Four times in the Quran, God informs us that He has provided us the hearing, the eye sight, and the brains.
[16:78] GOD brought you out of your mothers’ bellies knowing nothing, and He gave you the hearing, the eyesight, and the brains, that you may be appreciative.
[17:36] You shall not accept any information, unless you verify it for yourself. I have given you the hearing, the eyesight, and the brain, and you are responsible for using them.
[23:78] He is the One who granted you the hearing, the eyesight, and the brains. Rarely are you appreciative.
[32:9] He shaped him and blew into him from His spirit. And He gave you the hearing, the eyesight, and the brains; rarely are you thankful.
These three steps also corresponds with actual human development. By about week 16 of pregnancy a fetus’s inner ear structures form, and by 24 weeks, the cochlea, eardrum, ossicles, and other crucial ear structures are fully formed. Eyesight on the other hand isn’t fully formed until week 26.
By the time a baby is born both their hearing and their eyesight is just about fully developed, but what about the brain?
Humans have the largest brains in proportion to their bodies compared to any other animal. For instance, while the brain to body weight is 1-to-220 for birds, most other mammals have a ratio of 1-to-180, but the human has a ratio of 1-to-50. So the human brain proportionally takes up more weight in human beings than it does in other animals. But in addition, humans also have the largest cerebral cortex of all mammals, relative to the size of their brains.
Now back to babies, when babies are born their brains are still developing, this is in contrast to the hearing and eyesight which is just about fully developed upon birth. In addition, a human babies development is even severely underdeveloped compared to other primates. By one estimation a human fetus would have to undergo a gestation period of 18 to 21 months instead of the usual nine to be born at a neurological and cognitive development stage to match that of a newborn chimpanzee. Not only that, but for a human to get to full brain development it takes about 25 years, longer than any other animal.
So from this analysis we see that the Quran order of human development corresponds with what we observe in science, that first a human develops the ability to hear, then see, then to discern.
Interesting enough the Quran also talks about the process of death and our senses as well. Twice in the Quran God references the hearing in context to death.
[2:19] Another example: a rainstorm from the sky in which there is darkness, thunder, and lightning. They put their fingers in their ears, to evade death. GOD is fully aware of the disbelievers.
In the above verse, God is informing us that in an attempt to evade death the people would put their fingers in their ears. One could read this as figuratively, such that they avoiding hearing the reality that they are going to die they think they can evade death. The other way this could be understood is there is a correlation with hearing and death.
The second occurrence is in Sura 18 and the history of the Sleepers of the Cave. When God put the youths to death for 300 years, it states:
[18:11] We then sealed their ears in the cave for a predetermined number of years. [18:12] Then we resurrected them to see which of the two parties could count the duration of their stay therein.
Again we see the reference of sealing ears in conjunction with death. What makes this particularly interesting is that the last of the five senses that a human loses when approaching death is the ability to hear.
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