The word ‘science’ in its modern context means the systematic study of the natural world, using observation, experimentation, measurement and verification. It comes from the Latin word (from around the 14th century) scientia, which means ‘to know’.
Arabic manuscripts from Islamic times did not have a word for ‘science’ as we know it today. Instead, they had a word similar in meaning to scientia, which is ilm (plural, uloom). Ilm means ‘knowledge’: this could be knowledge of the natural world, as well as knowledge of religion and other things.
Scientists in the Ottoman empire came closest to realising that ilm is not the same as the scientific method. They introduced a new word, fen (plural, funoon), which means ‘tools’ or ‘techniques’. For example, a university of science would be written in Turkish Arabic as darul funoon, or a home for the techniques of science.
The new Ottoman convention, however, did not catch on. Turkish Arabic is all but extinct and Modern Arabic has retained the original dual usage for the word ilm. So, while the Arabic edition of Scientific American magazine is called Majalla Uloom (magazine of knowledge), at the same time, darul uloom (a home for knowledge) is used to describe religious seminaries all over the world.
