It is possible to ask many more such questions. Astronomer Neil F. Comins, from Maine University, explained in his book, What If the Moon Didn’t Exist, the scenarios humankind would have faced if the Moon hadn’t existed. According to Comins, one of the millions of reasons why Earth is the only planet (known to us) to have life is the delicate balance between the Earth and the Moon. No occurrence in the universe is a coincidence, thus the Moon has been created as a balance factor. This balance is so sensitive that it is possible to say that there would be no life on Earth if it weren’t for the Moon.

The Moon, a sphere that has no atmosphere, and has a surface covered with craters, dust and rocks, is the Earth’s only satellite. The radius of the Moon is about one fourth of that of the Earth’s, its volume is about 1/50 of the Earth’s, and its mass is about 1/81 of the Earth’s. The Moon is around 240,000 miles from the Earth’s center and it takes 29.5 days to complete its orbit around the Earth. Even though we do not know for sure how the Moon came into being, the currently accepted theory asserts that a planet about 10 times lighter than the Earth, which astronomers call “Thiea,” crashed into Earth and a part of that planet broke apart and fell into space. This part (having lost its shape and most of its mass) crashed into Earth again after orbiting the Earth. In this second crash, the metal center of “Theia” fused into the center of the Earth while the outer shell’s light rocks scattered into space. In time, these little rocks fused to form the Moon. At first, the Moon orbited the Earth with a distance of only 14,000 miles, but in time this distance increased into an average of 240,000 miles.

The Moon’s largest effect on Earth is the tide. According to the law of universal gravitation, any two objects in the universe pull each other, and the force of this pull is in direct proportion to the objects’ masses and in inverse proportion to the square of the distance between the objects. The gravitational pull between the Earth and the Moon causes the seas and the oceans on Earth to either rise or subside. This effect is called the tide, which changes between high tide and low tide according to the Moon’s position. One third of all tide effects on Earth are caused by the Sun’s pull and the rest is caused by the Moon’s.

The Moon gets 1.57 inches farther from the Earth every year due to the tide. It is known that the time taken for the Earth to turn around its axis completely (1 day) increases by 0.02 milliseconds every year so that this distancing effect can be countered and the angular momentum of the Earth and the Moon can be sustained. It is also known that the time taken for the Earth to turn around its axis was 8 hours when the Moon was first created, and that it increased to 24 hours since then. If the Moon had not been created, there wouldn’t have been any tide and because of that, one day would still be 8 hours. That would mean that the Earth would be spinning around its axis about 3 times faster than its current speed. A greater spinning speed of a planet might mean stronger winds on its surface. For example, Jupiter and Saturn spin around their axes very fast and have about ten hours in a day. This causes winds with speeds up to 300 miles/hour at the east-west direction on their surfaces. The dust storms that occur in the atmospheres of these planets are caused by these winds and can be seen from the Earth with a telescope.

Without the Moon, the Earth would have spun faster, causing a faster heat exchange among the air, seas and land. This, in turn, would have caused hurricanes in the east-west direction on the face of the Earth with speeds up to 100 miles/hour. Such conditions would have been very inconvenient to all complex life forms including human beings. Even simple tasks like speaking or listening could have been very difficult or even impossible. Since a day would have been eight hours, this would have caused a mismatch between the biological clock of living things – including human beings – and the flow of the day, resulting in biological complications. Without the Moon, the high tide would have been very weak, again causing a very inconvenient environment for sea creatures.

The Moon also has a role in keeping the Earth’s axis at a 23.5 angle. It is known that the seasons result from this and allows the right amount of sunlight to the equator and the poles, creating a climate appropriate for life. Another known effect of the Moon on the Earth is that it reflects the Sun’s light and heats up the Earth by 32.36°F (0.2°C). The Moon also serves as a shield against space rocks, and if it had not been for the Moon many more rocks and meteors would have hit the Earth.

Most of the cosmic rays that come from space are neutralized by the Earth’s magnetic field. Few of these rays reach the Earth and causes chemical reactions. Without the Moon, the core of the Earth would have spun faster along with the Earth itself. With the core of the Earth spinning faster, the magnetic field would have been much stronger. This would have caused huge changes in the atmosphere. Besides, some bacteria and animals that use the magnetic field to find their way (such as sea turtles, salmon, eels, pigeons, and migratory birds) would have been negatively affected. Consequently, many ecosystems, as we know them today, would have been different.

Another significant service of the Moon to our lives is that, like the Sun, it has been used as a calendar throughout human history. Muslims today observe their Ramadan fast according to their hijri calendar which is based on lunar measurement of time.

The Moon is the largest satellite that we know, in proportion to the size of the planet it is attracted by (the Moon’s mass measures 1.23 % of the Earth’s mass). The size of the Moon plays a critical role in the sensitive balance of our ecosystem. When the relationship between the Earth and the Moon is examined carefully, one could easily conclude that the Moon has been created specially for the life on Earth by the One Who “has made the heavens high and set up the balance” with a gentle measure, a great cause and benefit, and was given to the service of humankind.

Notes

1. Neil Comins. What If the Moon Didn’t Exist? Voyages to Earths That Might Have Been, New York: HarperCollins, 1993.
2. “The Sun and the Moon are by an exact calculation” (Quran 55:5).
3. Marcus Chown. “The Planet That Stalked the Earth,” New Scientist, August 14, 2004, pp. 27–30.
4. Paul D. Spudis. “Moon,” World Book Online Reference Center, NASA, 2004.
5. Tony Phillips, “What Neil & Buzz Left on the Moon,” Science, NASA 2004.
6. Richard Ray, “Ocean Tides and the Earth’s Rotation,” IERS, 2001.
7. Comins 1993.
8. Paul J. Henney, www.astronomytoday.com
9. John Gribbin, “A Mysterious Monthly Temperature Cycle,” New Scientist, pp. 18, January 28, 1995.
10. “We have obscured the sign of the night, and We have made the sign of the day illuminating to see, that you may seek bounty from your Lord and that you may know the computation of (time) the years and reckoning…” (Isra 17:12). This verse has been interpreted as to refer to the moon and the sun. “… He has made the night for repose, and the sun and the moon a means for reckoning (the divisions of time)…” (An’am 6:96) also refers to this fact. See Ali Unal, The Qur’an with Annotated Interpretation in Modern English, Tughra Books, 2008, p. 294, 570–71.
11. Quran 55:7.

Today, those who have made it their business to identify and cure these feelings of emptiness and the consequent loneliness that is experienced by the human self have presented panoply of solutions, usually gift-wrapped in various intellectual discourses. People struggle with each discourse, hoping that maybe one will, after all, be their stamped pass through the golden gateways of enlightenment. Time unwraps each solution and lays its contents bare. History stands as a graveyard, giving testimony to the inadequacy of the philosophical critiques and theoretical discourses of modernity and post-modernity. The world is still in a state of chaos and, within this existentialist milieu, human beings still question their solitary existence.

It seems that history has selected a fistful of people who deem themselves destined to step into the arena of intellectual combat, jumping to the rescue of humankind. The common man finds themselves in a literary laboratory where they are left to experiment with the latest medicines that have been prescribed for their affliction. In a desperate attempt to break free from the onslaught of isms hurled at us by the age of modernity and post-modernity, the intellectuals of our age have come up with a new literary concoction. The era of isms has ended. It is now the age of paradoxes. There is an increasing trend of juxtaposing ironies in the guise of facts and universal truths. Language is the best-seller in the market for dressing-up contradictions with such frills; one is often left so dazzled by the linguistic niceties that they are unable to detect any lacuna in the logic presented. People develop unique dictionaries for each of these. The logic presented for this discrepancy in the repertoire of every person is simple: each person’s world is made up of their distinct life experiences, their memories of the past and their imagination of the future, as well as their comprehension of the now and their plans of action for grappling with the present. Thus, the language one employs and the peculiar meaning it entails is contingent upon one’s very own, individual privé monad. It is these self-concocted dictionaries, composed of their distinct vernacular along with their numerous subtleties, which form one’s individual mental architecture by which the affairs of one’s life are orchestrated.

This novel concept of individual dictionaries rotates round and round the dining tables of the most “progressive” of humankind. People prize themselves as being part of what is now being hailed as a grand intellectual revolution. This revolution, it is believed, gives one the ability to guard one’s pristine exclusivity. Inherent within this exclusiveness of the individual self from the “other” is the championing of the self, and a sense of security prevails, giving humankind the assurance that the esoteric nature of our pristine binaries of right and wrong, true and false, beautiful and ugly make all that we do and say a private matter. And, some like to believe, within this privacy, within this unique sphere of personal space lays the epitome of freedom that humanity has ever been able to reach.

It is within this multiplicity of one’s private, peculiar lingua franca that they are able to ascribe meaning to their very existence. One’s conceptualization of the self and one’s ferocious defense of this newly-acquired perception of freedom are what form the basis of one’s interaction with those around them and the world that they live in. This sense of exclusivity leads to what Habermas has called a breakdown in “communicative action”-the absence of common relatable backgrounds to the extent that no one can any longer imagine being in another’s shoes. Without this mutual taking of perspective, the very precious element of human emotional intelligence that is known as “empathy” is automatically removed from many people’s dictionaries. Empathy is the same trait that makes a child burst into tears when another one cries in front of them, thinking that the pain is not the other’s but their own. This quality of being able to relate to, to actually understand and feel not only the other’s pain, but also their happiness, is what forms the main spring of the concept of rescue, a concept upon which entire literary laboratories have been established. If it were not for empathy, the demarcation between the self and the other would make it unimaginable for anyone to surmount those towering walls to rescue another; this would have been a thing of fairy tales and folklore. This is the point when an eagerly embracing the age of private dictionaries, with their golden masquerade of personal freedom, draws one actively into an intellectual maelstrom against the “other,” and against tolerance.

Confronted by such tempestuous times, when I look upon the glorious pasts of our ancestors in an attempt to find some point of reference that could aid in navigating, one string of events presents some relevant points to my argument. While growing up, my life, just as that of any other child who was growing up at the same time, was colored by numerous stories and legends. Over time, I managed to dust off images of flying horses and heroic men coming to the rescue of people who were being tortured by brutal potentates. But the more human memories have remained with me to this day. As a young child, I often saw my grandmother leave the house and walk over the next-door neighbors’ house with some delicious dish she had prepared. The visits had an almost ritualistic feel to them, since every single time some delectable dish was cooked and brought over to our house; I knew some of this would find its way to our house. On the occasions when I was allowed to accompany my grandmother on these visits, I would witness her place the dish on the table, and then either herself or the recipient would divulge some important piece of news, each launching off into a torrent of complaints and remarks about this, that and the other. On one such occasion, the meeting took a sudden unpleasant twist. I remember quite vividly that my grandmother severely rebuked one of our neighbors, a regular receiver of sweets and meals. The hot halawa lay on the table in front of her, sending off sweet enticing whiffs while both grownups were engaged in a heated verbal brawl. The point of contention was indecipherable to me, as grown-ups at that time had a way of skillfully employing a code language in front of children; perhaps this was part of an attempt to protect our innocence from being tarnished by the realities of adulthood. At the end of the quarrel, my grandmother apparently had the last word and made her way home with the hot dish of sweet-smelling food still sitting on the neighbor’s table. From that time onwards, there was a continuation of exchanges of harsh words over hot delicious meals or sweet mouth-watering delicacies. My young mind was at first befuddled and later exasperated by the on-going quarrel, the continuation of which was clearly contingent on the exchange of meals. I knew that all the trouble would effortlessly come to a halt if neither lady were to cross the fence that demarcated their house from the other. No ties of blood bound them and the cessation of any contact whatsoever would not have disrupted the routine of our lives. It was as simple as that.

What left my young mind baffled in the past was the persistence of my grandmother and our neighbor to maintain contact, despite the conflict; however, this makes sense to me now. People in the past had a more wholesome experience of life because it was framed within a sense of collectivity. Their dictionaries were not discrepant from others and they spoke a common language based on a certainty that their essence was unique to them not as individuals, but as an individual human race. It was their recognition of the unity of essence, shrouded within a multiplicity of existence, which enabled them to forge ties that were so tenacious. This notion of being united in essence, in their human proclivity to do good and believe in the Absolute Truth, was translated into their relationships and their persistent efforts to maintain relationships that had been forged willingly. The entire saga of my grandmother’s quarrels with the neighbor is intelligible to me now as a part of ongoing effort to remind her friend not to detract from this natural inclination towards goodness that was rooted within her very makeup as a human being. The whiffs of sweet-smelling treats were left as a message that her act of reprimanding her friend did not spring from a desire to claim a higher moral ground based on her own personalized set of rights or wrongs, but rather from an active concern for the community that she perceived herself to be a part of. The fact that the neighbor welcomed her at the door each time before the drama took place relates the moral pattern of people at that time, or at least within the confines of such interactions. It reflects a broad moral consensus of the entire neighborhood; they were actively involved in saving not just the one who was being wronged, but also the one who was doing wrong. Each person comprehended the fact that the underlying reason for the argument between the two found its source in the legacy of mutual concern, handed down to them from their elders. An active sense of empathy, of the fear that the wrong that was being committed today could be committed by them tomorrow, the fear that if it was not ended it would form a part of the legacy of their children, existed among these neighbors.

Today, people find a false sense of security in the notion of privacy and personal space. A sense of relief is felt that no busybody from the neighboring apartment will come knocking on the door, with the sense that the gift of a sole meal or a plate of sweets grants them the moral right to correct one’s wrongs or to criticize acts. One finds themselves comfortably ensconced in this preservation of private space and thus fails to recognize that the so-called privacy that is so aggressively guarded is actually shrinking with every passing day. In the past, at least one was able to walk down a street without having some person or another trying to sell them expensive means to look socially acceptable. But the case today is the total opposite of this. The alienation that is a direct cause of protecting what we now term “personal space” has curtailed our freedom to guard our natural proclivity towards goodness which connects us with humanity. The percolating sense of otherness and spreading intolerance are just two sides of the same coin.

The decisive factor in the above discussion is that no time is in and of itself golden. It is the people who are living at that time who cast it in varying hues, hues by which the future generations will remember them. Only if people could burst their own bubble which divides them from the other and embrace the unified proclivity towards Good and Absolute that is part of their human makeup, will they be able to live up to the moral responsibility that they have, not only towards themselves and their contemporaries, but also towards their future progeny. In this hour of need what we need is not another so-called glamorized intellectual revolution, but rather a grand intellectual revival of the human estimation of one’s own self. In my opinion, expensive intellectual laboratories and large think-tanks can help, but a revolutionary revivalism of that which can help us find a positive continuity with the past and a beneficial connection to the future could play a small start. The muddy hand of a child is enough to hold up a mirror to each and every one of us, shattering any claims of uniqueness or separateness. This brief muddy treasure will remind us of what we are made of and of what we mean to one another. Within this humbling realization, I believe, flickers a great hope.

Raaza Jamshed Butt has an MA degree in international relations from the International Islamic University, Malaysia.

At the beginning, I really did not pay much attention to him. He was very small, almost invisible and harmless-looking. However, he started to reproduce all of a sudden. Now, there were billions of his copies on one of my leaves. Everything was happening so quickly. They were taking me over. Something had to be done urgently.

As plants, we cope with such environmental stresses everyday. If the stress factors affecting us are living organisms, such as bacteria, harmful insects, and weeds, we call those as biotic stresses (1). On the other hand, if we are exposed to drought, salinity, heat, cold, and deficiency or excess of a chemical in soil, those are abiotic stresses for us. Both biotic and abiotic stresses impair our growth and even lead to our death sometimes. Therefore, stress response mechanisms are very important for us. Unfortunately in the United States alone, crop losses due to plant pathogens amount to billions of dollars (2). As we are the main food resource for the humans and assigned for so many other important functions on earth by God, our health and productivity is taken very seriously by scientists. So, it is of great interest to them to find out how our defense responses against microbes work. If scientists learn what is going on when a plant is infected by pathogens thoroughly, they can introduce better resistance mechanisms into economically important crop plants via genetic engineering.

Oh “NO,” I am stressed!

Unlike animals, we are firmly attached to the ground so we can not escape from stress factors. However, thanks to God, we have fascinating defense mechanisms against environmental challenges. First of all, I need to know who this infectious agent (pathogen) is so that I can trigger a stress response mechanism against it. The interactions between me and these microbes are controlled by my receptor proteins and Pathogen-associated molecular patterns, or PAMPs, delivered by the pathogen. PAMPs help pathogen growth by suppressing my defenses and manipulating my metabolism (3).When I recognize a PAMP by my receptors, I activate a set of defense mechanisms known as the hypersensitive response (HR) to arrest and terminate pathogen growth before it terminates me (4). Just before or in conjunction with HR, I increase synthesis of several families of pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins in my infected part (5).

Do you want to know what I do after I identify a pathogen? I bet you do, so I am going to tell you about the other components of my signal transduction cascade that is activated upon brutal attack of microbes (Fig. 1). One of the early steps in this signaling cascade is the elevation of cellular calcium (Ca (2+)) levels mediated by my plasma membrane and channels such as cyclic nucleotide gated channels (CNGCs). After the initial Ca(2+) increase, I activate some of my calcium-binding proteins (calmodulin or CaM) and protein kinases, which modify other proteins by chemically adding phosphate groups to them, and ultimately I generate nitric oxide (NO) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) (6). ROS function as signaling molecules that coordinate a wide range of diverse plant processes, such as growth, development, stress adaptation, and cell self-destruction (programmed cell death) (7). However, the real reason I produce ROS under attack is to use them as local toxins to form unfavorable conditions for pathogen growth and reproduction. NO plays a key role in our immunity in synergy with ROS regulating responses that include defense gene expression and programmed cell death (8). As a result, I utilize both ROS and NO to say “NO” to the pathogens. Other important signaling molecules I utilize are salicylic acid and jasmonic acid. These essential plant hormones are chemical messengers that enable me to respond to my environment. Salicylic acid, SA, which is chemically similar to but not identical to the active component of aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid), is involved in the defense against pathogens that feed and reproduce on live host cells and activates signaling processes providing systemic acquired resistance, protecting the plant from further infection after an initial pathogen attack (9) (Fig. 2). On the other hand, jasmonic acid (JA) induces defense against pathogens that kill host cells for nutrition and reproduction (10). Another hormone in the complex cross talk of signaling pathways regulating my defense responses to microbial attack is ethylene, ET (11).

Although, I have not even told you all the details, I bet you have started to think that all these signaling cascades, regulators, hormones, molecular patterns, and receptors are highly complicated. Do not worry; I am not planning to tell you all the molecular mechanism(s) and relevant pathways I execute during biotic stress responses. If I do, then what will the plant scientists who are interested in plant pathogen interactions do for the rest of their lives? Instead I am going to briefly describe to you what strategies I use to prevent the spread of infection that the small microbe started.

Initially, I build physical barriers around the infection by increasing my cuticle, a protective waxy covering, and cell wall thickness, and then I release antimicrobial compounds, such as phenolics and phytoalexins to the sites of invasion (11). However, this effort is usually not enough to stop the microbes. Therefore, most of the time, the cells in the local region surrounding the infection decide to commit suicide to limit the growth of the pathogen through programmed cell death, which is a highly coordinated and sophisticated phenomenon. This resembles to the firefighters’ strategy to put down a forest fire. Firefighters control flames by cutting down trees, clearing brush away from the existing edge of the fire. This way they can form borders to mitigate the forest fire.

While I am fighting the infection, I also try to confer a long-lasting protection against this pathogen. I send mobile signals like salicylic acid to activate defense responses in distal tissues in case a secondary pathogen attack might occur there (12). Salicylic acid also induces numerous genes that encode PR proteins with antimicrobial properties (13).

I have done all those things I have told you here and a lot more that are still undisclosed to humans in a really short time because it was a matter of “to be, or not to be.” After all that stress, I have won the battle against the microbe at least for now. I have gained a life experience and will defend myself better in the future. I am recovering, but unfortunately my leaf, where all that fighting happened, has a big lesion, an abnormal tissue, which was formed when my poor cells died during the attack (Figure3).

As you can tell from my story, plants get stressed out too. However, we are not stressed due to problems at home, school, or work or spending time stuck in traffic. We deal with salinity, heavy metals, temperature, drought, lack of nutrition, herbivores (insects, mammals, etc.), and pathogens. Thanks to God that He gave us astonishingly complicated response mechanisms to resist all sorts of stresses to some extent, especially biotic stress. Otherwise, we might have become extinct. Can you imagine a world without us? You would have no more oxygen in the air, no more food for animals and humans, no more papers or books, no more clothes, no more furniture, no more blooming beautiful gardens, no more roses for your loved ones, and no more trees, which hold the soil in place so that wind and rain don’t cause severe erosion and destruction of homes for so many species. In addition, there will be fewer resources for drugs and dyes. Oh my God, you are the Most Gracious and the Most Merciful. Thank you that You created us, shaped us and gave us smell, taste, color, and resistance to stresses.

Safiye Arslan is a research fellow in the area of biological chemistry and lives in Nevada.

References

1. Holopainen JK, Gershenzon J. 2010. “Multiple stress factors and the emission of plant VOCs.” Trends Plant Sci. 15,176–184.

2. http://www.apsnet.org/online/feature/biotechnology/

3. Wulff BB, Chakrabarti A, Jones DA. 2009. “Recognitional specificity and evolution in the tomato-Cladosporium fulvum pathosystem.” Mol Plant Microbe Interact. 22, 1191–202.

4. Genger RK, Jurkowski GI, McDowell JM, Lu H, Jung HW, Greenberg JT, Bent AF. 2008. “Signaling pathways that regulate the enhanced disease resistance of Arabidopsis ‘defense, no death’ mutants.” Mol Plant Microbe Interact. 21, 1285–96.

5. Klessig DF, Durner J, Noad R, Navarre DA, Wendehenne D, Kumar D, Zhou JM, Shah J, Zhang S, Kachroo P, Trifa Y, Pontier D, Lam E, Silva H. 2000. “Nitric oxide and salicylic acid signaling in plant defense.” Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 97, 8849–8855.

6. Ma W, Berkowitz GA. 2007. “The grateful dead: calcium and cell death in plant innate immunity.” Cell Microbiol. 9, 2571–85.

7. Gechev TS, Van Breusegem F, Stone JM, Denev I, Laloi C. 2006. “Reactive oxygen species as signals that modulate plant stress responses and programmed cell death.” Bioessays. 28, 1091–101.

8. Asai S, Yoshioka H. 2009. “Nitric oxide as a partner of reactive oxygen species participates in disease resistance to nectrotophic pathogen Botryis cinerea in Nicotiana benthamiana.” Mol Plant Microbe Interact. 22, 619–29.

9. Beckers GJ, Spoel SH. 2006. “Fine-Tuning Plant Defence Signalling: Salicylate versus Jasmonate.” Plant Biol (Stuttg). 8, 1–10.

10. Spoel SH, Johnson JS, Dong X. 2007. “Regulation of tradeoffs between plant defenses against pathogens with different lifestyles.” Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 104, 18842–7.

11. Bouchez O, Huard C, Lorrain S, Roby D, Balagué C. 2007. “Ethylene is one of the key elements for cell death and defense response control in the Arabidopsis lesion mimic mutant vad1.” Plant Physiol. 145, 465–77.

12. Ficke A, Gadoury DM, Seem RC, Godfrey D, Dry IB. 2004. “Host Barriers and Responses to Uncinula necator in Developing Grape Berries.” Phytopathology. 94, 438–45.

13. Liu PP, Bhattacharjee S, Klessig DF, Moffett P. 2010. “Systemic acquired resistance is induced by R gene-mediated responses independent of cell death.” Mol Plant Pathol. 11, 155–60.

14. Durrant WE, Dong X. 2004. “Systemic acquired resistance.” Annu Rev Phytopathol. 42, 185–209.

“No, my dear, I cannot see God. No one can see Him,” was her mother’s reply.

Unsatisfied with this answer, the girl then approached her father for confirmation. “Can you give me a photo of God, papa?” she asked, waiting to see her father laugh at her innocence.

“Why do you need one, my dear?” her father inquired; she then asked her next question. “Can you see Him, Papa?

“No, my child, we cannot see Him. We just know that He’s kind and Merciful.”

The girl now looked for her grandfather, who had once told her “God is the Most Beautiful.” Her Grandpa always had comforting answers for her strange and wonderful questions. “Grandpa, will you tell me the truth about something?”

“I will never tell you a lie, my child.” Her grandfather’s words reassured her that she could always trust him. “Can you see God, Grandpa? Mama and Papa cannot see Him.”

“I see nothing but God, my child,” her grandfather answered with a sincere smile on his serene face.

Pervisha Khan is a student of B.s Hons. Mass Communication at Lahore College for Women University , Pakistan.

The twisted grammar of the naturalistic fallacy

In assuming nature to be uniquely real, a naturalist proposes that “reality” (or “existence”) means “natural being” and nothing more. Instead of saying, “nature is real,” (or “nature exists,”) a naturalist prefers to says, “reality (or existence) is nature.” Such an utterance has an odd syntax, with the subject and predicate being strangely exchanged, thus twisting the grammar and invalidating it. It is not vague, but rather nonsensical. Such nonsense originates from the awful mistake of reducing a group (here, “beings”) into a member (“natural beings”), or, to use logical terms, equating a universal (here, “reality” or “existence”) to a particular (“natural reality” or “natural existence”). What a naturalist attempts here is to narrow the meaning of reality; this can be called “naturalistic fallacy,” borrowing G. E. Moore’s phrase. It is with this attempt that naturalism becomes unreasonable. Namely, as it is reasonable to conceive of “unnatural” beings, that is, any entities outside the world observed, it is thus unreasonable to assume nature as being unique in reality. In other words, the “world observed” is not equal to (nor does it consume the meaning of) the world of reality. The phrase “natural existence” is a necessary reference to-at least the possibility of-“unnatural existence.” Indeed, against this immediate inquiry of justification, naturalistic discourse does nothing but recede from a logical base. As the famous naturalist Kai Nielsen states, naturalism is nothing but an idea without any idea of foundation. That is to say, naturalism remains as arbitrary as any fantastic speculations about an alien world, as both share the same status of justification.

Hetoric divorced from logic

(a) “Naturalism is the view that only natural objects, kinds, and properties are real.”

As “natural” here is used to mean “of the world observed,” then the use of “only” means that “real” cannot be the proper predicate for the sentence. This statement is odd. To perceive the oddity, imagine (if possible) a man who understands the concept of “color” but is unable to perceive anything except red objects. Had such man said, “Only red is a color,” this is then equal to “All color is red.” Similarly, a naturalist suggests imagining reality as “comprising” (not “including”) nature. Can you imagine yourself answering this question: “Do you know why birds are eagles?”

(b) “Naturalism is the belief that the world is a single system of things or events, every one of which is bound to every other in a network of relations and laws, and outside this natural order there is nothing.”

If one were to ask a naturalist what convinced them to view the world as a single system that excludes unnatural things, they would answer, “The fact that I haven’t seen such things.” Responding thus, they admit the possibility of unnatural realities, which fulfills the meaning of the phrase “outside this natural order” in the statement. If a child asks this naturalist what might happen outside the natural order, how meaningful it is if they reply: “I have no idea” and how meaningless if they reply: “Nothing.” Such a conversation would demonstrate that it is impossible to place nature into “space” as a concept of physics, and that it is certainly not a childish attempt to try to squeeze reality into nature.

Groundless denial of supernatural

(c) “Naturalists reject all such notions of spirits, disembodied souls, non-material personal gods, and more-than-natural agencies. The grounds for the rejection of these notions are a lack of evidence adequate to support these notions.”

Ideas of spirits or souls are referred to as “supernatural” in that they are “ordinarily” not subject to the world observed. This means that they might be subject to the world of phenomena or of experience. There may be (reportedly, are) many experiences regarding supernatural phenomena, like spirits, angels, inspirations, revelations, etc. If this is the case then it would be unreasonable to reject all the relevant human traditions. Just as a momentary sighting of a peculiar insect is sufficient reason for the conviction that there is such a species on earth, the same is true for more peculiar entities. This indicates, as William R. Dennes clearly puts, that naturalists may have no reason to exclude intelligible reference to supernatural. Had a child reported to a naturalist that he had certainly seen a ghost, or that his dead grandfather had related a secret to him in dream, but the naturalist denies the child’s claims, accusing him of lying or dreaming, then the child’s rejection, in turn, of all the stories told and all the advice given by the naturalist that are based on experience would be meaningful.

(d) “Naturalism denies that there are any supernatural or spiritual realities. There are no purely mental substances and there are no supernatural realities beyond nature or transcendent to the world or anything of the sort, or at least we have no sound reasons for believing that there are such realities or perhaps even that there can be such realities. Physical realities, or perhaps as well realities dependent on physical realities, are the only kind of realities there are.”

The problem in the above statement is that the non-existence of supernatural entities cannot be reasonably claimed, let alone proven. Common sense commands that we not deny any possibility unless logically necessary. In logic, the denial of possibility is one of the two greatest mistakes; the other is the refusal of necessity. It seems that a naturalist cannot maintain such mistakes forever as they would necessarily encounter some form of supernatural experience, just as other fellow humans are. In other words, conjectures die away whenever phenomena manifest themselves. A naturalist then cannot be serious in his materialistic position, in denying the most manifest supernatural phenomenon, the soul, the factual manifestation of which is consciousness and the conscience. Therefore, rejecting any “purely mental substance” is a sophistic proposition. The immutable duality of “subject” and “object” always warrants the fact that “soul” is the constant interference of the supernatural into natural. Namely, if “nature” is the object that is observed, “I” am the subject that observes. Here we infer that a naturalist can only pretend to become a materialist at the expense of their own self. As Schopenhauer once wrote, materialism is the philosophy of the “subject” that forgets to give account of himself.

A pointless appeal to natural science

(e) “Naturalism is the recognition that it is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.”

If science is claimed, in this approach, to identify reality, that is, to assign by observation what is real and what is not, then science itself is at stake as the objective study of natural reality, merely because it is the concept of reality that justifies observation. Plainly speaking, it is the sense of “real” that qualifies observation, not the opposite. This is why it is meaningful to say, “What we observe is real.” It is impossible to identify anything without having a “prior” conception of reality. In Kant’s dictionary, it is a priori concepts, the most prior of which is “reality,” that ensure all a posteriori notions, which all scientific terms are subject to. Now, upon this logical structure it is meaningful for a child to ask: “Aren’t ghosts real?” as well as for a naturalist to reply: “Certainly, not!” Similarly, natural science asks: “How is natural reality?” and answers: “It is in accordance with observation.” Thus, science admits that the reality of nature needs to be identified by a prior philosophy, a metaphysical notion. This means that natural science normally denounces (scientists must denounce) the awful illusion of scientism, the claim that science is uniquely eligible to identify the reality of the world; it is in regard with this that Wittgenstein warns that “the whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.” What the philosopher means is that a scientist is no wiser about nature than anyone else when he steps out of his laboratory.

A final word

One may gather from this brief analysis that naturalism, in its absolute form, is destined to struggle forever, if not pass away, with the irremovable fallacy of reductionism. A naturalist may understand that to avoid from this destiny they must abandon the vacuous attempt to “invent” a logic for the world, rather maintaining the language on the grammar of possibility when assuming metaphysics, by stating, for instance, “Nature may be autonomous; who knows?” Such normalization turns naturalism, as Kai Nielsen states, into a game that might be called “fallibilism” and must be played without any confidence or hope. As a result, for anybody who wants to take metaphysics seriously for their ultimate concerns, as Michael C. Rea emphasizes, there is no such an option as naturalism.

Erkan Mazhar Kurt has a PhD in theology. He is an executive member of The Institute of Interfaith Dialog, Houston, Texas.

Notes

1. See, William Ray Dennes, Some Dilemmas of Naturalism, Columbia University Press, New York 1960, p. 80.

2. Kai Nielsen, Naturalism without Foundations, Prometheus Books, New York 1996, p. 35.

3. See, Michael C. Rea, World without Design: The Ontological Consequences

of Naturalism, Clarendon Press, Oxford 2002, p. 56. (These and the following emphases are mine for attention at conceptual relations.)

4. See, ibid, p. 55.

5. Cf. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (tr. D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness), Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1961, p. 149.

6. Sterling P. Lamprecht, The Metaphysics of Naturalism, Meredith Publishing

Company, New York 1967, p. 209.

7. Dennes, ibid, p. 21.

8. Nielsen, ibid, p. 25.

9. Cf. Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, Cambridge University Press, New York 2000, p. 14.

10. Cf. A. D. Smith, “Non-Reductive Physicalism?” in Objections to Physicalism

(ed. Howard Robinson), Oxford 1993, p. 225.

11. Cf. Ralph Walker, “Transcendental Arguments against Physicalism” in Objections to Physicalism (ed. Howard Robinson), Oxford 1993, p. 78.

12. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (tr. E. F. J. Payne), Massachusetts 1958, II, 313.

13. See, Rea, ibid, p. 42.

14. Cf. Dallas Willard, “Knowledge and Naturalism” in Naturalism: A Critical Analysis (ed. William Lane Craig & J. P. Moreland), Routledge, New York 2000, p. 30.

15. See, Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (tr. J. M. D. Meiklejohn), Prometheus Books, Buffalo 1990, p. 7.

16. Wittgenstein, ibid, p. 143.

17. Cf. Ian G. Barbour, Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues, HarperSanFrancisco, New York 1997, p. 87.

18. Nielsen, ibid, p. 26.

19. Rea, ibid, p. 59.

Mustafa Tabanli

MaryLynn Schiavi

What Is This Thing Called Love?

Post: Love is a profound ability that we have to say yes to the lives of the people around us. Your life is not a mistake, your life is a gift, we affirm it, we value your life, you have significance in this universe no matter what anyone’s told you. You matter, we are concerned about you.

It is believed to conquer all. It forms the cornerstone of all major religions and has been the primary call to action echoed by the great spiritual leaders throughout human history, from Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, to Gandhi and the Dalai Lama. It has inspired countless poems, novels, songs, and films. Many people search for it their entire lives. Others find it everywhere they go. As the 1929 song written by Cole Porter asks, “What is this thing called love?” And how does love impact our physical and mental health? Can the emotion of love affect our overall well-being and the well-being of society? How can we cultivate love? We explored all these questions with Professor Stephen G. Post. Dr. Post is Professor of Preventive Medicine, Head of the Division of Medicine in Society, and Director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics at Stony Brook University. He is currently a Trustee of the John Templeton Foundation (2008-2011). Professor Post is equally recognized as a leader in the study of altruism, love, and compassion in the integrative context of scientific research, philosophy, and religious thought.

M&B: Professor Post, can we say that academic research on health mostly focuses on the negative aspects, such as depression?

Well, I think most of the research is focused on human disease and deficit and illness, but now I think there’s a little more of a balance. People realize that, say, public health, isn’t just about getting rid of lead paint or getting rid of bugs and germs by washing your hands, but it’s actually a part of how we live our lives. When we live good, generous, positive lives we are healthier, happier and odds are that we live a little longer, too.

M&B: You did a lot of research on the positive aspects, such as love and altruism. It’s a topic essential to human life, yet not essential to academic research. Do you see a controversy here?

People in the academic world are more receptive to studying positive things nowadays. I think there’s so much hatred, fear and anger in the world that people are interested in things like forgiveness, gratitude, joy, happiness, love and altruism; those are topics that have really come into their own in the last five to ten years.

M&B: How do you define love, and based on your research can we say that we are born with it?

Well, what is love? I think love is something like this: When the happiness and the security of another person means as much to me or more than my own happiness and security, I love that person. That could be a child, it could be my spouse, a parent, a friend, a colleague at work, a student, or it could even be just somebody on the street. So what we’re talking about is the shift from a preoccupation with self, you know, “I’m the center of the universe,” and only relating to people insofar as they contribute to my little agendas and plans, but no further. So, I never really discover other people as valuable in themselves, and therefore I never get a sense of awe. I think that love responds to this human need for significance.

So are we born with it? Well, we’re certainly born with the capacity for it but it can be inhibited; in other words, it can be covered over if we’re raised in an environment that’s full of hurt and hatred. I like to say hurt people… people who are hurt usually tend to be hurtful. So how we grow up, what kind of support we have in our families, in our environment, that’s important. We all have that side; I don’t think one person is different than any other in that sense. I think we all have these two sides to us, the positive and the negative, and it’s up to us in a lot of ways to decide what we emphasize, what we decide to nurture and cultivate, and it’s very easy for negative emotions to take over, and then we get in this incredible cycle of hatred and violence.

M&B: Now, there is also some research showing that being good actually has certain health benefits too. Would you please tell us a little bit about that?

Being good in the sense of being generous toward others does have health benefits. In the 1990s there was a remarkable book published called Anger Kills. It was written by a cardiologist at Duke University named Redford Williams. He looked at these personality tests that people had been taking over the last 60 or 70 years and he identified 50 questions which were associated with hostility, cynicism, anger, aggressiveness and so forth. He went back and he looked at those 50 questions. Of the people who took that test in 1950 when they were 25 years old, those who are in the top 25 percent on hostility had a 20% death rate by age 50. In other words, 20% of them were dead by the time they would have reached age 50. Of the ones who were in the lower 25% on hostility, only 2% of them were dead by age 50. So we know that these negative emotions are like acid on metal. Metal is pretty strong, but after awhile the acid will eat through even metal, so a lot of these people died of coronary problems, vascular problems, heart problems, they were more susceptible to cancer and other stress induced physical illnesses and they tended to be more depressed.

What positive emotions like love do is to move us away from that anger and hatred. Really looking toward other people, forgetting about your own problems and just being generous, getting into the flow of love, that really frees us from a lot of negative emotions. Therefore, the studies were quite remarkable. Young people going back to the 1920s who identify nobility of purpose as their major goal in life – they want to help other people – that group of young people tend to be healthier, happier and live a little longer. Even as they’re getting into their 80s and 90s, because now they’re old people, they’ve been followed up on every ten years, and they tend to get a benefit. Older adults, people 60 and older, who do a little volunteering instead of being isolated, have a tremendous reduction in death rates.

So the appeal isn’t to selfishness. I’m not saying help others just for yourself. Rather, the appeal is to look into the human essence of love. When you live that way of life, when you’re close to that way of life in your heart and in your actions, then you’re going to be shielded from a lot of alternatives – hatred, fear, anxiety, anger – you’re protected from those emotions and that’s a benefit for you. That’s why every religious tradition without a single exception, whether it’s Islam or Christianity or Buddhism or Judaism or whatever it might be, they all have statements like those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed, or it is better to give than to receive, and that idea is really important.

There’s no religious tradition that just teaches “do unto others,” you know, “love your neighbor and nothing good will happen to you.” When you love your neighbor, when you do unto others, it’s a blessing. Usually, it’s a blessing in terms of relationships and your external situation in the world because people will like you more, they will respect you more, you’ll get more opportunities and more relationships, but also it’s a health benefit. Now, this is a byproduct, it’s a side affect, you’re not aiming for it.

M&B: Now the question is how to cultivate love. In your book Why Good Things Happen to Good People you give 10 basic expressions of love. Some of them are intuitive like compassion, forgiveness, even generosity and joy. But some of them could be somewhat surprising like courage. How does courage be a part of loving?

There’s sort of ten basic expressions of love, so I’ve defined love as when the happiness and security of another person means as much or more to me as my own happiness and security. Now how can that love be expressed? Well, sometimes it’s expressed as compassion, an immediate response to suffering. I see someone suffering and I jump out of my seat and I want to help them; that’s compassion. But sometimes, love is expressed in terms of the courage to confront destructive and self-destructive behaviors. We love everybody, we believe in universal love, but there are many times in life when we’re raising children as parents, or when we’re dealing with difficult individuals who are incredibly disruptive or violent, and we certainly don’t endorse everything that people think or say. So care-frontation is what I call it, having the courage in a caring way to confront destructive behavior and in the process not to completely lose the connection with that person, you know, not to let them go away, never to be seen again, but somehow to inspire them and uplift them so that they can change and improve their behavior. That ain’t easy. People who love are not just nice all the time, but typically they are the first ones to speak out when there’s an injustice around them. All the great prophets are like that; when they see an injustice, instead of just being quiet about it, they speak to it. Sometimes at risk to themselves. So there is a certain risk that comes with the territory of courage and care-frontation. Compassion is one expression of love, but sometimes care-frontation is also an expression of love. There are a lot of other expressions of love, too.

M&B: I will leave other chapters for our readers to explore. But I see all these virtues are interconnected and intertwined, like respect is related to gratitude and celebration is related to joy and so forth.

Yes, they are. I think of it as a wheel of love. So, at the center is love as I’ve defined it, this profound ability that we have to say yes to the lives of the people around us. Your life is not a mistake, your life is a gift, we affirm it, we value your life, you have significance in this universe no matter what anyone’s told you. You matter, we are concerned about you. That’s this outpouring of love; but like in any wheel there are spokes, so the ten ways of love are like spokes on a wheel. You can sometimes see this in life on everyday occasions. I mean, my daughter called me one morning – I say this in the book, you know – and she had just gotten a new job. She was really happy about it; she’d been very sad about not having a good job. So, I was on the phone celebrating with her. I was affirming her, I was saying great, wonderful, happy, delightful, you’re terrific, but then I was coming in the door to the medical school and this poor woman who worked here for many years had just been fired, unfortunately and unfairly, and she was out in front of the door crying because her card would no longer let her get into the medical school. So she needed compassion, right? You walk through life everyday and you’ll find that you need to use all these different forms of love, maybe some on one day more than others. So they’re separate, but also they’re all interconnected, because separating them is a little bit artificial. The reality is that in most interactions you’re trying to be a good listener, you’re trying to be affirming and grateful, you’re trying to be compassionate; in other words, things can mix together a bit. Loyalty is also a very important expression of love. I mean, I’m telling you in today’s world a lot of relationships don’t last very long – marriage, parents and children, friendships – they’re not very deep, they don’t have much loyalty or much glue, and so to me commitment is a big expression of love. It’s hard to imagine loving someone if you’re just thinking, “Well, you know, I’ll see you for two seconds and bye, bye for life.” I mean, love has a kind of presence, a king of holding power that’s really important.

M&B: What would be your final recommendation?

Well, people will have different strengths, so no one shoe fits all; people have different personalities and different abilities, so some folks are going to be mostly expressing their love through, say, creativity and compassion maybe, and some people are going to be expressing love maybe more through listening. So people can have strengths and can cultivate those strengths, but they also ought to be aware of all the other different forms of love, and they ought to try to avoid big gaps. You know, big down points where they’re just not functioning.

I can’t prescribe this like a medicine. I mean, people need to be uplifted, they need the right people around them, they need to stumble on this kind of lifestyle and it’s sometimes a difficult thing. What the book does is that it gives people a kind of test, a quiz at the end of every chapter, so they can size themselves up. They can get a birds’ eye view of some other strengths and maybe some of the areas where they could work a little bit harder, just by having that in mind. Everything begins with an idea. So just putting that idea, planting that idea in a person’s mind – “Hey, I could be more loyal, I could be more forgiving” – that’s the beginning of change.

Interview conducted by Mustafa Tabanli for Ebru TV for the Emmy Award winning television series Matter and Beyond.

Futuwwa, defined as youth and chivalry, is really a composite of such virtues as generosity, munificence, modesty, chastity, trustworthiness, loyalty, mercifulness, knowledge, humility, and piety. It is a station on the path to God as well as a dimension of sainthood, and also signifies that altruism and helping others have become one’s second nature. It is an important, indispensable dimension of good conduct and a significant aspect of humanity.

Derived from fata’ (young man), futuwwa has become a symbol of rebellion against all evil and the endeavor for sincere servanthood to God; the following verse expresses this eloquently:

They were young men who had believed in their Lord, and We increased them in guidance. And We strengthened their hearts, when they rose up and declared: Our Lord is the Lord of the heavens and Earth; we will not call upon any god beside Him, or then we had spoken an outrage. (18:14)

The verse We have heard a youth talk of them (the idols); he is called Abraham (21:60) expresses the position and influence of one who has achieved perfect futuwwa in his or her community, one who has sought to guide humanity to truth. By contrast, the young men mentioned in the verses: With him there came into the prison two young men (12:36) and: (Joseph) told his young (servants) to put their merchandise (with which they had bartered) into their saddle-bags (12:62) were ordinary young men without chivalry.

As many people have written on or talked about futuwwa since the Age of Happiness, the concept has been defined in many ways: not despising the poor or being deceived by the rich and riches; being fair to everybody without expecting fairness in return; living one’s life as a pitiless enemy of one’s carnal self; being ever-considerate of others and living for them; smashing all idols or all that is idolized, and rebelling against falsehood so as to be wholly devoted to God Almighty; bearing whatever evil is done to oneself, but roaring when the rights of God are violated; feeling remorse for the rest of one’s life for committing the smallest of sins, but overlooking others’ sins, regardless of how large they are; seeing oneself as a poor, lowly servant while considering others as saintly; not resenting others while maintaining relations with those who resent you; being kind to those who hurt you; serving God and the people before everyone else, but putting others first when it is time to receive one’s rewards.

Some have summed up futuwwa in the four virtues mentioned by Haydar Karrar Ali, the fourth Caliph and cousin of the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings. They are: forgiving when one is able to punish, preserving mildness and acting mildly and gently when one is angry, wishing one’s enemies well and doing good to them, and being considerate of others’ well-being and happiness first, even when one is needy.

Ali was one of the greatest representatives of futuwwa. When he was stabbed by Ibn Muljam while leading the morning prayer in the mosque, his children, who saw that their father was going to die, asked him what he wanted them to do to Ibn Muljam. He did not order his execution in retaliation. During a battle, Ali threw his enemy to the ground and then released him. When ‘Ali was about to kill this man, the latter spat in Ali’s face, which angered him. Fearing that his motive for killing the man was now confused and sullied, ‘Ali released him. He felt sincere grief when Zubayr ibn Awwam, a leading Companion and his enemy in the Battle of the Camel, was killed. Since he always considered others first, even when he was in need, he usually wore summer clothes in winter and trembled with cold (because he would give away his winter clothes). It was said about him that there could be no young, chivalrous man like Ali, and there could be no sword like Dhu al-Fiqar (Ali’s sword). Ali lived with the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, and was raised by him. He lived a perfectly honest, pure life without any stain, and embodied God’s answer to Prophet Moses, upon him be peace, about futuwwa: It means that you are able to return your self to Me as pure or untainted as you received it from Me.

The signs of a fata’ (young, chivalrous one) are that the individual, created with the potential to accept Divine Unity and Islam, is totally convinced of the Divine Unity; this urges him or her to live according to the requirements of this conviction; that, without being captivated by carnal or bodily desires, he or she lives a pure, spiritual life; and that he or she always seeks to please God in his or her deeds, thoughts, and feelings. One who cannot be saved from the temptations of the carnal self, Satan, appetites, love of the world, or attachment to the worldly life cannot climb upward to the peak of futuwwa.

Futuwwa is a treasure obtainable by climbing high beyond
All the “highest mountains of the world”;
What business have those who fall tired
Even on a smooth road with such a treasure?

Notes

1. Ibn al-Athir, Usd al-Ghaba, 4:118.
2. Shamsaddin Sivasi, Manaqib Jiharyar Guzin, 258.
3. Al-Haythami, Majma’ al-Zawa’id, 9:150.
4. Ibid., 9:122.
5. ‘Ali al-Qari, Al-Asrar al-Marfu’a fi akhbar al-Mawdu’a (Beirut, 1986), 367.

The dark breathing its last, lights panting for air.

Fog and smoke dissipate in my vision

There! New spring with its emerald hair.

Like a conquering army, a generation marches forward

The walls of the fortress bent down in awe

Earth and heaven smile at my bliss

To the arch of victory, the paths lead

When all these dreams come true, one by one

Invigorated is the friend’s heart while petrified is the foe’s.

It wasn’t…

Worse than that, in the third grade we had to learn about “conversion of units.” I figured it was good source of test problems. So I couldn’t escape from learning it. I admit it was difficult in the beginning. “The strange rule” said if we are to measure with a bigger scale, then we had to divide the number by ten and vice versa. Why was 120 cm equal to 1.2 m? If we knew that it was 120 already why did we bother to say it was also 1.2 in another unit? I got confused whether I should multiply the number by ten or divide by ten? (At least it was easy to multiply or divide by ten instead of another number, so I kept silent.)

In time, I realized that people used the unit to measure almost anything. Length is measured in meters, mass is in kilograms, time is in seconds. Wherever there was quantity, there was also a base-unit associated with it. Of course I never asked what a “second” was, because our teacher said everyone accepted this unit of time. Since it was a world-accepted “standard measure,” I subconsciously got the impression that the universe had a clock* and that people calibrated their time accordingly. In the same way, one kilogram was an absolute quantity in my mind by which every other mass can be measured.

As we grew up, more and more types of measures and units entered our lives: Volt, Joule, Ampere, Newton, and many others. Dealing with the “old” units of length and time was a piece of cake then. However, my faith in “standard measures” as universal remained unchanged until high school.

I was quite surprised in high school when our chemistry teacher told us that our very fundamental units of measures were actually not absolute. They were not fundamental in the sense that they, too, were defined in terms of other quantities. In fact, there is a history of “what to define as a unit” and “how to measure it.”

Let’s take time, for instance. We measure years by days and days by hours. Have we ever thought about why a year is 365 days and one day is 24 hours? Can’t we divide a year into 400 days or a day into 25 hours? Is this an artificial choice or a natural timing? It all depends on how we define a year and a day. We can identify a year by a full rotation of the earth around the sun. Also we can distinguish the beginning of day and night clearly. These are definite intervals of time dictated through our observations, and so there is not much choice other than setting one year at 365 days. Is there a similar fact behind the relation of day to hours? Not at all! It was in ancient Egypt, around 2000 BC, that days for the first time were sliced into 24 pieces of time. In the age of Babylonians, however, a day was designed to be 60 hours. Perhaps the reason for such division of the day (into 24 or 60) hours was that 24 or 60 are nice numbers which are divisible by many integers; the same reason why a full-angle is 360 degrees instead of 2π.

In the Middle Ages, for Muslims, measurement of astronomical phenomena was a very serious affair. They were very concerned about accurate timing. Determining the changing time of the five daily prayers and the beginning and ending of the month of Ramadan was more than a custom, it was a religious duty. And such calculations required high precision. This precision was exemplified in year 1000 AD by the Muslim scholar al-Biruni who gave the times of the new moons in terms of days, hours, minutes, seconds, thirds, and fourths after noon Sunday.

In the West, the first accurate time measurements were made by Roger Bacon in thirteenth century. In 1657, Christian Huygens invented the pendulum clock, which uses swinging weights to keep time. Later, Hyugens and William Clement refined the design so that clocks were accurate up to seconds. Another problem with older clocks was that although they worked fine in the local region, they lost accuracy at different parts of the globe and were thus unsuitable for navigation. The reason for the lack of accuracy was that earth’s rotation around the sun on its axis (which definitely affects the period of the pendulums) was not uniform. Several adjustments were made in the nineteenth century for better accuracy by improving the design to compensate for thermal expansion of the metal rods and air drag, which globalized the measurement of time. In 1956, the “second” was redefined in terms of the earth’s revolution around the sun, according to data gathered in year 1900. As the scientists were not completely satisfied, they re-defined the second (as the atomic second) a decade later. In 1967, the Thirteenth General Conference on Weights and Measures defined a second of atomic time in the International System of Units as:

The duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.

Measuring the length was another important task for ancient peoples. Among the earlier civilizations, the most accurate system was developed by Indus Valley Civilization. While their contemporaries were using parts of the body for measurement, as early as 2600 BC, the Indus civilization had a much finer unit system that accounted even for millimeters. Most societies continued to use their own length scale until eighteenth century.

As early as seventeenth century, with the advances in the accurate measurement of time, pendulum motion was suggested to measure standard length. In the eighteenth century, there were two main approaches for measuring the standard unit of length. One suggested defining the meter as the length of a pendulum with a half-period of one second. The other suggested defining the meter as one ten-millionth of the length of the Earth’s meridian along a quadrant, which is the distance from the equator to the North Pole. In 1791, the French Academy of Sciences selected the choice based on the meridian. After several changes in the definition in 1960, the International Bureau of Weight and Measure organized the 11th CGPM (General Conference on Weights and Measure), during which the meter was redefined as 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the krypton-86 atom in a vacuum. The final decision came from the 17th CGPM as: “a meter is defined as 1/299,792,458 of a light-second.”

Figure 1. Historical International Prototype Meter bar, made of an alloy of platinum and iridium, was the standard from 1889 to 1960.

As for the measurement of mass, the situation is even more complicated since scientists cannot even agree on what mass is. There are mainly two different understandings of mass based on its features. One is called inertial mass (related to the quantity of a material); the other is gravitational mass (related to gravitational pull and acceleration). Whether these two concepts are equivalent or not is still in debate though in modern theories like Einstein’s general relativity, these two definitions are equivalent. We can, therefore, leave these philosophical discussions about the concept of mass to the scientists and go back to its measurement.

Just like the measurement of time and length, scientific mass measurement gained a boost after the French Revolution. At first, a gram, defined as the absolute mass of 1 cm3 of water at 0o C, was chosen as the standard. In 1799, scientists made a slight modification to the unit of mass by re-setting the definition at 4oC since it is the temperature at which water is most stable. Later, officials noticed that this unit was too small to be a standard of everyday commercial materials, which usually appear in large amounts. In 1889, the International Prototype Kilogram (IPK), made of an alloy of 90% platinum and 10% iridium (by weight), was designed to define the standard mass (Figure 2). After the first production, several more stable replicas of IPK have been produced to replace the older ones. Today every government who subscribes to this standard must have an exact copy of IPK, and these replicas must be returned to Paris periodically as they may get rusted or dirty with time.

Figure 2. Shown above is a computer-generated image of the International Prototype Kilogram (IPK). The IPK is made of a platinum-iridium alloy and is stored in a vault at the BIPM in Sèvres, France.

These facts may sound very odd to some, as it did to me when I first heard of them. I asked myself: If all these measures are defined in terms of something else, what is the point of defining them in the first place? For example, if we can agree to use the second as some interval of time, why do we bother to count the number of oscillations of Cesium. The answer is: We cannot agree unless we use a reference time which is geography-free, climate-free, and politics-free. Only then we will be sure that I, here in Western Pennsylvania, a person on the top of Everest, or a person in a submarine under the Pacific Ocean will call the same interval of time a “second.” In other words, the oscillation of the cesium isotope was believed to be free from all possible deficiencies that are results of physical location (Australia or America), environmental change (the Amazon Forests or the Sahara Desert), and politics.

In short, sand-clocks for measuring time (think of what kind of sand in what shape of glass tube) or the arm of a king as a length unit (imagine a king who seized the throne at 13 and died at 60), or weighing with iron cylinders (common in small grocery stores in some countries) is too unreliable, too unstable, too local, and of course, inaccurate to create a standard. Especially in this age of globalization, a consensus on measurement is absolutely necessary.

It seems a bit ironic that a simple-looking concept of science, measurement, could cause such controversy. A simple way to keep track of numbers that belong to different kind of quantities evolved into an area of serious research through time. Perhaps then, I should have not worried that much about my bad math grades on a subject which troubled the scientist themselves. After all, my grades were just my teacher’s own measurement.**

O. S. Caglayan has a PhD in mathematics. He is a freelance writer. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

* This famous quotation attributed to Newton was opposed by Leibnizian view of time: “The universe is the clock.” The scientist as philosopher, Friedel Weinert, Springer; 1 edition (May 27, 2004)

** The author is indebted to his dear elementary school teacher Muazzez Ozalp for instilling in him the love of science.

References

1. G. J. Toomer. Ptolemey’s Almagest (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998)
2. The History of Time (Leofranc Holfrod-Strevens).
3. al-Biruni (1879). The chronology of ancient nations: an English version of the Arabic text “Vestiges of the Past”. London: W.H. Allen, 147-149. OCLC 9986841.
4. Matthew Bennett, Michael F. Schatz, Heidi Rockwood and Kurt Wiesenfeld, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 2002 458, 563-579.
5. Ian Whitelaw. A Measure of All Things: The Story of Man and Measurement, St. Martin’s Press, 2007.
6. http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/meter.html
7. www.bipm.org/eng/home

He was few minutes late for the meeting, but not so late as to be unacceptable. After the meeting was over, Adam went to his office. He had a lot of things to do: a report was due in two weeks, there was to be a presentation for a project he had just finished, a proposal for a new project, and a bunch of minor office tasks. However, he did not feel like doing any of them at the moment; moreover, they all could wait a few minutes. He was curious about the up-coming election, so he decided to read the news online. Then he felt the need to look up on the latest technology news. Without noticing, he spent nearly an hour reading the news.

Adam then felt compelled to start preparing his presentation. He was intelligent and the project was innovative; now was the time to prepare the best possible presentation. He outlined the presentation in his mind and started working on the first slide. He spent quite a bit of time on the first slide, but he could not get it right; every time he tried something, he saw that it was not perfect and started again from scratch. Finally, he exhausted his energy and motivation and decided that preparing the presentation for this project was too difficult and postponed working on it later that day.

He decided to move to the report task, but first he needed a break. It was around 1 p.m. and it was time for the noon prayer, but this was not urgent, he thought; he could do it later. He decided to take a break and check his emails. He quickly checked his three email accounts to see if he had any unread messages-there was a message in one of the accounts. It was from his high school friend asking how he was doing. He was busy right now, and decided that he did not have the time to answer; he signed out. Finally, he started writing something for the report. Even though he had planned to work on the report last week, he had not been able to do it, not because he did not have enough time, but because it had not been due and he decided that it could wait. He started working on the report, but he noticed that the software he was using to write the report was notifying him of a feature update. Because he did not feel like working on the report, he went ahead and downloaded the update. Installing it took some time. Even though it was completely unnecessary at that moment, he convinced himself that it was worthwhile, at least for the future.

He jotted down some notes for the report. While he was working on it, his friend from the next office came and asked him if he could join them to play basketball at the weekend. He told him that even though he would very much like to join them, he was very busy and had no time nowadays. The time for the noon prayer was nearly over. He hurried up and performed the obligatory part of the prayer quickly. As for the voluntary prayers, he had no time for them right now.

After the prayer he remembered that he still needed to write the proposal for next week. He was planning to work on it this week, but, because he had not worked on the report last week, he had to work on that now instead of the proposal.

Without having realized it, it was nearly 6 p.m. already. He was married, so he did not want to stay in the office. After all, he could work on the report at home, he thought. He went back home, had dinner with his wife; his wife mentioned that it had been a long time since they had seen a movie together and wondered if they could go and see one. He told his wife that even though he would very much like to, he was too busy this week; perhaps they could go next week. He remembered that he said the same thing last week; he had worked well last week so he would have time this week. He knew that he was not working very efficiently, and he was not able to do so, even though he wanted to. He condemned himself of being lazy and not a very good husband.

Weeks passed. Adam continued the same style of lethargic life; he was carrying out all his duties (his job, volunteering tasks, duties as a husband, etc.) at the bare minimum; he was neither satisfied nor completely unhappy. However, his wife was not happy with the whole process; every time she asked something from Adam, he would promise to do it later; however this would almost always be delayed indefinitely. Once at the weekend she asked Adam whether they could go out. Adam said that he was very busy; perhaps they could go out later that day or next week. This time, his wife told Adam that she no longer had confidence in him. He was shocked; he had not expected such a response. He tried to explain himself to his wife by saying that every promise he had made was with sincere intentions, but his wife did not believe even this explanation. He said he was sorry, but his wife did not accept his apology as this was the hundredth time he had apologized. Adam felt that the most important thing between a husband and a wife was trust; losing this meant losing everything. He felt terrible; he tried to explain everything, but nothing pleased his wife. He felt exhausted; he blamed his wife not being more understanding and left.

Adam spent hours thinking about what had gone wrong. Indeed, his wife was right; every time she asked for something, he would promise to do it and even though he was sincere in his promise, he would put it off indefinitely. He felt awful about the whole situation, but he was not able to rectify it. Then he thought about all the promises that he had made to God, almost all of which he had broken. Then, he shivered with the thought of “what if God also says that He does not trust me anymore?” And what if God told him that He had given Adam enough chances and that he had used them all up, that he had none left and therefore, there is no need for him to be alive any longer? That would be a horrible end indeed.

It was time for the afternoon prayer. After the prayer, he made the following supplication over and over again: “Should He not know what He created? And He is the Subtle, the Aware” (Mulk 67:14). Thus, he asked for help from the One Who is aware of everything, Who is the All-Compassionate, the All-Merciful, and the All-Powerful.

This time, he was determined to solve the lethargy problem. First, he contemplated about what were the causes of being lethargic.

Indeed, Adam was very lethargic and there were many reasons for it. It was not that he wanted to be a lazy person; on the contrary, he wanted to succeed; he could be smart and successful when he put his energy into a task. However, he was very disorganized; because he did not assign tasks to different time slots, he could easily spend those times on tasks that seemed necessary but actually were unnecessary, such as spending long minutes or even hours reading the news, installing feature updates, etc. He was a perfectionist; he wanted to make the final product (report, presentation, etc.) perfect; this is a good habit to have. However, being a perfectionist made him overcritical of himself, and this dampened his desire to work. He procrastinated; procrastination made his tasks pile higher and deeper; delaying one task caused delays to others. The constant thought of piled-up tasks constantly preoccupied him and as a result he had no time to reply to his emails, no time for the optional prayers, no time for sports, no time for entertainment, and no time to read books, etc. However, had he set aside some time to do sports; however to support hard work he would have to have a healthier body and mind, he needed to set aside an hour for relaxation, and not spend long hours on the web surfing while thinking “I should not be doing this right now” at the back of his mind, yet at the same time he had to be able to relax and start the next day with a fresh mind.

To solve these problems, he would have to eliminate the causes; however, most importantly, he needed energy and determination. He had neither. Then, he remembered: “My Lord would not care for you were it not for your prayer” (Furqan 25:77). Indeed, he was too weak to depend on himself alone, but he had learned that if he depended on God he could be the most powerful person in the world. He remembered all the things he had read and learned… The importance of “In the Name of God,” the need to put his trust in God, the fact that the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, had a prayer for almost every occasion, that it is very important not to sleep at dawn, that one should perform their daily prayers as early as one can, that one should eat, sleep and talk less, and that eating much meant sleeping much, that our Prophet used to go to bed after the night prayer, the importance of lawful earning and legitimate food, that the work between two prayers is counted as worship, that he should not leave today’s task for tomorrow, that he should know the value of free time before he became too busy, and so on. He felt that he could not do all of these; but once again, he remembered the verse above. However, he did not know where to start. Then, he recited: “Should He not know what He created? And He is the Subtle, the Aware” (Mulk 67:14) and while making the prayer, he knew that God knew everything about him and that Adam had to extricate himself from this problem but he was not successful. He asked for help; he asked for solutions to all his problems, dilemmas, troubles and obstacles.

He thought of starting a new life-style tomorrow morning, but then he remembered that it was Satan who was whispering him to start “tomorrow”; he needed to put an end to this miserable life right now. He went back home; dinner was waiting. He thought “what a patient wife I have; we had a quarrel, yet she still prepared dinner for me.” The food was very good, but he did not eat much. First of all, he was not feeling well, but he also wanted to practice the “eat less” principle. When it was time for the night prayer, he immediately rushed to his prayer rug; he knew that if he does not pray now, he will delay it at least two hours. After the prayer, he went to bed.

He woke up early in the morning; he was able to wake up early because he had not slept with a full stomach, and he had gone to bed early. He made the supplication “All praise belongs to God; He gave me life after my death; we shall return to Him. There is no god but God. O God; increase my knowledge. Do not let me go astray after you have guided me to the straight path. Grant me mercy. Indeed You are the Bestower.” He thanked God for giving him another chance.

He performed the morning prayer and he thought about some of the wisdoms inherent in the morning prayer: By nature man is extremely weak, yet everything touches him, saddens and grieves him. Also, he is utterly lacking in power, yet the calamities and enemies that afflict him are extremely numerous. Also, he is extremely wanting, yet his needs are indeed many. Also, he is lazy and incapable, yet the responsibilities of life are most burdensome. Also, his humanity has connected him to the rest of the universe, yet the decline and disappearance of the things he loves and with which he is familiar continually pains him. Also, his reason shows him exalted aims and lasting fruits, yet his reach is short, his life brief, his power slight, and his patience little. Thus, it can be clearly understood how essential it is for a spirit in this state to have recourse to and present a petition to the Court of an All-Powerful One of Glory, an All-Compassionate All-Beauteous One at the time of prayer in the early morning through prayer and supplication, to seek success and help from Him; this is an essential support so that one can face the things that will happen to them in the coming day and bear the duties that will be loaded on them. He then sought refuge in God from laziness. He was feeling energetic, but still very deep in thoughts of all the things that had happened yesterday.

He felt very sleepy, but he resisted going to bed; in order to wake himself up, he took a shower. After the shower, he recited a few pages from the Qur’an. He was feeling very ashamed every moment he felt he was in the presence of God, but interestingly, he was also feeling very close to God.

After having a light breakfast, Adam left for the office. It was pretty early in the morning. When he arrived at work, he made a list of the things he needed to do. Then, he divided his day into five, according to the five daily prayers; he put the prayers down on his list first. He was determined to perform them as early as he could. Then, he arranged the other tasks between the prayers.

Now, it was the time to start the first task. It was a new project and it was always difficult to take the first step. He pushed himself to start the task, but he could not start. He was about to give up; then, he remembered the power and the treasures hidden inside “bismillah” (in the name of God).” He recited it and he also recited “O God, make it easy for me, not difficult. O God, finish it with a good and beneficial end.” Adam felt a little better; he recited the words a few more times. He was able to take the first step and the rest just followed.

When he tired of one task, he said “All Praise belongs to God, Alhamdulillah” for each task, and he moved onto the next with bismillah. But, after about two hours, he felt very tired. He was inclined to read the news, to relax; but he resisted. He asked himself “What purpose does reading the news serve right now? Relaxation? I don’t remember ever being relaxed after reading news. Being up to date about current events? Well, I’ll do that towards the end of the day when my mind is more tired.” He then went outside to get some fresh air. After a 10-minute break, he returned and realized that he could complete one more task before the prayer. He started the task with bismillah and before he knew it, it was time for the prayer and the task had been complete.

Now it was time for the noon prayer. This was the moment he had been waiting for. Adam thought about some of the wisdom of the noon prayer: the time of noon prayer, just past midday is the time of the day’s zenith and the start of its decline; the time when daily labors approach their achievement, the time of a short rest from the pressure of work, when the spirit needs a pause from the heedlessness and insensibility caused by toil, and a time when Divine bounties are manifest. Everyone can then understand how fine and agreeable, how necessary and appropriate it is to perform the midday prayer for the human spirit, as it is a means to be released from the pressure, to shake off the heedlessness, and leave behind those meaningless, transient things, clasping one’s hands at the Court of the True Bestower of Bounties, the Eternally Self-Subsistent One, offering praise and thanks for all His gifts, and seeking help from Him; through bowing one display one’s impotence before His Glory and Tremendousness, and prostrates and proclaims one’s wonder, love, and humility. He performed his prayer with great humility and submission. He was able to refresh himself with the prayer; he reminded himself of the source of the power and he reminded himself that the work between two prayers counted as a type of worship. While praying, Adam forgot all about work and his mind was rested. He made a supplication at the end of the prayer, thanking God for all the things He had given him and thanking Him for the work he had been able to complete in the morning; he also asked for help for the rest of the day and the rest of his life.

After the noon prayer, Adam continued his tasks that had not been finished in the morning. When he became tired, he took a book out of his bag and spent some time reading it as a break and then he returned back to work. When it was time for the final task on his list for that day, he remembered that the task was not due for another week, so he thought about delaying it. However, he remembered that he should not leave today’s tasks for tomorrow.

The day passed. It was a very productive day; he felt that time had expanded. Maybe, it had expanded because he had recited prayers in the morning, maybe it had expanded because he had not remained asleep at dawn, or perhaps there was some other reason. Whatever the reason was, it was a bounty from God and he thanked Him for it. Adam once again felt a great humility in front of God.

A few days passed like this. Adam would perform the night prayer on time and he would go to bed after the prayer, making supplications when he woke up; he would not sleep after the morning prayer, but rather recited supplications before he left for work. He was very happy throughout this time, but it was not easy. He felt that he did not have the same motivation or energy that he had had at the beginning. He was about to lapse again. He knew that to remain on this track would not be easy. From all his experience he knew that every time he made a resolution to adopt a new style of life, it would only last a few days. But, this time, Adam was more determined than ever. First of all, he was sick of being lethargic and all the results of this lethargy. It was destroying his life; his time was passing unused and he was not fulfilling his promises to his wife or those to God. He really wanted to put an end to all of this and he was successful for a few days. Adam was now afraid that he would revert to his former life-style. Then, he prayed: “Our Lord! Let not our hearts deviate now after You have guided us, but grant us mercy from You; for You are the Grantor of bounties without measure.”

He finally decided to talk to his wife about the situation. He explained things to her, he discussed the lethargy and that he had constantly been fighting it for so long, but that he had not been successful. It was the cause behind all the broken promises. But, this time, he was very determined; he was constantly praying and he was also looking for different sources of information to solve the problem. He also told his wife that solving this problem would not be easy and it was possible that he would revert to his old habits on occasion, more frequently in the beginning than towards the end. He asked for her help in the entire process; he asked for her encouragement and he asked her to support him lest he stumbled. His wife felt the great pain that her husband was experiencing and she also felt the great determination he had. Additionally, she had witnessed very positive changes within the last few days. She said she would always be with him. Adam also talked about the process that he was going through with his best friend and he asked for help from him as well.

Things got better with every passing day; he was stumbling every now and then, but the frequency of such events was decreasing. He was very happy about all the goodness that had emerged from the “good work and determination” and he was very grateful to God for this blessing.

Finally, this manner of life became the norm, and his earlier life-style now seemed quite unnatural. In fact, Adam started wondering why he had led such a life. He repented all those lost days and hours. He decided to help his friends who were struggling with the same problem.

He knew that merely relating his journey to his friends would not help them much. They needed to find the causes, they need to be determined, etc., but most importantly of all, they needed to take action. However, he also knew from experience that taking action and continuing it for a long time was the most difficult part and that his friends might be too weak to do so. Well, they were human beings and this is the way things are; they were meant to feel weak without the help of God, for what value is anything if we do not have prayer?

And, as a first step in helping his friends, Adam changed the tone of his prayers; the “me” was replaced with “us” and he felt his friends’ pain in his supplications. He then remembered “O you who believe! If you will help (the cause of) God, He will aid you, and plant your feet firmly.” (Muhammad 47:7).