Van Huyssteen J.W. (editor) Encyclopedia of Science and Religion

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ISLAM,HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

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The conservative movement clashed with the Ab-

basid Caliph al-Mahm5n (r. 813–833

C.E.), who,

wishing to establish state control over religion,

promoted the teachings of the philosophical the-

ologians. Al-Mahm5n required all judges (who were

state appointees) to uphold the doctrine that the

Qurhan (technically, God’s direct speech) was cre-

ated. The conservative scholar A*mad ibn Hanbal

refused to conform and was imprisoned. His con-

tinuing refusal resulted in severe beating and home

confinement until al-Mutawakkil (r. 847–861

C.E.)

revoked this policy.

The early Abbasids were more successful in

their policy of encouraging the translation of sci-

entific and philosophical texts into Arabic. This

movement began with al-Man’5r’s commission to

his physician to translate medical texts into Arabic.

By their commitment to a program of appropriat-

ing the pre-Islamic scientific and philosophical

legacy into Arabic, the early Abbasid view of sci-

ence went beyond the utilitarian. This perspective

is evident in the Abbasid establishment of the in-

stitution of a royal library, the House of Wisdom

(bayt al-*ikma), which played a role in scientific

activity and perhaps translation. These policies re-

sulted in the translation into Arabic by the middle

of the tenth century of almost the entire scientific

and philosophical corpus of Classical and Late An-

tiquity and a handful of Sanskrit and Pahlavi texts.

This endeavor relied on Nestorian Christian and

other translators and financing by patrons beyond

the court. The sons of M5s1 are an interesting ex-

ample. Their father, a former brigand, was be-

friended by al-Ma’m5n. M5s1’s orphaned sons

were raised at the palace and their education was

supervised by the caliph. Subsequently prosper-

ous, they patronized additional translations, apart

from being excellent mathematicians in their own

right. Translation activity was not haphazard. Man-

uscripts of texts to be translated were eagerly

sought. Moreover, entire areas of the classical tra-

dition, for example Greek drama and tragedy,

were bypassed deliberately.

Despite the engagement of the Abbasid court,

the translation enterprise was not uncontroversial.

The scientist and philosopher al-Kind3 (d. ca. 870

C.E.), tutor to al-Muita’3m’s (r. 833–847 C.E.) son

and patron of an early translation of Aristotle’s

Metaphysics, addresses critics in his On First Phi-

losophy: “We ought not to be ashamed of appreci-

ating truth and of acquiring it wherever it comes

from, even if it comes from races distant and na-

tions different from us.” He rejects “those who are

in our day acclaimed for speculation, who are

strangers to the truth . . . because of their narrow

understanding. . . . [They] traffic in religion, though

they are devoid of religion” (p. 58–59). The targets

of his remarks are undoubtedly philosophical the-

ologians and legal scholars. Despite such contro-

versy, the translation project was a resounding suc-

cess. It initiated a vigorous scientific and

philosophical tradition that extended and flour-

ished beyond Baghdad, persisting in various forms

until modern times. During the tenth century, sci-

entists and philosophers were patronized at the

courts of the Hamdanids in Syria, the Buyids in

Iran and Iraq, the Fatimids in Egypt, and the Ghaz-

navids in Central Asia, among others.

The movement to appropriate was followed by

the naturalization of the “sciences of the Ancients.”

The extent of naturalization is evident in the edu-

cation of Ibn S3n1 (980–1037

C.E.), also known as

Avicenna. Residing in the eastern city of Bukhara

in present-day Uzbekistan, he learned arithmetic

from a grocer, then studied with an iterant philoso-

pher, and then, having surpassed his instructor,

taught himself the “Ancient” sciences from books

that he purchased. An opportunity to examine the

private library of the local ruler led to finding

rooms of books on all subjects. Ibn S3n1’s account

illustrates the widespread engagement with knowl-

edge and the extent of the naturalization of “the

sciences of the Ancients,” from the practical arith-

metic of the grocer, to the iterant philosopher who

sought eager students in peripheral locations, to

the availability of books in the markets, as well as

in private collections. The tenth-century Epistles of

the Sincere Brethren illustrates another aspect. The

epistles represent a sectarian educational program

in ethics, politics, mathematics, physics, meta-

physics, and the religious sciences, providing an

Islamic worldview steeped in a Neoplatonism.

Such a perspective was also promoted by the

tenth-century Sh3i3 Fatimid dynasty in Egypt.

The age of Ibn S3n1 represents the culmination

of the naturalization of the “sciences of the An-

cients” in Islamic civilization. These sciences were

flourishing almost everywhere. Ibn S3n1 was based

primarily in Iran. His contemporaries include the

astronomer and mathematician al-B3r5n3 (973-1050

C.E.) in Central Asia; the physicist, astronomer, and

mathematician Ibn al-Haytham (965-1039

C.E.) and

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the astronomer Ibn Yunus (d. 1009 C.E.), who were

both in Egypt; the physician al-Zahraw3 (963-1013

C.E.) in Andalusia; and others. These scientists

were at the frontiers of research, yet they were crit-

ical of the scientific tradition they had received via

the translations and its early proponents. In his en-

cyclopedic work The Cure, Ibn S3n1 presents an in-

tegral worldview of the “philosophical sciences”

encompassing logic, mathematics, physics, and

metaphysics. Ibn S3n1’s writings were extremely in-

fluential. Many in later generations studied Ibn

S3n1’s works, whether as proponents of the “sci-

ences of the Ancients” or as critics.

The fundamental premises of the worldview of

the “philosophical sciences” as explicated by Ibn

S3n1 are as follows. The world is eternal, produced

by cascading emanations of the Divine, who is oth-

erwise removed from, and not directly involved in,

creation. The world comprises celestial and terres-

trial realms. The celestial realm is constant and un-

changing, consisting of emanated spiritual be-

ings—intellects and souls—associated with

celestial spheres, which house each of the planets.

Planetary motion is voluntary, exhibiting the desire

of intellects and souls to imitate the divine. In con-

trast, the terrestrial realm, consisting of the mineral,

plant, and animal kingdoms, is always in flux. Man,

possessing intellect, are at the head of the terres-

trial chain of being. The celestial realm influences

events in the terrestrial realm through emanation.

The phenomenon of prophecy, for example, oc-

curs when a particularly receptive human with a

powerful imagination is able, through the guidance

of a celestial intellect via emanation, to represent

pure knowledge in symbolic and cultural garb.

Most men are incapable of grasping pure truth and

thereby need symbols, rewards, and threats to pre-

serve public order. Revelation is thus replete with

symbols, necessitating allegorical interpretation by

those with access to pure, theoretical knowledge,

namely, the philosophers.

Critique and defense of the “sciences of the

Ancients”

Soon after Ibn S3n1’s death, the Sh3i3 Buyids were

replaced by the Saljuqs, who favored Sunni

restoration. By 1055, the Saljuqs controlled Bagh-

dad. They then seized control of the eastern

Mediterranean and Mecca and Medina from the

Sh3’3 Fatimids, and in 1071 they overcame Byzan-

tine resistance in eastern Turkey. Like their Buyid

predecessors, the Saljuqs were protectors of the

powerless Abbasid caliph. The Saljuq vizier Ni81m

al-Mulk (r. 1064–1092

C.E.) established Ni81m3ya

madrasas (colleges) that, while nominally private,

represented official sponsorship of the Sh1fii3 legal

school. Already active at the end of the Buyid pe-

riod, partisans of Ahhmad ibn Hanbal intensified

their drive to promote the conservative perspective

and caliphal authority. They staged popular upris-

ings against Muitazil3 philosophical theology, the

mystic al-Hall1j (859-992

C.E.), and even the Han-

bal3 scholar Ibn Aq3l (1040-1119

C.E.). The move-

ment culminated with the appointment of the Han-

bal3 Ibn Hubayra (d. 1165

C.E.) to the vizierate by

the caliphs al-Muqtaf3 (r. 1136–1160

C.E.) and al-

Mustanjid (r. 1160–1170

C.E.). During the early

years of the reign of the later, the property of a

judge who had fallen out of favor was seized, and

his books on philosophy, including Ibn S3n1’s The

Cure and the Epistles of the Sincere Brethren, were

burned.

In a similar environment in 1091, Ni81m al-

Mulk appointed the religious thinker al-Ghaz1l3

(1058–1111

C.E.) to teach Sh1fii3 law at the

Ni8z1m3ya in Baghdad. Al-Ghaz1l3 spent the first

year studying Ibn S3n1’s works and then publishing

The Aims of the Philosophers. Soon after, he pub-

lished The Incoherence of the Philosophers, with

the aim of “[refuting] the ancients, showing the in-

coherence of their beliefs and the contradiction of

their doctrines with regards to metaphysics” (p. 3).

The Incoherence attacks the cosmology of the

“philosophical sciences,” in particular, the proposi-

tions of the eternity of the world, God’s lack of di-

rect involvement in the world evident through

God’s ignorance of particular events, the determi-

nation of particular events in the world by celestial

souls, natural causality, and the denial of physical

resurrection as described vividly in the Qurhan. Al-

Ghaz1l3’s attack, albeit utilizing Ibn S3n1’s philo-

sophical vocabulary, is a defense of the cosmology

of the philosophical theologians. The Incoherence

concludes by charging those who pursued the

“philosophical sciences” with unbelief (kufr) on

the grounds of their denial of creation ex nihilo,

God’s knowledge of particulars, and bodily resur-

rection.

When al-Ghaz1l3 himself was accused of unbe-

lief, he composed the legal work The Clear Crite-

rion for Distinguishing between Islam and Unbe-

lief. He notes that this charge was hurled for

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sectarian purposes by the Hanbal3s against the

Ashiar3 philosophical theologians, or the Muitazil3s

against the Ashiar3s, and so on. Thus, this work is

primarily directed against the philosophical the-

ologians and conservative Hanbal3s. Al-Ghaz1l3 as-

serts interpretive flexibility where the Qurhanic text

is susceptible to interpretation, although he pro-

poses strict guidelines. Nevertheless, his attitude of

extreme caution in taxing a Muslim with unbelief

raises the question of whether he had reevaluated

the charge of unbelief against the philosophers in

the Incoherence.

In his magnum opus, The Revival of the Reli-

gious Sciences, al-Ghaz1l3 discusses the classifica-

tion of knowledge from a religious perspective. He

divides knowledge into religious and secular,

namely, knowledge derived from prophets, and

knowledge guided by intellect, observation, or so-

cial convention (e.g., arithmetic, medicine, and lan-

guage). The pursuit of secular sciences beneficial

to human activity (e.g., medicine and arithmetic) is

praiseworthy even though one need not engage

too deeply into them. Geometry and arithmetic are

neutral, although some may be led astray by them.

Physical sciences, apart from medicine, do not

have any utility, and lead people astray. Meta-

physics also leads people astray. Thus, most natu-

ral sciences and metaphysics are blameworthy. Al-

Ghaz1l3 does not evaluate logic, although he

describes it as the examination of methods and

conditions of proof. He had argued for the

Qurhanic basis of logic in many treatises and incor-

porated logic into his major work on legal theory.

Since Aristotelian categorization and analysis were

indispensable to logic, al-Ghaz1l3’s action provided

a foothold for the “philosophical sciences” at the

heart of the religious sciences.

The Andalusian jurist and philosopher Ibn

Rushd (1126–1198

C.E.), also known as Averroës,

rebutted al-Ghaz1l3’s critique of the “philosophical

sciences.” Andalusia had undergone a series of so-

cial upheavals since the end of Umayyad rule in

1031. After a divisive period of the petty states

(1031–1091

C.E.), Andalusia came under the con-

trol of the Berber Almoravids (1091–1147

C.E.) and

then the Almohads (1147–1269

C.E.), who were in-

vited to defend Spain against the Christian drive to

reconquer Spain and oust the Muslims (known as

the Christian Reconquista). Under the Umayyad

rulers Hish1m (r. 788–796

C.E.) and 9akam I

(r. 796–822

C.E.), M1lik3 law became the official

Islamic legal school in Andalusia. Andalusian

M1lik3 law was highly conformist, rejecting any ex-

ercise of independent judgment. M1lik3 scholars

were deeply suspicious of the “philosophical sci-

ences” and theological philosophy, and they even

prevented the circulation of al-Ghaz1l3’s works.

When Ibn Rushd was introduced to the Almo-

had ruler Ab5 Yaiq5b ibn Y5suf (r. 1163–1184

C.E.),

he hesitated engaging in a discussion regarding the

eternity of the world. The ruler then commissioned

him to write commentaries on the works of Aristo-

tle, for which Ibn Rushd became known as “the

Great Commentator” in medieval Europe. Ab5

Yaiq5b also appointed Ibn Rushd as judge in Cór-

doba, Spain. In his Incoherence of the Incoherence,

Ibn Rushd rebutted each point of al-Ghaz1l3’s cri-

tique of the “philosophical sciences.” His Decisive

Treatise on the Harmony between Religion and Phi-

losophy is a legal defense of the “philosophical sci-

ences.” Ibn Rushd argues that the Qurhan commands

Muslims to recognize their Creator through the

study of creation. Since the “philosophical sciences”

study creation via demonstration, which is the best

manner possible, they permit capable minds to

obey the Qurhanic edict. For the masses who cannot

grasp demonstrative proof, rhetorical and dialectical

knowledge is sufficient. Thus revelation is couched

in rhetorical and dialectical language so that the

masses can believe, perform religious acts, and

maintain public order. Towards the end of his life,

Ibn Rushd was briefly imprisoned by the Almohads,

who were under external threat from the Recon-

quista and had to placate M1lik3 demands.

Appraisal

It would be a mistake to conclude that the

episodes described above illustrate unmitigated re-

ligious opposition to science in Islam. The pursuit

of science was not explicitly driven by the Qurhanic

edict to study creation, despite Ibn Rushd’s argu-

ment to the contrary. Nevertheless some Muslim

scientists, for example al-B3r5n3, reflect upon the

Qurhan in their works. In The Determination of the

Coordinates of Positions for the Correction of Dis-

tances between Cities, al-B3r5n3 quotes the Qurhanic

verse, “They consider the creation of the heavens

and the earth [and exclaim], Oh our Sustainer, You

have not created this in vain” (3:191). He then

comments, “This noble verse incorporates all that I

have explicated in detail. Only after carrying out its

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instruction will man arrive at the heart of the sci-

ences and understanding” (p. 3). Al-B3r5n3 illus-

trates the attitude that prompted the exploration of

scientific problems connected to religious prac-

tice—the determination of times and direction of

prayer, the sighting of the crescent moon, and the

determination of the twilight and sunset. As a re-

sult, the office of the timekeeper versed in mathe-

matics and astronomy and affiliated with the Friday

congregational mosque became an important insti-

tution in some regions.

The “philosophical sciences” had always been

studied privately and had no place in the curricula

of the post-eleventh century, increasingly domi-

nant institution of the madrasa. The exceptions of

arithmetic and medicine at some madrasas. Yet the

“philosophical sciences” were deeply rooted in the

Islamic world and were incorporated into the reli-

gious sciences, as evidenced by Al-Ghaz1l3’s incor-

poration of logic into Islamic legal theory. In his

massive commentary on the Qurhan, Fakhr al-d3n

al-R1z3 (1149-1209

C.E.) turns to the “philosophical

sciences” to discuss theories of light, planetary mo-

tion, and other such matters. This attitude is also

evident in the philosophical theologian al-Ij3 (d.

1355

C.E.), whose work The Stations of Philosophi-

cal Theology became the standard textbook in the

Sunn3 madrasas and was the subject of numerous

commentaries across the Muslim world. The same

can be said of other popular texts. Clearly the in-

teraction of religion and science in premodern

Islam was a complex phenomenon and requires

due diligence to the specific contexts that sup-

ported, or opposed, the scientific enterprise.

See also AVERRÖES; AVICENNA; CREATION; GOD; ISLAM;

SLAM, CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND

RELIGION; METAPHYSICS

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Gutas, Dimitri. Greek Thought; Arabic Culture: The

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Ibn Sina. The Life of Ibn Sina, trans. William Gohlman.

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ALNOOR DHANANI

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JUDAISM

Judaism is a monotheistic, scriptural religion that

evolved from the religion of ancient Israel during

the Second Temple period (516

B.C.E.–70 C.E.).

Two core beliefs shaped the attitude of Judaism to-

ward nature and toward the systematic study of na-

ture (i.e., science): that God is the creator of the

universe and that God revealed God’s will in the

form of Law—the Torah (literally “instruction”)—to

the chosen people, Israel.

The doctrine of creation facilitates an interest

in the natural world that God brought into exis-

tence, even though the details of the creative act

remain beyond the ken of human knowledge.

Several Psalms express the notion that the more

one observes nature, the more one comes to re-

vere its creator, since the world manifests order

and wise design. Awareness of nature’s orderliness

leads the observer to praise and thanksgiving and

evokes awe and reverence. The study of nature,

then, did not conflict with love of and obedience

to God. Indeed, in the Middle Ages, Jewish

philosophers regarded the study of God’s created

nature as a religious obligation. Nonetheless, the

natural world was not to be worshiped for its own

sake; that is the form of idolatry against which Ju-

daism rails. In Judaism, nature always points,

rather, to the divine creator who governs and sus-

tains nature and who intervenes in human affairs,

making God’s will known through the performing

of miracles, the greatest of which is the revelation

of the Torah to Israel.

Rabbinnic attitudes

Even though in principle there is no theological

impediment to study the natural world, the degree

to which Jews should engage in scientific inquiry

has always been debated in traditional Jewish so-

ciety. Since philosophy and science originated in

ancient Greece, the debate pertained to the cul-

tural boundaries of Judaism, especially because

Jews encountered Hellenistic culture as the culture

that occasionally oppressed them, curtailing Jewish

political independence and threatening Jewish

mores. Since immersion in Greek culture could

conceivably lead one away from commitment to

God’s Torah and the life it prescribed, rabbinic lit-

erature contains suspicious attitudes toward “alien

wisdoms” (hochmot hitzoniyot) and issues a call to

avoid teaching “Greek wisdom” to children. This

caution is found side by side with information

about rabbis who promoted the Greek paideia or

who were themselves learned in the natural sci-

ences. More problematically, the primacy of Torah

study itself was justified by the claim that the re-

vealed Torah, identical with God’s wisdom, en-

compasses all true knowledge. If so, Jews have no

need to pursue knowledge outside the perimeters

of Torah. It is difficult, then, to generalize about

the rabbinic attitude toward the study of nature

and determine the precise scope of rabbinic

knowledge of the science in their day.

The main scientific data in rabbinic literature

pertains to astronomy and human physiology. Sev-

eral rabbis (e.g., R. Yohanan ben Zakkai, Gamaliel

II, and Joshua ben Hananya) were expert as-

tronomers, using observed data for the calculation

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and adjustment of the lunar-solar calendar. The

rabbinic corpus is also replete with information

about the motions of celestial bodies, the four sea-

sons, the planets, the zodiac, and even comets.

The picture of the universe in Talmudic texts has

the Earth in the center of creation with heaven as

a hemisphere spread over it. The Earth is usually

described as a disk encircled by water. Interest-

ingly, cosmological and metaphysical speculations

were not to be cultivated in public nor were they

to be committed to writing. Rather, they were con-

sidered as “secrets of the Torah not to be passed

on to all and sundry” (Ketubot 112a). While study

of God’s creation was not prohibited, speculations

about “what is above, what is beneath, what is be-

fore, and what is after” (Mishnah Hagigah: 2) were

restricted to the intellectual elite.

Within the created world, the human body was

of utmost interest to the rabbis, although their in-

formation about human anatomy was shaped by

religious concern for ritual purity. Rich in details

about the skeleton, the digestive organs, the respi-

ratory system, the heart, the genitals and other or-

gans, the rabbinic corpus also includes rather fan-

ciful material and is totally lacking in graphic

illustration. The discussion is concerned primarily

with physical disfigurements that disqualify men

from the priesthood, with rules concerning men-

struating women, and with other sources of ritual

pollution. The rabbinic corpus also includes in-

formative claims about embryology, diagnosis of

diseases, and a host of medications and hygienic

strategies for prevention of disease. Indeed, the

physician is viewed as an instrument of God,

treated with utmost respect, and several Talmudic

scholars were themselves physicians. Nonetheless,

the rabbinic discourse about scientific matters was

unsystematic, primarily because it was embedded

in the interpretation of Scriptures. Whether the rab-

binic legal reasoning as a whole could be consid-

ered “science” is debated in contemporary times,

reflecting twentieth-century changes in the philos-

ophy of science.

Scientific learning in the Middle Ages

The cultivation of science as a public, albeit elitist,

activity began in earnest in the ninth century,

when most of world Jewry lived in the orbit of

Islam. Greek and Hellenistic philosophy and sci-

ence were translated into Arabic and stimulated

the rise of Islamic rationalist theology. Writing in

Arabic, Jews emulated Islamic scholars, reinter-

preting rabbinic Judaism in rationalist categories

derived from Muslim neo-Platonism and Aris-

totelianism. Jewish scholars studied all branches of

the sciences and a few Jews (e.g., Isaac Israeli,

Moses Maimonides, and Levi ben Gershom, known

as Gersonides) achieved distinction in the non-

Jewish world. Jews participated in astronomy at

the court of Alphonso X and were largely respon-

sible for the construction of the Alphonsine Tables

for computing planetary positions that remained

popular until the mid-seventeenth century. Lacking

an institutional setting, Jewish scientific learning

was an autodidactic, bookish activity of translating

texts of the liberal arts and natural philosophy from

Arabic into Hebrew and occasionally from Hebrew

into Latin, writing commentaries on them, and

working out the theological implications of the ap-

parent conflict between revealed knowledge (“re-

ligion”) and knowledge discovered by human rea-

son (“science”). One primarily exception was the

astronomical observations of Gersonides (1288–

1344), who built an instrument to study the dis-

tance between the stars, the Jacob Staff remained

in use by European navigators until the mid-

eighteenth century.

Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) articulated the

most sophisticated synthesis of science and Ju-

daism. In principle, he held, there can be no con-

tradiction between the inner, nonliteral meaning of

the Torah and what is true in the sciences of

physics and metaphysics. Apparent conflicts

emerge either because a nondemonstrable scien-

tific theory is adopted (for example, Aristotle’s

view that the world is eternal and his explanation

of celestial motions), or because the biblical text is

not interpreted in light of philosophy and science.

For Maimonides, who accepted Aristotelian science

in regard to processes of the sublunar world, pos-

sessing knowledge about the physical world was a

religious obligation, because accurate knowledge

about the physical world leads one to understand

how God governs the world (i.e., God’s attributes

of action). However, Maimonides’s radical nega-

tive theology, according to which scientific knowl-

edge does not yield valid knowledge about God’s

essence, placed a limit on science and made the

intellectual perfection (the goal of human life ac-

cording to Maimonides) unattainable.

For the subsequent four centuries, Mai-

monides’s followers translated scientific literature

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into Hebrew and interpreted Scripture as an eso-

teric text that contains scientific-philosophic truths.

To disseminate philosophic-scientific knowledge

Jewish scholars composed encyclopedias that sum-

marized known scientific data in the linguistic sci-

ences (logic, rhetoric, and grammar), the mathe-

matical sciences (arithmetic, geometry, optics,

astronomy, music, mechanics, algebra), the physi-

cal sciences (based on the eight books of Aristotle’s

Organon), metaphysics, and politics (including

ethics and economics). This vast knowledge was

deemed necessary for the attainment of intellectual

perfection, resulting in immortality of the intellect.

Whether it was also sufficient knowledge for im-

mortality was vigorously debated, especially after

Maimonides’s theory of divine attributes was mod-

ified by Gersonides to mean that scientific knowl-

edge does yield positive knowledge about God’s

essence. For Jewish philosophers to attain religious

perfection, they had to be philosopher-scientists.

Jewish scientific learning during the Middle

Ages was broad in scope and ambitious in aim but

it was not unproblematic. First, scientific learning

was cultivated only by Jews in Mediterranean com-

munities of Spain, Southern France, Italy, and

North-Africa but did not penetrate the Jewish com-

munities north of the Alps. Second, the Jewish sci-

entists-philosophers did not have an institutional

setting and did not receive official support for their

inquiries. Unlike their Christian neighbors, Jews

did not create universities, and the scientific cur-

riculum was not incorporated into the rabbinic

academies for higher learning. Third, scientific

knowledge was cultivated by a very small number

of experts and did not engage the community at

large. Finally, there was organized opposition to

the cultivation of the sciences, spearheaded not

just by rabbis who regarded secular knowledge to

be irrelevant or even undermining to the authority

of the Jewish tradition, but sometimes by Jews

who were themselves quite knowledgeable in the

sciences. The Maimonidean controversy that en-

gulfed world Jewry during the thirteenth century

and resurfaced in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-

turies indicated that the cultivation of science re-

mained problematic even in the Middle Ages.

Early modern period

In the early modern period (sixteenth through

eighteenth centuries), the Maimonidean tradition

lost its interpretative power and was replaced by

Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, as the of-

ficial theology of Judaism. In a way, the turn to

Kabbalah was an attempt to overcome the restric-

tions of Maimonides’s radical negative theology.

For the kabbalists, knowledge of God’s essence

and intimacy with God were to be attained not

through observation of the material world inter-

preted by Aristotelian scientific theories, but

through fathoming the symbolic meaning of God’s

revealed Torah. Constructed out of the building

blocks of the Hebrew alphabet, nature mirrors

God’s essence and the primordial Torah is the key

to decipher nature’s symbolic structures. The kab-

balists regarded nature not as observable, measur-

able mass, but as an information system that has to

be decoded. Their elaborate speculations about the

origins of the universe were ultimately a her-

meneutic activity, framed by the very language of

Jewish canonic texts. This approach to nature was

in accord with trends in Renaissance culture and

usually went hand in hand with preoccupation

with magic, astrology, and alchemy, but it did not

necessarily prevent the Jewish scholar from also

being informed about new scientific discoveries in

astronomy, human physiology, botany, zoology,

and mineralogy.

While Kabbalah did not preclude one from in-

terest in nature, on the whole, Kabbalah probably

retarded the involvement of Jews in the scientific

revolution of the seventeenth century. Jewish

scholars played a marginal role in the development

of early modern science, although a small number

of Jews were aware of the emerging new sciences.

David Ganz (1541–1613), for example, corre-

sponded with the astronomer Johannes Mueller

and was personally familiar with Johann Kepler

and Tycho Brahe. The first Jew to mention Coper-

nicus and praise him, Ganz nonetheless adapted

Brahe’s model, which reconciled the Copernican

and Ptolemaic systems on the basis of actual ob-

servations. For Brahe, Ganz translated the Alphon-

sine Tables from the Hebrew into German, and for

his Jewish audience Ganz composed in Hebrew

the history of Jewish involvement in astronomy.

That book, however, was printed only in 1743, in-

dicating a relative lack of interest in the subject

among Jews. A typical Jewish response to the he-

liocentric theory was voiced by Isaac Cardozo

(1604-1681), the most scientifically informed Jew

of his day, who rejected it on religious grounds

and adduced nineteen biblical verses against the

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theory. By contrast, Joseph Solomon Delmedigo

(1591–1655), who had contacts with Galileo Galilei

and who was the first Jewish scholar to use the re-

cently invented logarithmic tables, parted company

with the followers of Ptolemy to espouse the

Copernican system. Delmedigo was also a student

of Kabbalah, which he proceeded to criticize, but

he promoted knowledge of the empirical sciences

as a way to alleviate the miserable conditions of

Jewish life in Europe’s ghettos. The small cadre of

Jews who earned doctoral degrees from European

universities, especially in medicine from the Uni-

versity of Padua, did not change the fact that inter-

est in the natural sciences was marginal in Jewish

culture during the early modern period. Instead,

the study of Halachah and Kabbalah—both are

elaborate, textual, self-referential, abstract edi-

fices—preoccupied Jewish intellectual interests.

The ethos of Jewish traditional life in eighteenth-

century Europe remained largely uninformed by

the scientific revolution.

In the late eighteenth century, a small group of

Jewish intellectuals in Germany began to agitate

for change. Inspired by the Enlightenment, these

Jews insisted that Judaism must embrace scientific

knowledge or else stagnate. Desiring social inte-

gration and an end to Jewish segregation and per-

secution, the advocates of Jewish Enlightenment

(Haskalah) were very critical of traditional Jewish

education and encouraged Jews to study the sci-

ences in order to become fit to enter modern soci-

ety. The proponents of Haskalah worked tirelessly

to persuade European states to grant Jews equal

civil rights.

France was the first country to grant citizenship

to Jews (1791), as the logical consequence of the

Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789). Yet the

struggle for legal emancipation lasted until the

1870s in central Europe and was achieved in Rus-

sia only with the revolution of 1917. As citizens,

Jews who flocked to the universities of western

and central Europe embraced the natural sciences

as secular pursuits that promised social progress

and modernization. Some even converted to Chris-

tianity in order to be able to hold academic posi-

tions, and for those who remained nominally Jew-

ish, science replaced traditional Jewish Torah-study

and was devoid of religious meaning. In the nine-

teenth century, individual Jews contributed im-

mensely to a plethora of natural sciences, but they

did so as individuals and not as members of Israel,

God’s chosen priestly nation. The secularization of

Western (Christian) culture, which privatized reli-

gion, and the prevailing scientific theories of clas-

sical physics exacerbated the perception that sci-

ence and religion were diametrically opposed. The

main Jewish responses to modernity—Reform,

Conservative, and Orthodoxy—articulated distinc-

tive approaches to the perceived tension.

Strands of modern Judaism

Reform Judaism essentially denies that there is a

conflict between Judaism and science. Reform

thinkers assume that Judaism is a rational religion

that welcomes the scientific, ongoing sequence of

observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and

conclusion, with each conclusion subject to further

investigation by the same method. The rationalist

spirit of Reform Judaism intended to strip Judaism

from the morass of ossifying, legalistic minutiae

and bring to the fore the timeless, universal truths

of Judaism. The rationalist temper, which led Re-

form Judaism to discard many traditional practices

or invent new rituals, did not necessarily mean en-

dorsing the most challenging scientific theory of

the nineteenth century—Darwinism. In the United

States, the radical reformer David Einhorn (1809–

1879) sneered at the idea that humans descended

from lower animals, and his opponent, Isaac

Mayer Wise (1819–1900), also took a dim view of

Darwinian thought. However, by the 1880s several

Reform rabbis attempted to reconcile religion with

the new science and defended Judaism’s superior-

ity over other religions because of its nondog-

matic, ever-evolving character. Reform rabbis ac-

cepted biblical criticism and viewed the Bible

itself, and not only rabbinic Judaism, as a product

of history. To their chagrin, however, Reform rab-

bis had to contend with Protestant biblical criti-

cism that used the Darwinian model to prove that

Judaism was a primitive religion out of which

evolved the superior religion of Christianity.

Interest in the relationship between science

and religion is stronger in Conservative Judaism

because it takes the rabbinic tradition to be oblig-

atory, while acknowledging that it evolved over

time. More than the natural sciences, the academic

discipline of history was the scientific inquiry

that concerned Conservative Judaism. In the nine-

teenth century, Conservative scholars accepted the

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evolutionary model and applied it to the history of

Jewish law, leaving the Bible untouched. In the

twentieth century, the critical method has been ap-

plied to the biblical text and the perceived chal-

lenge by science is rebuffed by saying that the re-

vealed biblical text did not intend itself to be

understood literally but as a poetic statement of

certain truths: that the world was created by God,

and that God planned it carefully and designed it

to be hospitable to human beings. These conclu-

sions are consistent with contemporary scientific

theories in physics and cosmology. Indeed, the

twentieth-century move away from classical

physics to a new model of the universe explained

by relativity theory or by quantum mechanics en-

abled some Conservative rabbis to make the bibli-

cal narrative more intelligible. Rabbi Lawrence

Troster, for example, argued that the Anthropic

Principle shows that the universe is not a neutral

entity, empty of purpose and meaning, and that

partnership between science and religion is possi-

ble and desirable. For him the Big Bang theory can

lead to an intellectual or emotional enthusiasm for

the creator. Conversely, contemporary physics

should lead to rethinking the meaning of the doc-

trine of creation, especially creation in the image of

God, and of the problem of evil. Troster’s studies

are consistent with the work of Norbert Samuel-

son, the only Reform rabbi who has made a signif-

icant contribution to the dialogue of science and

religion.

The main area for the confluence of science

and religion in Conservative Judaism is bioethics.

Conservative legal thinkers such as Elliot Dorff

maintain that scientific research is both possible

and potentially fruitful and that contemporary in-

terpretation of Halachah must be informed of ad-

vances in science and technology. Yet, scientific

activity cannot be taken for its own sake: Scientific

means and ends have to be evaluated by religious

values. Science, and especially its application in

technology, can be used to solve legal problems or

to alleviate legal restrictions. Though rabbis must

be informed about science, the scientific facts of

every disputed issue do not settle anything since

how one construes the facts is crucial, and this is

determined by one’s religious and moral values.

Biomedical issues of most concern to Conservative

thinkers are issues of human sexuality (e.g., fertil-

ity and homosexuality) as well as questions of the

beginning and end of life (i.e., abortion and

euthanasia). Conservative legal thinkers legitimize

the consultation with science by insisting that Jew-

ish law itself presupposes the existence of knowl-

edge and morality independent of Jewish law.

Of all variants of modern Judaism, Modern Or-

thodoxy (in contradistinction from Ultra Ortho-

doxy) is most preoccupied in the dialogue be-

tween science and religion, precisely because on

the surface the two may appear to be contradic-

tory. Founded by Samson Raphael Hirsch

(1808–1888) in Germany, Modern Orthodoxy was

also a response to the challenges of modernity,

even though it rejected the radical ritual changes of

Reform Judaism or the historical approach of the

positive-historical school, the ideological founda-

tion of Conservative Judaism. For Hirsch, a “Torah-

True Judaism” meant that the Torah is eternal and

unchanged, but that Judaism must be informed

about and selectively involved in the secular

world. His slogan, “Torah im Derekh Eretz” (Torah

combined with secular knowledge), became the

institutional credo of Yeshiva College in New York

City, which was founded in 1928 and became a

university in 1946. This institution was committed

to the synthesis of “Torah U-Mada” (Torah and sci-

ence), although the precise meaning of this ideal is

repeatedly questioned. The faculty and graduates

of Yeshiva University publish essays about the in-

terplay of science and religion in their academic

magazines—Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox

Thought and The Journal of Halacha and Contem-

porary Society—and even founded a magazine de-

voted solely to that issue: The Torah U-Mada Jour-

nal. Precisely because Orthodoxy understands

Judaism as truth, it takes note of seemingly com-

peting truth claims in science.

For Modern Orthodoxy the affirmation of the

dialogue between science and Judaism is based

on the following assumptions: first, Halachah is

binding and all-encompassing and no aspect of

human life is irrelevant to it, including science.

Second, since halachic discourse exposes the true

meaning of divine revelation, there can be no con-

tradiction between what is true in science and

what is true in Judaism. Third, scientific and tech-

nological advances can help resolve many practi-

cal details of religious practice, especially in mat-

ters that concern the human body. Medical ethics

is thus a primary area in which a fruitful interac-

tion between science and Judaism can take place.

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