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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."
While Charlemagne, an illiterate barbarian was converting the masses to Christianity (and brutally, I might add,) Middle Eastern doctors were actually successfully performing neurosurgery. Just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents...at least I learned something for the student loans I still owe!
> Many good scientific have been religious in some form ot believe in god: Newton, Einstein, Bohr, etc.
Newton also believed in alchemy. Newton was a freaky little nut.
Einstein was a pantheist, and specifically rejected the idea of an anthropomorphic god that intervenes directly in the universe.
No idea about Bohr.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Wikipedia has information on .
One reason for the scientific decline can be traced back to the 10th century, when the orthodox school of Ash'ari theology challenged the more rational school of Mu'tazili theology. Other reasons include conflicts between the Sunni and Shia Muslims, and invasions by Crusaders and Mongols on Islamic lands between the 11th and 13th centuries, especially the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. The Mongols destroyed Muslim libraries, observatories, hospitals, and universities, culminating in the destruction of Baghdad, the Abbasid capital and intellectual centre, in 1258, which marked end of the Islamic Golden Age.[20]
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Thanks to Al-Ghazali, REAL science has been anathema to Islam for almost a thousand years.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
When the author mentions the "extreme Hindu group", he misquotes its name as the "Vishnu Hindu Parishad". It's correct name is the "Vishwa Hindu Parishad".
Also, as far as I am aware, it has not asked for the ethnic cleansing of anybody, though many of its members are of a very extreme bent, and may well hold such opinions.
Thirdly, they have also not, to my knowledge, ever acted to block any piece of scientific research. It's an organisation concerned mostly with the social aspects of religion, and they don't bother with what goes on in the laboratories.
Probably the only thing they care about in regard to science and research is that we have bigger and better nukes than the Pakistanis.
Yes, but if you actually read the article, the author dispels the "lack of resources" argument. To address your specific point, the average person in the oil rich countries is well enough off to afford a good education. Yet those countries' output pales in comparison to much poorer places around the world.
Frankly, I think the author is tackling too much at once. Life in Malaysia is very different from that in Pakistan, which is very different from that in Iran, which is very different from that in Saudi Arabia, which is very different from that in Turkey. It'll be hard to find unifying reasons that apply well to all those countries. Each country has different reasons for their lack of scientific output.
Beetle B.
Really? Stalin's Soviet Union launched the first satellite, and put the first man in space. 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.
Stalin was an evil murdering bastard, but to suggest that Soviet physical scientists were prevented from doing good work under his reign is just claptrap. Even under Stalin, scientific free thought was encouraged, it was economic and political free thought that was curtailed. You'll notice they didn't win many Nobel prizes for Economics over that time, and their most notable literary laureate (Pasternak) turned it down out of fear of his government.
Communists have dogma that infringes artistic and economic thought, but it requires a fundamentalist theist to have dogma that infringes scientific thought.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
False. Islam was already well established when the arabic world was more advanced then the europeans. When the christians were burning roman and greek science (philosophy, medicine, etc) books, the muslims were preserving them in great libraries. Similarly for greek and roman art, the christians destroyed countless statues, the muslims decorated their palaces with them. They also created their own art, music, poetry, architecture, some of the most beautiful things ever created by man. They made advancedments in medicine, mathematics (we get our number system from them), philosophy, even early forms of robotics. Later, the ottomans were one of the most powerful and technologically advanced empires the world has ever seen, yet they allowed their people to keep their local customs and religions.
further reading
BTW, I am a staunch supporter of atheism, and while I do think all religions in essence, are bullshit, it doesn't mean that great things can't come from them, or at the very least, despite them.
Although the Soviet Union had many important scientific discoveries, the independent discovery of the atom bomb wasn't among them. The soviets made their first atom bomb by stealing US designs through espionage. The earliest soviet bombs closely resembled early US bombs.
Bernard Lewis wrote a book "What Went Wrong?" which described precisely (in his opinion) how Islam became the backward group when during the Dark Ages they were the advanced group and Europeans were the backwards ones.
After the Muslims started to lose battles to Vienna, one of the caliphates ordered his advisors to come up with a report on why they were losing. The two reasons given were (1) The Mullahs refused to allow "new" science to be researched, Muslim science was pretty much based on Greek science and they considered all the major problems solved and (2) not using 50% of their resources (women).
The same on used and improved by Galileo, Copernicus, Francis Bacon, or even Da Vinci?
(Yes, some of them lived into the 1600's, and those that did were about 40 yrs old in 1600 at that - all were born before the 1600's, if not earlier.)
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Actually, that numeric system was not invented by the Arabs.
They originally evolved in India as the Hindu-Arabic Numeral system and were borrowed and spread by the Arabs.
They are derived from the decimal Indian numeral system.
Even under Stalin, scientific free thought was encouraged[...]
This is TOTALLY FALSE. First of all, you need to look up Lysenkoism.
but to suggest that Soviet physical scientists were prevented from doing good work under his reign is just claptrap.
Scientists were hated by politicians and because of their advanced knowledge were by default suspected of being a dangerous spy risk. It was almost impossible to do most tasks because work was broken up for security reasons so that no one could know fully what they were working on. Scientists working on secret projects were kept in distant Siberian outposts and treated nearly identically to political and criminal exiles. Scientists were routinely prevented from travelling overseas to important scientific conferences and as a matter of course were obligated to deny all politically inconvenient scientific discoveries made by state enemies.
That any science was accomplished at all during the majority of the Soviet era is a testament to the amazing people actually doing it, the Soviet system was actively against them.
> Really, it's interesting to watch judeochristians begrudge the muslim world one good crusade.
They had at least "one good crusade".
That's why North Africa and Asia Minor is muslim to begin with.
Islam started out by trying to convert the rest of the world at the end of a sword. This aspect of Islam tends to be conveniently forgotten. There's a REASON that there's historical animosity between the east and west.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
To confirm his words, Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians used the word "Allah" to refer to their own gods. It's just like saying "God" in English -- it can refer to whoever you speak of.
Mexico (the country from which most immigrants to the US come) has separated church and state for 140 years.
In Mexico, unlike in the US, you don't pray in public schools where religious symbols are forbidden, all public servants swear their charges using the Mexican constitution, not the Bible, and many women ignore advice from the Pope regarding contraception (the Pope will not provide for my unwanted children - they say wisely).
Most Mexicans are catholic alright, but we have learned to live and let live, so your fears are unfounded (if anything, the exaggerated religiosity in the US may erode such healthy attitudes towards religion from Hispanic immigrants).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The Catholic church, does not, has not, and never will accept the divinity of Mary. According to the Catholic Church, Mary is a human being. Period. Full stop.
The most (only?) significant statement about Mary the Church made in the middle of the 20th century was the declaration by Pope Pius XII that, at the end of her life, Mary was bodily assumed into heaven by the grace of God. This, BTW, was the second of only two ex cathedra statements ever made by a pope and reflected a Christian tradition going back more than 1500 years. It also has absolutely nothing to do with a supposed divinity of Mary.
-JS
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity...