Integrated Elements In Ibn Al-Haytham Philosophy Of Science

This paper aims to identify the underlying elements in Ibn al-Haytham philosophy of science and to analyze it from the Islamic theory of knowledge views. The discourses about the theory of knowledge often debate in contemporary philosophy of science. Moreover, the modern philosophy of science today is based on the logical-positivism philosophy which concerned with the data that may be perceived by the sensations. However, as a Muslim scholar who is the earliest to introduce the scientific thought, are there any similarities between the elements of the scientific view of Ibn al-Haytham and the philosophy of logical-positivism? What about the prospect of Islam on his scientific thought? Thus, with the aid of content analysis upon some of Ibn al-Haytham’s works, this paper try to seek the answers. The discussion in this paper is arranged in three parts, i.e. first, the discourse on the demands of integrated philosophy of science; second, the identification of Ibn al-Haytham’s fundamental elements in his scientific thought; and third, the analysis from the perspective of Islamic and Western theory of knowledge. As the result, this paper identifies four fundamental elements, i.e. the senses, the intellect, the intuition and the laws of nature which embodied in the Ibn al-Haytham philosophy of science. It can be concluded that all these elements are compatible with the Islamic epistemology.