How do We Attain Knowledge?

There are three issues which people frequently mix up when trying to answer this question. I hope the reader will distinguish between them:What is the source of knowledge? What are the means by which knowledge is acquired? And what is the method which must be followed toacquire knowledge? The source of knowledge is, as the name indicates, the place where knowledge may be found. The means are abilities and instruments which Allah has placed at our disposal for acquiring knowledge from its source. The sources of knowledge for aMuslim are existence and revelation. Its means are the senses and the mind. As for the method, it variesaccording to the type of knowledge and its source. It is a mistake, then, for us to say - as do some religiously minded people - that the sources of knowledge or its means are the senses and revelation, or that the scientific method is restricted to empirical sciences.
The Means of Acquiring Knowledge
The verse mentioned earlier establishes that thehuman being is born ignorant, and that Allah, the Exalted, provides him with hearing, vision and intellect. This makes it clear that it is not possible for a human being to acquire knowledge-whether it is religious or worldly-except by way of the senses or the intellect. Why do I say the senses when the verse only mentions hearing and sight? Because the other senses are mentioned in other verses. This verse singles them out for mention because they are the most important sensesfor acquiring information.
The senses are - as is well-known - connected tothe brain and, by way of it,to the mind. The mind is what coverts the material arriving through the senses into things that have meaning for the person. The sense which is most closely affiliated withthe intellect is hearing. A person hears sounds arising from natural thingslike thunder, wind, birds, animals and insects, but healso hears speech, which issounds that indicate meanings. Hearing is usually referred to in the Noble Quran to mean this second aspect. The one who doesn’t understand speech or benefit from it iscompared by the Quran to an animal which hears nothing more of speech that its sounds. Speech is affiliated with intellect in another way, that is, somespeech is true and some is false, and there is no way to distinguish the true from the false by the senses alone; logic must be applied as well. It determines whether the speech is internally contradictory or consistent.
If it finds it contradictingitself it rules that it is false.If it finds it internally consistent it examines the meaning: is it in accordance with the reality it refers to or not? Deciding whether there is accord or disparity might be a simple operation. If, for instance, someone says“The sun has risen,” all oneneeds to do is look up. If you see the sun, you judgethe statement to be true, and if you can’t see it, you judge it to be false. Judging the truth or falsehood of a statement may, however, be a long, complex operation, such as confirming the authenticity of a scientific theory like Relativity./