The essays presented in 'The History and Philosophy of Islamic Science' discuss the principles behind the different sciences cultivated in the Islamic world from the third century of the Islamic era onwards and the place of science in relation to other branches of Islamic learning.

The essays in this volume cover a wide range of topics in the history and philosophy of Islamic science. The main aim is to reveal the different dimensions of the link that exists between spiritual and scientific knowledge. By Islamic science the author means the totality of the mathematical and natural sciences cultivated in the Islamic culture from the third Islamic century. These sciences are Islamic because they are based on the metaphysical, cosmological, epistemological, ethical and moral principles of Islam. Scientific knowledge in Islam is shaped by the consciousness of the unity existing between the Divine Principle and its cosmic manifestations, as expressed in the principle of Divine Unity (tawhid), and is organically related to the knowledge of God. In the light of its spiritual and moral conception of nature, Islamic science adopts goals and methodological principles that are different in several respects from those of modern science.

Review
'[Osman Bakar's book] marks a most valuable contribution both to the effort of revealing the Islamic intellectual and spiritual approach to science, and to the concomitant endeavour to highlight the deeper causes of the contemporary crisis in western science and technology...it opens up, with clarity and simplicity, the philosophy of Islamic science.' Islamic Quarterly.

Professor Dato Dr Osman Bakar is Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic Affairs) of the University of Malaya, Malaysia and an authority on Islamic science. He is the author of 'Classification of Knowledge in Islam' published by the Islamic Texts Society.