As for mathematics, (Ghazali) explains, its object is either discrete quantity (arithmetic), or continuous quantity (geometry), neither of which are relevant to metaphysics. As for arithmetic, he simply dismisses as nonsense the claim that metaphysics requires it. As for geometry, he associates it with investigating the shape and structure of the cosmos (the number and arrangement of the spheres and their movements). This, he claims, is also irrelevant for metaphysics.
For this is as if someone were to say that the knowledge that this house came to be through the work of a knowing, willing, living builder, endowed with power, requires that one knows that the house is either a hexagon or an octagon and that one knows the number of its supporting frames and the number of its bricks, which is raving, its falsity obvious; or that one does not know that this onion is temporally originated unless he knows the number of its layers and does not know that this pomegranate is temporally originated unless he knows the number of its seeds…’ (2000 p. 9).
This raises a question that we will have occasion to consider later. The contention, essentially, is that natural science has no bearing on metaphysics. The analogous metaphysical question, drawn from the first example, would be whether the cosmos and its contents came to be through the work of a knowing, willing, powerful Creator. The apparent implication here is that we cannot arrive at an answera to that question by inferring from what we know about the natural structure of these things. This would seem to preclude any teleological ‘design’ argument, premised on observations of the order in that structure. Yet in other works, Ghazālī does just that.
In his major theological text, al-Iqtisād fī al-I‘tiqād (Moderation in Belief), he argues that, since the world is a well-ordered act, and every well-ordered act proceeds from a knowing and powerful agent, then the world proceeds from a knowing, powerful agent. Part of the evidence he produces for the first premise, moreover is based on the observation that the compartments of a beehive are hexagonal and therefore optimal for fitting the round shape of the bee without wasting space (2013 p. 91). Knowing that a house is hexagonal may not be necessary for knowing it had an intelligent designer, but knowing that a beehive is hexagonal is apparently sufficient for knowing it did. Unless we can know the world is a well-ordered act without knowing anything about its natural structure, it is hard to see how one can maintain that natural science has no connection to the question of whether the world has a knowing, willing, powerful Creator…
…In the second introduction, Ghazālī divides disputes with the falāsifah into three types: those that reduce to semantics, substantial disputes that do not contradict any religious principle, and those that do. Only the third sort, according to Ghazālī, require objection…
…The example of the second category is the falāsifah explanation of the eclipses. There is no purpose in disputing this, says Ghazālī, because it does not contradict religious doctrine. In fact, those who dispute it in the name of defending religion actually harm religion. ‘For these matters rest on demonstrations – geometrical and arithmetical – that leave no room for doubt,’ he writes, ‘Thus, when one who studies these demonstrations and ascertains their proofs…is told that this is contrary to religion, [such an individual] will not suspect this [science, but] only religion’(2000 p. 6). Then what if we find something demonstratively proven that does contradict religion? In that case, according to Ghazālī, we must interpret the religious text figuratively.
The discussion here deserves careful attention. The first thing Ghazālī does, is to consider an objection raised, on account of a hadith narrating a description by the Prophet Muhammad of the eclipses as God’s signs, where he denied that they happen because of the birth or death of any person and commanded people to pray if they see one. Nothing in this, Ghazālī says, contradicts the explanation of the eclipses demonstrated by the falāsifah. Understanding natural phenomenon as signs of God, we may infer, is compatible with them also having natural explanations. Note here Ghazālī’s opposition to any pretense to a monopoly on the sources of knowledge by self-styled defenders of religion.
One version of the hadīth in which this prophetic saying is narrated concludes with the statement, ‘But, if God reveals himself to a thing, it submits itself to Him.’ Ghazālī considers the objection that with this addition the text does indeed contradict the falāsifah explanation of the eclipses. The transmission of this version, he argues, is unsound. ‘For if the transmission [of the addition] were sound, then it would be easier to interpret it metaphorically rather than to reject matters that are conclusively true’ (2000 p. 7). There are many cases of metaphorical scriptural interpretation (ta’wīl), he points out, to resolve contradictions with things proven less decisively than the explanation of the eclipses.
There are two important things to take from this. First, there is the implied rule that when a scriptural text contradicts something demonstratively proven we should interpret the former metaphorically. Secondly, there is the implication that the statement, ‘if God reveals Himself to a thing, it submits (khaḍa‘a) itself to Him,’ taken literally, is incompatible with a natural explanation of the eclipses. It seems that Ghazālī takes the literal sense of ‘submits’ here as pertaining to the natural. For he proceeds to explain all this in terms of the same analogy he uses above for the lack of relation between the natural and the metaphysical.
This is because the inquiry [at issue] about the world is whether it originated in time or is eternal. Moreover, once its temporal origination is established, it makes no difference whether it is a sphere, a simple body, an octagon, or a hexagon; [it makes] no difference whether the [highest] heavens and what is beneath are thirteen layers, as they say, or lesser or greater. For the relation into [these matters] to the inquiry into divine [matters] is similar to the relation of looking at the number of layers of an onion [or] the number of seeds in a pomegranate. What is intended here is only [the world’s] being God’s act, whatever mode it has (2000 p. 7).
This seems to imply that in Ghazālī’s view the term ‘submits’, applied literally to an object of nature, entails that some specific physical description applies. Then when this physical description contradicts another one the truth of which we can logically demonstrate, we interpret the former as a metaphor for a metaphysical truth. Since there is no relation between the physical (e.g. the number of seeds in a pomegranate) and the metaphysical (e.g. the contingency of the pomegranate) then a logically demonstrated physical fact can never contradict a metaphysical truth. As we noted above, it seems to follow (problematically, perhaps) that a physical fact (or facts) can never entail a metaphysical truth. Consequently, Ghazālī must understand all non-negotiable religious principles as metaphysical principles, and it is only in defense of these that he deems it necessary to oppose the falāsifah.
Well anybody gonna say something?