Hume and Islamic occassionalists
Hume's ideas on causality seem to be correlated with occassionalism. If a single principle is moving matter with complete freedom, what becomes of science then? What is scientific thinking at that point? How can one be good at it? What is reason? Didn't Islamic science suffer from these doctrines?
Comments (7)
Hume replaced Allah in the Islamic occassionalist system with matter as the prime mover (following Hobbes's on dynamics). With an infinity of possible forces involved in anything, science seems to be rather occultic. Zeno, through history's Pyrhonnians, probably led to Spinoza. Kant turn Spinoza's God into the unknowable, and Marx and his followers demystified the world by taking out anything that wasn't based in principle on matter. Then came Einstein who said time starts from motion. And finally we have Hawking, who points out there is no eternity outside of this universe for God to even act in. What are we left with except waiting for regularities to change?
I don't know. But to some extent scientists - especially Greek - were sheltered by Muslim societies during the Dark Ages. Mathematical contributions are obvious, but while science was burned on the stakes by the Church Islam came to the rescue. But that was then.
It would help me if you referred to specific text of Islamic philosophers you have in mind.
They did not all agree with each other. Grouping them together is a thesis in itself.
Hume's critique was epistemological, and not ontological.