They Were Siblings

Hello,

Free-thinking, free-conscienced, beautiful people.

Continuing to look through the mirror of art…

What appears to us today through the mirror of art is,

Brotherhood,

Whose brotherhood?

Naturally, the brotherhood of the creative imagination.

In other words, the brotherhood of science and art,

The brotherhood of the power that gives the being called human the courage to challenge the gods, who are believed to be immortal.

I would say, do not just brush off the word 'challenge'.

To challenge, 

I am talking about the kind of challenge that strips us of our helplessness in the face of the existence of the universe that amazes us, directs us to understand the laws of existence that make it what it is, draws us into the depths of its puzzle as we understand and analyze it, keeps us occupied in the fog of mysterious secret doors like the Bermuda Triangle, but possesses the determination and courage of Gilgamesh searching for the island of immortality, or the challenge of Giordano Bruno, who did not succumb to the darkness of the Inquisition and was burned to death, yet was able to say, 'If I exist, there is no darkness.'

Because challenging begins with trying to understand and continues with the desire to position things that seem uncertain first as things-in-themselves, then within their totality and their objectivity within that totality, bringing them into unity and wholeness—that is, with curiosity and the instinct to grasp what is wondered about in its context; it continues by propelling it with the power of observation and experiment, leading to its reimagining, and subsequently, its birth within the womb of creative imagination.

In other words, all of humanity's creative acts draw their inspiration from the existence of the universe, which has amazed humans since the beginning. The universal energy that makes one admire it just by looking, but when viewed through the window of reason, makes one sense that humans themselves are a part of it. We, the children of Adam, are the ones who say, 'I am in this extraordinary order, so what shall I do?' and who want to talk to it, understand it, and show what we have understood through art, science, and philosophy.

In our last article, we mentioned two of these children of Adam. Perhaps you had already started thinking to yourselves: 'Professor Abidin said curiosity is good at the end of his last piece and left us worried about these two children of Adam, but he never actually got to the point.'

Would it kill you to be a little more curious, anyway...

Just kidding, just kidding, dear friends, don't die, of course.

Science and art are the roots that nourish our civilization, and each scientist and artist  is an energy source that gives life to our civilization through these roots. What we call a scientist or an artist are people who draw their energy from their sense of curiosity and succeed in making the results of this curiosity visible. 

These people have shown that the laws of harmony and wholeness they observe in nature and the universe are not only valid for plants, animals, and inanimate objects,  but that all these laws also encompass human beings. In other words, they observed as siblings, thought about it, and then one sibling practiced their science, while the other practiced their art.

These siblings, from different geographies, different faiths, different cultures, and different skin colors, set out to solve the laws of the universe not only to satisfy their own curiosity but also with the effort to produce a common benefit for all of humanity.

Anyway, I think I can finally get to the point...

At this stage, I think it is necessary to mention the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma), established by the Abbasid Caliph Al-Ma'mun, where the Arab-origin Muslim scientist Ibn al-Haytham, born in Basra in 965, received his education. If it weren't for the House of Wisdom, today's Western civilization might not have been in its current hegemonic position. Specifically, Caliph Al-Ma'mun, who held the Mu'tazila belief that centered on rationalism, had all works written in languages such as Greek, Syriac, Chinese, and Hindi translated into Arabic during his reign. Thanks to the philosophy, geometry, mathematics, astronomy, optics, and medicine books translated into Arabic, many scientists such as Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi and Al-Kindi were trained, and the books written by these scientists illuminated the path of humanity. 

Westerners, who gained the opportunity to acquire broader knowledge about Islamic Civilization following the commercial relations that developed between the West and the East and the Crusades, translated the books of Muslim scientists into Latin. Thanks to these books translated into Latin,  the Western World found the opportunity to rediscover Ancient Greek Philosophy, which they accepted as the foundation of their civilization, and was able to build the Renaissance Enlightenment that would end the Middle Ages. 

Do you see the brotherhood, translating from one language to another, over and over... Why translate, you ask? To remind us that we are siblings in the universal language of science and art...

You might say; Professor, what happened to Leonardo? What happened to his story with Alhazen?

Did you deceive us!

We said curiosity is good, didn't we...

Keep being curious; to say that brotherhood is a beautiful thing, the rest will be in the next article,

Until our next meeting, goodbye for now; right now and always, breathe with art, stay with art.