This entry considers the Qur'an's consistent naming of hearing before sight, in verses such as Surah as-Sajdah 32:9 and al-Insan 76:2, and the reading that treats this ordering as reflecting the developmental timing of the senses in the fetus. The inference is a weak one and easily retrofitted.
The source text
ثُمَّ سَوَّىٰهُ وَنَفَخَ فِيهِ مِن رُّوحِهِۦ ۖ وَجَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلسَّمْعَ وَٱلْأَبْصَـٰرَ وَٱلْأَفْـِٔدَةَ ۚ قَلِيلًا مَّا تَشْكُرُونَ
“Then He proportioned him and breathed into him from His [created] soul and made for you hearing and vision and hearts [i.e., intellect]; little are you grateful.”
Qur'an 32:9 · Saheeh International
إِنَّا خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَـٰنَ مِن نُّطْفَةٍ أَمْشَاجٍ نَّبْتَلِيهِ فَجَعَلْنَـٰهُ سَمِيعًۢا بَصِيرًا
“Indeed, We created man from a sperm-drop mixture that We may try him; and We made him hearing and seeing.”
Qur'an 76:2 · Saheeh International
What was understood in the seventh century
In the seventh century the relative developmental timing of the senses in the fetus was unknown. There was no way to observe that a fetus's hearing becomes functional before its visual system is ready to see, and no framework that would have made such a sequence meaningful. What could be known was only that a newborn arrives already responsive to sound.
Across many verses the Qur'an lists hearing (as-sam') before sight (al-basar). In 32:9 God 'made for you hearing and vision and hearts,' and in 76:2 man is made 'hearing and seeing.' The pairing is a fixed one in the Arabic, recurring in contexts that have nothing to do with gestation, such as descriptions of divine attributes and of human responsibility, which is relevant to how much weight the ordering can bear.
The modern correspondence
Developmental neuroscience established the relevant timing in the twentieth century. The inner ear and auditory pathway become functional around the middle of pregnancy, with fetuses responding to sound from roughly twenty-four to twenty-five weeks, whereas the visual system matures later and vision is only exercised after birth, when the eyes first meet light. Hearing, in this sense, precedes sight in coming into use.
Commentators connect the fixed word order to this sequence, reading the priority of hearing over sight as matching the order in which the two senses become active. The correspondence argued here is between a consistent grammatical ordering and a real developmental fact. Supporters point to the regularity of the pattern, that hearing is placed before sight not once but repeatedly, as what distinguishes it, in their view, from a chance turn of phrase. The Britannica material on prenatal development, cited below, records the developmental timing invoked, though the verses make no explicit claim about it.
Considerations and counterpoints
Critics note that 'hearing and seeing' is a fixed Arabic word pair, common also in pre-Islamic usage, whose order reflects rhetoric and euphony rather than embryology; the verses make no claim about a developmental sequence. Reading fetal sensory timing into the ordering is post hoc, and the same pairing appears in verses where gestation is not in view at all, which tells against treating the order as an encoded disclosure rather than a settled idiom of the language.
Credibility rating: Tier 3 · Contested — The consistent word order is real, but treating a rhetorical/grammatical convention as an encoded statement of developmental timing is a weak, easily-retrofitted inference.