SOME SCIENTIFIC DOCTRINES IN THE MATHNAWI OF JALALADDIN MAWLAWI: A PERMANENT DIALOGUE OFCIVILIZATIONS

Nezameddin Faghih

Dr. Faghih holds a Ph. D in Random Signal Analysis from
Surrey University. He is a member of the New York Academy of Science, the
IEEE, the American Mathematical Society, and many others. He is currently
Professor of Engineering and Industrial Management at Shiraz University, and
has taught classes there, and at the University of Maryland, in a
wide-variety of engineering related subjects, including System Dynamics,
System Identification, Control Systems and Engineering Management. He has
published ten books, including: Maintenance
Engineering (winner of the Book of the Year Prize from the Iranian
Ministry of Higher Education), Science in the Mathnawi of Maulawi,
and Love and the Entity.

Mawlana Jalaladdin Mawlawi, born in 1207 (A.H.604) and died in
1273 (A.H.672), one of the greatest Iranian scientists, doctrinairs and
philosophers, has employed a poesy language, as was customary at his time, to
express his scientific and philosophic concepts and doctrines. This paper
highlights some of these doctrines, in the area of physical sciences, which
today after centuries, have been established and understood as well-known
scientific facts; so well known to the scientists, that no formal proof is felt
required to support them. In specific, a mathematical demonstration, based on
the Renewal Theory, is presented for his cognition that:

Every moment the world is renewed, and we are unaware of
its being renewed whilst it remains (the same in appearance). Life is ever
arriving anew, like the stream, though in the body it has the semblance of
continuity.

On this, the paper proceeds to show that life is, indeed, a
renewal process, posing continuity. In fact, by employing the Renewal Theory and
applying the exponential probability density function (which is generally known
to represent life), it is shown that lifetime is, but the Mathematical
Expectation of the number of renewals and appears as a continuous function.
This, however, seems to be an interesting result, on its own.