Methodology of Innate Sciences

Surveying the ways through which one can know innate truths is one of the themes that have interested some Muslim thinkers as well as western philosophers. Descartes identified clarity and distinctiveness as the hallmark of innateness, in John Lock’s view general consensus, moral conscience and divine benevolence and compassion were introduced as the ways appealed to by some to prove the innate truths. Islamic thinkers made use of four methods to prove such truths: historic – empirical, rational, intuitive and revealed or scriptural method. It seems however that knowledge of innate truths needs much more elaborate and analytic treatment than that found in the works of Muslim and western thinkers. Hence the article is to offer a new way to the proof of innate truths.