I thought I would end the common era year of 2007 by clarifying why I use the cybername Easy Nash. Many of my Facebook friends asked me this same question and eventually I felt obliged to offer up an explanation. A good number of my blog readers are also asking this question and this is the response I gave to my Facebook friends:
"Enough people have asked that I feel I need to respond. When a critical mass of friends ask "Why is your name Easy Nash?", I feel I owe an explanation. This was the response I gave to one friend:
Well, I have some medical problems and my family doctor kept on telling me "You must take it easy Nash". I told him I wanted an expert medical opinion so he sent me to a specialist. As I was leaving the specialist's office, he said "Remember, you must take it easy Nash". Back to my family doctor, who, once again, insisted "You must take it easy Nash".
So, in order to ensure that I heed that advice, I found a way to constantly remind myself about it.....easynash@gmail.com.....easynash@sympatico.ca.....easynash@rogers.com......easy.nash@hotmail.com......easynash the blogger......Easy Nash the facebook aficionado......"
In truth the very fact that I write this blog is a result of heeding the advice of my doctor, who insisted that I participate in an activity that would prevent my brain from turning into mush. I also sold my house and moved into a condominium that has a heated pool and powerful jacuzzi. With the former I do regular aquatherapy and aquaaerobics to keep my joints fluid and mobile and my ticker at an active clip. With the latter I soften tightened muscles and do autoreflexology and autoacupuncture using the powerful hot jets. Accross the road from me is the most amazing registered massage therapist who affords me a deep tissue massage coupled with physiotherapeutic active muscle strengthening twice a week. All of the above modalities help to better manage my debilitating chronic pain. Most importantly I keep my brain busy and active by writing this blog on a subject that has enthralled, fascinated and preoccupied me since I was a 17-year old undergradutae science student at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in the early 1970s: The Link between Science and Religion in Islam.
In writing this blog, then, I am simply following my doctor's orders.
On this last day of the common era(CE) year of 2007, I would like to wish all my many blog readers on six continents a very happy new year and all the best for 2008. This is also a good time to indicate that all my future blog posts will have a new 4-quote signature that will reflect the more recent emphasis by Mawlana Hazar Imam, His Highness Aga Khan IV, 49th hereditary Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, on the subject of "God's creation":
The Qur’an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God’s creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
For my thoughts on the full extent of "God' creation", follow this series of quotes and excerpts that takes you down a continuum of knowledge ranging from transcendental knowledge of the divine to rationally-acquired knowledge:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2007/12/263the-creation-according-to-quran-and.html
Fast forward to 2008 and 2009(you can do that on a Blog you know):
The above collection of quotes and excerpts has been vastly upgraded and is now known as Blogpost Four Hundred:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
I even have a Blogpost Five Hundred:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Monday, December 31, 2007
Sunday, December 30, 2007
267)Pluralism and Ikhwan al-Safa: If society is to start from a premise that knowledge should be foundational, what form should that knowledge take?
Professor Nanji Speaks on Pluralism and its Contents
December 2007
The Director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS), Professor Azim Nanji, spoke on ‘Pluralism and its contents’ at a seminar on 23 November 2007 at Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC). The seminar was the last in the series ‘Possibility of Pluralism’, which discussed pluralism and its specific relevance to Muslim societies.
Other speakers in the last seminar included Professor Rajeev Bhargava, Senior Fellow and Director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies; Louis Greenspan, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at McMaster University in Ontario and Professor Abdou Filali-Ansary, Director of AKU-ISMC.
In his talk, Professor Nanji provided an example of a group of scholars in tenth century Basra who, in his view, wrote about issues related to plurality of religious interpretations in their own context. The group, known as Ikhwan al-Safa’ (Brethren of Purity), had written a series of 52 epistles in which they explored arguments about what ought to be the foundations of a society that took knowledge seriously. He framed the question the Ikwan were engaging with as: “If a society is to start from the premise that knowledge should be a foundation, what should be the form of that knowledge?” Further, he noted that the group was also “interested in the fact that the Muslim world in the 10th century had become very cosmopolitan, after three centuries of expansion and growth and conversion.”
Drawing upon two parables in the Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa’ (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity), Professor Nanji shared the group’s approach to social organisation. In the first story, a King, in order to educate his sons, creates a palace.The palace is adorned with various branches of knowledge available at that time - on the ceiling were representations of the cosmological and the astronomical sciences, on the four walls the different sciences, and in the courtyard the geography of the earth. Religion, i.e. din, in this model appeared as one dimension in the make-up of the world and a contributor to good governance, but was not necessarily perceived as an overarching dominant realm in society. It was, in fact, related to the other dimensions and informed them.
Professor Nanji referred to another story in the Rasa’il, which explored the problem of human existence in a diverse habitat that humans shared with other creatures. In this account, which occurred in the form of a debate between men and animals, the exchange involved each non-human species providing a case as to why humans should not be as privileged as they ordinarily were. Although humans were found guilty of many things, they were eventually recognised worthy of their position because of their two unique qualities: capabilities of self reflection and self-correction. In Professor Nanji’s view, through this story, the Ikhwan suggested that human beings must recognise that they share the planet with others and are accountable for the way in which they share the resources of the world, but also how they interact with other beings for the good of all.
Professor Nanji concluded by stressing the importance of creatively drawing upon Muslim as well as human heritage in general to find ways in which issues of human organisations have been approached. Some of these approaches, he believed, may illuminate and aid in resolving our current challenges. The appropriation of the Ikhwan, he suggested, was one example and must be seen as an invitation to continue with this process.
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=109142
Other links to the Ikhwan al-Safa:
http://spiritandlife.wordpress.com/2007/12/25/ikhwan-al-safa/#comments
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
December 2007
The Director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS), Professor Azim Nanji, spoke on ‘Pluralism and its contents’ at a seminar on 23 November 2007 at Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC). The seminar was the last in the series ‘Possibility of Pluralism’, which discussed pluralism and its specific relevance to Muslim societies.
Other speakers in the last seminar included Professor Rajeev Bhargava, Senior Fellow and Director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies; Louis Greenspan, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at McMaster University in Ontario and Professor Abdou Filali-Ansary, Director of AKU-ISMC.
In his talk, Professor Nanji provided an example of a group of scholars in tenth century Basra who, in his view, wrote about issues related to plurality of religious interpretations in their own context. The group, known as Ikhwan al-Safa’ (Brethren of Purity), had written a series of 52 epistles in which they explored arguments about what ought to be the foundations of a society that took knowledge seriously. He framed the question the Ikwan were engaging with as: “If a society is to start from the premise that knowledge should be a foundation, what should be the form of that knowledge?” Further, he noted that the group was also “interested in the fact that the Muslim world in the 10th century had become very cosmopolitan, after three centuries of expansion and growth and conversion.”
Drawing upon two parables in the Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa’ (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity), Professor Nanji shared the group’s approach to social organisation. In the first story, a King, in order to educate his sons, creates a palace.The palace is adorned with various branches of knowledge available at that time - on the ceiling were representations of the cosmological and the astronomical sciences, on the four walls the different sciences, and in the courtyard the geography of the earth. Religion, i.e. din, in this model appeared as one dimension in the make-up of the world and a contributor to good governance, but was not necessarily perceived as an overarching dominant realm in society. It was, in fact, related to the other dimensions and informed them.
Professor Nanji referred to another story in the Rasa’il, which explored the problem of human existence in a diverse habitat that humans shared with other creatures. In this account, which occurred in the form of a debate between men and animals, the exchange involved each non-human species providing a case as to why humans should not be as privileged as they ordinarily were. Although humans were found guilty of many things, they were eventually recognised worthy of their position because of their two unique qualities: capabilities of self reflection and self-correction. In Professor Nanji’s view, through this story, the Ikhwan suggested that human beings must recognise that they share the planet with others and are accountable for the way in which they share the resources of the world, but also how they interact with other beings for the good of all.
Professor Nanji concluded by stressing the importance of creatively drawing upon Muslim as well as human heritage in general to find ways in which issues of human organisations have been approached. Some of these approaches, he believed, may illuminate and aid in resolving our current challenges. The appropriation of the Ikhwan, he suggested, was one example and must be seen as an invitation to continue with this process.
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=109142
Other links to the Ikhwan al-Safa:
http://spiritandlife.wordpress.com/2007/12/25/ikhwan-al-safa/#comments
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Thursday, December 20, 2007
266)2008:The year all the rest of those teensy-weensy, itsy-bitsy particles that make up material reality may be uncovered, courtesy of the LHC.
LHC=Large Hadron Collider
CERN=Europe's Main Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.
"Science is a wonderful, powerful tool and research budgets are essential. But Science is only the beginning in the new age we are entering. Islam does not perceive the world as two seperate domains of mind and spirit, science and belief. Science and the search for knowledge are an expression of man's designated role in the universe, but they do not define that role totally....."(Aga Khan IV, McMaster University Convocation, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 15th 1987).
"....The Qur’an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God’s creation"(Closing Address by His Highness Aga Khan IV at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, Paris, France, October 17th 2007)
"Inside it, he and the thousands of other physicists who work at CERN hope to find the secrets of the universe: dark matter, dark energy, extra dimensions, tiny black holes that evaporate in an eye-blink and the origins of mass itself":
Particle physics
Merry Christmas, Dr Heuer
Dec 19th 2007
GENEVA
From The Economist print edition
The most prestigious job in physics is about to change hands
NAPOLEON once asked of a newly appointed general, “Has he luck?” Rolf-Dieter Heuer clearly does—and in Napoleonic quantities. At the moment, he is the research director of the German Electron Synchrotron, an important but local institution based in Hamburg. On December 13th, however, he was chosen to be the next director-general of CERN, Europe's main particle-physics laboratory.
Luckier still, he does not actually start his term for 12 months. By then, if all has gone well, he will be in charge of the best Christmas present that a physicist could imagine—the world's biggest particle accelerator. Inside it, he and the thousands of other physicists who work at CERN hope to find the secrets of the universe: dark matter, dark energy, extra dimensions, tiny black holes that evaporate in an eye-blink and the origins of mass itself.
Dr Heuer's unlucky predecessor, Robert Aymar, has sweated out his own five-year term trying to get this behemoth of a machine, which is called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), finished approximately on time and approximately on budget. Approximately, it looks as though he has succeeded. If all goes well, the LHC's first test run should happen in the summer, only two years late. Meanwhile, the creative financing techniques Dr Aymar employed to accomplish this—borrowing against future income in a way that the heads of pure-science projects rarely dare to do—seem to have worked, and not bankrupted the LHC as some more nervous people feared they might. Unfortunately for Dr Aymar, it is Dr Heuer who will reap the reward, for after a decade and a half in the wilderness since the United States abandoned its own plans for a giant accelerator, called the superconducting super-collider, the subject of particle physics is just about to get sexy again.
Standard deviations
The wilderness from which the field is emerging is called the Standard Model. This description of the way the universe works was built up in the early 1970s. It links together, in a reasonably satisfying mathematical way, all of the known fundamental particles (electrons, quarks, photons and so on) and three of the four known fundamental forces (electromagnetism, and the strong and weak forces that shape atomic nuclei). However, it is not a complete explanation. The force of gravity, for instance, is not yet part of it. Nor has its explanation of the existence of mass yet been proved true. And it relies on a lot of mathematical fiddle factors that are disturbingly arbitrary. Also, it has hardly changed for 35 years, and physicists are getting bored with it.
The LHC exists to relieve that boredom. Though its first task—to find a particle called the Higgs boson—has been talked up endlessly, the Higgs is actually just unfinished business from the Standard Model. The Higgs is the missing element needed for mass to exist. Since mass clearly does exist, an absence of Higgs would be a real shock. But assuming it is there, as everyone expects, the exciting stuff will be what happens afterwards.
That journey beyond the Standard Model is what the LHC was really built for. The machine itself is a pair of ring-shaped pipes, each 27km long, buried 100 metres down in a layer of rock between Geneva and the Jura mountains. The pipes are surrounded by powerful magnets that guide and accelerate the particles within, so that they whizz round in opposite directions at close to the speed of light. This gives them enormous energy and, because energy and mass are two aspects of the same thing, enormous mass as well.
The collisions between these particles that are the purpose of all this engineering take place in four huge particle-detecting machines buried in caverns on the ring's circumference. The pipes—and the streams of protons they are carrying—cross in the middle of each of these machines. When the protons from opposing streams bash into each other, the alchemy of subatomic physics creates new, massive and generally unstable particles—of which the Higgs should be one example. These quickly decay into showers of daughter particles that shoot out through concentric layers of detectors made of materials such as liquid argon and the purest crystals of silicon available. Each layer is designed to measure the passage of a different class of daughter. By analysing the daughters, the nature of the massive parents that gave birth to them can be worked out.
All this happens fast. Very fast. When the LHC is running at full speed, each detector will have to deal with a billion collisions a second. That is way beyond what even the best modern computers can study thoroughly, so most are given a cursory glance and thrown away. The truly promising—a few hundred a second—are stored for future examination.
Unwrapping reality
The first big discovery probably will be the Higgs. But not necessarily. Theory suggests that something called a neutralino would require about the same amount of energy as a Higgs to make, and so it might turn up at about the same time. A neutralino is a very different sort of beast—one that promises to lead physics into the promised land that is called supersymmetry.
Supersymmetry brings hope that physics will be able to jettison the Standard Model's arbitrary fiddle factors. The price it extracts for doing so is to double the number of particles needed to make sense of the universe. Neutralinos are (or, at least, are predicted to be) the lightest and most stable of these new particles. And their stability means they may also solve a cosmological mystery, which is that a quarter of the universe seems to be made of dark matter that can be detected only by its gravitational interactions. Many physicists think this dark matter is made largely of neutralinos.
That neutralinos feel gravity but not electromagnetism makes them hard to detect. (They also feel the weak nuclear force, but that, as its name suggests, is little help.) The way to find a neutralino, therefore, is to note everything else that comes out of a collision and see if any energy is missing. If that missing energy matches the expected energy of a neutralino, then that is probably what has escaped detection.
A similar trick will be used to look for gravitons—hypothetical particles that may carry the force of gravity. These, too, would be an extension to the Standard Model. Moreover, if their missing energies turn out to have a particular set of values, it will be evidence that they live part of their lives in a hitherto undetected fifth dimension (the other four being length, breadth, height and time). That, in turn, will cast light on the complex field of string theory, which is the best available “theory of everything”, even though it requires the existence of not five, but 11 dimensions.
Miniature black holes that evaporate in a hail of particles known as the Hawking radiation may also turn up in the detectors. That would allow Stephen Hawking, who predicted such radiation in 1974, to collect a much-deserved Nobel prize—just as discovering the Higgs would surely grant one to Peter Higgs, who realised the need for such a particle in 1964. (Nobel prizes are not awarded to theoreticians until their theories have been proved.)
Indeed, the Higgs itself may do more than merely create mass. Put a bunch of them together and they will repel one another in a way that takes the very fabric of space along with them. They could thus be the explanation for the sudden inflation that the universe seems to have undergone just after it came into existence. They could even help to explain another 70% of the universe whose nature is unknown—the dark energy that is pushing space apart even now.
With all this to play for, Dr Heuer is a very lucky man indeed. As long as the machine behaves, of course. If it does not—and when you are running something whose operating temperature is just above absolute zero, and which has the power consumption of a small town, you can never be sure—then the SFr6 billion or so (about $5 billion) it has cost will start to look rather pricey. And if that happens, then particle physics may find itself back in the wilderness for good.
These were earlier articles related to the above topic which I placed on my old blog:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/03/147finding-most-fundamental-particles.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/03/139the-elusive-higgs-particle-which.html
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
CERN=Europe's Main Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.
"Science is a wonderful, powerful tool and research budgets are essential. But Science is only the beginning in the new age we are entering. Islam does not perceive the world as two seperate domains of mind and spirit, science and belief. Science and the search for knowledge are an expression of man's designated role in the universe, but they do not define that role totally....."(Aga Khan IV, McMaster University Convocation, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 15th 1987).
"....The Qur’an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God’s creation"(Closing Address by His Highness Aga Khan IV at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, Paris, France, October 17th 2007)
"Inside it, he and the thousands of other physicists who work at CERN hope to find the secrets of the universe: dark matter, dark energy, extra dimensions, tiny black holes that evaporate in an eye-blink and the origins of mass itself":
Particle physics
Merry Christmas, Dr Heuer
Dec 19th 2007
GENEVA
From The Economist print edition
The most prestigious job in physics is about to change hands
NAPOLEON once asked of a newly appointed general, “Has he luck?” Rolf-Dieter Heuer clearly does—and in Napoleonic quantities. At the moment, he is the research director of the German Electron Synchrotron, an important but local institution based in Hamburg. On December 13th, however, he was chosen to be the next director-general of CERN, Europe's main particle-physics laboratory.
Luckier still, he does not actually start his term for 12 months. By then, if all has gone well, he will be in charge of the best Christmas present that a physicist could imagine—the world's biggest particle accelerator. Inside it, he and the thousands of other physicists who work at CERN hope to find the secrets of the universe: dark matter, dark energy, extra dimensions, tiny black holes that evaporate in an eye-blink and the origins of mass itself.
Dr Heuer's unlucky predecessor, Robert Aymar, has sweated out his own five-year term trying to get this behemoth of a machine, which is called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), finished approximately on time and approximately on budget. Approximately, it looks as though he has succeeded. If all goes well, the LHC's first test run should happen in the summer, only two years late. Meanwhile, the creative financing techniques Dr Aymar employed to accomplish this—borrowing against future income in a way that the heads of pure-science projects rarely dare to do—seem to have worked, and not bankrupted the LHC as some more nervous people feared they might. Unfortunately for Dr Aymar, it is Dr Heuer who will reap the reward, for after a decade and a half in the wilderness since the United States abandoned its own plans for a giant accelerator, called the superconducting super-collider, the subject of particle physics is just about to get sexy again.
Standard deviations
The wilderness from which the field is emerging is called the Standard Model. This description of the way the universe works was built up in the early 1970s. It links together, in a reasonably satisfying mathematical way, all of the known fundamental particles (electrons, quarks, photons and so on) and three of the four known fundamental forces (electromagnetism, and the strong and weak forces that shape atomic nuclei). However, it is not a complete explanation. The force of gravity, for instance, is not yet part of it. Nor has its explanation of the existence of mass yet been proved true. And it relies on a lot of mathematical fiddle factors that are disturbingly arbitrary. Also, it has hardly changed for 35 years, and physicists are getting bored with it.
The LHC exists to relieve that boredom. Though its first task—to find a particle called the Higgs boson—has been talked up endlessly, the Higgs is actually just unfinished business from the Standard Model. The Higgs is the missing element needed for mass to exist. Since mass clearly does exist, an absence of Higgs would be a real shock. But assuming it is there, as everyone expects, the exciting stuff will be what happens afterwards.
That journey beyond the Standard Model is what the LHC was really built for. The machine itself is a pair of ring-shaped pipes, each 27km long, buried 100 metres down in a layer of rock between Geneva and the Jura mountains. The pipes are surrounded by powerful magnets that guide and accelerate the particles within, so that they whizz round in opposite directions at close to the speed of light. This gives them enormous energy and, because energy and mass are two aspects of the same thing, enormous mass as well.
The collisions between these particles that are the purpose of all this engineering take place in four huge particle-detecting machines buried in caverns on the ring's circumference. The pipes—and the streams of protons they are carrying—cross in the middle of each of these machines. When the protons from opposing streams bash into each other, the alchemy of subatomic physics creates new, massive and generally unstable particles—of which the Higgs should be one example. These quickly decay into showers of daughter particles that shoot out through concentric layers of detectors made of materials such as liquid argon and the purest crystals of silicon available. Each layer is designed to measure the passage of a different class of daughter. By analysing the daughters, the nature of the massive parents that gave birth to them can be worked out.
All this happens fast. Very fast. When the LHC is running at full speed, each detector will have to deal with a billion collisions a second. That is way beyond what even the best modern computers can study thoroughly, so most are given a cursory glance and thrown away. The truly promising—a few hundred a second—are stored for future examination.
Unwrapping reality
The first big discovery probably will be the Higgs. But not necessarily. Theory suggests that something called a neutralino would require about the same amount of energy as a Higgs to make, and so it might turn up at about the same time. A neutralino is a very different sort of beast—one that promises to lead physics into the promised land that is called supersymmetry.
Supersymmetry brings hope that physics will be able to jettison the Standard Model's arbitrary fiddle factors. The price it extracts for doing so is to double the number of particles needed to make sense of the universe. Neutralinos are (or, at least, are predicted to be) the lightest and most stable of these new particles. And their stability means they may also solve a cosmological mystery, which is that a quarter of the universe seems to be made of dark matter that can be detected only by its gravitational interactions. Many physicists think this dark matter is made largely of neutralinos.
That neutralinos feel gravity but not electromagnetism makes them hard to detect. (They also feel the weak nuclear force, but that, as its name suggests, is little help.) The way to find a neutralino, therefore, is to note everything else that comes out of a collision and see if any energy is missing. If that missing energy matches the expected energy of a neutralino, then that is probably what has escaped detection.
A similar trick will be used to look for gravitons—hypothetical particles that may carry the force of gravity. These, too, would be an extension to the Standard Model. Moreover, if their missing energies turn out to have a particular set of values, it will be evidence that they live part of their lives in a hitherto undetected fifth dimension (the other four being length, breadth, height and time). That, in turn, will cast light on the complex field of string theory, which is the best available “theory of everything”, even though it requires the existence of not five, but 11 dimensions.
Miniature black holes that evaporate in a hail of particles known as the Hawking radiation may also turn up in the detectors. That would allow Stephen Hawking, who predicted such radiation in 1974, to collect a much-deserved Nobel prize—just as discovering the Higgs would surely grant one to Peter Higgs, who realised the need for such a particle in 1964. (Nobel prizes are not awarded to theoreticians until their theories have been proved.)
Indeed, the Higgs itself may do more than merely create mass. Put a bunch of them together and they will repel one another in a way that takes the very fabric of space along with them. They could thus be the explanation for the sudden inflation that the universe seems to have undergone just after it came into existence. They could even help to explain another 70% of the universe whose nature is unknown—the dark energy that is pushing space apart even now.
With all this to play for, Dr Heuer is a very lucky man indeed. As long as the machine behaves, of course. If it does not—and when you are running something whose operating temperature is just above absolute zero, and which has the power consumption of a small town, you can never be sure—then the SFr6 billion or so (about $5 billion) it has cost will start to look rather pricey. And if that happens, then particle physics may find itself back in the wilderness for good.
These were earlier articles related to the above topic which I placed on my old blog:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/03/147finding-most-fundamental-particles.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/03/139the-elusive-higgs-particle-which.html
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
265)The Top Ten Hubble Space Telescope photographs of the past 16 years.
"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)
".....This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007).
"The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation."(Aga Khan IV, AKU Convocation Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)
"Behold! in the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the alternation of the night and the day; in the sailing of the ships through the ocean for the profit of mankind; in the rain which Allah sends down from the skies, and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is dead; in the beasts of all kinds that He scatters through the earth; in the change of the winds, and the clouds which they Trail like their slaves between the sky and the earth; (Here) indeed are Signs for the people of intellect"(Quran)
"...Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order."(Aga Khan III, Karachi, Pakistan, April 4th 1952)
".....we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves. I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us." (Aga Khan IV,Speech, 1963, Mindanao, Phillipines)
"...Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders(Fatimids) as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world"(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
"...they illustrate that our universe is not only deeply strange, but also almost impossibly beautiful."
Michael Hanlon
After correcting an initial problem with the lens, when the Hubble Space Telescope was first launched in 1990, the floating astro-observatory began to relay back to Earth, incredible snapshots of the "final frontier" it was perusing.
Recently, astronauts voted on the top photographs taken by Hubble, in its 16-year journey so far. Remarking in the article from theDaily Mail, reporter Michael Hanlon says the photos "illustrate that our universe is not only deeply strange, but also almost impossibly beautiful."
The top ten Hubble Space photographs of the past 16 years:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/galleries/index.html?in_gallery_id=9139&in_page_id=1055
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
".....This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007).
"The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation."(Aga Khan IV, AKU Convocation Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)
"Behold! in the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the alternation of the night and the day; in the sailing of the ships through the ocean for the profit of mankind; in the rain which Allah sends down from the skies, and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is dead; in the beasts of all kinds that He scatters through the earth; in the change of the winds, and the clouds which they Trail like their slaves between the sky and the earth; (Here) indeed are Signs for the people of intellect"(Quran)
"...Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order."(Aga Khan III, Karachi, Pakistan, April 4th 1952)
".....we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves. I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us." (Aga Khan IV,Speech, 1963, Mindanao, Phillipines)
"...Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders(Fatimids) as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world"(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
"...they illustrate that our universe is not only deeply strange, but also almost impossibly beautiful."
Michael Hanlon
After correcting an initial problem with the lens, when the Hubble Space Telescope was first launched in 1990, the floating astro-observatory began to relay back to Earth, incredible snapshots of the "final frontier" it was perusing.
Recently, astronauts voted on the top photographs taken by Hubble, in its 16-year journey so far. Remarking in the article from theDaily Mail, reporter Michael Hanlon says the photos "illustrate that our universe is not only deeply strange, but also almost impossibly beautiful."
The top ten Hubble Space photographs of the past 16 years:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/galleries/index.html?in_gallery_id=9139&in_page_id=1055
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Monday, December 17, 2007
264)My favourite quotes as listed on my Facebook profile-UPDATED
For those who reach this post through the Google or other search engines, know that this post has now been updated and is now known as Blogpost Four Hundred:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
"Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest value on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation"(Aga Khan IV, 2006)
"The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being"(Aga Khan III, 1952)
"Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly"(Aga Khan IV, 2005)
"All human beings, by their nature, desire to know."(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
"My profession is to be forever journeying, to travel about the Universe so that I may know all its conditions."(Ibn Sina, aka Avicenna, 11th century Muslim Philosopher, Physician and Scientist, author of the Canon of Medicine))
"Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave"(Prophet Muhammad).
"Seek knowledge, even in China"(Prophet Muhammad).
"One hour of contemplation on the works of the Creator is better than a thousand hours of prayer"(Prophet Muhammad).
"No belief is like modesty and patience, no attainment is like humility, no honour is like knowledge, no power is like forbearance, and no support is more reliable than consultation"(Hazrat Ali, the first Imam of Shia Islam).
"The ink of the scholar is better than the blood of the martyr"(Prophet Muhammad)
"The Quran itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation"(Aga Khan IV, Paris, France, Oct 17 2007)
"Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders(Fatimids) as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world"(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
"Islam does not perceive the world as two seperate domains of mind and spirit, science and belief"(Aga Khan IV, McMaster University Convocation, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 15th 1987)
"This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007)
"The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters"(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)
“Muslims believe in an all-encompassing unit of man and nature. To them there is no fundamental division between the spiritual and the material while the whole world, whether it be the earth, sea or air, or the living creatures that inhabit them, is an expression of God’s creation.”(Aga Khan IV, Charlottesville, Virginia, 13 April 1984)
Easy Nash aka easynash
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
"Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest value on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation"(Aga Khan IV, 2006)
"The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being"(Aga Khan III, 1952)
"Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly"(Aga Khan IV, 2005)
"All human beings, by their nature, desire to know."(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
"My profession is to be forever journeying, to travel about the Universe so that I may know all its conditions."(Ibn Sina, aka Avicenna, 11th century Muslim Philosopher, Physician and Scientist, author of the Canon of Medicine))
"Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave"(Prophet Muhammad).
"Seek knowledge, even in China"(Prophet Muhammad).
"One hour of contemplation on the works of the Creator is better than a thousand hours of prayer"(Prophet Muhammad).
"No belief is like modesty and patience, no attainment is like humility, no honour is like knowledge, no power is like forbearance, and no support is more reliable than consultation"(Hazrat Ali, the first Imam of Shia Islam).
"The ink of the scholar is better than the blood of the martyr"(Prophet Muhammad)
"The Quran itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation"(Aga Khan IV, Paris, France, Oct 17 2007)
"Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders(Fatimids) as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world"(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
"Islam does not perceive the world as two seperate domains of mind and spirit, science and belief"(Aga Khan IV, McMaster University Convocation, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 15th 1987)
"This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007)
"The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters"(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)
“Muslims believe in an all-encompassing unit of man and nature. To them there is no fundamental division between the spiritual and the material while the whole world, whether it be the earth, sea or air, or the living creatures that inhabit them, is an expression of God’s creation.”(Aga Khan IV, Charlottesville, Virginia, 13 April 1984)
Easy Nash aka easynash
Saturday, December 15, 2007
263)The Creation according to the Quran and key figures in Islam-UPDATED.
For those who reach this post through the Google or other search engines, know that this post has now been updated and is now known as Blogpost Four Hundred:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Its very interesting but I have noticed a key phrase being used in a significant number of Mawlana Hazar Imam's speeches during 2006 and 2007, this key phrase being "God's creation", "His creation", "creation of Allah":
"The second great historical lesson to be learnt is that the Muslim world has always been wide open to every aspect of human existence. The sciences, society, art, the oceans, the environment and the cosmos have all contributed to the great moments in the history of Muslim civilisations. The Qur’an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God’s creation"(Closing Address by His Highness Aga Khan IV at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, Paris, France, October 17th 2007)
"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)
"....in Islam, but particularly Shia Islam, the role of the intellect is part of faith. That intellect is what seperates man from the rest of the physical world in which he lives.....This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007).
"Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason"(Aga Khan IV, Spiegel Magazine interview, Germany, Oct 9th 2006)
From 1995:
"The Quran very often refers to nature as a reflection of Allah's power of creation and says: Look at the mountains, look at the rivers, look at the trees, look at the flowers all as evidence of Allah's love for the people whom He has created. Today I look at this environment and I say that I beleive that Allah is smiling upon you, may His smile always be upon you"(Aga Khan IV, Tajikistan, May 27th 1995)
From 1984:
“Muslims believe in an all-encompassing unit of man and nature. To them there is no fundamental division between the spiritual and the material while the whole world, whether it be the earth, sea or air, or the living creatures that inhabit them, is an expression of God’s creation.”(Aga Khan IV, Charlottesville, Virginia, 13 April 1984)
Another speech excerpt of Mawlana Hazar Imam I discovered recently talks about this: "The spiritual and material realms are not dichotomous, since in the Ismaili formulation, matter and spirit are united under a higher genus and each realm possesses its own hierarchy"(Azim Nanji, Institute of Ismaili Studies) . The excerpt:
"Science is a wonderful, powerful tool and research budgets are essential. But Science is only the beginning in the new age we are entering. Islam does not perceive the world as two seperate domains of mind and spirit, science and belief. Science and the search for knowledge are an expression of man's designated role in the universe, but they do not define that role totally....."(Aga Khan IV, McMaster University Convocation, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 15th 1987).
In view of the new speech excerpts listed above, here is an UPDATED version of my earlier postings, variously entitled "What is the full extent of 'God's creation'?", "The creation according to the Quran and key figures in Islam" and "The creation according to the Quran and Prophet Muhammad, Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan III, Imam Jafar As-Sadiq, Al-Kirmani, Al-Sijistani, Nasir Khusraw and Azim Nanji":
According to a famous hadith of the Prophet Muhammad:The first thing created by God was the Intellect ('aql).
Mowlana Hazar Imam recently(October 9th 2006) made the following statement to the German newspaper 'Spiegel' about the religion of Islam:"Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason."(Aga Khan IV)
“Muslims believe in an all-encompassing unit of man and nature. To them there is no fundamental division between the spiritual and the material while the whole world, whether it be the earth, sea or air, or the living creatures that inhabit them, is an expression of God’s creation.”(Aga Khan IV, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, 13 April 1984)
The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry. The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation. - (Aga Khan IV, AKU Convocation Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)
God – may He be Glorified and Exalted – created Intellect ('aql) first among the spiritual entities; He drew it forth from the right of His Throne, making it proceed from His own Light. Then he commanded it to retreat, and it retreated, to advance, and it advanced; then God proclaimed: 'I created you glorious, and I gave you pre-eminence over all my creatures.'( Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, (Al-Kulayni, Usul, vol. 1, pp. 23-24))
The beginning of all things, their origin, their force and their prosperity, is that intellect ('aql), without which one can profit from nothing. God created it to adorn His creatures, and as a light for them. It is through intellect ('aql) that the servants recognize God is their Creator and that they themselves are created beings …It is thanks to intellect ('aql) that they can distinguish what is beautiful from what is ugly, that they realize that darkness is in ignorance and that light is in Knowledge.( Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, (al-Kulayni, Usul al-Kafi, Vol. 1, pp. 34))
The Intellect is the substance of (God's) unity and it is the one (al-wahid), both cause and caused, the act of origination (al-ibda) and the first originated being (al-mubda al-awwal); it is perfection and perfect, eternity and eternal, existence and that which exists all in a single substance.( Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani,Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist (Kitab al-Riyad, pp. 221-222))
"....in Islam, but particularly Shia Islam, the role of the intellect is part of faith. That intellect is what seperates man from the rest of the physical world in which he lives.....This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007).
About Hafiz, the renowned Iranian poet:"Then came Hafiz - by far the greatest singer of the soul of man. In him we can find all the strivings, all the sorrow, all the victories and joys, all the hopes and disappointments of each and every one of us. In him we find contact, direct and immediate, with the outer universe interpreted as an infinite reality of matter, as a mirror of an eternal spirit, or indeed (as Spinoza later said) an absolute existence of which matter and spirit alike are but two of infinite modes and facets."(Inaugural Lecture Before the Iran Society by Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan III, November 9, 1936 London, United Kingdom.)
Behold! in the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the alternation of the night and the day; in the sailing of the ships through the ocean for the profit of mankind; in the rain which Allah sends down from the skies, and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is dead; in the beasts of all kinds that He scatters through the earth; in the change of the winds, and the clouds which they Trail like their slaves between the sky and the earth; (Here) indeed are Signs for the people of intellect(Quran)
Here is a relevant verse from the Qur'an, cited by Nasir-i Khusraw, hujjat-i Khurasan in his Khawaan al-Ikhwaan : "It is He who created you from dust, then from a sperm drop, then from a blood clot, then He brings you forth as a child, then lets you reach your age of full strength, then lets you become old - though some of you die before - and then lets you reach the appointed term; and that haply you may find the intellect (la'allakum ta'qilun)."(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)
The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine will (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954).
Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation. (Aga Khan IV,Speech, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
"Science is a wonderful, powerful tool and research budgets are essential. But Science is only the beginning in the new age we are entering. Islam does not perceive the world as two seperate domains of mind and spirit, science and belief. Science and the search for knowledge are an expression of man's designated role in the universe, but they do not define that role totally....."(Aga Khan IV, McMaster University Convocation, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 15th 1987)
"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)
Quote from a letter written by Our 48th Imam to a friend in 1952 under the title: "What have we forgotten in Islam?":Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth. During the great period of Islam, Muslims did not forget these principles of their religion. Alas, Islam which is a natural religion in which God's miracles are the very law and order of nature drifted away and is still drifting away, even in Pakistan, from science which is the study of those very laws and orders of nature.……Islam is a natural religion of which the Ayats are the universe in which we live and move and have our being………..The God of the Quran is the one whose Ayats are the universe……(Aga Khan III, 1952)
"The Quran very often refers to nature as a reflection of Allah's power of creation and says: Look at the mountains, look at the rivers, look at the trees, look at the flowers all as evidence of Allah's love for the people whom He has created. Today I look at this environment and I say that I beleive that Allah is smiling upon you, may His smile always be upon you"(Aga Khan IV, Tajikistan, May 27th 1995)
Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God. (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954).
'Tarkib' is composition as in the compounding of elements in the process of making more complex things, that is, of adding together two things to form a synthesis, a compound. Soul composes in the sense of 'tarkib'; it is the animating force that combines the physical elements of the natural universe into beings that move and act. Incorporating is an especially apt word in this instance. It means to turn something into a body, as in 'composing'. But it is actually the conversion of an intellectual object, a thought, into a physical thing. Soul acts by incorporating reason into physical objects, the natural matter of the universe and all the things composed of it(Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani,10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, from the book, 'Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary', by Paul Walker).
In fact this world is a book in which you see inscribed the writings of God the Almighty"(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet).
Kathalika yubayyinu Allahu lakum ayatihi la'allakum ta-'aqiloona: Allah thus makes clear to you His Signs that you may intellect.(Holy Quran 2:242)
Thus there was an absolute need for the Divine Word's revelation, to Mohammed himself, a man like the others, of God's person and of his relations to the Universe which he had created. Once man has thus comprehended the essence of existence, there remains for him the duty, since he knows the absolute value of his own soul, of making for himself a direct path which will constantly lead his individual soul to and bind it with the universal Soul of which the Universe is, as much of it as we perceive with our limited visions, one of the infinite manifestations. Thus Islam's basic principle can only be defined as mono-realism and not as monotheism. Consider, for example, the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar". What does that mean? There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life and to the soul. Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its reflection in the pool of a fountain; there is certainly a reflection or image of the sun, but with what poverty and with what little reality; how small and pale is the likeness between this impalpable image and the immense, blazing, white-hot glory of the celestial sphere itself. Allah is the sun; and the Universe, as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its power, are nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
Quran Symposium:....a reflection of how Islam's revelation, with its challenge to man's innate gift of quest and reason, became a powerful impetus for a new flowering of human civilisation.This programme is also an opportunity for achieving insights into how the discourse of the Qur'an-e-Sharif, rich in parable and allegory, metaphor and symbol, has been an inexhaustible well-spring of inspiration, lending itself to a wide spectrum of interpretations.In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy. (Aga Khan IV,Speech, 2003, London, U.K.)
God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves. I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us. (Aga Khan IV,Speech, 1963, Mindanao, Phillipines)
Several days ago, at a meeting of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in Malaysia, it was pointed out that the only way the umma can work its way out of its present sad state is to harness the intellect.(Aga Khan IV, Speech,2003, London, U.K.)
It (Surah of Light from the Quran) tells us that the oil of the blessed olive tree lights the lamp of understanding, a light that belongs neither to the East nor West. We are to give this light to all. In that spirit, all that we learn will belong to the world and that too is part of the vision I share with you. (Aga Khan IV, Speech 25 Sept. 1979)
The truth, as the famous Islamic scholars repeatedly told their students, is that the spirit of disciplined, objective enquiry is the property of no single culture, but of all humanity. To quote the great physician and philosopher, Ibn Sina: "My profession is to be forever journeying, to travel about the universe so that I may know all its conditions." (Aga Khan IV, Speech, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
An institution dedicated to proceeding beyond known limits must be committed to independent thinking. In a university scholars engage both orthodox and unorthodox ideas, seeking truth and understanding wherever they may be found. That process is often facilitated by an independent governance structure, which serves to ensure that the university adheres to its fundamental mission and is not pressured to compromise its work for short-term advantage. For a Muslim university it is appropriate to see learning and knowledge as a continuing acknowledgement of Allah's magnificence.(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 1993, Aga Khan University)
That quest for a better life, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, must lead inevitably to the Knowledge Society which is developing in our time. The great and central question facing the Ummah of today is how it will relate to the Knowledge Society of tomorrow.The fundamental reason for the pre-eminence of Islamic civilizations lay neither in accidents of history nor in acts of war, but rather in their ability to discover new knowledge, to make it their own, and to build constructively upon it. They became the Knowledge Societies of their time.(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 2006, Aga Khan University)
Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world. The form of universities has changed over those 1000 years, but that reciprocity between faith and knowledge remains a source of strength. (Aga Khan IV, Speech,1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
The Muslim world, once a remarkable bastion of scientific and humanist knowledge, a rich and self-confident cradle of culture and art, has never forgotten its past.The great Muslim philosopher al-Kindi wrote eleven hundred years ago, "No one is diminished by the truth, rather does the truth ennobles all". That is no less true today.(Aga Khan IV, Speech,1996, Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A.)
"The second great historical lesson to be learnt is that the Muslim world has always been wide open to every aspect of human existence. The sciences, society, art, the oceans, the environment and the cosmos have all contributed to the great moments in the history of Muslim civilisations. The Qur’an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God’s creation"(Closing Address by His Highness Aga Khan IV at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, Paris, France, October 17th 2007)
A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God's creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations.(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 2004, Matola, Mozambique.)
"The starting point of such a synthesis is the doctrine of ibda (derived from Qur'an 2:117). In its verbal form it is taken to mean 'eternal existentiation' to explain the notion in the Qur'an of God's timeless command (Kun: Be!). Ibda therefore connotes not a specific act of creation but the dialogical mode through which a relationship between God and His creation can be affirmed - it articulates the process of beginning and sets the stage for developing a philosophy of the manifestation of transcendence in creation...........In sum the process of creation can be said to take place at several levels. Ibda represents the initial level - one transcends history, the other creates it. The spiritual and material realms are not dichotomous, since in the Ismaili formulation, matter and spirit are united under a higher genus and each realm possesses its own hierarchy. Though they require linguistic and rational categories for definition, they represent elements of a whole, and a true understanding of God must also take account of His creation. Such a synthesis is crucial to how the human intellect eventually relates to creation and how it ultimately becomes the instrument for penetrating through history the mystery of the unknowable God implied in the formulation of tawhid......"(Ismaili Philosophy, Dr. Azim Nanji, Director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, U.K.)
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Its very interesting but I have noticed a key phrase being used in a significant number of Mawlana Hazar Imam's speeches during 2006 and 2007, this key phrase being "God's creation", "His creation", "creation of Allah":
"The second great historical lesson to be learnt is that the Muslim world has always been wide open to every aspect of human existence. The sciences, society, art, the oceans, the environment and the cosmos have all contributed to the great moments in the history of Muslim civilisations. The Qur’an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God’s creation"(Closing Address by His Highness Aga Khan IV at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, Paris, France, October 17th 2007)
"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)
"....in Islam, but particularly Shia Islam, the role of the intellect is part of faith. That intellect is what seperates man from the rest of the physical world in which he lives.....This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007).
"Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason"(Aga Khan IV, Spiegel Magazine interview, Germany, Oct 9th 2006)
From 1995:
"The Quran very often refers to nature as a reflection of Allah's power of creation and says: Look at the mountains, look at the rivers, look at the trees, look at the flowers all as evidence of Allah's love for the people whom He has created. Today I look at this environment and I say that I beleive that Allah is smiling upon you, may His smile always be upon you"(Aga Khan IV, Tajikistan, May 27th 1995)
From 1984:
“Muslims believe in an all-encompassing unit of man and nature. To them there is no fundamental division between the spiritual and the material while the whole world, whether it be the earth, sea or air, or the living creatures that inhabit them, is an expression of God’s creation.”(Aga Khan IV, Charlottesville, Virginia, 13 April 1984)
Another speech excerpt of Mawlana Hazar Imam I discovered recently talks about this: "The spiritual and material realms are not dichotomous, since in the Ismaili formulation, matter and spirit are united under a higher genus and each realm possesses its own hierarchy"(Azim Nanji, Institute of Ismaili Studies) . The excerpt:
"Science is a wonderful, powerful tool and research budgets are essential. But Science is only the beginning in the new age we are entering. Islam does not perceive the world as two seperate domains of mind and spirit, science and belief. Science and the search for knowledge are an expression of man's designated role in the universe, but they do not define that role totally....."(Aga Khan IV, McMaster University Convocation, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 15th 1987).
In view of the new speech excerpts listed above, here is an UPDATED version of my earlier postings, variously entitled "What is the full extent of 'God's creation'?", "The creation according to the Quran and key figures in Islam" and "The creation according to the Quran and Prophet Muhammad, Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan III, Imam Jafar As-Sadiq, Al-Kirmani, Al-Sijistani, Nasir Khusraw and Azim Nanji":
According to a famous hadith of the Prophet Muhammad:The first thing created by God was the Intellect ('aql).
Mowlana Hazar Imam recently(October 9th 2006) made the following statement to the German newspaper 'Spiegel' about the religion of Islam:"Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason."(Aga Khan IV)
“Muslims believe in an all-encompassing unit of man and nature. To them there is no fundamental division between the spiritual and the material while the whole world, whether it be the earth, sea or air, or the living creatures that inhabit them, is an expression of God’s creation.”(Aga Khan IV, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, 13 April 1984)
The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry. The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation. - (Aga Khan IV, AKU Convocation Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)
God – may He be Glorified and Exalted – created Intellect ('aql) first among the spiritual entities; He drew it forth from the right of His Throne, making it proceed from His own Light. Then he commanded it to retreat, and it retreated, to advance, and it advanced; then God proclaimed: 'I created you glorious, and I gave you pre-eminence over all my creatures.'( Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, (Al-Kulayni, Usul, vol. 1, pp. 23-24))
The beginning of all things, their origin, their force and their prosperity, is that intellect ('aql), without which one can profit from nothing. God created it to adorn His creatures, and as a light for them. It is through intellect ('aql) that the servants recognize God is their Creator and that they themselves are created beings …It is thanks to intellect ('aql) that they can distinguish what is beautiful from what is ugly, that they realize that darkness is in ignorance and that light is in Knowledge.( Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, (al-Kulayni, Usul al-Kafi, Vol. 1, pp. 34))
The Intellect is the substance of (God's) unity and it is the one (al-wahid), both cause and caused, the act of origination (al-ibda) and the first originated being (al-mubda al-awwal); it is perfection and perfect, eternity and eternal, existence and that which exists all in a single substance.( Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani,Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist (Kitab al-Riyad, pp. 221-222))
"....in Islam, but particularly Shia Islam, the role of the intellect is part of faith. That intellect is what seperates man from the rest of the physical world in which he lives.....This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007).
About Hafiz, the renowned Iranian poet:"Then came Hafiz - by far the greatest singer of the soul of man. In him we can find all the strivings, all the sorrow, all the victories and joys, all the hopes and disappointments of each and every one of us. In him we find contact, direct and immediate, with the outer universe interpreted as an infinite reality of matter, as a mirror of an eternal spirit, or indeed (as Spinoza later said) an absolute existence of which matter and spirit alike are but two of infinite modes and facets."(Inaugural Lecture Before the Iran Society by Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan III, November 9, 1936 London, United Kingdom.)
Behold! in the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the alternation of the night and the day; in the sailing of the ships through the ocean for the profit of mankind; in the rain which Allah sends down from the skies, and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is dead; in the beasts of all kinds that He scatters through the earth; in the change of the winds, and the clouds which they Trail like their slaves between the sky and the earth; (Here) indeed are Signs for the people of intellect(Quran)
Here is a relevant verse from the Qur'an, cited by Nasir-i Khusraw, hujjat-i Khurasan in his Khawaan al-Ikhwaan : "It is He who created you from dust, then from a sperm drop, then from a blood clot, then He brings you forth as a child, then lets you reach your age of full strength, then lets you become old - though some of you die before - and then lets you reach the appointed term; and that haply you may find the intellect (la'allakum ta'qilun)."(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)
The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine will (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954).
Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation. (Aga Khan IV,Speech, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
"Science is a wonderful, powerful tool and research budgets are essential. But Science is only the beginning in the new age we are entering. Islam does not perceive the world as two seperate domains of mind and spirit, science and belief. Science and the search for knowledge are an expression of man's designated role in the universe, but they do not define that role totally....."(Aga Khan IV, McMaster University Convocation, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 15th 1987)
"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)
Quote from a letter written by Our 48th Imam to a friend in 1952 under the title: "What have we forgotten in Islam?":Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth. During the great period of Islam, Muslims did not forget these principles of their religion. Alas, Islam which is a natural religion in which God's miracles are the very law and order of nature drifted away and is still drifting away, even in Pakistan, from science which is the study of those very laws and orders of nature.……Islam is a natural religion of which the Ayats are the universe in which we live and move and have our being………..The God of the Quran is the one whose Ayats are the universe……(Aga Khan III, 1952)
"The Quran very often refers to nature as a reflection of Allah's power of creation and says: Look at the mountains, look at the rivers, look at the trees, look at the flowers all as evidence of Allah's love for the people whom He has created. Today I look at this environment and I say that I beleive that Allah is smiling upon you, may His smile always be upon you"(Aga Khan IV, Tajikistan, May 27th 1995)
Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God. (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954).
'Tarkib' is composition as in the compounding of elements in the process of making more complex things, that is, of adding together two things to form a synthesis, a compound. Soul composes in the sense of 'tarkib'; it is the animating force that combines the physical elements of the natural universe into beings that move and act. Incorporating is an especially apt word in this instance. It means to turn something into a body, as in 'composing'. But it is actually the conversion of an intellectual object, a thought, into a physical thing. Soul acts by incorporating reason into physical objects, the natural matter of the universe and all the things composed of it(Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani,10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, from the book, 'Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary', by Paul Walker).
In fact this world is a book in which you see inscribed the writings of God the Almighty"(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet).
Kathalika yubayyinu Allahu lakum ayatihi la'allakum ta-'aqiloona: Allah thus makes clear to you His Signs that you may intellect.(Holy Quran 2:242)
Thus there was an absolute need for the Divine Word's revelation, to Mohammed himself, a man like the others, of God's person and of his relations to the Universe which he had created. Once man has thus comprehended the essence of existence, there remains for him the duty, since he knows the absolute value of his own soul, of making for himself a direct path which will constantly lead his individual soul to and bind it with the universal Soul of which the Universe is, as much of it as we perceive with our limited visions, one of the infinite manifestations. Thus Islam's basic principle can only be defined as mono-realism and not as monotheism. Consider, for example, the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar". What does that mean? There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life and to the soul. Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its reflection in the pool of a fountain; there is certainly a reflection or image of the sun, but with what poverty and with what little reality; how small and pale is the likeness between this impalpable image and the immense, blazing, white-hot glory of the celestial sphere itself. Allah is the sun; and the Universe, as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its power, are nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
Quran Symposium:....a reflection of how Islam's revelation, with its challenge to man's innate gift of quest and reason, became a powerful impetus for a new flowering of human civilisation.This programme is also an opportunity for achieving insights into how the discourse of the Qur'an-e-Sharif, rich in parable and allegory, metaphor and symbol, has been an inexhaustible well-spring of inspiration, lending itself to a wide spectrum of interpretations.In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy. (Aga Khan IV,Speech, 2003, London, U.K.)
God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves. I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us. (Aga Khan IV,Speech, 1963, Mindanao, Phillipines)
Several days ago, at a meeting of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in Malaysia, it was pointed out that the only way the umma can work its way out of its present sad state is to harness the intellect.(Aga Khan IV, Speech,2003, London, U.K.)
It (Surah of Light from the Quran) tells us that the oil of the blessed olive tree lights the lamp of understanding, a light that belongs neither to the East nor West. We are to give this light to all. In that spirit, all that we learn will belong to the world and that too is part of the vision I share with you. (Aga Khan IV, Speech 25 Sept. 1979)
The truth, as the famous Islamic scholars repeatedly told their students, is that the spirit of disciplined, objective enquiry is the property of no single culture, but of all humanity. To quote the great physician and philosopher, Ibn Sina: "My profession is to be forever journeying, to travel about the universe so that I may know all its conditions." (Aga Khan IV, Speech, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
An institution dedicated to proceeding beyond known limits must be committed to independent thinking. In a university scholars engage both orthodox and unorthodox ideas, seeking truth and understanding wherever they may be found. That process is often facilitated by an independent governance structure, which serves to ensure that the university adheres to its fundamental mission and is not pressured to compromise its work for short-term advantage. For a Muslim university it is appropriate to see learning and knowledge as a continuing acknowledgement of Allah's magnificence.(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 1993, Aga Khan University)
That quest for a better life, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, must lead inevitably to the Knowledge Society which is developing in our time. The great and central question facing the Ummah of today is how it will relate to the Knowledge Society of tomorrow.The fundamental reason for the pre-eminence of Islamic civilizations lay neither in accidents of history nor in acts of war, but rather in their ability to discover new knowledge, to make it their own, and to build constructively upon it. They became the Knowledge Societies of their time.(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 2006, Aga Khan University)
Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world. The form of universities has changed over those 1000 years, but that reciprocity between faith and knowledge remains a source of strength. (Aga Khan IV, Speech,1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
The Muslim world, once a remarkable bastion of scientific and humanist knowledge, a rich and self-confident cradle of culture and art, has never forgotten its past.The great Muslim philosopher al-Kindi wrote eleven hundred years ago, "No one is diminished by the truth, rather does the truth ennobles all". That is no less true today.(Aga Khan IV, Speech,1996, Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A.)
"The second great historical lesson to be learnt is that the Muslim world has always been wide open to every aspect of human existence. The sciences, society, art, the oceans, the environment and the cosmos have all contributed to the great moments in the history of Muslim civilisations. The Qur’an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God’s creation"(Closing Address by His Highness Aga Khan IV at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, Paris, France, October 17th 2007)
A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God's creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations.(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 2004, Matola, Mozambique.)
"The starting point of such a synthesis is the doctrine of ibda (derived from Qur'an 2:117). In its verbal form it is taken to mean 'eternal existentiation' to explain the notion in the Qur'an of God's timeless command (Kun: Be!). Ibda therefore connotes not a specific act of creation but the dialogical mode through which a relationship between God and His creation can be affirmed - it articulates the process of beginning and sets the stage for developing a philosophy of the manifestation of transcendence in creation...........In sum the process of creation can be said to take place at several levels. Ibda represents the initial level - one transcends history, the other creates it. The spiritual and material realms are not dichotomous, since in the Ismaili formulation, matter and spirit are united under a higher genus and each realm possesses its own hierarchy. Though they require linguistic and rational categories for definition, they represent elements of a whole, and a true understanding of God must also take account of His creation. Such a synthesis is crucial to how the human intellect eventually relates to creation and how it ultimately becomes the instrument for penetrating through history the mystery of the unknowable God implied in the formulation of tawhid......"(Ismaili Philosophy, Dr. Azim Nanji, Director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, U.K.)
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Sunday, December 9, 2007
262)Unprecedented video and written greetings from the Government of Canada to Mawlana Hazar Imam and the worldwide Shia Ismaili Muslim community.
The Conservative Government of Canada(The Hon. Jason Kenney, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, on behalf of the Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada) sends video greetings to His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan on the occasion of his upcoming birthday and Salgirah and Khushiali Mubarak to Shia Ismaili Muslims worldwide:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=b6i1Wzw31Ik
UPDATE, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12TH 2007:
Since the above video greeting was released it has shown itself to be wildly popular with the worldwide Jamat and others: the youtube video has received hits from people on six continents in places like Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, South Korea, Russia, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, the Middle East, the U.K., Holland, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Brazil, most Canadian Provinces and many U.S. States.
Today an official message was also placed on the Canadian Heritage website,
http://www.canadianheritage.gc.ca/pc-ch/news-comm/DJK071971_e.htm
and MP Rahim Jaffer, Chairman of the Conservative Caucus in the Canadian Parliament, addressed the Canadian House of Commons:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=D31i38JSly8
I sent the following comment to Ismaili Mail, which has published all the above three greetings on its much-visited website:
"This must be the trilogy to end all trilogies! First we have the mind-bogglingly popular and unprecedented video greeting to His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan and the worldwide Shia Ismaili Muslim Jamat from the Hon.Jason Kenney on behalf of the Rt. Hon Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada. Then we have the official written statement put out on the Canadian Heritage website. Finally, to cap it all off, we have an address to the Canadian Parliament by MP Rahim Jaffer, Chairman of the Conservative Caucus. This is a blessed confluence of events that comes together at the perfect moment-just a few hours before the birthday itself, December 13th 2007."
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/12/12/conservative-mp-rahim-jaffer-delivers-khushiali-statement/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/12/09/conservative-government-of-canada-sends-video-greetings-to-his-highness-the-aga-khan-and-the-shia-ismaili-muslim-community/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/12/12/declaration-on-behalf-of-canadian-prime-minister-stephen-harper-on-the-birthday-of-his-highness-prince-karim-aga-khan/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/12/11/conservative-member-of-parliament-rahim-jaffer-to-deliver-statement-about-mawlana-hazar-imams-birthday/
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=b6i1Wzw31Ik
UPDATE, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12TH 2007:
Since the above video greeting was released it has shown itself to be wildly popular with the worldwide Jamat and others: the youtube video has received hits from people on six continents in places like Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, South Korea, Russia, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, the Middle East, the U.K., Holland, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Brazil, most Canadian Provinces and many U.S. States.
Today an official message was also placed on the Canadian Heritage website,
http://www.canadianheritage.gc.ca/pc-ch/news-comm/DJK071971_e.htm
and MP Rahim Jaffer, Chairman of the Conservative Caucus in the Canadian Parliament, addressed the Canadian House of Commons:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=D31i38JSly8
I sent the following comment to Ismaili Mail, which has published all the above three greetings on its much-visited website:
"This must be the trilogy to end all trilogies! First we have the mind-bogglingly popular and unprecedented video greeting to His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan and the worldwide Shia Ismaili Muslim Jamat from the Hon.Jason Kenney on behalf of the Rt. Hon Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada. Then we have the official written statement put out on the Canadian Heritage website. Finally, to cap it all off, we have an address to the Canadian Parliament by MP Rahim Jaffer, Chairman of the Conservative Caucus. This is a blessed confluence of events that comes together at the perfect moment-just a few hours before the birthday itself, December 13th 2007."
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/12/12/conservative-mp-rahim-jaffer-delivers-khushiali-statement/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/12/09/conservative-government-of-canada-sends-video-greetings-to-his-highness-the-aga-khan-and-the-shia-ismaili-muslim-community/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/12/12/declaration-on-behalf-of-canadian-prime-minister-stephen-harper-on-the-birthday-of-his-highness-prince-karim-aga-khan/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/12/11/conservative-member-of-parliament-rahim-jaffer-to-deliver-statement-about-mawlana-hazar-imams-birthday/
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
261)The Hubble Space Telescope: A fine example of the ingenuity of man.
"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)
".........A strong commitment to learning has been at the very root of Ismaili and Islamic culture, going back to the first Imam of the Shia Muslims, the fourth Caliph, Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Talib, and his emphasis on knowledge. The tradition was renewed over many centuries in many places by the Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Safavids – the Mughals, the Uzbeks and the Ottomans......."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)
“When you have an instrument that reaches so far beyond what you’ve ever had before, you make discoveries that nobody ever thought of before,” said John Grunsfeld, who will be the payload commander on the Atlantis mission. “And we see things that nobody ever saw before. As a result, you know, Hubble became not just an observatory, but an icon for all of science. And Hubble has become part of our culture":
By DENNIS OVERBYE
New York Times
Published: December 4, 2007
Next August, after 20 years of hype, disappointment, blunders, triumphs and peerless glittering vistas of space and time, and four years after NASA decided to leave the Hubble Space Telescope to die in orbit, setting off public and Congressional outrage, a group of astronauts will ride to the telescope aboard the space shuttle Atlantis with wrenches in hand.
That, at least, is the plan.
“It’s been a roller coaster ride from hell,” Preston Burch, the space telescope’s project manager, said in his office here at the Goddard Space Flight Center of the controversy and uncertainty.
In a nearby building, the Hubble’s astronaut knights — dressed as if for surgery, in white gowns, hoods and masks —swarmed through a giant clean room to kick the tires, so to speak, of new instruments destined for the Hubble and to try out techniques and tools under the watchful eye of the Goddard engineers. They practiced sliding a new wide-field camera 3, suspended in air like a magician’s grand piano, in and out of its slot on a replica of the telescope that is mechanically and electrically exact down to the tape around the doors. “We have to train their minds and bodies,” said Michael Weiss, the deputy project manager of Hubble, adding that when the astronauts see the real telescope in orbit, “they say they’ve seen it before.”
Spacewalking astronauts have refurbished the Hubble four times in the last two decades; but the trip planned for August, almost everybody agrees, really will be the last service call. The shuttles are scheduled to stop flying in 2010, and without periodic maintenance, the telescope’s gyroscopes and batteries are expected die within about five years.
Astronauts, engineers and scientists here say they are resolved to pull off the most spectacular rejuvenation of the telescope yet, one, they say, that will leave it operating at the apex of its abilities well into the next decade so that it can go out in a blaze of glory.
“It will be a brand new telescope, practically,” said Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute on the Johns Hopkins campus in Baltimore. He added, “We want to return crackerjack science we can be proud of.”
The last visit, Dr. Mountain explained, is unique. “You don’t have to do routine maintenance,” he said. “It’s like a car you’re only going to keep another 20,000 miles. You don’t buy new tires.”
Engineers and project managers are busy mapping out five days of spacewalks.
If all goes well — never a given 350 miles above Earth — the astronauts will install a new camera and spectrograph and change out all the gyroscopes that keep it properly pointed and the batteries that keep it running. They are also planning to repair a broken spectrograph and the Hubble’s workhorse, the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which had a severe short-circuit last winter and was pronounced at the time probably beyond repair.
In space, the Hubble would be able to discern details blurred by the turbulent murky atmosphere. But its 94-inch diameter mirror turned out to have been polished to the wrong shape, leaving it with what astronomers call a spherical aberration. The Hubble became branded as a “technoturkey.”
In 1993, astronauts fitted the telescope with corrective lenses (at the cost of removing one of its five main instruments, a photometer), and the cosmos snapped into razorlike focus.
Three more visits by astronauts kept the Hubble running and, by replacing old instruments, actually made it more powerful. Along the way, the astronauts graduated from yanking equipment fitted with large astronaut-friendly handles to operating on instruments never meant to be repaired by people wearing the equivalent of boxing gloves in space.
In 2002, after an infrared camera named Nicmos unexpectedly ran out of coolant, the astronauts attached a mechanical refrigerator to run coolant through its pipes. A year later, the Hubble’s astronomers used the rejuvenated camera along with the advanced survey camera to record the deepest telescopic views ever obtained of the universe. The images captured galaxies as they existed a few hundred million years after the beginning of time.
“When you have an instrument that reaches so far beyond what you’ve ever had before, you make discoveries that nobody ever thought of before,” said John Grunsfeld, who will be the payload commander on the Atlantis mission. “And we see things that nobody ever saw before. As a result, you know, Hubble became not just an observatory, but an icon for all of science. And Hubble has become part of our culture.”
That status did not come cheaply.
Edward Weiler, director of the Goddard center and formerly associate administrator for science at NASA, estimated that over the years the Hubble had cost $9 billion. “There are few people, especially Americans, who won’t say it was worth it,” he said.
Hubble's History
All this seemed doomed to a premature end after the shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003 that killed its crew of seven. Sean O’Keefe, who was then the NASA administrator, declared that a shuttle flight to the telescope was too risky because, unlike the space station, it offered no safe haven if anything went wrong with the shuttle. The public was appalled. Schoolchildren even offered to send their pennies to NASA to keep the telescope going.
Some astronomers and engineers challenged the reasoning of Mr. O’Keefe, whose background was in public administration, and not engineering. Others in the space science community, noting that the science budget was being squeezed by President Bush’s Moon-Mars initiative, suggested that it was time to move on and that the Hubble repair money might be better spent on other science projects.
“Everybody could see where he was coming from,” David Leckrone of Goddard, the Hubble’s project scientist, said, referring to Mr. O’Keefe’s distress about the Columbia and a mandate for increased emphasis on safety. But, he added, “It seemed so un-NASA-like. We would never have sent anybody to the Moon if we were so risk averse.”
“I thought we were dead,” Dr. Leckrone said. “As long as he was administrator, it stuck.”
In February 2005, however, Mr. O’Keefe resigned to become chancellor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. His successor, Michael Griffin, who has a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering, instituted a rigorous risk analysis, culminating in a two-day meeting of experts that concluded it was no riskier to fly to the telescope than to go to the space station. In fall 2006, after the shuttles had begun flying again, Dr. Griffin approved the Hubble mission to a standing ovation from scientists and engineers.
“We all agree the risks are acceptable,” Dr. Leckrone said. “Griffin led us through that process with a good deal of intellectual vigor. He didn’t fake it.”
As a backup, NASA will have the shuttle Endeavor, which is scheduled for a September mission to the space station, prepped for a quick launching if a rescue is needed.
In the meantime, engineers, challenged by Mr. O’Keefe to keep the Hubble going as long as possible, learned to run it on a kind of austerity program, using two gyroscopes to keep the telescope pointed instead of the usual three (one for each dimension in space). They also learned how to preserve the batteries, which derive power from solar panels in the sunlit part of each orbit and provide electricity in the dark part. As a result, the batteries, which degraded rapidly for years, are now actually slightly stronger than before, the engineers say, and the Hubble has a healthy gyroscope in reserve in case one fails.
“If it weren’t for two-gyro science,” Mr. Weiss, the deputy project manager, said, “the next gyro failure would take us out of science.”
Besides Dr. Grunsfeld, who has been to Hubble twice, the crew includes Cmdr. Scott Altman, who led a Hubble mission in 2002; the pilot, Gregory Johnson; and the mission specialists, Andrew J. Feustel, Megan McArthur, Col. Mike T. Good and Michael J. Massimino, who also worked on the Hubble in 2002 and performed two spacewalks.
The new wide-field camera was designed to extend the Hubble’s vision into the ultraviolet wavelengths characteristic of the hottest stars and into the longer infrared wavelengths characteristic of cool stars, complementing the abilities of the advanced survey camera. It will replace the wide-field planetary camera 2, which has been in the telescope since 1993 and has been its only visible-light camera for the last year.
When the old camera is slid out, perhaps as early as the first spacewalk, will be “a heart-stopping moment,” Dr. Mountain said.
Dr. Grunsfeld’s crew will install another new instrument, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, into the slot now occupied by an old corrective optics package known as Costar that is no longer needed.
The instruments installed on the Hubble since the 1993 repair were built taking the mirror’s aberration into account. The new spectrograph is also designed to be sensitive to invisible ultraviolet light. Astronomers hope to use it to map a so-called “cosmic web,” stretching through intergalactic space, in which two-thirds of atoms in the universe are thought to be drifting and hiding.
One of the bigger challenges of the mission will be surgery on the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which can take pictures of things and break down their light to analyze their composition. The spectrograph had an electrical failure in 2004. To get inside the spectrograph, 111 screws that were never meant to be removed in space have to be unscrewed and kept from floating off. The plan is to clamp a plate over them beforehand and unscrew them through tiny holes.
No such option exists for the Advanced Camera, the choice for 70 percent of Hubble’s prospective users and the chief dark-energy-hunting instrument on or off the planet. It suffered a huge short-circuit in its power supply last winter.
In a task that could be spread over two spacewalks, the astronauts will clamp a new power supply to the outside of the camera. From there, according to ground tests, power can be fed back inside to the other parts of the camera through existing wires, unless they were damaged in the short-circuit.
In one additional piece of business, the astronauts will attach a grapple fixture to the bottom of the telescope so that a robot spacecraft could grab it and attach a rocket module in the future. The rocket would then drop the telescope into the ocean.
But that time is not yet. The telescope’s orbit will be stable through 2024, according to recent calculations.
All of this work could, in principle, be performed in the allotted five days of spacewalks. In that case, when the Atlantis pulls away and human eyes glimpse the Hubble for the last time in person, the telescope would have its full complement of instruments to dissect the light from the cosmos for the first time since 1993.
Running down a list of subjects like planets around other stars, dark energy and the structure of the universe, Dr. Leckrone called the telescope a toolkit for discovery. Noting that any astronomer in the world could propose to use it, he said: “A lot of brain power comes to Hubble. It’s mouthwatering to think of what they will do with it.”
Asked whether the astronomers were tempted to run the rejuvenated instrument frugally to prolong its life beyond its anticipated 2013 demise, Dr. Mountain said the idea was to go for broke.
“We don’t want to trade science for false longevity,” he said.
http://www.astromart.com/news/news.asp?news_id=746
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Friday, December 7, 2007
260)Neutrinos: Such small particles with so little mass that when they rain down on planet Earth they pass right through it!; Practical applications.
Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God's creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations(Aga Khan IV, 25th June 2004, Matola, Mozambique)
Neutrinos are such small particles and have so little mass that when they rain down on planet Earth they pass right through it. However, a new application can use this phenomenon to get very accurate information on our earth's interior, to map its interior fabric and structures:
Geophysics
Going to extremes
Nov 15th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Mapping the Earth with neutrinos
TELESCOPES that point down instead of up sound like a weird idea but, if they are designed to detect subatomic particles called neutrinos, they can tell astronomers what is happening in the sky on the other side of the planet. That is because most of the neutrinos that reach the Earth pass right through it. The planet thus forms a useful screen against other sorts of particles that might confuse the telescope. Such devices could, however, also see what is happening deep inside the Earth. At least, that is the suggestion made this week by a team led by Maria Gonzalez-Garcia of Stony Brook University, in New York state.
At the moment, the only data on the Earth's interior are the paths of earthquake waves that are reflected and refracted by the various layers of the planet's interior. These, together with reasonable guesses about the Earth's overall composition, have been used to put together the familiar model of an iron core, a rocky mantle and a thin crust. But the evidence is indirect. If Dr Gonzalez-Garcia is correct, then physicists will have opened a direct window on the subterranean world—at a minimal extra cost.
Most of the neutrinos that travel through the Earth come either from the sun or from sources far beyond the solar system. Some, however, are the result of collisions between cosmic rays and the gases of the upper atmosphere. As luck would have it, these tend to have about the right level of energy to be absorbed by rock more often than their extraterrestrial counterparts. That means they can, according to Dr Gonzalez-Garcia, be used like X-rays passing through a human body, to pick out denser rocks from lighter ones.
Of course, you would need an appropriate neutrino telescope to do this. Luckily, one is being built at the South Pole at the moment. Called IceCube, it will work by detecting the flashes of light generated on those rare occasions when a neutrino hits one of the atoms in a molecule of water in the ice.
When IceCube is completed in 2011, it will be a boon to astronomy. But it will also be the first telescope capable of spotting enough neutrinos to make it worthwhile to take measurements of the interior of the Earth. If Dr Gonzalez-Garcia is right, it will thus be the world's first geoscope as well.
Easy Nash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God's creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations(Aga Khan IV, 25th June 2004, Matola, Mozambique)
Neutrinos are such small particles and have so little mass that when they rain down on planet Earth they pass right through it. However, a new application can use this phenomenon to get very accurate information on our earth's interior, to map its interior fabric and structures:
Geophysics
Going to extremes
Nov 15th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Mapping the Earth with neutrinos
TELESCOPES that point down instead of up sound like a weird idea but, if they are designed to detect subatomic particles called neutrinos, they can tell astronomers what is happening in the sky on the other side of the planet. That is because most of the neutrinos that reach the Earth pass right through it. The planet thus forms a useful screen against other sorts of particles that might confuse the telescope. Such devices could, however, also see what is happening deep inside the Earth. At least, that is the suggestion made this week by a team led by Maria Gonzalez-Garcia of Stony Brook University, in New York state.
At the moment, the only data on the Earth's interior are the paths of earthquake waves that are reflected and refracted by the various layers of the planet's interior. These, together with reasonable guesses about the Earth's overall composition, have been used to put together the familiar model of an iron core, a rocky mantle and a thin crust. But the evidence is indirect. If Dr Gonzalez-Garcia is correct, then physicists will have opened a direct window on the subterranean world—at a minimal extra cost.
Most of the neutrinos that travel through the Earth come either from the sun or from sources far beyond the solar system. Some, however, are the result of collisions between cosmic rays and the gases of the upper atmosphere. As luck would have it, these tend to have about the right level of energy to be absorbed by rock more often than their extraterrestrial counterparts. That means they can, according to Dr Gonzalez-Garcia, be used like X-rays passing through a human body, to pick out denser rocks from lighter ones.
Of course, you would need an appropriate neutrino telescope to do this. Luckily, one is being built at the South Pole at the moment. Called IceCube, it will work by detecting the flashes of light generated on those rare occasions when a neutrino hits one of the atoms in a molecule of water in the ice.
When IceCube is completed in 2011, it will be a boon to astronomy. But it will also be the first telescope capable of spotting enough neutrinos to make it worthwhile to take measurements of the interior of the Earth. If Dr Gonzalez-Garcia is right, it will thus be the world's first geoscope as well.
Easy Nash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
259)Cosmic Rays, Stars and Black Holes: Marvels of Allah's creation
"Science is a wonderful, powerful tool and research budgets are essential. But Science is only the beginning in the new age we are entering. Islam does not perceive the world as two seperate domains of mind and spirit, science and belief. Science and the search for knowledge are an expression of man's designated role in the universe, but they do not define that role totally....."(Aga Khan IV, McMaster University Convocation, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 15th 1987)
"....in Islam, but particularly Shia Islam, the role of the intellect is part of faith. That intellect is what seperates man from the rest of the physical world in which he lives.....This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007).
Cosmic rays
They came from outer space
Nov 8th 2007
From The Economist print edition
A 40-year-old mystery is solved
SMALLER than an atom, they arrive with the energy of a tennis ball served by a champion. When they hit the atmosphere they create showers of daughter particles that zap mountaineers and people in aeroplanes. And no one knows where they come from—nor how, in apparent defiance of the laws of physics, they get to this planet in the first place.
Actually, that last sentence is no longer true. The super-particles in question are a particular type of high-energy cosmic ray and fittingly, given their extreme properties, their origin has now been worked out by a team of 444 researchers from 17 countries, using the biggest piece of scientific apparatus on Earth—the Pierre Auger observatory, which occupies 3,000 square kilometres of western Argentina.
Ordinary cosmic rays are puny things. Indeed, they are not really “cosmic” at all. They originate from various events (supernovae and so on) within the Milky Way galaxy that is home to the Earth. A few, however, are real whoppers—the products of events far more powerful than occur in the Milky Way. These are the tennis-ball equivalents and their existence is a puzzle.
Two puzzles, in fact. The first is: what created them? The second is: how did they get to Earth at such speed?
One hypothesis about their creation is that they are the result of stars being sucked into giant black holes. A second is that they come from colliding galaxies. A third is that they are caused by the collapse of massive but invisible relics from the beginning of the universe. All those events would be powerful enough, but all tend to happen a long way away. And that is where the second puzzle comes in.
In 1966 Kenneth Greisen, Vadim Kuzmin and Georgiy Zatsepin showed that high-energy charged particles (cosmic rays are mostly atomic nuclei, and thus positively charged) should be slowed by collisions with the photons of the cosmic microwave background (radiation left over from the Big Bang that permeates all space). This would bring them below a well-defined speed limit. Yet that limit is regularly exceeded. So, either the laws of physics are wrongly understood, or the super-rays are coming from close by, even if not from the Milky Way itself.
To find answers to these questions, the team trawled through the data that have accumulated since the Pierre Auger observatory began operating three years ago. The observatory, which is named after the physicist who discovered the showers caused by cosmic rays, has 1,600 detectors on the ground to record the arrival of such cascades and 24 telescopes pointing at the sky to locate the flashes of light produced by the collisions that create them.
So far, it has recorded a million or so showers. Around 80 of these were caused by cosmic rays more energetic than theory allows. The collaborators whittled these down to the 27 biggest events, so that there would be no ambiguity. They then decided to test the first, and easiest, hypothesis: that energetic cosmic rays are caused by hungry black holes. They did this by taking a peek at an astronomers' catalogue of 318 active galaxies located within 300m light years of Earth.
An active galaxy is a star system with a humongous black hole at its centre. Such black holes regularly chomp up stars, and that produces a lot of radiation. Only the 318 in question, however, are close enough to the Milky Way for the predicted galactic speed limit not to have been imposed (300m light years may sound a long way, but it is a short hop on the cosmic scale).
As the team report in this week's Science, all 27 of the cosmic rays they looked at did, indeed, come from the direction of galaxies in the catalogue. Both mysteries thus seem to have been solved. High-energy cosmic rays are caused by black holes consuming stars. And the laws of physics do not have to be torn up after all.
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
"....in Islam, but particularly Shia Islam, the role of the intellect is part of faith. That intellect is what seperates man from the rest of the physical world in which he lives.....This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007).
Cosmic rays
They came from outer space
Nov 8th 2007
From The Economist print edition
A 40-year-old mystery is solved
SMALLER than an atom, they arrive with the energy of a tennis ball served by a champion. When they hit the atmosphere they create showers of daughter particles that zap mountaineers and people in aeroplanes. And no one knows where they come from—nor how, in apparent defiance of the laws of physics, they get to this planet in the first place.
Actually, that last sentence is no longer true. The super-particles in question are a particular type of high-energy cosmic ray and fittingly, given their extreme properties, their origin has now been worked out by a team of 444 researchers from 17 countries, using the biggest piece of scientific apparatus on Earth—the Pierre Auger observatory, which occupies 3,000 square kilometres of western Argentina.
Ordinary cosmic rays are puny things. Indeed, they are not really “cosmic” at all. They originate from various events (supernovae and so on) within the Milky Way galaxy that is home to the Earth. A few, however, are real whoppers—the products of events far more powerful than occur in the Milky Way. These are the tennis-ball equivalents and their existence is a puzzle.
Two puzzles, in fact. The first is: what created them? The second is: how did they get to Earth at such speed?
One hypothesis about their creation is that they are the result of stars being sucked into giant black holes. A second is that they come from colliding galaxies. A third is that they are caused by the collapse of massive but invisible relics from the beginning of the universe. All those events would be powerful enough, but all tend to happen a long way away. And that is where the second puzzle comes in.
In 1966 Kenneth Greisen, Vadim Kuzmin and Georgiy Zatsepin showed that high-energy charged particles (cosmic rays are mostly atomic nuclei, and thus positively charged) should be slowed by collisions with the photons of the cosmic microwave background (radiation left over from the Big Bang that permeates all space). This would bring them below a well-defined speed limit. Yet that limit is regularly exceeded. So, either the laws of physics are wrongly understood, or the super-rays are coming from close by, even if not from the Milky Way itself.
To find answers to these questions, the team trawled through the data that have accumulated since the Pierre Auger observatory began operating three years ago. The observatory, which is named after the physicist who discovered the showers caused by cosmic rays, has 1,600 detectors on the ground to record the arrival of such cascades and 24 telescopes pointing at the sky to locate the flashes of light produced by the collisions that create them.
So far, it has recorded a million or so showers. Around 80 of these were caused by cosmic rays more energetic than theory allows. The collaborators whittled these down to the 27 biggest events, so that there would be no ambiguity. They then decided to test the first, and easiest, hypothesis: that energetic cosmic rays are caused by hungry black holes. They did this by taking a peek at an astronomers' catalogue of 318 active galaxies located within 300m light years of Earth.
An active galaxy is a star system with a humongous black hole at its centre. Such black holes regularly chomp up stars, and that produces a lot of radiation. Only the 318 in question, however, are close enough to the Milky Way for the predicted galactic speed limit not to have been imposed (300m light years may sound a long way, but it is a short hop on the cosmic scale).
As the team report in this week's Science, all 27 of the cosmic rays they looked at did, indeed, come from the direction of galaxies in the catalogue. Both mysteries thus seem to have been solved. High-energy cosmic rays are caused by black holes consuming stars. And the laws of physics do not have to be torn up after all.
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
258)A blast from the past: a key post from my old blog; What have we forgotten in Islam?
What Have We Forgotten in Islam?
Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural Religion. Throughout the Quran, God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon...The Aga Khan’s diagnosis in a letter dated 4th April, 1952 to H.E. Dr. Zahid Husain President, Arabiyyah Jamiyyat, Karachi.
First of all I must thank you for so kindly praying for my health. The Almighty has graciously allowed me some further time to be able to serve the great cause which you and I have at heart. I had promised when I made the donation of Rs. 10,000 to send you my views and I take this occasion of doing so.Of late in Pakistan various people have said that the downfall of the Muslim states during the last 200 or 300 years has been due to forgetting Islamic principles and this is a warning for the people of the new God-given state of Pakistan. Certainly I agree that we forgot Islamic principles in these three hundred years, but here great care must be taken to understand what Islamic principles we forgot and what Islamic principles we did not forget, for, it may be, that the stress is being hid in the popular mind on what we had not forgotten. For instance, the Ulemas in Iran were ever more powerful, more influential, more believed in, more obeyed than in the early part of the 19th century during Fatehali Shah's reign. The Shariat law was in every way being carried out, rites and ceremonies were exactly obeyed, the poor received regular help and assistance and Zakat was general Yet that was for Iran the most disastrous period because they went to war, foolishly trusting on prayers, against Russia and lost the whole Caucasus, Georgia and half Azarbaijan. It is generally said in Iran that the Ulemas assured the troops who had inferior arms that if the prayer Joshaun was read, they could face the superior armament of the Russians. Unfortunately they did and they were massacred and defeated and had to accept finally the humiliating treaty of Turkamanchia.
During the same 18th/19th centuries in Turkey and North Africa also, the rites, ceremonies and alms for poor were carefully carried out and yet those were the years of the disastrous wars with Russia and Austria with regular loss of territory.
Only in India we can say that the downfall was due to the forgetting of our principles of rites and ceremonies and Shariat law, but here apart from such failures, the same forgetting of another fundamental Islamic principle, which had led to the downfalls in Iran and Turkey, also worked and was perhaps the principal cause.
In North Africa, from Egypt to Morocco, rites and ceremonies and the ordinary laws of the Shariat and poor relief were strictly observed and yet year by year throughout the 19th/20th centuries, independence was removed and Europe conquered in one form or other, Morocco being the last which was lost in our time for the same faults. There was another fundamental Islamic principle which the Muslim world during the last 300 years more and more forgot and they lost everything.
Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth. During the great period of Islam, Muslims did not forget these principles of their religion.
Under the Khalif Muavia and the great Omaiyyad Khalifs of Damascus, the Islamic navy was supreme in Mediterranean, better ships, better knowledge of wind and tide were placed at the disposal of the Muslim navy and thus the land conquests of half Western Europe rendered possible and easy.
Even the historian Gibbon says that when the Turks conquered Constantinople, the Muslim artillery was far superior to any other in Europe, and far greater knowledge was known of the consequences of powder and fire than anything that the Greeks had at their disposal. This alone led to the rapid Turkish conquest of the Balkan Peninsula and Constantinople and coming up to Vienna. Just as under the great Omaiyyads they had almost reached Paris.
But at the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th, the European Renaissance rapidly advanced in knowledge of nature, namely all those very Ayats of God to which the Quran refers when Muslims forgot the Ayats, namely natural phenomenon, its law and order which are the proofs of divine guidance used in the Quran, but we stuck to our rites and ceremonies, to our prayers and fast alone, forgetting the other half of our faith. Thus during those 200/300 years, Europe and the West got an advance out of all proportion to the Muslim world and we found everywhere in Islam (inspite of our humble prayer, our moral standard, our kindliness and gentleness towards the poor) constant deterrioration of one form or another and the Muslim world went down. Why? Because we forgot the law and order of nature to which the Quran refers as proof of God's existence and we went against God's natural laws. This and this alone has led to the disastrous consequences we have seen.
Today public opinion in Pakistan is standing at a critical moment. If again we look upon Islamic principles as only rites and ceremonies and forget the real Ayats of God's natural phenomenon, then not only Europe but China and India will go so far ahead of us that either we will become like North Africa, humble protectorates or we may have like Turkey to throw over much that is most valuable and precious in our mental outlook. To avoid this, what are we to do? Any fool can tell you of the disease but what is the remedy, how are we to save both teaching of Islam, knowledge of nature and our daily Islamic life of kindliness, gentleness and prayers? If the present method by which the Ulema being brought up on one line of studies and the scientific youth on a different one continues, then disaster will come because there will be a fundamental misunderstanding in the outlook of intellect and faith in the soul of the nation. We must learn from our enemies what saved Christianity for Europe. It was the fact that, as the Universities at the time of the Renaissance and centuries that followed went forward with natural studies, at the same time, the same universities had faculties of divinity in which the priesthood was trained. The atmosphere of science permeated the atmosphere of Christian divinity studies and the atmosphere of the Christian divinity students permeated the atmosphere of the scientific studies; thus both grew and developed together. Christianity adapted itself to science, though it is any thing but a natural religion being based on fundamental irrational principles which are the break up of natural law and order, while science accepted these extraordinary miracles as temporary breaks of the natural law of the universe.
Alas, Islam, which is a natural religion in which God's miracles are the very law and order of nature, drifted away and still drifting away, even in Pakistan, from science which is the study of those very laws and orders of nature.
You, gentlemen, have a great responsibility. The only practical hope I see is that all your universities in Pakistan should have a faculty of Islamic religious and philosophical studies attached to ordinary curriculum for post-graduate students, who alone could be recognized as Ulemas. Something of the kind I know is being prepared in Egypt. A great Muslim divine, alas dead far too soon, the late Sheikh al-Maraghi, insisted in Azhar that natural laws should be taught according to the latest discoveries; but if we turn to Iran, Pakistan, North Africa, outside Egypt, we find that the Ulemas are being still brought up on the same old lines and the modern students on a totally different line. There is no unity of soul without which there can be no greatness.
My voice alone is the voice of an old sick man in the wilderness, but you members of the Jamiyyat are not old members and sick men. Insist, you who have taken up the study of the language of the Quran, to make the spirit of the Quran also the spirit of Pakistan. Remember that in the great first century they knew more about sea and wind than Europe ever did for hundreds of years to come. Today where are you? Unless our universities have the keen graduated Ulema school for men brought up in the same atmosphere as the science students, realizing the fundamental truth that Islam is a natural religion of which the Ayats are the universe in which we live and move and have our being, the same causes will lead to the same disastrous results.
You, members of the Jamiyyat should bravely request the enlargement of our universities and the increase of their numbers on Aligarh lines, and insist on post graduate degrees for Ulema, just as there is for scientists brought up in the same way. I influenced my friend Mohsenul Mulk to do something of the kind in Aligarh. Alas, he died and after his death my direct influence on the powers of Aligarh got less and less, though something of the kind to which I here refer did come up in Aligarh. It did not go the whole way as it would have gone, still if Mohsenul Mulk had lived and I had been able to continue my influence, but it was an improvement and it has given you Pakistan. Without Aligarh no Pakistan would have come, but to live we want many Aligarhs with science and religious philosophy and education blended in one atmosphere realizing that God of the Quran is the one whose Ayats are the universe.
This is my most important message to you, brothers of Jamiyyat. If your prayers have given me life enough to write this letter, your prayers have done some good(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952)
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural Religion. Throughout the Quran, God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon...The Aga Khan’s diagnosis in a letter dated 4th April, 1952 to H.E. Dr. Zahid Husain President, Arabiyyah Jamiyyat, Karachi.
First of all I must thank you for so kindly praying for my health. The Almighty has graciously allowed me some further time to be able to serve the great cause which you and I have at heart. I had promised when I made the donation of Rs. 10,000 to send you my views and I take this occasion of doing so.Of late in Pakistan various people have said that the downfall of the Muslim states during the last 200 or 300 years has been due to forgetting Islamic principles and this is a warning for the people of the new God-given state of Pakistan. Certainly I agree that we forgot Islamic principles in these three hundred years, but here great care must be taken to understand what Islamic principles we forgot and what Islamic principles we did not forget, for, it may be, that the stress is being hid in the popular mind on what we had not forgotten. For instance, the Ulemas in Iran were ever more powerful, more influential, more believed in, more obeyed than in the early part of the 19th century during Fatehali Shah's reign. The Shariat law was in every way being carried out, rites and ceremonies were exactly obeyed, the poor received regular help and assistance and Zakat was general Yet that was for Iran the most disastrous period because they went to war, foolishly trusting on prayers, against Russia and lost the whole Caucasus, Georgia and half Azarbaijan. It is generally said in Iran that the Ulemas assured the troops who had inferior arms that if the prayer Joshaun was read, they could face the superior armament of the Russians. Unfortunately they did and they were massacred and defeated and had to accept finally the humiliating treaty of Turkamanchia.
During the same 18th/19th centuries in Turkey and North Africa also, the rites, ceremonies and alms for poor were carefully carried out and yet those were the years of the disastrous wars with Russia and Austria with regular loss of territory.
Only in India we can say that the downfall was due to the forgetting of our principles of rites and ceremonies and Shariat law, but here apart from such failures, the same forgetting of another fundamental Islamic principle, which had led to the downfalls in Iran and Turkey, also worked and was perhaps the principal cause.
In North Africa, from Egypt to Morocco, rites and ceremonies and the ordinary laws of the Shariat and poor relief were strictly observed and yet year by year throughout the 19th/20th centuries, independence was removed and Europe conquered in one form or other, Morocco being the last which was lost in our time for the same faults. There was another fundamental Islamic principle which the Muslim world during the last 300 years more and more forgot and they lost everything.
Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth. During the great period of Islam, Muslims did not forget these principles of their religion.
Under the Khalif Muavia and the great Omaiyyad Khalifs of Damascus, the Islamic navy was supreme in Mediterranean, better ships, better knowledge of wind and tide were placed at the disposal of the Muslim navy and thus the land conquests of half Western Europe rendered possible and easy.
Even the historian Gibbon says that when the Turks conquered Constantinople, the Muslim artillery was far superior to any other in Europe, and far greater knowledge was known of the consequences of powder and fire than anything that the Greeks had at their disposal. This alone led to the rapid Turkish conquest of the Balkan Peninsula and Constantinople and coming up to Vienna. Just as under the great Omaiyyads they had almost reached Paris.
But at the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th, the European Renaissance rapidly advanced in knowledge of nature, namely all those very Ayats of God to which the Quran refers when Muslims forgot the Ayats, namely natural phenomenon, its law and order which are the proofs of divine guidance used in the Quran, but we stuck to our rites and ceremonies, to our prayers and fast alone, forgetting the other half of our faith. Thus during those 200/300 years, Europe and the West got an advance out of all proportion to the Muslim world and we found everywhere in Islam (inspite of our humble prayer, our moral standard, our kindliness and gentleness towards the poor) constant deterrioration of one form or another and the Muslim world went down. Why? Because we forgot the law and order of nature to which the Quran refers as proof of God's existence and we went against God's natural laws. This and this alone has led to the disastrous consequences we have seen.
Today public opinion in Pakistan is standing at a critical moment. If again we look upon Islamic principles as only rites and ceremonies and forget the real Ayats of God's natural phenomenon, then not only Europe but China and India will go so far ahead of us that either we will become like North Africa, humble protectorates or we may have like Turkey to throw over much that is most valuable and precious in our mental outlook. To avoid this, what are we to do? Any fool can tell you of the disease but what is the remedy, how are we to save both teaching of Islam, knowledge of nature and our daily Islamic life of kindliness, gentleness and prayers? If the present method by which the Ulema being brought up on one line of studies and the scientific youth on a different one continues, then disaster will come because there will be a fundamental misunderstanding in the outlook of intellect and faith in the soul of the nation. We must learn from our enemies what saved Christianity for Europe. It was the fact that, as the Universities at the time of the Renaissance and centuries that followed went forward with natural studies, at the same time, the same universities had faculties of divinity in which the priesthood was trained. The atmosphere of science permeated the atmosphere of Christian divinity studies and the atmosphere of the Christian divinity students permeated the atmosphere of the scientific studies; thus both grew and developed together. Christianity adapted itself to science, though it is any thing but a natural religion being based on fundamental irrational principles which are the break up of natural law and order, while science accepted these extraordinary miracles as temporary breaks of the natural law of the universe.
Alas, Islam, which is a natural religion in which God's miracles are the very law and order of nature, drifted away and still drifting away, even in Pakistan, from science which is the study of those very laws and orders of nature.
You, gentlemen, have a great responsibility. The only practical hope I see is that all your universities in Pakistan should have a faculty of Islamic religious and philosophical studies attached to ordinary curriculum for post-graduate students, who alone could be recognized as Ulemas. Something of the kind I know is being prepared in Egypt. A great Muslim divine, alas dead far too soon, the late Sheikh al-Maraghi, insisted in Azhar that natural laws should be taught according to the latest discoveries; but if we turn to Iran, Pakistan, North Africa, outside Egypt, we find that the Ulemas are being still brought up on the same old lines and the modern students on a totally different line. There is no unity of soul without which there can be no greatness.
My voice alone is the voice of an old sick man in the wilderness, but you members of the Jamiyyat are not old members and sick men. Insist, you who have taken up the study of the language of the Quran, to make the spirit of the Quran also the spirit of Pakistan. Remember that in the great first century they knew more about sea and wind than Europe ever did for hundreds of years to come. Today where are you? Unless our universities have the keen graduated Ulema school for men brought up in the same atmosphere as the science students, realizing the fundamental truth that Islam is a natural religion of which the Ayats are the universe in which we live and move and have our being, the same causes will lead to the same disastrous results.
You, members of the Jamiyyat should bravely request the enlargement of our universities and the increase of their numbers on Aligarh lines, and insist on post graduate degrees for Ulema, just as there is for scientists brought up in the same way. I influenced my friend Mohsenul Mulk to do something of the kind in Aligarh. Alas, he died and after his death my direct influence on the powers of Aligarh got less and less, though something of the kind to which I here refer did come up in Aligarh. It did not go the whole way as it would have gone, still if Mohsenul Mulk had lived and I had been able to continue my influence, but it was an improvement and it has given you Pakistan. Without Aligarh no Pakistan would have come, but to live we want many Aligarhs with science and religious philosophy and education blended in one atmosphere realizing that God of the Quran is the one whose Ayats are the universe.
This is my most important message to you, brothers of Jamiyyat. If your prayers have given me life enough to write this letter, your prayers have done some good(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952)
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Monday, December 3, 2007
257)"It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy"(Aga Khan IV)
I agree with the assertion that signs and processes in the external world are nothing more than harbingers of the mysteries and realities of the spiritual world. Mowlana Hazar Imam mentioned as much in eloquent language at an IIS convocation in 2003:
"The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy"(Aga Khan IV, 19th October 2003, London,U.K.)
Some examples, IMHO, of "a cosmos full of signs and symbols" include:
1)The presence of invisible dark matter and dark energy, which makesup by far most of the matter in the universe and whose physical presence can only be inferred by its gravitational effect on visible matter, which makes up less than 5% of all matter in the universe;
2)Particles of matter and their anti-matter counterparts. Each particle of matter in the universe has its own, specific anti-matter partner, which can be situated anywhere in the universe but whose behaviour is intimately connected to its corresponding matter particle. When a matter particle undergoes any change its corresponding, invisible, anti-matter particle responds to this change no matter where it physically is in the universe;
3)Quantum mechanics, which does not follow the rules that the macroscopic universe follows, demonstrates a blurring between the worlds of existence and "non-existence" and is forced to use probabilities and not certainties to describe the properties of matter;
4)Ubiquitous processes in nature like Photosynthesis and Protein Synthesis, IMHO, reflect deeper truths when one studies them sequentially.
In Photosynthesis, green plants capture uv light from the sun, convert it into chemical energy in the form of well-known high-energy molecules, then use this energy to power a reaction where carbon dioxide is extracted from the atmosphere and combinedwith water to create food or nourishment(carbohydrate or sugar), releasing oxygen back into the atmosphere. The image of taking light from the sun and using it to create nourishment in the form of food can be a symbol of the light(noor) of Imam providing spiritual nourishment to an impoverished individual human soul or community of souls.
In Protein Synthesis the specific instructions for making a protein in the cell's interior come from the master DNA molecule in the nucleus, which literally is at the geographical center of that protein's universe. A protein's function is totally dependent on its 3-dimensional structure, which in turn is totally dependent on its unique and specific amino acid sequence, which itself is entirely dependent upon coded instructions from the DNA master molecule in the nucleus. In a very real way the master DNA molecule is the celestial essence of that protein. We can see in this ayat(sign) of Protein Synthesis a symbolism speaking to the hierachy of spiritual knowledge and that while there may be(and is) beauty in the physical universe, the real story and beauty lies at the level of its Celestial Essence. I think there are many other examples in nature, many of which have been discovered by the rational intellect of man during the 20th century.
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/127no-7-ayatssigns-in-universe-series.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-4.html
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
"The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy"(Aga Khan IV, 19th October 2003, London,U.K.)
Some examples, IMHO, of "a cosmos full of signs and symbols" include:
1)The presence of invisible dark matter and dark energy, which makesup by far most of the matter in the universe and whose physical presence can only be inferred by its gravitational effect on visible matter, which makes up less than 5% of all matter in the universe;
2)Particles of matter and their anti-matter counterparts. Each particle of matter in the universe has its own, specific anti-matter partner, which can be situated anywhere in the universe but whose behaviour is intimately connected to its corresponding matter particle. When a matter particle undergoes any change its corresponding, invisible, anti-matter particle responds to this change no matter where it physically is in the universe;
3)Quantum mechanics, which does not follow the rules that the macroscopic universe follows, demonstrates a blurring between the worlds of existence and "non-existence" and is forced to use probabilities and not certainties to describe the properties of matter;
4)Ubiquitous processes in nature like Photosynthesis and Protein Synthesis, IMHO, reflect deeper truths when one studies them sequentially.
In Photosynthesis, green plants capture uv light from the sun, convert it into chemical energy in the form of well-known high-energy molecules, then use this energy to power a reaction where carbon dioxide is extracted from the atmosphere and combinedwith water to create food or nourishment(carbohydrate or sugar), releasing oxygen back into the atmosphere. The image of taking light from the sun and using it to create nourishment in the form of food can be a symbol of the light(noor) of Imam providing spiritual nourishment to an impoverished individual human soul or community of souls.
In Protein Synthesis the specific instructions for making a protein in the cell's interior come from the master DNA molecule in the nucleus, which literally is at the geographical center of that protein's universe. A protein's function is totally dependent on its 3-dimensional structure, which in turn is totally dependent on its unique and specific amino acid sequence, which itself is entirely dependent upon coded instructions from the DNA master molecule in the nucleus. In a very real way the master DNA molecule is the celestial essence of that protein. We can see in this ayat(sign) of Protein Synthesis a symbolism speaking to the hierachy of spiritual knowledge and that while there may be(and is) beauty in the physical universe, the real story and beauty lies at the level of its Celestial Essence. I think there are many other examples in nature, many of which have been discovered by the rational intellect of man during the 20th century.
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/127no-7-ayatssigns-in-universe-series.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-4.html
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
256)A must-see documentary movie on His Highness Aga Khan IV, who is the beloved muse of my blog.
The plot outline as described by the makers of this documentary movie:
"For 50 years the Aga Khan has shouldered the burden of the welfare of his community as the world has faced incredible change. In this post 9/11 world as the divides between Muslims and non-Muslims and within the Muslim world itself seem to be getting more pronounced, we need to hear the story of the Aga Khan."
Ismaili Mail has taken one of the leads in promoting this documentary worldwide:
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/an-islamic-conscience-the-aga-khan-and-the-ismailis/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/11/29/can-the-story-of-the-aga-khan-point-to-a-solution-to-the-east-west-divide/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/the-aga-khan-and-the-ismailis/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/a-tale-of-modern-islam-the-aga-khan-and-the-ismailis/#comment-19368
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=9056376419
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
"For 50 years the Aga Khan has shouldered the burden of the welfare of his community as the world has faced incredible change. In this post 9/11 world as the divides between Muslims and non-Muslims and within the Muslim world itself seem to be getting more pronounced, we need to hear the story of the Aga Khan."
Ismaili Mail has taken one of the leads in promoting this documentary worldwide:
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/an-islamic-conscience-the-aga-khan-and-the-ismailis/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/11/29/can-the-story-of-the-aga-khan-point-to-a-solution-to-the-east-west-divide/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/the-aga-khan-and-the-ismailis/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/a-tale-of-modern-islam-the-aga-khan-and-the-ismailis/#comment-19368
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=9056376419
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Sunday, December 2, 2007
255) "It is He who created you from dust, then from a sperm drop, then from a blood clot, then He brings you forth as a child, then.....(Quran).
Here is a relevant verse from the Qur'an, cited by Nasir-i Khusraw, hujjat-i Khurasan in his Khawaan al-Ikhwaan : "It is He who created you from dust, then from a sperm drop, then from a blood clot, then He brings you forth as a child, then lets you reach your age of full strength, then lets you become old - though some of you die before - and then lets you reach the appointed term; and that haply you may find the intellect (la'allakum ta'qilun)."(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)
Space dust
Blowing in the wind
Oct 11th 2007
From The Economist print edition
The building blocks of planets and people come from black holes
WHEN the writer of Genesis said man was made of dust, he spoke true. And not just man. The whole Earth was made from dust particles in orbit around the primitive sun, as were all the other solid objects in the solar system. But how did the dust itself come into existence?
That is a puzzle. Modern space dust blows off stars that formed about 10 billion years ago. These stars would have been too young to have shed much of the stuff by the time that the solar system formed, 4.5 billion years ago. The universe's primordial dust must therefore have come from somewhere else—and a team of researchers led by Ciska Markwick-Kemper of the University of Manchester think they know where. The answer is from black holes.
The black holes in question are at the centres of quasars. These formed shortly after the universe began and they came to the attention of earthling astronomers because quasars are powerful radio sources. The radio waves (and lots of other radiation) are the result of matter being drawn into the black hole and releasing energy as it falls. But not all this matter is swallowed. Some is baked, transformed and spat out again. It was this transformation that interested Dr Markwick-Kemper.
Suspecting that it might be the source of primordial dust, she recruited a space telescope called Spitzer to look at a quasar called PG 2112+059 in more detail. Spitzer is tuned to pick up infra-red radiation—the sort of radiation emitted by dust that has been heated. And the details of the spectrum of infra-red radiation given off by a speck of dust will betray its composition.
Dr Markwick-Kemper and her colleagues report their findings in a forthcoming edition of Astrophysical Journal Letters. The dust around PG 2112+059 contains large quantities of rock-forming minerals, including crystalline forms of silica (essentially, small sand grains), a form of aluminium oxide called corundum (better known on Earth as the principal ingredient of rubies and sapphires) and a form of magnesium oxide called periclase (which is present in marble).
These minerals must have been produced by the quasar, Dr Markwick-Kemper argues, because their crystal structures would not survive long in the hostile conditions of outer space. Cosmic rays would zap them into an amorphous, glass-like state. Moreover, corundum and periclase have not been detected in space dust before. Their association with the quasar is therefore strong evidence that this is the object that created them. A human being may still be a handful of dust. But that dust has had an exciting history.
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Space dust
Blowing in the wind
Oct 11th 2007
From The Economist print edition
The building blocks of planets and people come from black holes
WHEN the writer of Genesis said man was made of dust, he spoke true. And not just man. The whole Earth was made from dust particles in orbit around the primitive sun, as were all the other solid objects in the solar system. But how did the dust itself come into existence?
That is a puzzle. Modern space dust blows off stars that formed about 10 billion years ago. These stars would have been too young to have shed much of the stuff by the time that the solar system formed, 4.5 billion years ago. The universe's primordial dust must therefore have come from somewhere else—and a team of researchers led by Ciska Markwick-Kemper of the University of Manchester think they know where. The answer is from black holes.
The black holes in question are at the centres of quasars. These formed shortly after the universe began and they came to the attention of earthling astronomers because quasars are powerful radio sources. The radio waves (and lots of other radiation) are the result of matter being drawn into the black hole and releasing energy as it falls. But not all this matter is swallowed. Some is baked, transformed and spat out again. It was this transformation that interested Dr Markwick-Kemper.
Suspecting that it might be the source of primordial dust, she recruited a space telescope called Spitzer to look at a quasar called PG 2112+059 in more detail. Spitzer is tuned to pick up infra-red radiation—the sort of radiation emitted by dust that has been heated. And the details of the spectrum of infra-red radiation given off by a speck of dust will betray its composition.
Dr Markwick-Kemper and her colleagues report their findings in a forthcoming edition of Astrophysical Journal Letters. The dust around PG 2112+059 contains large quantities of rock-forming minerals, including crystalline forms of silica (essentially, small sand grains), a form of aluminium oxide called corundum (better known on Earth as the principal ingredient of rubies and sapphires) and a form of magnesium oxide called periclase (which is present in marble).
These minerals must have been produced by the quasar, Dr Markwick-Kemper argues, because their crystal structures would not survive long in the hostile conditions of outer space. Cosmic rays would zap them into an amorphous, glass-like state. Moreover, corundum and periclase have not been detected in space dust before. Their association with the quasar is therefore strong evidence that this is the object that created them. A human being may still be a handful of dust. But that dust has had an exciting history.
Easy Nash aka easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)