Natural Sciences in the Ottoman Empire: Scholars, Works, Problems
In recent years, in order to contribute to the expanding literature on Ottoman scholarly life, the Istanbul Center for Research and Education (ISAR) has been organizing a series of symposiums on different branches of the Ottoman scholarly tradition, aiming to evaluate and redefine their place in both the tradition of Islamic thought and the history of thought in general. In this context, ISAR has so far organized nine symposiums focusing on the disciplines of kalām, fiqh, Sufism, tafsīr, hadīth, Arabic linguistic sciences, logic and argumentation theory, history, and ethics, respectively. The output of each symposium was then compiled into a book volume and published. The tenth of these symposiums will be on natural sciences in the Ottoman period.
In the Islamic tradition of thought, as in other traditions, nature has been one of the main objects of human curiosity, with many great minds seeking to know and understand its reality. The natural sciences, as a discipline oriented towards knowing and understanding nature, examine the natural body and its properties, the existence of which has no involvement with the will and art of human societies. Within this framework, natural sciences examine the different manifestations of the object and its properties in nature, such as the formation and structure of the object, the principles of motion, time, space, elements, minerals, meteorological events, plants, and living beings.
The natural sciences began to be systematically studied within Islamic communities in the 8th century as a result of translation movements. They continued to be developed over the following centuries by different scholars with chemical qualificationist, kalam-atomist, and peripatetic qualificationist approaches to scientific explanation. The scholars who contributed to the natural sciences from different perspectives include: al-Naẓẓām, Abū al-Huzayl al-Allaf,, Jābir b. Hayyān, Dīnawarī, Ibn Ahī Hizām, Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, Ibn Wahshiyya, al-Bīrūnī, Avicenna, Ibn al-Awwām, al-Qazwīnī, Ibn al-Baytār, and al-Damīrī.
In the first centuries of the Ottoman Empire, the conceptual vocabulary, issues, and debates of the classical philosophical-scientific tradition in the field of natural sciences were inherited through the translation of Arabic and Persian works, and research on both the theoretical and practical issues of these sciences was expanded through translations, commentaries, and reconstructions. Although not in the form of independent sciences, thinkers belonging to the peripatetic, ishrāqī, kalām, and ʿirfān schools analyzed the issues related to the natural sciences in their voluminous books. From the 17th century onwards, translations mostly came from European languages, while educational institutions established in the last quarter of the 18th century began to follow the literature developed in Europe.
Although there has been partial research on the emergence, organization, and development of the natural sciences in the early periods of Islamic thought, there have not yet been in-depth and comprehensive studies on its course in the Ottoman Empire. This symposium will provide a basic picture of the natural sciences in terms of its emergence, development, classifications, periods, issues, works, and personalities, enabling further research of the subject.
The titles of the symposium include, but are not limited to, the following sample themes:
- The scope, main checkpoints, and periods of natural thought in the Ottoman Empire
- The place of Ottoman natural sciences in the history and thought of natural sciences in general
- Classification of texts and authors on natural sciences in the Ottoman Empire (chronological, regional, professional, subject-based, etc.)
- The place of natural sciences in the Ottoman classification of sciences
- The relationship between the natural sciences and other disciplines
- Issues related to natural sciences in the works of kalām, Illuminationism, Sufism and the Peripatetic tradition
- Works and issues related to main natural sciences, such as Chemistry, Mineralogy, Meteorology, Botany, and Zoology in the Ottoman Empire
- Works and issues related to sub-branches of natural sciences in the Ottoman Empire, such as Geology, Seismology, Agriculture, Veterinary, Hunting, Mechanics, Tide, Hydrostatics, Gastronomy, and Forestry
- Works and issues related to dream interpretation, ʿIlm al-Ḥawāss, ʿAjā'ib al-Makhlūqāt, ʿIlm al-Jawāhir, ʿIlm al-Kiyāfa, ʿIlm al-Firāsa, Astrology, ʿIlm al-Nīrancât, and ʿIlm al-Tılsimāt in the context of their relationship with the theories in natural sciences in the Ottoman Empire. Sources of Ottoman works on the natural sciences
- Translations in the context of the natural sciences in the Ottoman Empire
- Types of writing of works on the natural sciences in the Ottoman period (authoring, commentary, glosses, etc.)
- The places where the natural sciences were taught and researched in the Ottoman period (enderun, madrasas, schools, engineering schools, shifāhānes, etc.)
- The expectations of Ottoman thinkers from the natural sciences and their conceptualization of this science
- The motivations of Ottoman natural philosophers and the intellectual traditions they maintained
- The evaluation of manuscript collections in the Istanbul and Anatolian libraries in terms of the natural sciences
- Traditions of treatises focusing on specific problems in the natural sciences (the treatises on al-jawhar al-fard, time, space, motion, substance, accident, and rainbows)
- The study of the natural sciences in Ottoman madrasas
- The reception of the modern natural sciences during the Westernization period
Note
After the program, the authors will be given time to edit the selected papers as a book chapter and the texts will be published as a chapter of a separate editorial book.
The languages of the symposium to be held in Istanbul are Turkish, Arabic, and English.
Travel and accommodation expenses of the accepted presenters will be covered.
Abstracts should be 250 words maximum.
Abstracts should be sent to symposium@isar.org.tr with the applicants' contact information and academic CVs.