philosophy- science was declined in the Islamic world, so that in Molla-Sadra time that was coincided with the emergence of modern sciences in the west, the science was in its worst situation in the Islamic world and Iran”. Dr. Golshani noted then the beginning of the scientific developments in the west and said: “the science in Europe was shined with people like Galileo, Newton, and René Descartes, when the thinking environment was- like the Islamic world- according to the way of thinking in Abu Reyhan Biruni and khajeh Nasireddin Toosi’s time. Newton was a Unitarian whose concern was that his science and religion be in agreement with each other. But after one hundred years, when the Newton mechanics developed to the highest degree, a sense of disdain was gradually appeared in the west scholars, and the era of enlightenment started in England by Deism and led to French by denial of God”. While explaining the place of religion and God in the process of science development in the west, this university professor said: “there was a perception that the religion would be dismantled in nineteenth century, but the events such as the world war one and two, and appearance of various schools of science philosophy in the second part of the 20th century, led to elimination of this concept”. Affirming that most of the secrets can be extracted from Holy Quran and Hadith, Dr. Golshani said: “it should not be ignored that the Holy Quran has issued the command of “ travel through the earth ….” for us and asked us to understand the enjoy of discoveries and to feel awfully against the nature’s vastness, and this is not achieved unless by doing scientific work”. He added: “in the period when we copied the science from the west, we were such affected by technology that we forgot the science itself. This meant that, despite all the Holly Quran’s emphasizes on the science, we did not practice the Islam advices, and with all these encouraging points in our religion, we fell behind. Today a n endeavor is necessary that our scholars accomplish scientific work and innovations with confidence and consciousness”. He specified that: “in the inevitable specialized world of today, we should have vast vision and to value other fields, so the interdisciplinary fields become very common”. |
