Hampshire College • Science in Muslim Society Lecture

“Historical and Contemporary Muslim Engagements with Science,” Monday, October 5, 2015
Hampshire College
The Muslim world is currently going through enormous changes. This is not entirely surprising, as more than half the population in the Middle East, and in much of the larger Muslim world, is under the age of 25. This is also the first generation to have been fully affected by the spread of mass education in the region and the global technological revolution of the past two decades. It is therefore not a leap to predict that this generation will interpret Islam and shape its relation to the modern world for decades to come, and that these interpretations will be influenced by global concerns and technological developments.
This panel brings together three eminent scholars from the fields of history of science, Islamic studies, and evolutionary biology to talk about ways Muslims have engaged with the sciences both historically and in the contemporary world.
Panelist biographies:
Dr. George Saliba 24:28 is professor of Arabic and Islamic Science in the department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. Dr. Saliba is considered one of world’s leading authorities on the history of Arabic and Islamic Science. He is the author of Late Arabic Scientific Commentaries: Their Role and Their Originality (2014) and Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (2007).
Dr. Asad Ahmed 42:03 is associate professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Ahmed specializes in early Islamic social history and pre-modern Islamic intellectual history, with a special focus on the rationalist disciplines, such as philosophy, logic, and astronomy. His current focus is the period ca. 1200-1900 CE, especially with reference to the Indian subcontinent. He is the author of The Religious Elite of the Early Islamic Hijaz (2011) and Avicenna’s Deliverance: Logic (2011)

Dr. Ehab Abouheif 1:01:33 is professor and Canada Research Chair in Evolutionary Developmental Biology in the department of biology at McGill University, Canada. Dr. Abouheif’s primary research focuses on the evolution of ants and his articles have been published in prestigious journals, such as Science. He is also the co-director of the McGill Centre for Islam and Science, and is actively engaged in dialogue about Islam and evolution.
Moderator: Dr. Salman Hameed 0:00 is the director of SSiMS. He is the Charles Taylor Chair and associate professor of integrated science and humanities at Hampshire College.