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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."
Wow, for the first time ever, an article linked off a slashdot story that I find completely fascinating. As a scientist myself I find it utterly tragic that the past greatness of Islamic scholars is apparently largely forgotten outside of the work of science historians.
One can only hope that this current poverty of science in the islamic world is reversed.
> In those circumstances, scientific research becomes, at best, a kind of cataloging or 'butterfly-collecting' activity. ...you insensitive clod.
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!
Freedom of speech and science are directly related. Both islamic and stalinist countries violently suppress free speech, consequently having almost no scientific breakthrough.
The best scientific advancements come when someone declares "everything we know about this is wrong" and formulates, tests, and publishes some bold new idea. The tendency to question established "knowledge"--which is often backed by the church or the government--is never encouraged in non-free states.
If you want a great example of this in western history, look at Galileo.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
...on this story This should be a cautionary tale for any society that allows fundamentalism to rule public discourse and science.
(This coming from someone living in Kansas USA, where many would like creationism in the schools)
You don't need to be Einstein to understand that scientific advances are proportional to the economical status of the land. And I'm not talking about the economical status of the elite of the country but about the MEDIUM economical status of the population. Good economics is almost always equal to good education, good universities, quality investigations, cooperation projects, etc. I don't see any direct connection between ideology or religion and science.Many good scientific have been religious in some form ot believe in god: Newton, Einstein, Bohr, etc.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
...and usually put on trial for heresy by their compatriots.
Islam had it fair share of brilliant scholars, the problem was it had its fair share of fundamentalist religious types, and they won.
Did you know that there is a good deal of evidence that the western renaissance was started using Islamic knowledge taken from libraries in spain?
simplified yes, but basically true.
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...was once the height of scientific enlightenment. Then along came Islam, and since then very little has progressed (without outside influence). Quite the contrary. The Muslim Scientific Enlightenment began and declined after Islam came about. (I avoided saying Arab as many of the well known scientists, while living in the Middle East, were not Arab).Nice try, though.
Beetle B.
...was once the height of scientific enlightenment. Then along came fundamentalist Christianism, extreme patriotism, and since then very little has progressed (without outside influence).
One can only imagine what civilization would be like today if religion (of all stripes, mind you) hadn't stifled scientific progress since man first walked upright.
"It's the exact same thing that's going on in America. The Jesus freaks utterly reject anything that might come into conflict with their preconception of GOD MADE THE EARTH IN SEVEN DAYS AND IF YOU SAY OTHERWISE YOU'RE GOING TO BURN IN HELL FOREVER."
While the muslims do the same but actually set you on fire. In the street. Right now.
So no, it's not the exact same thing that's going on in America. Others will chime in with their opinions of why it is, but they'll have a hard time finding comparable behavior amongst religiosos in the US.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
I would not be surprised. However Spain was conquered only a short time after the founding of Islam, so one could argue that most (if not all) of the knowledge brought to Spain by the conquering Muslims was discovered before Muhammad's time.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
the problem is the question itself because the question involves islam. if the question had involved christianity or judaism or buddhism the problem would be the same. the problem being, to think that science and religion have anything to do with each other at all, in a negative or positive way. they are simply oil and water, science and religion. they don't mix. at all
this in fact is not a call to abandon religion to embrace science, nor is it an assertion that there is a conflict between religion and science. they merely have nothing to do with each other. there can be no conflict between two systems that don't speak the same language or investigate the same phenomena. one has to do with fact based inquiries, the other has to do with transcendental thought. the aspect of scientific knowledge simply cannot involve, touch, comment on or otherwise involve the aspect of religious knowledge. and visa versa
once you realize this, all of the "problems" involving science and religion disappear. problems only appear when, mistakenly, someone tries to comment on science from the point of view of religion, or someone tries to comment on religion from the point of view of science. this represents instant failure of an ability to understand the subject matter you are concerning yourself with
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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
Stupid mods. Mod some bullshit informative just because it's an early post that sounds authoritative. Idiots.
The following sentence from the article troubles me greatly: "The near-absence of democracy in Muslim countries is also not an especially important reason for slow scientific development. "
It should be clear to any human being in this world that democracy (and the rule of secular law), though not perfect by any means, leads to a populace who have a moral investment in the country in which they live - and this leads them to think of greater things, such as science, and not the day-to-day issues like how to not be killed for wearing the wrong clothes.
Religion and science have nothing to do with each other and anyone who even suggests that is making a grave mistake and fool out him/herself and the science s/he studies.
'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.'
Don't worry, you've been linked on Slashdot. Prepare for plenty of non-Muslims with no knowledge of either history or religion to come along and tell you.
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.
"Then along came Islam, and since then very little has progressed"
I'm sorry, but you have your time line wrong. The scientific enlightenment came along as a consequence of Islam.
From Wikipedia:
"A number of modern scholars, notably Robert Briffault, Will Durant, Fielding H. Garrison, Alexander von Humboldt, Muhammad Iqbal, Abdus Salam, and Hossein Nasr, consider modern science to have begun from Muslim scientists, who were pioneers of the scientific method and introduced a modern empirical, experimental and quantitative approach to scientific inquiry."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_science/)
Obviously things have gone horribly wrong in the last thousand years. But then again we seem to be going in the same direction in the United States, with intelligent design etc. In fact in 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" sounds a lot like the United States, where over 50% of the population doesn't accept the theory of evolution (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/22/opinion/polls/main657083.shtml).
(and a disclaimer, yes I know not every muslim country has vast amounts of oil, but many do and have an inordinate influence)
Oil rich countries can buy massive amounts of technology(including advanced weaponry) without having to ever invent any of it, somewhat rare if not totally unique in the modern world. Thus for many governments, there seems to be very little need to develop technology indigenously. This seems especially true in the case of the Saudis whose legitimacy in the eyes of many in the muslim world(they oversee the holiest places in Islam) seems to be largely dependent on their hardline Islamic views which means Madrassas and knowledge of Islam, not science, is th e most important thing to them. They can defend themselves from any threats(mostly Iran) without developing the know-how to engineer weapons themselves. Very few other civilizations in history could ever get away with that....
Monstar L
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.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
Perhaps you should read his rationale behind the statement.
Simply put: Countries with dictators still at times do better than the countries mentioned. It's not that big a factor unless they actually shut down the universities. Few dictators actually prevent papers from being published - it's not their concern. Heck, just yesterday I was reading a research paper in my field that came from a Cuban university.
Some of these countries, BTW, have democracies. Their scientific output still sucks.
Beetle B.
*total* crap?
I submit to you that Islam and Christianity both did plenty to stifle scientific progress simply because some scientific discovery was at odds with the religion in some way.
You're right, the scientific establishment has plenty of religion in its family tree (Copernicus, Georges Lemaître, and countless others were entrenched in both camps), but that's beside the point.
The fact that the Islamic world was ahead of the west for quite some time isn't a refutation of the original argument (that Islam ended up hampering scientific progress). Likewise, the argument that the Christian world is ahead of the east (man, I have writing that) isn't an affirmation of Christianity enabling scientific discovery.
What, pray tell, do you believe led to the decline of scientific progress in that part of the world, if not oppressive religion in the form of (in this case) Islam?
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
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).
Yet another person who apparently has not met a Muslim, let alone live in the "Islamic" world.
Beetle B.
They just moved lower down the head, and use a much larger knife now.
"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." Although in much of Europe, the middle ages were not a time of great learning from the Greeks, many Irish monestaries were busy hoarding important works from that era. "How the Irish Saved Civilization" by Thomas Cahill is a pretty good book - and very eye opening for those who have been taught that the Islamic societies were the ONLY cause of the Renaissance. And half of those "Islamic" scholars weren't Arab anyway. They were Persian - heirs to an immense scientific culture that got forcibly converted by a barbarian invasion in the 600s. On the other point, I call bullshit. Islam has a prohibition against artistic depictions of living things. Mohammed is credited for smashing every statue in the Kaaba, and during the sack of Constantinople in 1453, every single statue in the Hagia Sophia was smashed, and the frescoes painted over. Wherever Muslims invaded, there was an enormous destruction of artworks.
The "there is no God" notion isn't really a conclusion of science. It isn't even a hypothesis. It is a "metaphysical presupposition."
This presupposition must be made in order for scientific investigation to be possible. If one assumes that some phenomena (whatever it may be) is simply "the work of God," then there is no incentive to do controlled tests of it. If, however, one assumes that the phenomena has a physical (non-miraculous, non-conscious) mechanism behind it, then it makes sense to to tests aimed at uncovering and modeling the mechanism.
When a scientists (self-proclaimed or authentic) states that science has proven the non-existence of God, he has simply overstepped his bounds. Just as there is no experiment that could prove the existence of God, neither is there an experiment that could disprove it. God is beyond the scope of science. Any true believer can rest confidently in this simple observation. Any honest scientist should too.
However, a scientist is completely within his rights to presume the non-existence of God when doing his work. Theologians can clean up the mess later with notions about how God is the author of the mechanisms being studied, if necessary. But the first step any scientist must take is to clear his hypotheses of God.
It is easy to confuse a presupposition with a conclusion. It is also easy to wonder where God went when we look at a mechanical universe with a particularly incompassionate character to it. So we can cut the scientists some slack.
I would encourage the scientists to cut the theologians a little slack too, so long as the theologians are not inhibiting scientific research by making appeals to their own metaphysical presupposition.
There's my $0.02
Here's the Iranian leaders take on science is in the Islamic world:
Speaking as "an academic," Ahmadinejad said that from his perspective, the role of science is to serve Islam and that any science that does not serve Islamic goals is corrupt. As he put it, "Science is the light, and scientists must be pure and pious. If humanity achieves the highest level of physical and spiritual knowledge but its scholars and scientists are not pure, then this knowledge cannot serve the interests of humanity." Elaborating on this notion, he argued that Western scientists serve corrupt governments who reject the pure and pious path of Islam and therefore are used as agents for corruption.
From a Caroline Glick article on Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Religion and serious scientific discovery have always been at odds with each other and the reason boils down to "believe without evidence" or "faith." "Science" isn't always right but it's not about being right... it's about the continual pursuit of learning and understanding reality as we know it based on available evidence and the ability to prove through testing.
Religion is simply the opposite. It is based on the idea that what you were told is the truth. "Rumor" fits this description... as does "myth" and "gossip." But the fact is, religious belief cannot be admissible in a court of law with any reasonable rules for evidence and discovery. (Unless that court of law is based on religion... and we see what happens to 'rule of law' when it's based on religion... chaos and rather unjust proceedings.)
I think it's interesting that they are trying to make some connection between Islam and advanced knowledge. I'm probably wrong, but I believe things like advanced mathematics were developed in the "Islamic" part of the world, but predates Islam itself. It's more likely that Islam itself is responsible for the intellectual decline in that area just as it's often responsible for intellectual decline elsewhere.
From the article:
The Qur'an, being the unaltered word of God, cannot be at fault: Muslims believe that if there is a problem, it must come from their inability to properly interpret and implement the Qur'an's divine instructions.
The Qu'ran, far from being "the unaltered word of God", is actually an horrific and savage compilation of distilled hatred. Work on collecting the verses wasn't even begun until long after Mohammed was dead, and it was pieced together from people who claimed to have known him or known people who knew him. Thus it's put together out of chronological order (already one alteration) and to try to claim "Mohammed" wrote it is laughable.
The same is true for the other Muslim "holy books", the various collections of hadith (sayings of the so-called "prophet") that various factions believe are more or less authentic (the Sunni and Shi'a have their own favored set each, same for other sects).
Islam is not simply a religion; it is a design guidebook for the creation of a totalitarian state in which the "supreme leader" (Caliph) and his stooges get to use religion as an excuse to be really crappy to everyone else. And it's a lot easier to keep your population under control if they're too stupid to know better and terrified that a revolt might stop them from reaching "heaven."
And Mohammed, far from being a prophet, was an opportunist who figured like Akenaten, Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard that he could use religion as a tool and scam. Look at the various things he was "exempted" from. He "limited" other men to only 4 wives (already a mysoginistic bastard but we'll move on), but he himself got at least an even dozen, plus he fucked a 5 year old (Aisha) just because he got bored with adults. He raped a girl who had just seen her entire family slaughtered (Safiya) and then retroactively declared it a "marriage" the next day when his troops started complaining.
Muslims like to try to rewrite history to hide embarassing details - such as the nature of the Ka'aba, their "holy box", which predates Mohammed. Mohammed's grandfather was a pagan priest of a specific deity of the Quraish tribe. He named his son (Mohammed's dad) "Abd'allah", literally "Slave of Allah."
This was before the monotheistic "Allah" was cooked up by Mohammed.
Question: Which pagan deity is Allah? Or else who was Abd'allah named for?
Islam is a joke. The more educated Muslims you get, the more educated ex-Muslims you'll have as they wake up to the utter absurdity of this bullshit. That's why Muslim leaders hate education so much.
Hell, that's why the Muslim religion has a standing death threat for converting away.
That describes the fundamentalist Christian-dominated home town so well I want to hug this guy.
The problem with fundamentalists is that they value the knowledge and beliefs of people from thousands of years ago over any progress we have made since.
There are multiple periods during which certain parts of the Middle East were prominent civilizations, advanced for their time. The period that occurred most recently was under the Islamic empire. The person who is considered the "father of algebra" had the full name Mohammed ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi.
As for your theory as a whole, you ignore some important facts. For example, Christian scholars were instrumental in preserving the knowledge of the Roman Empire through the dark ages. Also, theology has been an important component of the thinking of many of history's greatest minds. When you look at the figures behind the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, the vast majority of them were not atheists.
That said, I do agree that organized religion has done a lot of harm to science as well. On the whole, I'd agree that it's been more good than bad.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Baghdad_(1258)
Just the other week I discussed this with my uncle, he is a die hard christian and I talked to him about what I perceived as a negative effect of religion. You hear it all the time. Whenever something bad happens, it Gods will. Lost your job? Gods will. Got sick? Gods will (Germs whats that?). Your grandma died? Gods will (No she was 100 years old and did just fine, what natural causes?).
It seems that any time a believer explains an event with "It was Gods will." they are basically saying, dont get any ideas, dont ponder, dont try to figure out why.
Im an atheist myself. I wish I could ban religion altogether.
-- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
I don't think the Church (or the Mosque or the Synagogue) should get credit for the achievements of its members! It was the Christian Church that put Galileo under house arrest. It was a Christian (Newton), that came up with the fundamentals of classical mechanics. There is an important distinction to be made.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
No, they just blow up abortion clinics, but somehow, that's not labeled "terrorism".
>this in fact is not a call to abandon religion to embrace science, nor is it an assertion
>that there is a conflict between religion and science. they merely have nothing to do with
>each other.
You evade the problem by being too abstract. There is no conflict between "religion" and "science" but there is clearly a conflict between specific established scientific views and specific established religious views.
Many sects dogmatically proclaim that the world was created in 7 days. You can say that "this is a metaphor, and so not at odds with science," but the problem, the conflict is that the people who say that don't *mean* it as a metaphor. They mean it as a factual statement about the world.
Saying there is no conflict between something abstract like "religion" and "science" is missing there point. There are concrete conflicts between various religious dogmas many specific scientific views.
Furthermore, it is well historically established that societies that accept dogmatic modes of thought are not conducive to scientific development. If scientists must do all of their important research in secret, for fear of public reprisal, they will get little done and their work will not be widely disseminated. This is a historical and ongoing problem in our society.
The problem isn't that "religion is bad," although I think an argument could be made for that, but that certain social institutions, especially some hard line religious sects, do much to harm the advancement of science by establishing dogmatic views that they refuse to accept rational challenges to.
If you want to propose that anyone who uses religion to explain nature is "missing the point of religion," then the vast majority of people throughout history from every religion around the world were "missing the point". In fact, it's arguable that the original purpose of religion was to provide explanations for natural phenomena that were unexplainable at the time. The idea that religion isn't supposed to provide explanations for natural phenomena is a relatively new one. If you want to try to re-invent religion as something that has nothing to do with empirical fact, then I wish you luck; but realize that you are trying to reinvent it.
You mean there's no proof for the 72 virgins? Damn, thought I had an avenue there for a second.
Table-ized A.I.
science is static. it looks at what happened in the natural world and explains it, and extrapolates future predictions of activity outside of human intervention
religion is dynamic. it is about that human intervention that science cannot explain or comment on. humanity is an interesting creature: it creates it's own reality. something that is not real in the natural world is made real nonetheless simply by enough of humanity believing it into existence. and i am not talking about physical objects like pyramids or airplanes, i am talking about mental concepts like fairness and justice
there is no fairness and justice in the natural world. the concepts of fairness and justice is entirely made up by humanity. on faith. believed into being on faith, enforced as reality through enough human belief in it. but you tell me if that lack of existence of fairness and justice in the natural world means those concepts are nullified, or that such concepts are unworthy of investigation, codification, thought, and knowledge
such things as fairness and justice are necessary components to human life, just like food and water, without which you would go insane
in fact, if you say to me you are strictly a man of science, without any religion, i say that you lack self awareness. you have belief and faith in something. even a rudimentary humanism is a form of religion
science and religion: two entirely different fields. and yet two fields of inquiry invaluable to every single man woman and child on the planet. there is no such thing as a man of religion without any science, or a man of science without any religion. the existence of such people is impossible, strictly because a rudimentary form of one or the other is required by a human being to survive in this world
two completely unrelated issues that cannot comment on each other, and yet are utterly vital to what it means to be a human being
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Much of the problem is economic, not religious.
The prototypical state for the economic problem in this case is Saudi Arabia. Saudis obviously are not lacking for money - they pump it from the ground at alarming rates - and this is part of their problem.
The Saudi state distributes oil wealth among its people, and these distributions are a big problem.
When people receive fairly large amounts of money for doing nothing, they have little incentive for improving their technical skills. Subsequently, there is little reason for young Saudi men - who, incidentally, were likely raised by largely uneducated women - to go beyond what they already do and know. A great many will also not seek out employment of any kind (the CIA World Factbook puts unemployment in Saudi Arabia at between 13% and 25% - not to mention the massive hole women have left in the workforce). Living off of oil subsidies, there is little need for students to prepare to compete in the global economy - they already have a resource the rest of the world needs for survival and receive an annual cut sufficient to live quite nicely off of.
Pakistan is another example. With the state generally unwilling to invest serious amounts of money in education - and with teachers rightfully afraid for their lives in many areas - parents are given the terrible choice of choosing to provide little to no education at all for their children or sending them to a madrasa where their child will at least learn to read, write, as well as likely learn some basic math. The religious knowledge they will acquire will also help instill positive morals (they hope) and make them a beacon in the community as they grow older (also, they hope). While the later is admirable, it is when the religion overtakes ALL subject areas - as it does in many of these schools - that it becomes a problem.
I received my undergraduate degree at a religious university - BYU - in the U.S. Evolution was accepted as fact and discussed as such. I studied Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and other great philosophers. I took classes on deductive logic. I studied Islam and Judaism. I learned the laws of thermodynamics. Majors were offered in Biology, Chemistry, various engineering disciplines, and other quite scientific fields. There were, of course, religion classes as well, but the requirement to complete these - 12 credits - was a fairly minor part of the overall curriculum and I cannot recall any instance of religion being extensively mentioned in secular classes (the vast majority) with the exception of ethical issues - particularly in a National Security class and on the subject of war. If the Arab world could make a system like that work, it would be better than what they have now.
I wonder how much of this divergence has to do with the embracing or refusal of logic. Christianity, after the dark ages, made various attempts to reconcile its beliefs with logic with varying and certainly debatable results. St. Thomas Acquians and Pascal are good examples. But the idea that things should conform to logic and reason has been deep seated for centuries now, even though it is certainly not universal. As Christianity embraced reason, Muslims philosophers such as Al-Ghazali sought to move away from it for whatever reason. The courses I took on logic and philosophy, although somewhat infuriating at the time (professor's fault, not the material) have been the most useful to me by far in life. I cannot imagine a life - or a culture - without these ideas.
Much of the science attributed to 9th-11th century Islam is actually Assyrian. The Assyrians produced significant scientific achievements for centuries, were defeated militarily by Islamic invaders, forced to convert, and, within about 100 years, stopped producing any meaningful science. Google 'Assyria Science Islam' for numerous articles on this. The early Muslims, perhaps, understood the importance of science by capturing it, building libraries, etc. However, they never mastered the scientific method or the attitudes that support science. Consequentially, "getting back to the golden age of Islamic science" is not really possible. As the author stated, developing and supporting attitudes conducive to science is critical to scientific progress is Islamic countries, but it will be the first time that substantive scientific work takes place in Islamic countries.
"One can only imagine what civilizsation would be like today if religion (of all stripes, mind you) hadn't stifled scientific progress since man first walked upright."
Religion and science are NOT diametric opposites! ...nor are faith and reason.
Forget the fact that some of this nations best schools and hospitals are run by religious organizations. Never mind that Gandhi, Dr. King and even Pythagoras were men of faith AND reason.
There is room for more than one way to make sense out of the world around us. By now we should have reached the point where we can accept diverse paths to truth and the idea that not all questions have satisfying, simple answers that one and all can understand. ...at least not right away.
...and if we can't agree with each other about the questions and answers, we shouldn't have to be so disagreeable in that regard. We shouldn't need to demean others who don't believe what we believe or think the way we think.
I didn't need all that excess karma anyway.
The US was, in part, founded by fundamentalists. Of course these same fundamentalists were escaping persecution by a religious majority and saw the need to not allow a single religion to dominate all of society.
Even today, we get along just fine with the Amish, Mormons, Baptists, Southern Baptists, Scientologists, Wiccans, Satanists, etc. I don't see anything to suggest that this will change.
Bettle B made a good point, but I also want to add something. I think in general it's better to look at religion as a reflection of society, than something that molds society. Ostensibly, societies derive their values from religion, but to be completely realistic, more often society leverages religion to enforce the values that they already hold. So in the context of the Arab period of enlightenment, it is useful to look at not the religious angle, but the political and economic events that underly them.
The Islamic Empire (a political phenomenon) brought civilization and urbanization to a region that had been largely nomadic. It brought, at least for a time, stability, security, and wealth. The culture of Islam was, at the time, more contemporary and metropolitan than its contemporaries (remember, we're talking about a period when Europe was in the Dark Ages). These ingredients were all important for the cultural renaissance that occurred in the period. As the civilization declined, wealth, stability, and security were lost, and at that point Islam was used to enforce the conservative social order that naturally arises from such an impoverished state.
Neither Islam nor Christianity have changed substantially in the last 500-1000 years. Neither the Bible nor the Quran have gone through a new edition. What has changed is how literally followers of the religion adhere to the now antiquated doctrines. The vast majority of Western Christians aren't really all that Christian. They don't attend Church regularly, they don't follow most of the teachings of the Bible, etc. They have a vague belief in God and Christ and doing good work, but for all their specificity such beliefs are probably closer to those of a modern, progressive Muslim than to the beliefs of the more ardent believers within their own religion. The litmus test for me is really the whole issue with the Catholic Church and birth control. The Pope, the designated representative of God on Earth, says that contraception is wrong yet most Catholics still use it. This is a very fundamental test of belief. If you honestly believe that there is an all-powerful being who controls heaven and earth and that Jesus died for your sins and left Peter as his successor, and that the current Pope is the spiritual successor of Peter and speaks with all of his authority, then you cannot possibly rationalize the use of birth control. LIke it or not, most modern Catholics do not really believe in Catholicism --- they believe in something similar, but diluted enough for modern sensibilities.
It is this "dilution" that is desperately missing from the Islamic world. We have a population that feels at most mild guilt for skipping Church, and they have a population that fears for their eternal soul for missing prayers, and that's the problem.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Funny, what I've heard is that the rennaissance was started by the rulers in italy allowing people to keep most of the fruits of their labor.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
The author harks back to the golden age of Islam (essentially, before 1500) and claims that Islam no longer rejects technology. The fallacy here is that Islam did reject technology like the printing press until very recently. It is not a surprise that Islamic culture did not keep up with the west when they ignored such technology for 400 years. It is true that cultures with complex writing systems, like Japan and others, also were slowed by difficulties with mechanized printing, but they have been able to assimilate western technology sooner than the Muslim cultures have.
Muslim countries that are less entrenched in fundamentalist belief are more culturally and technically advanced. The rich oil countries have science as an effect of their wealth, not as a cause of it. Southeast Asians are geographically adjacent to high tech territories, with a different culture than the north African Arabs and other Muslims in Africa and West Asia. The lack of science in those countries probably has more to do with poverty and oppression than Islam.
To state an obvious point, modern Islamic culture does embrace technology when it suits them - they adapt violent practices from the west when they feel it helps them to advance their goals.
It most certainly is terrorism, and is treated as such, even by President Bush's FBI:
"A Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested and charged a 27-year-old for allegedly planting a bomb at a women's health clinic in South Austin that performs abortion procedures."
There's no telling who he could have hurt or killed with his bomb. The mailman. The utility meter reader. Someone on the bomb squad cleaning up his mess. I-35 was partially closed, increasing traffic danger.
It is for jackasses like this that the death penalty must remain.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Well, until fairly recently in the Western tradition, it was fairly dangerous to be openly non-religious or anti-religious. It only makes sense that a smart person would, at the very least, adopt the correct appearances.
Who's to say what those individuals would have thought did they not exist in an environment which more or less required religion in order to be taken seriously (or not be harassed or killed)? It's difficult, probably impossible, to pull any of them out from their environment.
But you're giving religion a ridiculous amount of credit to say, simply because a lot of people who were smart also were religious, that their being religious led to their being smart. A lot of criminals were also religious; do we lay them at the Church's doorstep, too?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Whoa. This is a logic leap of Olympic proportions.
Democracy is a powerful means to its ends (e.g.: those typically described in democratic constitutions), but it inherited the lamentable romantic habit of taking strong assertions for rational arguments.
- Democracy does not, per se, lead to a moral investment of the population in politics.
It's remarkably difficult to get even minimal participation (voting on the most important elections) on mature democracies, much less 'moral investment'.
- Democracy does not lead the population to think of 'higher, greater things'.
On the contrary, participatory government focuses on concrete improvements to the way of life of the constituents. That IS one its main virtues - the resources of the state are to be invested into the happiness of the population, rather than the aspirations (however idealistic) of an autocrat.
- Democracies tend to worry, more than anything, about day-to-day issues.
Not being killed for wearing the wrong clothes is a central preocupation of citizens and politicians on most modern democracies - personal security is expensive to maintain, and a function of prosperity, not (directly) of constitutional freedom.
Even if the most secure and prosperous democracies, day-to-day issues are the center of popular thought and political action. People worry more about their job security, schools for their children, their parking situation, or whether there is too much fat in french fries.
Historically, worrying about "greater things" rather than the menial day-to-day problems of life is a very aristocratic feeling, not a democratic one; and the romantic rethoric of democratic documents has a lot to do with the aristocratic antecedents of those who wrote the seminal documents, and rethorical tradition.
Even when democratic nations do spend great effort and emotional investment in a "greater thing" (e.g.: space exploration, fundamental scientific research, solving world hunger, etc) it is typically a result of unilateral top-down leadership, whether motivated by national needs (war, foreign competition, etc) or by a strong push from a charismatic executive leadership.
In other words, the efforts are fundamentally 'dictatorial', in the original Roman sense of the word.
The causal chain that leads democracy to achieve 'greater things' is powerful but indirect. Leisure is the parent of such worries, and prosperity leads to leisure. The power of democratic societies lies on their capacity to best achieve and sustain prosperity, and reduce the number of worries of survival a citizen needs to deal with daily.
But it is human nature that, for the overwhelming majority of the population, even the most menial daily worries will take a higher priority than "greater things" in their political opinion.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
I believe it was Karl Popper (a famous philosopher of science) who wrote that he believed that Christianity was instrumental in the formation of science in the West. The Christian God creates a rational world that can be understood through reason. However, the world is not contingent, so we must observe it to know it. Even math started out as religion - the Pythagorians had a religion based on rational numbers. So I completely disagree with you that science and religion are incompatible.
So? There have been atheists who have killed because someone proclaimed belief in God. Big deal, they were isolated incidents. Individual loonies don't reflect upon the group as a whole, so quit slinging the strawmen. When I see a large, organized group attacking abortion clinics, then you'll have a point.
And who, might I ask, doesn't consider bombing abortion clinics terrorism or some other temr along those lines?
So you mean basically that they should stop doing what the Catholic church got booted out of doing....oh....let me see....500 years ago. I suppose that we get to wait and see who their Galileo will be.
2 cents,
QueenB.
HDGary secures my bank
The 'elected' parliament refused to grant women their right to vote up until 2005 where, again, the 'dictatorship' government forced the law on the parliament and threated to dissolve it if it didn't pass. My sister completely covers up her face, if somebody saw me with her, they'd think "Oh look at that Arab suppression his wife/family", while in fact, I tried many time to convince her to take it off and how ridiculous it is but with no success, she's a devout Muslim and she doesn't want to do that and she thinks hideously of any thing western. While it is true that a lot wear it forcibly, it's mostly due to culture "oh everyone is wearing it so I'll do that". On many instances, I've seen women become more conservative by their own will. What's ironic is that in the last parliamentary elections where women got the right to run for office and vote, an Islamic MP (Daif-Allah bu Ramiah) who worked so hard to devoid women of their rights by launching numerous campaigns, actually won the race mostly due to the overwhelming votes he got from women voters (Women voters represent more than 50% of the total vote, despite that fact, no women MP was elected). It's completely insane and I truly don't understand it.
The country lives in a horrendous bureaucracy, most people are so lazy to work in an ethical manner, and most scientific institutions are run by zealot Islamic creationists who are wasting research money on 'scientific miracles of the Quran' and producing more books on why 'Evolution is a lie'. Their influence is heavy in education where kids are actually taught evolution, and how to 'disapprove it', not to mention the hatred driven religious classes which, thanks aga
I wouldn't say my mind is closed.
Of course you wouldn't. That doesn't mean it's not true.
In my experience most people (religious or otherwise) get irrational when their core beliefs are challenged. Not always hostile, but definitely irrational. They will spout logical fallacies left and right, seeming to have suddenly lost their ability to detect them, when only moments before they were pointing them out (as fallacies) in rival belief systems.
This seems to be a psychological defense mechanism that serves to protect one from the very disturbing feelings of uncertainty that arise in such discussions.
The people I've known who don't get irrational when their core beliefs are challenged were usually philosophers (by formal study). Also, they seemed to like it when they suddenly realized that the issues were deeper and less clear than previously thought. In other words, they didn't find uncertainty disturbing, hence they didn't need defense mechanisms, and hence they could remain rational when being challenged, and hence they could actually authentically be considered open minded.
My challenge to you: Humans are not perfect; in fact they often mess things up pretty good. Every single word in the Bible was written by a human. God himself didn't manifest before you and hand you a copy; a human did. Your belief that God used his divine power to preserve the accuracy of the Bible was also taught to you by a human (and, ultimately, cooked up by a human). You simply cannot escape the element of human fallibility present in the Bible, and in all arguments made to it's final authority.
So your faith isn't actually in God. It is in humans. That is to say, you have placed your faith in the specific humans who wrote the Bible, and the specific humans who gave you teachings about it.
In that light, what rational reason can you give me for believing that the (very strange) stories in the Bible (the ones about heaven, hell, superhuman powers, talking animals, and so on) are concretely and historically accurate?
Oh, wait - the Jews in Israel are protecting thousands of gay Palestinian teens who came out of the closet and ran for their lives away from their murdering "parents."
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Individuals read and interpret the Bible, understand the worship service, form their own denominations, etc. I disagree, though, that this means that Christianity has become diluted
Of course it's become diluted. The Bible clearly states that masturbation is wrong. Yet, I'd be willing to bet that most Christian males in Western countries masturbate. The Bible repeatedly states that premarital sex is a crime, yet in the West premarital sex is the norm! How do you rationalize this behavior? Simple: people say they believe in the basic tenants of Christianity, but they don't. They pick and choose the parts of the Bible that are agreeable to them, a process which itself makes no sense if you consider the Bible to be a divine work inspired by an omnipotent being! Nobody fears God anymore, because they believe in a kind, friendly God who is accepting of their lifestyle, and is willing to overlook all but the most basic rules in the Bible. This is not the Christian God!
Most US Christians don't worry about losing their souls by using birth control, but I bet a lot more would worry about losing their souls by committing murder.
The Quran says not to kill people too, and so do the Ten Commandments. General stuff like that isn't what defines Christianity, distinguishing it from other religions. In fact, you're reinforcing the point I'm making. Christianity, as defined by the Bible, is a big religion, with lot's of elements. In Catholicism, in particular, these aspects are even highly-codified. Over time, people stop believing in more in more of these aspects, while retaining only the basic ones that are compatible with modern society. This is absolutely dilution of peoples' belief in the religion.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The basic problem is that Islam was never "reformed". Christianity went through the same sort of oppressive anti-intellectual period when the Catholic Church ran the world. That period, 600 years of "dumb", is called the "Dark Ages" for good reason.
There's hope. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are making progress, partly because they don't take Islam too seriously. Dubai has become a wealthy country without oil; it's a commercial center, like Hong Kong or Singapore. Saudi Arabia made a terrible policy mistake - the royal family let the religious types control education. Over 90% of the doctorates in Saudi Arabia are in "religious studies". Saudi Arabia ought to be training and exporting the world's oil experts, like Texas does. But they don't. They don't even train enough people to run their own country, which is going to hurt when the oil runs out.
Publishing in the Arab world is in terrible shape. The entire Arab world produces fewer books than minor European and Asian countries.
>>Religion and science have nothing to do with each other and anyone who even suggests that is making a grave mistake and fool out him/herself and the science s/he studies.
What the fuck? Why do people keep saying this? Do religious creation myths not conflict irreconcilably with the theory of the big bang? Aren't miracles pretty much a violation of the laws of physics (hence their name)? I'm willing to concede that a discussion of the afterlife can be seen as entirely separate from scientific issues, as it posits essentially an entirely separate universe for use after death, but that hardly implies that science and religion don't talk about the same things, and have very different opinions about the facts surrounding them and the mechanics driving them.
Sheesh.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
I cannot see that a belief in miracles (or rather, the belief that certain miracles have occurred) is inimical to science. The point about miracles is that they are NOT the normal working of the universe, and do NOT tell us how the natural world works in general. Indeed, the fact that they are normally impossible is what makes them miraculous. This leaves the field of normal events (i.e. 99.999999+% of all that happens) open to explanation by empirical science as the only source of reliable knowledge in that sphere.
The problem is with the use of ancient texts, no matter how inspired ("revelation"), to resolve general scientific matters. In particular, the problem lies in the assumption that fiction is not a valid form of scripture. I not only like fiction, but find some fiction profoundly moving and enlightening - why cannot scripture include fiction? Some ancient texts (like the parables told by Christ) are clearly meant to be fictions, and yet inspired and truth (just not truth in the narrative sense). The early parts of Genesis work very well as inspired *literature*, as vivid symbolism (e.g. with "Adam" and "Eve" as everyman and everywoman - the story is about human nature in general, not about some alleged first man and first woman in time). When people see the literary and personal value of many kinds of scripture (not all, but many), they worry less about whether it is narrative fact - the issue actually isn't important (e.g. the whole book of Job is an imaginary play about the meaning of suffering - it doesn't need to have a single iota of narrative truth to be worthwhile spiritual literature).
Even Christian scholars in the 4th century (Jerome, Augustine) thought that Genesis described the origin of the world in a poetic manner, rather than scientifically. It is modern (or at least more recent) fundamentalists, not the ancient religious scholars, who try to impose ancient religious texts onto scientists in a way that those texts were never written to be used. I have no trouble believing that the world is created (every moment) by God and at the same time holding that it is an evolving world, lasting billions of years. To use a literary example: who created the One Ring - Sauron or Tolkien? The answer is that both did, but in different ways. God, if you like, is the Tolkien of the universe - we are all characters in the story he is telling (and no, you are not likely to be the Frodo of the story - live with it).
Fundamentalism suffers from a lack of imagination. Those who think that fundamentalism is the only form of religion (or, somehow, that it is the "true" form, because it is the form they love to hate) are either biased or lacking experience of the real, diverse world of religion. And neither of these conditions is very scientific. Fundamentalism exists, and it is a real problem - not just for those outside the religion of the fundamentalists but also for the non-fundamentalists within that religion.
Science and religion are not in conflict. They are simply different things. And to the extent that this article discusses Muslim scientists and Muslim anti-scientists the conflict did not exist in the past either: both sides of the conflict were religious.
I am anarch of all I survey.
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.
I find it ironic that the most vehement posts against Islam's scientific backwardness come from a country where a significant proportion of the population literally believe that the earth is 6000 years old.
Personally, I can't wait until all these overrated fairy tales are accorded the same level of respect, and have the same level of influence on social and political life, as Ashtarte, Zeus and Ra.
Wrong. Algebra was incorrectly attributed to Muslim scholars. The Hindus contributed to math and our number system. The so-called Arabic numerals were derived from Brahmi numerals. A Persian mathematician known as Al-Khwarizmi wrote a book called On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals. A lot of great Muslim scholars were actually thought of as heretics (that means, they actually contribute something in spite of Islam).
Muslims also consider depictions of people and animals haram. They destroyed the pagan statues in Kabaa when they took over.
Letting people keep their local custom and religion? Sure, only if they agree to pay jizyah and live as third class citizens (Muslim males first, muslimahs second and then us infidels). Have you ever heard of the Armenian Genocide? Yupe, over a million Armenians were slaughtered by the Ottoman Empire that you admire so much. That was a blueprint used by Hitler to massacre Jews.
The Qu'ran, far from being "the unaltered word of God", is actually an horrific and savage compilation of distilled hatred. Work on collecting the verses wasn't even begun until long after Mohammed was dead, and it was pieced together from people who claimed to have known him or known people who knew him. Thus it's put together out of chronological order (already one alteration) and to try to claim "Mohammed" wrote it is laughable.
Your point being? They were smart in the fact that anything that contained contradictions were burnt, one thing that the boys who compiled the bible were not so smart in doing as they never expected people to look at it criticly (there a handful in the Qu'ran but not many, making a Muslim apologist's job alot easier than a Christian one)
The same is true for the other Muslim "holy books", the various collections of hadith (sayings of the so-called "prophet") that various factions believe are more or less authentic (the Sunni and Shi'a have their own favored set each, same for other sects).
Anyone who claims to be a ]prophet is full of shit (including Paul of Tarsus) you should know better. Hadith makes the religion funny if you look hard enough. The sects mostly revolve around who should have aquired Mohammed's mantle. Then there are those who belive only Qu'ran has authority and those that belive both Qu'ran and Hadith have authority (in both Sunni and Shi'a sects)
Islam is not simply a religion; it is a design guidebook for the creation of a totalitarian state in which the "supreme leader" (Caliph) and his stooges get to use religion as an excuse to be really crappy to everyone else. And it's a lot easier to keep your population under control if they're too stupid to know better and terrified that a revolt might stop them from reaching "heaven."
Explain to me how that is any different from Christianity? It is a religion, thats the entire point of religion. The churches have lost their power in the west but in the old days they were very much based on totalitarian principles. The west went backwards because of Christianity which is a shame because of how far the Greeks advanced before the time of the alleged Jesus of Nazarath. When you troll Islam at least get it right, he married Aisha at 6 and f**ked her at 9. So he's still a kid f**ker but I just wanted to fix that one.
Muslims like to try to rewrite history to hide embarassing details - such as the nature of the Ka'aba, their "holy box", which predates Mohammed. Mohammed's grandfather was a pagan priest of a specific deity of the Quraish tribe. He named his son (Mohammed's dad) "Abd'allah", literally "Slave of Allah."
How is that any different than most religions? Not a single trace of Moses and his tribes "exile from egypt" Not a single contemparanious account of the alleged Jesus of Nazarath where they rewrite history to say Augustus and Herod ruled at the same time (read the first few verses Matthew and Luke chapters 2) 6CE and 4BC are a decade apart last time I checked. And thats just one simple example.
This was before the monotheistic "Allah" was cooked up by Mohammed.
It wasn't cooked up, he stole it from the monothesitic Yahweh (YHWH). Haven't you read the Qu'ran? Simple plagerism
Question: Which pagan deity is Allah? Or else who was Abd'allah named for? Yahweh the jewish war god, one of the "Sons of El" or "Elohim" who the jews turned made interchangable with El and adapted it to a monotheistic ideology. Judaism and as a result Christianity and Islam did start as pagan mythology.
Islam is a joke. The more educated Muslims you get, the more educated ex-Muslims you'll have as they wake up to the utter absurdity of this bullshit. That's why Muslim leaders hate education so much.
How does that differ from other religions? We have seen it first hand with Christianity
Hell, that's why the Muslim religion has a standing death threat for converting away.
Where do you think they got that idea? Its in the bible
If you are going to single out Islam, make sure its what makes it especially more repulsive than other religions, not pointing out the same flaws the others have.
Make SELinux enforcing again!
Really? I know three astrophysicists, and none of them can fathom how a person could observe the beauty and order of the universe without considering some kind of divine presence of Creator. I've often pondered the thought that their science brought them to (or at least towards) religion.
Your monitor is staring at you.
I get the sense I misinterpreted the main message of your last statement. Based on the context of your post, I believe you are saying culturally and politically science and religion have nothing to do with each other. In this sense, I agree: religion and science are basically culturally orthogonal.
However, one must be careful not to overstate the point with this non-overlapping Magisteria cartoon. Tacitly and overtly, religion makes many claims about the way the world works physically. When this happens, like it or not, religion is treading in the domain of science. There is an afterlife, or there isn't. Either someone rose from the dead, or didn't. Someone turned water into wine, or didn't. Created the world in 7 days, or didn't. Born of a virgin, or wasn't. And so on. If these things happened, then there had to be a mechanism. These claims are not just symbolic abstractions for most believers but real physical claims about the way the universe works at its most fundamental level. Science has a lot to say about the physical possibilities of these claims (usually not siding with the original claim). If religion were to stick to only unfalsifiable, untestable, unphysical claims, then non-overlapping Magisteria works fine.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
I know that scientists are prone to superstition. These astrophysicists commit the same error many commit - they feel they need to explain complexity with even more complexity and with complexity that is not grounded on any facts whatsoever and that is exchangable by an infinite number of equally absurd theories.
In the concrete argument: there is nothing that forbids those astrophysicists to observe the beauty and order of the universe without any creator. There is no reason to make up a creator other than the infantile wish to explain something that cannot be explained by an antropocentric fairy tale.
Yes, religion can blind people who are otherwise quite smart - so what?
Perhaps we should be asking why the Golden Age of Islamic science happened at all. As the article pointed out, the Arabs had no scientific tradition before their conquest of large parts of the (Greek speaking) Roman Empire. It was only when Greek texts were translated into Arabic that it was possible to continue the work that the Greeks had started. You could argue that the same thing occurred in Christian countries with the re-discovery of Greek philosophers in the Renaissance.
The price of Wikipedia is eternal vigilance
Given that steam engines, electricity and the concept of the atom where discovered at later Hellenistic periods (around 200 years around the birth of Jesus Christ), we could be at Star Trek level of technology and civilization right now. But instead of that, we got 1500 years of no progress, thanks to religion.
Sigh. Yes, let's just redefine words to make them far broader than their usual meaning. That's useful.
I'm a biologist, because I once looked at some animals.
And I'm a photographer because once I actually took a photo.
This is fun!
If it were, then lifting society from ignorance into a state of "progress" would be like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
It may be that extraordinary individuals are responsible for some kind of transformation. If so, it doesn't mean those individuals aren't equally infected by superstition. Isaac Newton was not only an alchemist, but was considerably involved with studying the Bible to decode hidden prophetic messages.
I think the flowering of science in the early Islamic world is more readily explainable in simple terms: for once, a society had a means for extraordinary individuals to develop their latent intellectual powers, and a mechanism for distributing the fruit of those powers. The means was the Quran: as the literal word of God, it made widespread and sophisticated literary training available, and individuals who would have otherwise have lived their lives in illiterate obscurity had basic education and a means to communicate across great distances. The scope to communicate was created by a vast empire (and later collections of empires) sharing familiarity with a common language.
The reasons for the relative obscurity of the Muslim world in current scholarship is what is difficult to explain. In part, it is a matter of suffering by comparison. We live in the most learned era of human history. Muslim societies have not so much declined technologically as failed to keep pace with the advancement of European science.
The reasons may be (as some are quick to suggest) due to the character of Islamic society. Or they may be historical, rooted in the specific failure and decline of the Ottomon regime at the same time Europe began to develop technologically and industrially. I do believe the glamour of historical glories exerts an enervating effect on a society. I see some of the same exhaustion of creativity energy in current American attitudes, which increasingly are more obsessed with being innovative than actually innovation, or being leaders than actually leading.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Thanks to slave labor, actually. The Greek steam engine was pistonless and driven by steam jets, making it incapable of generating much power. There was no incentive to develop it into an usable state, when slaves did all the heavy work. And even if they could had, they lacked the materials and skills to make machines which could had actually used that power rather than break.
For the Greek, technology was essentially a toy, and science (philosophy, really) just a fun pasttime. They seeked harmony with nature, not mastery over it. Furthermore, the citizens who made the toys were already free from physical labor, so why should they have cared about devices which made it easier ?
The reason the Greek failed to start the Industrial Revolution was that their society simply wasn't ready for it, neither was their science nor technology. And the Middle Ages saw constant advances in technology, mainly in warfare, but also in metallurgy and irrigation, and the invention of physics.
The Greek were smart, but they had no steam engines, they had steamjet-driven toys. And their atoms have very little to do with the particles so called today.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.