CONTRIBUTION OF MUSLIM SCIENTISTS
Introduction to Science

Introduction to Science
• Etymology: the word derived from French and
Latin word Scientia knowledge or the word
scio I know
• Definition: Science is a systematic endeavor
that build and organizes knowledge in the
form of testable explanations and
predictions about the universe.

Introduction to Science
Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of
the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on
evidence.
• Scientific methodology includes the following:
• Objective observation: Measurement and data (possibly although not
necessarily using mathematics as a tool)
• Evidence
• Experiment and/or observation as benchmarks for testing hypotheses
• Induction: reasoning to establish general rules or conclusions drawn from
facts or examples
• Repetition
• Critical analysis
• Verification and testing: critical exposure to scrutiny, peer review and
assessment

Scope of Science
• Science is a body of knowledge obtained by methods based
upon observation. Observation is authentic and that it is only
through the senses of man that observations can be made.
Thus, anything outside the limits of man’s senses is outside
the limits of science. In other words, science deals with the
universe and galaxies in the forms of matter and energy which
is in the form of living and non-living.
• Science employs a number of instruments to extend mail’s
senses to the extremely minute to very vast, to the short-time
duration or long-time duration, to dilute or to concentrate
and so on and so forth which does not alter the conclusion
that science is limited to that which is observable.

Scope of Science
• Thus, as in any other discipline contemporary experimental
techniques set up some practical limitations but these are
not to be confused with the intrinsic limitations inherent in
the very nature of science. The knowledge of science is
tested and retested and also reinvented.
• Today the disciplines of Science and Social Sciences are
drawing into each other. Behavioral zoologists study the
sociology and psychology of animals. Archaeologists derive
new insights from the rapid advances in chemical and
physical analysis. Hence sciences should be understood
with interdisciplinary approach within science as a whole.
Biology draws on chemistry, physics and geology.

Scientific Method
• The scientific method is critical to the development of scientific theories,
whichexplainempiricallawsinascientificallyrationalmanner.Inatypical
application of the scientific method, a researcher develops a hypothesis,
testsitthrough various means,andthen modifiesthe hypothesis on the
basis of the outcome of the tests and experiments. The modified
hypothesis is then retested, further modified, and tested again, until it
becomesconsistentwithobservedphenomenaandtestingoutcomes.In
this way, hypothesis serve as tools by which scientists gather data. From
that data and the many different scientific investigations undertaken to
explore hypotheses, scientists are able to develop broad general
explanations,orscientifictheories.