Islam Rediscovered
2. Faith and Reason
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But by the early twentieth century, specifically after
the First World War, this mental climate changed
completely. The ancient Greek philosophers
believed that matter, in the last analysis, was
composed of atoms. And the atom, though very
tiny, was a piece of solid matter. But with the
breaking of the atom in the twentieth century, all
the popular scientific concepts underwent a sea
change. The theories about faith and reason seemed
relevant only while science was confined to the
macrocosmic level. Later, when science advanced to
the microcosmic level, it underwent a revolution,
and along with it, the method of argument also
changed.
So far, science had been based on the proposition
that all the things it believed in, like the atom, could
be directly explained. But when the atom, the
smallest part of an element, was smashed, it was
revealed that it was not a material entity, but just
another name for unobservable waves of electrons.
This discovery demonstrated how a scientist could
see only the effect of a thing and not the thing itself.
For instance, the atom, after being split, produces
