Manzoor Ahmad

Pakistani scientist

Manzoor Ahmed, DSc (Urdu: منظور احمد; born 11 March 1934) is a Pakistani scientist and philosopher of science. He is a professor of philosophy and is currently serving as rector of Usman Institute of Technology (UIT) in Karachi, Sindh Province. He has international prestige for publishing articles, books, and leading edge research on the field of Philosophy of science, particularly the philosophy of space and time.

Manzoor Ahmed was born into an Urdu speaking family, in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh on 11 March 1934. His parents home schooled him, and he was later enrolled in a local middle school. He was a child prodigy, and enrolled in High School at the age of seven, where he excelled.

Since his return to his country, Ahmad has worked for the Government of Pakistan, as head of various national and international organizations. He is also an active member of the Council of Islamic Ideology in Pakistan. After returning to Pakistan, Ahmad became associated to the Karachi University and has directed their Department of Philosophy; he was later appointed as the Dean of their faculty of Fine Arts. Ahmad was the President of the Pakistan Philosophical Congress (PPC), which works for the improvement of Philosophical studies in the country. He was a Fulbright scholar, and has lectured on philosophy of science at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and the University of California. He was also awarded fellowships by the Brown Foundation and the British Council. Ahmad held the vice chancellorship of Hamdard University twice and holds the Chairmanship of the Usman Institute of Technology (UIT). He is the Rector of the International Islamic University, Islamabad and Chairman of the Board of Governors for the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS).

Ahmad has written important books about the relation between consciousness, science and philosophy. In his article, The Notion of Existence, Ahmad argued that the impact of scientific development has created the problem of the subjectivity of sense qualities and a separation between knowledge and existence. Ahmad further noted that, "the picture of the world given by immediate perception is totally different from what the world actually is, leading to an opposition between existence and true knowledge. Galileo's solution is that this difference between knowledge and existence disappears to a certain extent in the clearest knowledge we possess, i. e. mathematical knowledge."