Development in Physical Sciences: Process and Role of Muslim Scientists

Man has always been curious to know the nature of things existing around him and to learn about the events taking place in the universe. The preliminary information which he could obtain from keen observation of the sequence of events taking place before him and the correlation which he could make between the 'expectations' and the 'observations' gave birth to the earliest logical thought. Thus is the pre-historic 'science' the existence of 'spirits' was postulated to account for the things which occurred without apparent cause. Later this was called 'mythology' and was superseded by philosophy which took its roots in Greece about 25 centuries ago. With increasing confidence in human intellectual prowess attempts were made to determine the 'absolute truth' by finding explanations to all observations. He even tried to find out the purpose of this existence and the rationale behind the creation of the 'known worlds'. Answers to the questions such as "Why is the world the way it is? What is the significance of life and death? Was there any beginning of this universe? What will be the end of everything around us?” were sought. However, any satisfactory answers to these questions remained elusive.