Experimental scientists, who struggle daily in the laboratory to understand the physical and biological world, are instinctively convinced that they are gradually, in spite of many difficulties, obtaining valid and enduring knowledge about a real, objective world. It is a familiar experience to be confronted by an apparently unintelligible phenomenon, to have an idea about what is going on, to base a theory on that idea, and then to sow that using it they can explain quantitatively what is already known and also make predictions about new phenomena that are subsequently verified. This is intelligible if we are gradually finding out about the world, but not if we are simply projecting our ideas on the world. Often scientists have struggled for a long time to interpret the world according to their own ideas, only to be forced by the evidence to adopt a different view. Planck’s discovery of the quantum is an example of this. -Theology and modern physics, Peter Edward Hodgson

The casual reader of the past series can now understand that physics has taken a tumble at the long journey of describing reality with reason and mathematics. At the smallest scales the reason and logic coded into our brains, the tools which have brought us much ‘progress’, fail to yield any further answers.

In a world where experiments and reason trump all, it seems experiments and reasoning have turned upside down and left us with experiments that boggle the mind and purely unverifiable ideas on how to explain them.

11th century Muslim saint and scholar, Imam Ghazali (R) underwent a similar crisis centuries ago. His recounting of his thought process in the matter is quite relevant.

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Then I said to myself, “My aim is to perceive the deep reality of things; I wish to seize the essence of knowledge. Certain knowledge is that in which the thing known reveals itself without leaving any room for doubt or any possibility of error or illusion, nor can the heart allow such a possibility.  One must be protected from error, and should be so bound to certainty that any attempt, for example, to transform a stone into gold or a stick into a serpent would not raise doubts or engender contrary probabilities. I know very well that ten is more than three. If anyone tries to dissuade me by saying, No, three is more than ten, and wants to prove it by changing in front of me this stick into a serpent, even if I saw him changing it, still this fact would engender no doubt about my knowledge. Certainly, I would be astonished at such a power, but I would not doubt my knowledge.

Thus I came to know that whatever is known without this kind of certainty is doubtful knowledge, not reliable and safe, that all knowledge subject to error is not sure and certain.

However, when I examined what I know, I found myself lacking this kind of certain knowledge, except as concerned things I could confirm with my senses or necessary (self-evident) for reason.

So I said, “Now that despair has overcome me, there is no point in studying any problems except on the basis of what is self-evident, namely, the affirmations of the senses and the necessary truths of reason. I had to look clearly at the nature of my trust in what I could confirm with my senses, and my confidence in being safe from error by following the requirements of reason. Are these feelings similar to my previous trust in the opinions of authority and the feeling of most people regarding speculative knowledge? Or is it a question of a certainty without illusion or surprise?

I proceeded therefore most earnestly to consider the evidence of my senses and the requirements of reason to see if I could make myself doubt these. This led me to lose faith in the evidence of my senses. This doubt, which became completely pervasive, can be expressed as follows:

How can one trust the evidence of one’s senses? Sight is the most powerful of our senses, and we could stare at a shadow and judge that it is fixed and not moving at all. Yet, at the end of an hour’s watching, we find that the shadow has moved, not all at once, but gradually or little by little: it has been moving all the time, and never was in a state of rest. The eye looks at a star and sees it reduced to the size of a coin (dinar), whereas geometrical computations show it to be larger than the earth. This and similar cases exemplify how the evidence of one’s senses leads one to a judgment which reason shows irrefutably to be totally erroneous.

Thus, I told myself that there is no security even in the evidence of one’s senses. Perhaps such surety can be found only in intellectual truths which play the role of first principles of thought, such as: ten is greater than three; the same thing cannot simultaneously be affirmed and denied; nothing here below can be both created and eternal, existent and non-existent, necessary and impossible.

But the evidence of my senses replied, Are you sure that when you trust the requirements of reason it is not the same sort of trust that you had in the evidence of your senses? You trusted us, then reason accused us of being in error; without that word of reason, you would trust us still. Perhaps there is something beyond reason which would show that reason in turn is in error, just as reason showed the error of the evidence of the senses. The fact that this further intelligence is not manifest does not prove that it is impossible.

I remained for some little time speechless. Then the difficulty appeared to resemble the problem of sleep. I told myself that when one is asleep one believes all sorts of things and finds oneself in all sorts of situations; one believes in them absolutely, without the slightest doubt. When one wakes up, one realizes the inconsistency and inanity of the phantasms of the imagination. In the same way, one might ask oneself about the reality of beliefs one has acquired through one’s senses or by reason. Could one not imagine oneself in a state which compares to being awake, just as wakefulness compares to being asleep? Being awake would be like the dreams of that state, which in turn would show that the illusion (of the certainty) of rational knowledge is nothing but vain imagination.

Such a state might be the one that the mystics (Sufis) claim, for they assert that, when they become totally absorbed in themselves and completely abstract from their senses, they find themselves in a state of mind which does not agree with what is given by reason.

Perhaps this state is none other than death? Did not Allah’s messenger, peace be upon him, say: “Men are asleep; in dying they awaken.” Life here below may be a stream, compared with life beyond. After death, things would appear in a different light, and, as the Qur’an says, “We have lifted your veil, and today your sight is penetrating.”

Then these thoughts came to my mind and gnawed at me I tried to find some way of treating my unhealthy condition, but this was in vain. They could be dispelled only by reasoning, which is impossible without recourse to the first principles of knowledge. If these are not admissible, no construction of a proof is possible.

My disease grew worse and lasted almost two months, during which I fell prey to skepticism, though neither in theory nor in outward expression. At last, God the Almighty cured me of that disease and I recovered my health and mental equilibrium. The self-evident principles of reason again seemed acceptable; I trusted them and in them felt safe and certain. I reached this point not by well-ordered or methodical argument, but by means of a light God the Almighty cast into my breast, which light is the key to most knowledge.

His trust in reason was solved by faith.