In 1671 a short book entitled Philosophus Autodidactus (The Self-Taught Philosopher) was published in England.^[1] It was a translation of a medieval Arabic text originally entitled Hayy ibn Yaqthan (meaning: ‘Alive, Son of Awake’). The author was one Ibn Tufayl, the 12^th century Andalusian Muslim philosopher, physician, and contemporary of Ibn Rushd (Averroes). Hayy ibn Yaqthan tells the story of a baby who is abandoned on an uninhabited island. Through careful and systematic observation, experimentation and contemplation, the child grows up to manhood with a deep understanding of both the natural world and metaphysics. The Royal Society, a collective of scientists or ‘natural philosophers’ committed to the pursuit of knowledge through empirical experimentation, were hugely enthusiastic about the text, and saw Philosophus Autodidactus as a vindication of the efficacy of the empirical method both for understanding the natural world, and for attaining a better knowledge of God. The Royal Society’s 1671 published book review of Philosophus Autodidactus is an intriguing short piece that highlights the ways in which the book, unexpectedly so due to its Islamic origins, proved a useful text for natural philosophers to examine and reflect upon the relationship between religion, mysticism and the Society’s scientific project.^[2]

The book review describes Philosophus Autodidactus as a translation ‘out of a fair Arabic Manuscript in the Bodleian Library… elegant in the Original, and in an excellent style’. Ibn Tufayl’s tale was translated into Latin by Edward Pococke the Younger, son of the famed Arabist Edward Pococke the Elder (although the extent of the father’s scholarly influence on the son, who otherwise seemed to be no master of Arabic, is naturally a cause of some speculation). The ‘Faigned History’ is utilised to explain ‘how… Man by the right use of his Reason may raise himself unto the knowledge of higher things’. Through his ‘single Use of Reason and Experience (without any human converse) [Hayy did] attain the understanding, first of Common things, the necessaries of human life… then to the knowledge of Natural things, of Moral, of Divine &c’. The review relates how Hayy comes into contact with a people on a nearby island who follow the dictates of an unspecified monotheistic revealed religion, ‘and having learned the Language, [Hayy] was found to excel their studied Philosophers’.

The appeal of Philosophus Autodidactus to the Royal Society is clear- for a group whose motto is ‘Nullius in Verba’ (‘take no one’s word for it’), the idea of a philosopher, unsullied by the baggage of antiquated learning who arrives at a correct knowledge both of the world and of God through his rational faculties alone, presents the reader with the model of a perfect natural philosopher. The Society’s emphasis on observation and experimentation is accurately reflected in Hayy’s own empiricist activities on the island (among other things, he dissects animals to come to conclusions about anatomy, and observes the heavenly bodies to inform his developing philosophy on the nature of the soul and of the world in relation to the universe and to God).

Perhaps what is more interesting is what is downplayed about Philosophus Autodidactus in this review. Most of the text enthusiastically describes Hayy’s natural philosophy project, but does not discuss explicitly where this leads Hayy in regard to his religious practice. In the story, Hayy’s realisation of the existence of an all-powerful God who has created the world that he has observed so carefully, leads to his withdrawal into a cave to dedicate himself to devotion. Eventually, he receives an ecstatic mystical experience of God. This stage of the narration is skimmed over swiftly in the review, briefly referring to Hayy’s attainment of ‘knowledge of Natural things, of Moral, of Divine &c’ before moving on to the next stage of the narrative where Hayy encounters other people.

This coyness to discuss head-on the religious implications of Hayy’s quest for knowledge points to the complexities encountered in discussing religion in the Royal Society of that time. On one hand, it can be understood as a consequence of the general trend among the Anglican religious majority to view discussions of mystical experience as suspect, extreme and ‘enthusiastic’. This was a trend born out of the proliferation of sects abounding in the English civil war, each claiming their own contradictory routes to ecstatic union with God and often bypassing the authority of the Bible in the process. In terms of Royal Society policy too, which tended toward an avoidance of religious discussions that could prove divisive among its members, a discussion of the mystical experiences described in the text may have been contrary to maintaining the fragile harmony among its Fellows. There is also, of course, the Islamic origins of the tale, that may have made the reviewer shy away from too resounding an endorsement of Hayy’s religious practice- indeed, at least one later translator of the text felt the need to defend the decision to publish a text written by a ‘Mohammedan’.^[3]

However, to say that Royal Society members would have been disapproving of the religious elements of the texts would be to ignore the strong faith motivating many of the Royal Society’s members. It is perhaps tempting to the modern reader to assume that the scientific goals of the Royal Society necessarily meant that they were somehow against, or at least apathetic to, traditional religious belief, or did not see any link between the realms of religion and science. This could not be further from the truth. Its members wrote extensively on their conviction that scientific enquiry itself would lead to a deeper and more perfect religious faith. Taking their cue from Francis Bacon’s assertion that studying the book of nature was the key to understanding God who was its author, they believed that discovering the wonders of the natural world would foster a greater appreciation of and devotion to its creator. Moreover, it was believed that a reformation in science should be a necessary companion to the Reformation in religion.^[4] Thomas Sprat, the Royal Society’s first chronicler, described the parallel projects of the Protestant Reformation and the Royal Society project thus: 'They both have taken a like cours [sic] to bring this about; each of them passing by the corrupt Copies, and referring themselves to the perfect Originals for their instruction; the one to the Scripture, the other to the large volume of the Creatures’.^[5]

Philosophus Autodidactus thus exemplified the new path in knowledge that the Royal Society wished to forge. Both religious faith and scientific knowledge would progress through a decreased reliance on the received and, up until now, unquestioned wisdom of the ancients, whether in the form of corrupted religious texts or the corrupted natural philosophy of antiquity. Instead, the emphasis would be on first-hand experience of the ‘book of nature’, through which the discerning ‘reader’ would be able to glean truth both about the Creator and the world that He created. Hayy, the ultimate natural philosopher, provided a blueprint for practicing natural philosophy, and an intriguing depiction of a possible outcome of God-centered scientific endeavour, namely a mystical experience of the Creator. Royal Society members, averse to plunging into controversial religious topics as they were, perhaps found Philosophus Autodidactus useful then as an imported vehicle for contemplating the religious possibilities that their new scientific mission offered, whilst entirely bypassing the well-worn path of post-civil war English Christian religious polemic and sectarianism. The Islamic origin of the text, therefore, far from proving problematic, actually made such engagement possible due to its remove from the religiously fraught landscape of Restoration England.

Title Image: “An Arabic manuscript from the 13th century depicting Socrates (Soqrāt) in discussion with his pupils.” From Topkapi Palace Library, Istanbul, Turkey. Image accessed here.

[1] Full title: Philosophus autodidactus, sive, Epistola Abi Jaafar ebn Tophail de Hai ebn Yokdhan : in quâ ostenditur quomodo ex inferiorum contemplatione ad superiorum notitiam ratio humana ascendere possit ex Arabicâ in linguam Latinam versa ab Edvardo Pocockio (Oxford: H Hall) 1671

[2] The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, VI, no. 73 (London: printed for John  Martyn at the Bell in St. Pauls Churchyard, 1671) p.2214.

[3] See George Keith, An account of the Oriental philosophy shewing the wisdom of some renowned men of the East and particularly the profound wisdom of Hai Ebn Yokdan, both in natural and divine things, which he attained without all converse with men, 1674

[4] Peter Harrison,The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 1998, p. 104

[5] Quoted in Ibid., p. 104