The Category of "Civilization" in the Classification of Islamic Sciences

The extant classifications of sciences were made in terms of the world order, or in terms of the categories of human cognition (faculties of memory, imagination, and understanding or reasoning), or in terms of the stages of the developments of the human being. However, these are not the only possible ways in which sciences are classified; they can also be classified in terms of human needs (whether material or spiritual), lacks and wants. In this paper, after providing an account of the place of "civilization" as the most inclusive anthropo-social unit in the extant classifications of sciences, I will show the necessity of providing civilizational criteria and a logic for the social needs in an attempt to give a classification of Islamic sciences. I insist on the necessity of mutual relations between theory and practice, and even on the priority of practice to theory at civilizational levels.