Science In Islamic Countries

biohack sends us to Physics Today for a thought-provoking article on the status of and prospects for science in Islamic countries. The author, a Pakistani physicist, posits that 'Internal causes led to the decline of Islam's scientific greatness long before the era of mercantile imperialism. To contribute once again, Muslims must be introspective and ask what went wrong.' The author makes a few strong conclusions, many of which are relevant to the general debate between science and religion. From the article: "Science finds every soil barren in which miracles are taken literally and seriously and revelation is considered to provide authentic knowledge of the physical world. If the scientific method is trashed, no amount of resources or loud declarations of intent to develop science can compensate. In those circumstances, scientific research becomes, at best, a kind of cataloging or 'butterfly-collecting' activity. It cannot be a creative process of genuine inquiry in which bold hypotheses are made and checked."

Comments

I'm an entomologist...

[pseudorand]

> In those circumstances, scientific research becomes, at best, a kind of cataloging or 'butterfly-collecting' activity. ...you insensitive clod.

Re:I'm an entomologist...

[Tibor the Hun]

Your dates are imperfect indeed, but simply because you're using an inferior number system. Had you written the dates in their original, true, and proper form, i.e. XVII and XVIII century they would be correct. Your post truly needs to be modded down to .

Now then, on to the discussion: Really, what has arab world contributed to the science world?

Re:Unfortunately...

[cayenne8]

Well, another thing is, the only physics they seem intent on studying, are those concerned with 'blowing things up'.

It is a limited field of study, and it seems most of the 'scientist' studying this phenomena are consumed along with their first experiment. Few papers are written post-experiment.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[thegnu]

but there's no valid comparison between literalist Christians in the U.S. and literalist Muslims in Saudi Arabia or Iran. There's a huge gulf there.

I'll say!

Re:freedom of speech

[Highrollr]

Under Stalin's rule, Cerenkov and Tamm won the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physics, as did Landau in 1962 for work carried out under Stalin, and Basov and Prokhorov in 1964.

Was it for time travel?

Re:UNIX explains the singular triune God

[oatworm]

They have the same UID, but they're on three different boxes... something about NFS, load balancing, and redundancy or something like that. I'm still trying to figure out why He deleted his "Jesus" account and then recreated it three days later. Very strange. Perhaps He was rootkitted? I'll go check the logs...

# tail bible.log

22:17And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And he that heareth, let him say, Come. And he that is athirst, let him come: he that will, let him take the water of life freely.
22:18I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues which are written in this book:
22:19and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book.
22:20He who testifieth these things saith, Yea: I come quickly. Amen: come, Lord Jesus.
22:21The grace of the Lord Jesus be with the saints. Amen.

Hmm... going to need to go farther back... this could take a while. I'll come back to you, 'k?

Re:"Here's your problem"

[Carthag]

He's right you know. I'm atheist and I've killed myself already because I didn't have any reason to live in a world without meaning.