Hannah Erlwein on al-Ash’ari’s A Vindication of the Science of Kalam

Online Workshop
7:30 pm CET

As part of the Science & Religion Project Workshop Series Hannah Erlwein will be speaking on al-Ash’ari’s A Vindication of the Science of Kalam. 
 

• What are, according to Ash'ari's account, the reasons put forward by those who oppose the science of kalam ("speculative theology") for their position?
• Why does Ash'ari think their reasoning is flawed? That is, how does he go about defending the validity of the science of kalam?
• What are some of the problems classical Islamic theologians discussed? That is, what was the science of kalam concerned with?

Hannah Erlwein obtained her PhD in Islamic Intellectual History from SOAS University of London in 2016 with a dissertation entitled Arguments for the Existence of God in Classical Islamic Thought: A Reappraisal of Perspectives and Discourses (De Gruyter, 2019). From October 2017 to September 2019, she was a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Peter Adamson at LMU Munich, being part of the DFG-funded research project “Natur in politischen Ordnungsentwürfen.” Her research focused on Avicenna's conception of the function of the law of the ideal state. In 2019, Hannah joined Prof. Katja Krause’s research group “Experience in the Premodern Sciences of Soul & Body, ca. 800–1650” at the MPIWG Berlin. Her current research focuses on the role of experience in premodern Islamic science, and in particular on the use of analogies between experienceable phenomena and phenomena beyond sense experience. Hannah currently teaches a course on "Islam and Science" at TU Berlin.

This event is part of a series of seminars organized by the BCB Science & Religion Project, a part of the Oxford-led project "New Horizons for Science and Religion in Central and Eastern Europe" with support from the Templeton Foundation.

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