The substances that ensure the general nutrition of the body come from chemical transformations which occur along the length of the digestive tract. These substances come from the contents of the intestine. One arrival in the intestine at the appropriate stage of chemical transformation, they through its wall and towards the systemic circulation. This passage is effected in two ways: either directly, by what are called the ‘lymphatic vessels’ or indirectly, by the portal circulation. This conducts them first to the liver, where they undergo alterations, and from here they then emerge to join the systemic circulation. In this way everything passes through the bloodstream. The constituents of the milk are secreted by the mammary glands. These are nourished, as it were by the product of food digestion brought to them via the bloodstream. Blood therefore plays the role of collector and conductor of what has been extracted from food, and it brings nutrition to the mammary glands, the producers of milk, as it does to any other organ.
“Here the initial process which sets everything else in motion is the bringing together of the contents of the intestine and blood at the level of the intestinal wall itself. This very precise concept is the result of the discoveries made in the chemistry and physiology of the digestive system. It was totally unknown at the time of the prophet Muhammad and has been understood only in recent times. The discovery of the circulation of the blood was made by Harvey roughly ten centuries after the Quranic Revelation.
“I consider that the existence in the Quran of the verse referring to this concept can have no human explanation on account of the period in which they were formulated”.
Seven, it is only recently that researchers have come aware of insemination in plants and learned that every living being comes into existence as a result of the merging of a maleand female cell.
Before the invention of the microscope which gave man access to the world of atoms and enable him to study microscopic beings, no one was aware of the action and reaction among male and female cells, certainly not in the age of ignorance, and indeed not until the codification of classical botany.
The numerous experiments and investigations by scientists in this field have proven that reproduction is impossible without insemination except in certain plants where reproduction takes place by way of the division of cells.
The first person to analyze this scientific fact in a clear and straight forward fashion was the well-known Swedish scientist, Charles Leine (1707-1787).
Scientific information shows that reproduction among plants generally takes lace through insemination with microscope particles, and the agents of insemination are insects, flies, bees and so forth, together with the most effective and widespread agent of all- the wind, which lifts up nearly weightless particles and scatter them in the air.
In verses that totally free of ambiguity, the Noble Quran sets forth clearly the principle of gender in the vegetable world, together with the existence of male and female cells in plants, something which was completely unknown until quite recently. It says, with the utmost eloquence: “Do they not look at earth, where We have created the plants in pairs?” (42:7) “We sent down water from the heavens and made to grow thereby pairs of different species of plants.” (20:52) “Pure and transcendent is the God Who created all contingent things in pairs- plants, human being, and other forms of creation unknown to you.” (36:36)
After setting forth the principle of two genders in the human being, the animals and the plant world, the Quran enlarges the scope of the principle to the degree of embracing all parts of existence. It is a general rule and law to which nothing that can be called existence forms an exception. The Quran says: “We have created all things their pair, in order that you may remember God.”(51:49)
Given the profound knowledge at the human being’s disposal in the present age, he has come to realize that all substances in the world can be reduced, in the final analysis, to their smallest structural unit, the atom. This infinitely small unit itself comprises a duality: that of positive and negative electricity. Although these two forces are identical with respect to their existential nature, one of them carries the positive electrical load and the other, a negative one. It is this opposition that attracts them to each other.
Attraction toward the opposite pole is inherent in both of them, and once the mutual attraction is exerted, a third entity comes into being- a force which is neutral in its electrical load.
It is very remarkable that the pairing of all things should have been mentioned in the Quran, which was, after all, revealed in an environment dominated by ignorance. The attraction that exists between two bodies each bearing a different kind of electric load makes entirely appropriate the use of the word “pair”. For it is entirely similar to the attraction between the two opposite genders. “Pair” was an extremely effective way of describing this scientific reality, given the limited thoughts of men at the time and even later, for it is not until recently that clear and definite information about the physical nature of this matter became available. So if e generalize the phenomenon of the pair to include the inner structure of atoms, we may conclude that the material structure of the world is indeed based on pairing, and that nothing in the material universe is exempt from the operation of this comprehensive principle.
To be continued
