belief. However, having having established the truth of the first two of the four main aims with various proofs and in places making reference to modern science, the work remained unfinished with the third, the resurrection of the dead, to be completed only thirty years later with the Risale-i Nur.

A note on the term 'hikmet', a key term in the First Article:

Historically, various meanings have been assigned the term hikmet in different branches of Islamic thought. It has been defined as "knowledge of, or the theoretical science that investigates to the limits of human ability, the true nature or reality of the things in existence." It was thus used synonymously with the term philosophy, and often with what was known as natural philosophy. By natural philosophy was meant natural science, especially the physical sciences and the study of nature. In the nineteenth century, what we now know as science acquired its modern meaning, together with the development of its various branches, that is, biology, botany, geology, and so on. With the introduction of the modern sciences into the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, writers used the term hikmet to refer to both Islamic philosophy and Western philosophy. Hikmet-i cedide referred to modern philosophy. Hikmet was also used to refer to modern science in such expressions as hikmet-i tecrübiye (empirical science). When it comes to Bediuzzaman, he uses the term hikmet in all three meanings: he occasionally uses in the sense of philosophy generally, as when referring to Greek philosophy; he more frequently uses it meaning natural philosophy, but in doing this, distinguishes between ancient philosophy (eski hikmet, hikmet-i atîka), which he denigrates as superstition since it was based on the geocentric Ptolemaic system, and modern science (hikmet-i cedide). He also uses the term hikmet on its own meaning modern science. For modern science he also and more usually uses the newer term fenn (pl. fünun) and in the text mentions many of its disciplines.

Sözler Publications