Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-the-arabic-world-turned-away-from-science

266 322 6 years ago

zeveb• 6 years ago

Pre-modern science, while not blind to utility, sought knowledge primarily in order to understand philosophical questions concerned with meaning, being, the good, and so on. Modern science, by contrast, grew out of a revolution in thought that reoriented politics around individual comfort through the mastery of nature. Modern science dismisses ancient metaphysical questions as (to borrow Francis Bacon’s words) the pursuit of pleasure and vanity.

Curious, because I think to a pre-modern philosopher the pursuit of knowledge and mastery is itself the pursuit of vanity & pleasure.

After all, (pace Aubrey de Grey) all men will some day die, no matter how much knowledge they have or what levels of technological control over the natural world they achieve.

bboylen• 6 years ago

I agree, but it is telling that some in Silicon Valley are quite literally seeking immortality.

netcan7• 6 years ago

That is exactly the kind of thing one of those crusty, barrel-dwelling ancients would have said!

tasogare3• 6 years ago

Short answer to the title: "With the rise of the Ash’arites, the ethos in the Islamic world was increasingly opposed to original scholarship and any scientific inquiry that did not directly aid in religious regulation of private and public life"

My opinion on the matter is that, in the islamic world, religious careers are more socially rewarding than scientific ones. Thus the best minds seeking a good social position go the religious studies instead. The idea of science is also not really important to a lot of muslims, who views their holy book as a revelation that explained the world already.

rat9988• 6 years ago

My opinion on the matter is that, in the islamic world, religious careers are more socially rewarding than scientific ones. Thus the best minds seeking a good social position go the religious studies instead. The idea of science is also not really important to a lot of muslims, who views their holy book as a revelation that explained the world already.

I do really doubt it.

throwaway123x22• 6 years ago

I'm from a Muslim country and now living in the West: and I can say that this is incorrect. Generally speaking where I am from, the best minds go to medicine, the next best to engineering and law, and the leftovers go to the military / religious study.

The failure of those best minds to produce results is an artifact of non-reason based education (in my country there was a huge emphasis on rote learning) and a lack of institutional support.

My friends in the West from other Muslim countries have corroborated this. It's always the bottom tier of students or the particularly devout that end up in the clergy.

ayende• 6 years ago

You are talking about the situation now. What was it like in the period of time that article is talking about?

Yetanfou2• 6 years ago

I suspect many people conflate scholarship with clergy because that was the way things worked in the middle ages in Europe: if you wanted to have enough time for scholarly pursuits the clergy was probably the best place to be. Once it became possible to make a career as a scientist this practice changed but the association between clergy and scholarship still lives in the public perception.

tasogare3• 6 years ago

I see, thank for having given your observation on the topic as an insider. I stand corrected.

ralmidani• 6 years ago

My parents immigrated from Syria, and I lived there for a few years. What you describe is precisely how the educational system works, apparently by design; oppressive regimes don’t want smart people questioning certain platitudes about the proper relationship between rulers and those over whom they rule.

Ironically, a more “originalist” reading of primary Islamic texts would be more politically liberal than rulings which were issued centuries after the death of Muhammad -- these later rulings severely restricted the conditions under which people could rebel against their rulers.

Later, clergy aligned with the rulers, such as Wahhabists in Saudi Arabia, took an even more absolutist position which made any public criticism against rulers a form of rebellion which is punishable by death.

These perversions are, of course, a failure of the clergy. But they have been set up to fail by the political regimes which designed these systems, as well as by their societies which reinforce and legitimize the intellectual caste system.

mda2• 6 years ago

Not really, Theological studies doesn't take students from the top percentages, but medicine, law and engineering do. Unfortunately pure mathematics and physics are not popular and top students do not pick these subjects. At least in some of the majority Muslim countries I am familiar with.

Slightofhand4• 6 years ago

I'm from an arab country and half of my family studied Math/Physics in university. My aunts (3 of them) either teach physics or have a phd in Maths. Same on my father's side.

In fact, you would be considered a loser if you didn't have a degree or knew maths really well in my family. Which I don't agree with.

The problem in the arab world is more political, with a bunch of people staying in power and using media and force to stay in power. It also doesn't help that the west cry for more democracy but propels and supports those same dictators to stay in power to help their interests.

petre• 6 years ago

Do you know where the words algorithm, algebra, arithmetic come from?

"Born into a Persian family in Khuwarizm (present-day Xorazm Province, Uzbekistan), Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (also known by the Latin form of his name, Algoritmi, circa 780–850 AD, 164–236 AH) was a Muslim mathematician, astronomer, and geographer, and a scholar in the famed House of Wisdom in Baghdad. Al-Khwarazmi wrote Kitab al-Jabr wa-l-Muqabala (The compendious book on calculation by completion and balancing) around 830 AD, with the encouragement of Caliph Al-Maamoun, the reigning Abbasid caliph of Baghdad in 813–33 AD. It is meant to be a useful work, with examples and applications for everyday life, in areas such as trade, legal inheritance, and surveying. The mathematical term algebra is derived from al-jabr, one of the two operations he used to solve quadratic equations. Also, the words algorism, algorithm, and arithmetic stem from Algoritmi. Similarly, his name is the origin of the Spanish term guarismo and of the Portuguese algarismo, both meaning digit."

pjc503• 6 years ago

This is actually mentioned in the article.

pjc503• 6 years ago

"We will turn to this question later, but it is important to keep in mind that the decline of scientific activity is the rule, not the exception, of civilizations. While it is commonplace to assume that the scientific revolution and the progress of technology were inevitable, in fact the West is the single sustained success story out of many civilizations with periods of scientific flourishing. Like the Muslims, the ancient Chinese and Indian civilizations, both of which were at one time far more advanced than the West, did not produce the scientific revolution."

.. so far, so good. There's always the risk that the West might internally reject the scientific revolution. This paragraph is a useful reminder that historical "progress" isn't linear or monotonic.

This article is very good on the background in the era of the Caliphate and early scientific progress in medieval Europe. Where it falls down is the past century. We can draw comparison with the Meiji restoration; Japan went from insular agrarianism to a world power to collapse to continued scientific development through to the 21st century. As did much of the Far East. Why not the Middle east?

Anyway, excellent longread.

netcan7• 6 years ago

I paused at that paragraph as well.

It is very possible that the achievements of modernity have changed the game. That said, the game was (is?) rise and fall. Rising civilizations leave a heritage to be mined, so there is an overall direction of rise... but every one of the many scientifically advancing cultures in history has declined. It would be prudent to expect the same for ours.

That said, modernity has almost certainly changed at least some of the rules. Even the term "The West" has become complicated. Our civilization is now essentially global. A scientific invention in France immediately arrives in Seoul. A joke told in Houston is heard in lagos. A book popular here is likely popular there.

The practical link between Rio De Janeiro and Tokyo is stronger now than Baghdad and Casablanca then.

masterphilo• 6 years ago

There's common interests between the nations and modern technologies have helped facilitate the exchange of both goods and ideas, but I doubt if we can call ourselves a "global civilization" just yet. That would mean some sort of world government, which we definitely don't have. And to me, that just means that the rules of the game haven't changed at all.

thom_nic• 6 years ago

There's always the risk that the West might internally reject the scientific revolution.

In the US I am pretty sure we are already on the decline.

I think it has to do with, during the industrial revolution and post-war, huge scientific advancements and tech grew the economy, fed capitalism by means of providing new desirable goods to consumers (e.g. dishwashers, nicer cars, etc.)

I wonder if we've reached a "peak" of consumer comfort where advances in science/ tech/ medicine are no longer frequent/ impactful enough to meaningfully satisfy consumers, (why do we care about exploring Mars?) so it's easy for people to reject it and say "we don't need science."

AlexTWithBeard• 6 years ago

I feel we're on decline, because "science, bitch" is used to harass people into doing something they don't want or not ready. And people generally don't like to be harassed, they begin to resist no matter how reasonable things you're talking about are.

I wish society could pick its battles more carefully.

_8091149529• 6 years ago

Agree with sentiments of the parent comment. I believe the prestige and social standing of physics (and, in part, the academia as a whole) is founded in the truly transformational technological advances -- say, the transistor -- made in the past decades.

Problematically, to secure funding today, one is essentially expected to frame every condensed-matter experiment as the next transistor. Not only in grant applications, but increasingly also in the abstract and opening paragraphs of research articles. There's a marked contrast with older research articles in physics, which usually go straight to disseminating the results. (Needless to say that I prefer the old style.)

As a result, a great deal of funding and attention is allocated towards projects that simultaneously 1) Will not improve the quality of life of anyone, even in the long term. 2) Are "de-risked" to such extent that no new scientific insights can come out of them.

bjelkeman-again• 6 years ago

As a European who have lived in the US, I have been of the opinion that the US have been in decline for several decades. I think there is a combination of over reliance of capitalism to solve problems which seemingly can’t be solved well that way: universal healthcare, environmental management, education, urban planning, crime (prisons) etc, and the culture buying into the “American way” which in fact doesn’t provide the social mobility it claims nor makes the population better off, if you remove the richest from the equation. If I wasn’t so busy with other stuff I would be interested in doing research around this.

29athrowaway5• 6 years ago

The point that marks the end of the Islamic Golden Age is the Siege of Baghdad of 1258.

As the Mongols expanded, each time they encountered an empire, they offered them two alternatives: a) Pay tribute to the Mongols, b) War with the Mongols and their vassal nations.

The caliphate chose the war option, unaware of the true military strength of the Mongols, who they considered primitive barbarians. The result was the complete destruction of the empire, their infrastructure including libraries, and the death of most scholars.

However, parts of Spain were under Islamic control from 711 AD to 1492 AD, and Sicily from 878 AD to 1060 AD. It was there were books from Islamic libraries were translated to Latin, giving origin to the European Reinassance.

nickbauman• 6 years ago

Yes. But the Mongols (Golden Horde) reached Germany eventually in the late 14th century, but that was their apotheosis; they never came back after that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe#Agai...

dennnis• 6 years ago

Lead poisoning?

kmeisthax2• 6 years ago

Why not the Middle East?

Well, when your region of the world has been torn asunder by everything, including colonial powers, fascist reactionaries and nationalists, liberal market economies, and international communism; the only remaining cultural artifact that you can call your own is religion. If you want to unify the Middle East, you have to do so under the guise of religion, and in practice that means conservative religious extremism. Iran is sort of a microcosm of this: they deliberately adopted theocracy as any form of secular government or economy was viewed as surrender to one's oppressors.

The only problem is that there's at least three dominant forms of religion in the area to unify under: Sunni and Shiite Islam, and Zionist-compatible Judaism. This has more or less created a local cold war between Sunni theocracies (e.g. Saudi Arabia), Shiite theocracies (e.g. Iran and half of Iraq), and Israel. These hostilities are often fought with insurgencies, which means lots of violence in the border areas between the three religions. This is not a great place to live.

Immigration law is quite complicated and fraught. Every country has a mostly but not entirely irrational fear of demographic shifts (see Texas and Israel), and so they heavily restrict who can enter their country. However, the demands of capitalism mean that most countries have to provide a practical immigration path for college-educated individuals such as scientists. Immigration for the working class is generally disallowed or heavily restricted as a form of labor market protectionism, which means there is vast disparities in who is and isn't allowed to leave a country.

This creates an interesting problem: it is very difficult for these countries to convince educated scientists to remain in their country. Scientists generally don't get along with theocrats all that well to begin with. However, we've also chosen the immigration policy that is most likely to select for (relatively) liberal emigrants and filter out more conservative ones. So there's a vicious cycle: it's easier for scientists to leave the Middle East, which makes the region more conservative, which makes more scientists want to leave.

travisoneill1• 6 years ago

The vast majority of emigrants from the middle east are poor migrants to Europe, not educated scientists.

hhas01• 6 years ago

“Iran is sort of a microcosm of this: they deliberately adopted theocracy as any form of secular government or economy was viewed as surrender to one's oppressors.”

Iran had a secular, democratic government. It was overthrown by the UK and US who installed a brutal dictatorship just so they could get their oil cheap, so you can kind of see how Iranians might conclude that “democracy” isn’t worth the paper it’s written on and the only defense is a bigger bunch of bastards than the other guys’.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

rsynnott5• 6 years ago

Japan went from insular agrarianism to a world power to collapse to continued scientific development through to the 21st century. As did much of the Far East. Why not the Middle east?

There are lots of theories, of course, but one I find interesting is that East Asia, in addition to never being colonized to the same extent as most places, emerged with national boundaries largely intact. The Middle East was under foreign control for, well, basically forever (Romans -> Ottomans -> mandates) and ended up with some pretty weird national boundaries. This encouraged a lot of strife.

There's also the oil theory; countries with huge natural resources seem to often struggle to develop normally.

thisiscorrect3• 6 years ago

Is this claiming that ethnic diversity within a country's borders causes strife, and in turn hinders scientific development?

dragontamer4• 6 years ago

(Romans -> Ottomans -> mandates)

Hittites -> Assyrians -> Babylonians -> Macedonia (aka Alexander the Great) -> Egyptian -> Romans -> Byzantine -> Mongols -> Ottomans

That area has been locked in war and conquest for pretty much all of human history.

m0zg2• 6 years ago

countries with huge natural resources

Can confirm. That's why Russia is sliding down scientifically. People gravitate to where money and prestige is, and when you have money squirting from the ground, that demands (and receives) disproportionate attention. Another side effect of this is that it suffocates technology and innovation by both depriving it of investment, and by shaping the tax structure that excludes the possibility of survival for most non natural resource businesses unless they cheat on their taxes. It's a complex problem without a clear solution. Only Norway has been able to manage it well so far.

lappet• 6 years ago

in fact the West is the single sustained success story out of many civilizations with periods of scientific flourishing

I find this statement problematic. The West is leading the current period of scientific revolution, as the Muslims, the ancient Chinese and Indians did during their periods of scientific achievement.

klodolph• 6 years ago

But doesn’t “sustained” just mean that we haven’t seen the end of it?

dragontamer4• 6 years ago

Why not the Middle east?

When Japan was conquered by USA in 1940s, the USA treated it with much more respect than the Europeans did vs the Ottoman Empire from WW1.

As a result, Japan was able to regrow into a world power. While the countries that formerly constituted the Ottomans are under a constant civil war (and major military groups, like ISIS, dream of re-establishing a religious empire of old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Caliphate)

Its not very hard to imagine a "cut up Japan", a hypothetical disarmed Japan where the USA would split between Britain / France / Russia / other members of the allies.

In fact, we can look to the (eastern part) of the Soviet Union to see how well splitting up countries went during WW2. The East / West Germany thing almost surely stunted Germany's growth back into its world standing.

--------

With that being said: the Ottomans were certainly in a decline by the late 1800s, before WWI broke out. But I can't imagine that WWI did those countries any favors.

tooltalk• 6 years ago

> the USA treated it with much more respect ...

the looming threat of communism from Russia and China played an important role in US's post-war policy in Japan and Japan's immediate post war recovery. While Japan was allowed to stay united as one, the Korean peninsula was divided, though the territory was never part of the WW2 theater. The Korean civil war led by the communist North likewise boosted Japan's quick recovery.

dragontamer4• 6 years ago

(eastern part) of the Soviet Union

Erm, Eastern part of Europe: the Soviet Union.

Whatever, I bet people know what I'm talking about. Cutting up countries is bad for their health!

ruricolist• 6 years ago

Mongols.

konjin2• 6 years ago

A civilization stops scientific activity when you kill its scientists and burn its libraries. Who would have thought?

How much science would get done in the US if everyone in the 50 largest cities is killed or enslaved and the cities are razed?

inglor_cz• 6 years ago

Well, it is not as if other regions of the world, including Europe, did not have their own massive disasters.

Vikings, Mongol attacks, Turkish attacks, the 30 Year War...

An interesting question why was Baghdad so unique that its loss led to disaster. Could it be that the rest of the Muslim world was, by this point in time, not very interested in science?

European science survived such events probably because of its polycentricity. There was no single point of failure.

OrangeBlaze• 6 years ago

Exactly. Surprised this is barely mentioned in the article.

During the siege of Baghdad, the Mongols destroyed the Grand Library of Baghdad which contained countless precious historical documents and books on subjects ranging from medicine to astronomy.[1]

To think these invaders are glorified today makes me sick. In my opinion, not only did only cause the decline of the Arabic world, but they also severely impacted the technological development of the world as a whole. Some of the works in the library were believed to be ancient manuscripts from Greek sources.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)#Destru...

amai3• 6 years ago

Russia was under Mongol rule for centuries. It didn't prevent them from sending the first man into space.

I highly doubt Mongols have anything to do with that.

mda2• 6 years ago

Why does the article focus on "Arabic"? I think "Islamic" or "Muslim" would be a better term as large percentage of scientists and philosophers of the time were not Arabs but of Persian, Moore, Turkic origin.

Juliate3• 6 years ago

It's discussed in the article. Look for "A preliminary caution must be noted about both parts of the term “Arabic science.”" (and read the 2 paragraphs after it)

bonoboTP3• 6 years ago

Explained in the article.

A preliminary caution must be noted about both parts of the term “Arabic science.” This is, first, because the scientists discussed here were not all Arab Muslims. Indeed, most of the greatest thinkers of the era were not ethnically Arab. This is not surprising considering that, for several centuries throughout the Middle East, Muslims were a minority (a trend that only began to change at the end of the tenth century). The second caution about “Arabic science” is that it was not science as we are familiar with it today. Pre-modern science, while not blind to utility, sought knowledge primarily in order to understand philosophical questions concerned with meaning, being, the good, and so on. Modern science, by contrast, grew out of a revolution in thought that reoriented politics around individual comfort through the mastery of nature. Modern science dismisses ancient metaphysical questions as (to borrow Francis Bacon’s words) the pursuit of pleasure and vanity. Whatever modern science owes to Arabic science, the intellectual activity of the medieval Islamic world was not of the same kind as the European scientific revolution, which came after a radical break from ancient natural philosophy. Indeed, even though we use the term “science” for convenience, it is important to remember that this word was not coined until the nineteenth century; the closest word in Arabic — ilm — means “knowledge,” and not necessarily that of the natural world.
Still, there are two reasons why it makes sense to refer to scientific activity of the Golden Age as Arabic. The first is that most of the philosophical and scientific work at the time was eventually translated into Arabic, which became the language of most scholars in the region, regardless of ethnicity or religious background. And second, the alternatives — “Middle Eastern science” or “Islamic science” — are even less accurate. This is in part because very little is known about the personal backgrounds of these thinkers. But it is also because of another caution we must keep in mind about this subject, which ought to be footnoted to every broad assertion made about the Golden Age: surprisingly little is known for certain even about the social and historical context of this era. Abdelhamid I. Sabra, a now-retired professor of the history of Arabic science who taught at Harvard, described his field to the New York Times in 2001 as one that “hasn’t even begun yet.”

everdrive• 6 years ago

Isn't that the point? Scientific advances were often Persian or Turkish rather than Arab after al-Ghazali.

ceesharp• 6 years ago

Which ones? I'm curious to know, thanks!

Slightofhand4• 6 years ago

Start with Algorithms named after a persiaan scientist called Alkhawarizmi. He did write in arabic though, so similar to einstein writing in english rather than german.

mrwnmonm18• 6 years ago

Because atheists and christians don't like that. No other reason.

netcan7• 6 years ago

The problem with theorizing about such things is that, being untestable, it's very hard to distinguish between our own narrative biases and objectivity.

Maybe the golden age was a byproduct of imperialism. Not many naked imperialists out there anymore, but the arguments are easy enough to make. The US, The USSR... both with some stunning scientific achievements (eg nuclear physics, space travel, physics) achievements during their most imperial, post-war years. The British. The Dutch. The Chinese. The Mongol empire(s) were pretty intellectually advanced.

Maybe it was multiculturalism. Circa 8-13th centuries, most muslim countries were pretty diverse. They had muslim leadership, but the plurality was still Christian, Zoroastrian and such.

Maybe it was capitalism. Muslims were traders, especially relative to medieval Christendom.

Maybe it was societal youth. Ibn Khaldun^, IMO greatest of the arab (and ethnically arab) golden age scholars, had a theories parsimonious with this.

Maybe it was "the flame of western civilization." As the article states, they did inherit the post Byzantine world of Greek culture which passed through roman hands from the Greeks. The Greeks themselves inherited it from the Persians, so maybe it's the flame of Persian civilization, or even back to Sumerians if you like your narratives grand.

Maybe religion. Quranic culture requires literacy, and a theological education was common to nearly all of those great scholars.

Maybe it was conquest. The national confidence of a conquering nation.

I don't see a way to pick one idea from another. History is not deterministic. We can reflect though, that Ibn Khaldun is the most noteworthy originator of the (now very western) idea that history does have a logic of this kind.

^Genuinely a forerunner to Smith, Marx & such. A lot of Scottish enlightenment may have been catalyzed by the translation of his "Muqdima."

Juliate3• 6 years ago

The good thing with theorizing with it are the conversations that this triggers. :)

Gravityloss• 6 years ago

The West German Wirtschaftswunder? The rise of South Korea? Finland? None needed war or imperialism, actually it was the opposite - peace and stability. There were these nations and people - and once the barriers like external or internal suppression or conflict were removed, they could make large strides.

jariel3• 6 years ago

So that's a very good point. The 'rise of Arabic Science' was totally consistent with conquest.

It seems there's a lot of hubris in Science, just like Imperialism, Art, etc. - and you need a lot of 'excess wealth' to delve into things that are not 'subsistence'.

The Renaissance probably would not have happened without the concentration of wealth in Venice and nearby areas. I mean who on Earth is going to pay for those weird/crazy instruments to be made and for creators full time to come up with this insane 'symphonic' concoctions. We take it for granted now but what happened was a miracle, and that's just in music.

netcan7• 6 years ago

My point is that any such theory is untestable, and we're good at convincing ourselves of "truths" that appeal to us. A 19th century nationalist would have liked your first sentence. A 19th century marxist would have liked your second and third one.

Any one of them can be challenged with counterexamples. EG, a great modern cognate to Venetian lords and bishops pouring money into prestige projects are the gulf Emirs. Yet...

bonoboTP3• 6 years ago

Having read the article, the suggested root of it seems to be the non-distinction between politics and religion in Islam. Muhammad was a powerful ruler and prophet. In Christian terms, he was both Christ and Constantine in one.

hef19898• 6 years ago

Which did not prevent the islamic world to influence mathematics and medicine, among other things, in Europe until they were driven out of Spain.

feralimal33• 6 years ago

Ha ha - primitive Islamic religionists!! Only we are exactly the same, but are blind to our failings. This narrative plays on our conceited, flabby, unreasoned thinking. But its nice to laugh to others, eh?

Science to me, is the application of the scientific method. This is to say that whatever is being looked at should be repeatable, and consistently provide the same results. Strictly speaking, when we say we know, we should be saying that because we have applied the scientific method personally.

The reality is that science in 'the West' does not provide us the knowledge we think it does. The use of the pronoun 'we' cuts to the chase of the problem - WE assume that our scientists have this. But step back and think about what it is to know - it can't be a case of trusting scientists. I should be able to take whatever is being proposed or claimed and verify it personally.

But no one - NO ONE - is verifying anything personally. No one is testing the claims. We all live in our silos, trusting that others are working in good faith. Trusting that the stories we are told are not just hearsay. We trust the results we are provided, without any verification. We trust that what we are provided are not stories, but are actual verifiable science.

My point is that no one is personally verifying science. On an individual level we cannot be sure that these are not stories and hearsay.

With the virus, has anyone here ever used an electron microscope? Did you see a virus with it? Why do you think it is a virus? Etc etc. The truth is our reason is actually faith too!

Science, as we do it, ie based on trust and without personal verification, is absolutely equivalent to religion. A comforting, explanatory story is provided and we believe we 'know' what is happening. Scientists are our priests and we take their pronouncements as gospel, without questioning them.

Retric4• 6 years ago

has anyone here ever used an electron microscope?

I am not a scientist, but yes. It’s not that hard to directly access most scientific tools. Verification takes effort, but random verification should reasonably give you confidence and can be a fun project on it’s own. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVbdbVhzcM4

PS: One of the most famous experiments off all time is replicated whenever you can something. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation

feralimal33• 6 years ago

You've used an electron microscope? They've been around since 1933 you know - we should all have ready access by now, no?

If you look at a video, do you believe its true? Take a look at this one, to see the problems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFLs6nufCj4

You really cannot trust what is presented on a screen. There really is no equivalent to personally testing science or any thesis personally. You will be illuminated, rather than falsely believing you 'know', when all you know is a story.

gomox• 6 years ago

Science and religion are belief systems and therefore share some commonalities but the radical difference is that science is based on testable hypothesis, whereas religion is just religion.

To say they are "absolutely equivalent" is a massive stretch.

feralimal33• 6 years ago

Do you personally test any scientific claims? Or do you personally take them on faith?

joshuahughes• 6 years ago

Worth pointing out that there was an important caveat that the GP included... "Science... BASED ON TRUST AND WITHOUT PERSONAL VERIFICATION is absolutely equivalent to religion."

jariel3• 6 years ago

"With the virus, has anyone here ever used an electron microscope? Did you see a virus with it? Why do you think it is a virus? Etc etc - its all on faith."

You're in the wrong forum.

feralimal33• 6 years ago

They've (electron microscopes) been around since 1933, why aren't they everywhere? On your phone even?

Fezzik• 6 years ago

Or they are, they may just not be aware of it - the fact that billions of people have had MMR vaccines and we, as a species, have nearly eradicated the measles, mumps, and rubella in a great scientific experiment is downright awe inspiring. This is nothing like a religion and this type of backwards thinking is what holds us, as a species back. And, either way, it doesn’t matter - every scientific practice does not need to be repeated down to the minutia by every human being to be effective. I imagine most people taking HIV/AIDs suppressants have never looked through an electron microscope to verify exactly how they work, but that has nothing to do with anything.

Your analogy is, frankly, awful and way off the mark.

Edit, to add an example: a patient listening to a doctor who has set many broken bones about how the doctor is going to set that particular patient’s bones is nothing like a religious adherent listening to a priest who has never spoken to god about what god says and expects of the adherent... that’s just absurd.

blackbear_2• 6 years ago

You have a fair point^, but instead of attacking science in particular you should attack societies in general. Can you trust the food you buy at the supermarket or at the restaurant is not poisonous? That your doctor or partner isn't going to kill you in your sleep? That policemen will not shoot you? That drivers won't run you over?

It's not about science. Society is impossible without trust.

^ except that scientists do check each other's work and occasionally find mistakes. Scientific progress is real and has provided concrete and undeniable improvements to people's lives, and this should give credibility to science as a whole. But I see your point, outsiders cannot understand nor verify science without the proper training and equipment.

feralimal33• 6 years ago

Fair enough. It is absolutely wider than science.

The problem more widely, is that we trust others. Bear with me - I know this sounds bad. The fact is that we trust too much. We should be verifying all the claims that are made to us. We would soon learn discernment over what sources are trustworthy (friend's personal experiences - ie anecdotal evidence) versus evidence presented by those that govern us on the media (politicians + their megaphone the mainstream media).

This in itself is jarring - we know politicians are not trustworthy, but we think they are trying to do their best. But really what we have is a dog and pony show to distract us, and the governance is going on anyway.

The answer, in my opinion, is something like stepping up individually. We should test and present our results to those around. We would soon learn the difference between knowing and believing. And we would also learn to accept that we do not know - and that that's ok. If we don't know, that doesn't mean we have to accept any old story that's presented. We can defer acceptance as and when we have the data, without kidding ourselves. This is skepticism.

simonh8• 6 years ago

This is flat out not true, every child that studies science in high school, all the way through to degree level in University personally goes through all the logical chains of thought, experimentation and verification of the ideas and principles they learn. We read how Newton derived the laws of motion and measure the periods of swinging weights hanging on strings, we measure the pressure of a gas as it varies with changing temperature. I have personally measured the speed of light in a lab to within a few percent using a set of lasers and worked through the derivation of the relativistic equations. All of this is in the physics text books for anyone to learn and personally verify.

Science education very much rests on teaching and learning scientific methods and showing students how to prove the things they are learning.

feralimal33• 6 years ago

Sorry - but you verify very little at school. It is an indoctrination system. IMO.

Feel free to provide a specific example though, where you verified something at school.

w0utert• 6 years ago

I don't agree with your final conclusion, but I upvoted this regardless, because I think it is an interesting perspective that is worthwhile to philosophize on.

If the Covid-19 situation taught me anything, it would be that it's apparently very, very easy to convince the vast majority of the population they need behave, think and feel in some way, based on 'facts' and figures that are unproven, incomplete, out-of-context, or based on 'science' that is not or only barely amenable to empirical verification. We (the world) are doing so many things at once now to try to handle the pandemic, but my impression of all of it, is that we really have no idea what we are doing, what works and what doesn't, why things seem to be out of control, and (controversially) how bad it actually is in the grand scheme of things.

IMO science is most definitely not comparable to religion, but I will concede that -for most people- its role in their lives is very similar.

feralimal33• 6 years ago

Thank you. I always get heavily downvoted as I don't think others are as open minded to hearing a different viewpoint as you.

I agree too. But, I see science as an individual's pursuit. I really mean it when I say that science is something one should verify personally. Whenever you don't do that, you are accepting a story - without testing you cannot know anything, it is all in the realm of belief.

And you are right that most belief whether it is science/magic/religion its all the same thing. They want to naively trust and have faith. It would be endearing if it wasn't also susceptible to meaning that they can be lead as a herd. As an individual, it is very hard to stand against the herd. Whether that is avoiding being drowned as a witch, or being forced to vaccinate oneself for the good of the herd.

tonyedgecombe• 6 years ago

That's not the impression I've got watching it all unfold in the UK. Sure there were a few charlatans at the extremes but the bulk of the messaging has been open about the fact there is a lot we don't know.

EForEndeavour2• 6 years ago

In a perfect world, any random person would have the ability to independently verify any scientific claim they cared to. But as you imply, our world is far from perfect. Many scientific facts require heavy training and/or expensive equipment to verify that most people just don't have. But the cool thing is that IF you did have the skills and gear (and patience, free time, assistants, etc.), you absolutely can image a virus particle, or measure the mass of an electron (not all that complicated, it turns out!), or take your own observations of the motion of the planets and re-derive Kepler's laws of planetary motion.

My point is that no one is personally verifying science. On an individual level we cannot be sure that these are not stories and hearsay.

You should hang out with more scientists. It turns out they count as "someone"!

Science, as we do it, ie based on trust and without personal verification, is absolutely equivalent to religion. A comforting, explanatory story is provided and we believe we 'know' what is happening. Scientists are our priests and we take their pronouncements as gospel, without questioning them.

This is a grossly false equivalency. The thing with any scientific claim is that you could independently verify it; in practice, verifying modern scientific claims tends to cost tons of time and money, but nothing in principle prevents you.

feralimal33• 6 years ago

Have you heard of the reproducibility/replication crisis?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

"A 2016 poll of 1,500 scientists reported that 70% of them had failed to reproduce at least one other scientist's experiment (50% had failed to reproduce one of their own experiments). In 2009, 2% of scientists admitted to falsifying studies at least once and 14% admitted to personally knowing someone who did. Misconducts were reported more frequently by medical researchers than others."

Its not a joke.

Also, there is the question of funding in science. The government, the military and private corporations basically provide all the funding.

Do you think they fund things that are not in their interests? That good food would be more effective than medicine? Stuff like that?

If they fund a study that produces data that is contrary to the general narrative, do you think that will be published?

Do you think they will fund those studies that are against their narrative?

I love science, and the scientific method. But, not the science we have. It really is akin to religion - both are means of governance of the masses by controlling what is acceptable to think about.

kalenx15• 6 years ago

That's the kind of argument that could make sense in a vacuum, but does not apply at all in practice.

Sure, _in theory_, I would be glad to know enough, to have enough time and to have enough money to verify every scientific theory since the dawn of times. In practice, it's been totally not scalable for a single person for about 500 years. _Careful trust_, with verification systems in place, is then the second best choice we can make.

The difference with religion lies in the fact that you do _not_ have to blindly accept everything. If you doubt a specific scientific theory, then by all means, put it to the test! But no, you won't be able to do that for science as a whole, not because "we're whining children who like conformting stories" but simply because of the blunt fact that our time here is limited.

feralimal33• 6 years ago

When you test, and in one case you find something different to what is presented, what do you do?

Do you, blame yourself? Accept that everything else is true? Accept that nothing else is true?

My position is that I am happy to continue as before, but I won't overstate my case. I won't say 'I know' when I don't. I can accept that what is presented as true, may in fact be true, but I don't know it. I would be lying if I did.

So, when you say viruses, or atoms, or whatever exist, but you have not personally verified that, you should be clear that you do not know. You may think such-and-such is the case, but if you state something without personal verification, you run the risk of repeating a lie, and misleading the next person.

PaulDavisThe1st• 6 years ago

This makes the mistake that science is there to be verified. It's not. It's there to be falsified.

We don't require verification of science above and beyond its contribution to our ability to predict and control the world. As the famous slightly cliched saying goes: all models are wrong, some models are useful.

There are some people who think that the point of science is to move us closer to truth. Some of those people are actual scientists, most of them are not.

GuB-42• 6 years ago

Many people consider science like a religion. For example, many people don't understand evolution, they think some magic force gradually turned fishes into humans. No wonder it is sometimes put on the same level as creationism. But to be honest, it doesn't really matter. If you are not a scientist, faith is a shortcut that allows you to focus more on what matters more to you.

The difference is that you don't need faith. With enough motivation, you can probably get to see the virus on an election microscope. It is difficult. Just operating an election microscope is an art, and getting the necessary security clearances to work with deadly pathogens can be tricky. Almost no one does it, but sometimes, a crazy enough guy spends way too much time challenging a well established theory. Most of the times, the results are the same as what mainstream science says, but there are a few exceptions. This random poking keeps science in check.

The current pandemic is good at exposing the "non-faith" aspects of science. Covid is not airborne, ah, maybe it is, hydroxychloroquine works, no it doesn't, case fatality rate is 5%, no, 0.5%, no, 1%, it attacks the lungs, the nose, you keep immunity for a long time, no you don't, yes you do, etc... It is constantly changing, and this is science at work. A priest will not change his mind, he will not receive a new revision of the Bible every week. That rarely shown aspect is a bit unsettling to those with a faith-based view of science, but totally normal for those who are practicing.

Modern academia has its problems. We often talk about the "reproducibility crisis", but the simple fact it is widely recognized as a problem sets it apart from religion.

And BTW, while I am an atheist myself, I am not against religion. Religion offers stability and answers that science is unable to provide, and both can coexist.

feralimal33• 6 years ago

Have you seen evolution? What proved evolution to you personally?

I would expect that you were presented with Darwin and evolution at school and accepted. With no verification. You were propagandised. Just like creationists.

Shorel2• 6 years ago

One of the issues with teaching evolution is the brain-dead treatment that it has in films and television.

No, if you start with cellular life you will not get to humans every time. You can't even be sure you will get to fish or other animals with internal skeletons.

So many random things can be different at each step of the chain and there are so many steps, millions of them.

tgv• 6 years ago

As far as viruses are concerned: when washing your hands can keep diseases at bay, that's good enough for me.

Then you study DNA at school, you experiment a bit with drosophila, you read about Mendel and evolution, and it makes sense, doesn't it? It isn't faith, it well calculated trust.

Science is absolutely equivalent to religion

And that's why we see people smitten by lightning every day.

segfaultbuserr2• 6 years ago

Science, as we do it, ie based on trust and without personal verification, is absolutely equivalent to religion.

We call it Social Constructionism. It's the basis of all knowledge in society. Whether a concept exists or whether it's believed to be true does not necessarily have anything connected to an objective reality, all you need is making it believable (different groups of people and different societies have different standards on what qualifies as believable). Demonstrating it by direct observation using the scientific method can achieve this goal, creating a mythology or writing a textbook can do it as well. At the end of the day, you must start from an existing concept and assume it is true. Theoretically, You can start from simple and self-evident concepts and derive everything from first principles. However, in a modern society, the existing body of knowledge is too large for any individual to independently verify and too useful to refuse. Even the verification of the simplest fact can be non-obvious and expensive. Thus, we assume they're true without verification. And often, what we have accepted are not even technically accurate.

Now, I'm not interested in discussing any particular issues in the thread, but I'd like to use this chance to talk about my pet theory on the psychology of conspiracy theories... An interesting thought exercise: Consider the shape of the Earth. Now, design a physics experiment to provide empirical evidence for a spherical Earth, preferably also it's rotation. Requirements: This should be practical within the ability of a single individual, and should be as easy as possible. Only minimum pre-existing concepts should be used. The result should be as obvious and unambiguous as possible without too much interpretation. It should be able to defend itself from any challenge on its technical inaccuracy or alternative models... I think it's actually a non-obvious problem. It's amazing how much domain-specific knowledge it requires. Flat Earth conspiracy theorists have cherry-picked numerous arguments to support their positions, just to name a few...

* Bedford Level Experiment. A number of sticks were placed in an 6-mile uninterrupted straight line. Optical observations were made. Experiment failed to detect any curvature, or that the data showed the curvature was not outward, but inward. Many modern versions by Flat Earthers can be found in YouTube videos, often on lakes or sea - objects and buildings well beyond the horizon can be seen by telescopic lens. Laser beams have been detected 15 kilometers apart, etc. Why? Atmospheric refraction. After atmospheric effects have been corrected, the data will definitely show that the Earth is indeed a sphere. But from now, to interpret the data, you suddenly need a model of atmospheric optics, which is far from obvious and requires many additional concepts. Then, consider the cost and difficulty of this naive experiment - For an individual, it's already high enough and unpractical for a city dweller. Thus, all optical experiments are doomed? Radio based observations are even trickier than optical observations.

* Foucault Pendulum. It's the most famous physics experiment to show the Earth's rotation, but the instability of the original, unpowered pendulum is notorious, even minor imperfection in mechanical construction or startup can create unwanted mode of oscillation, such as an elliptic oscillation which can totally mask the Earth's rotation. For powered pendulum, a careful and complicated mechanical analysis is needed to show that the pendulum has no preferred direction of swing,. Thus, Flat Earth advocates reject Foucault Pendulum as a valid experiment - any expected result is refuted as a coincidence or the result of the experimenter's biases.

* Gyroscope. An accurate and sensitive gyroscope, such as a Laser Ring Gyroscope, can sense the Earth's rotation. But gyroscope observations are rejected by Flat Earthers in general - the raw data output is noisy with random drifts and noise, aquisation of useful data heavily relies on algorithms and data processing. They argue that the algorithms can be biased to show a rotational Earth. Of course, it's not the case, but then you need to justify the entire subject of statistics and digital signal processing, good luck with that.

* Astronomic and Geodesic Measurements. Examples include observing the fixed stars and showing their variation in altitudes, or showing the sum of a triangle on Earth is greater than 180-degree, etc. Many of these experiments require an individual to travel great distances, many geodesic measurements also require accurate navigation, which can be disputed.

Of course, obvious experiments that produces strong evidences do exist, good candidates can be lunar ellipses, sun rise and sun set, timezones. But it's just a rhetorical question, I used the absurd example of Flat Earth to illustrate the point of non-obviousness of personal verification - indeed, many people who believe the Earth is a sphere have proposed these experiments to Flat Earthers, while making the mistake of not realizing their limitations, which in turns strengthens the beliefs of many Flat Earthers that "people are too brainwashed to see the truth". If we move away from Flat Earth and step into more advanced subjects, obviousness completely disappears, and only domain-specific knowledge remains, which are heavily dependent upon preexisting results.

In my opinion, it's how numerous conspiracy theories are created. The conspiracy theorists will simply tell you: why do you assume they're true? It's entirely possible that everything you know is false. And all the gaps in your accepted knowledge can be exploited by them to make this point. And ultimately, you may come to the conclusion that the entire body scientific knowledge is a hoax. Then, one may ask, how can people build anything in engineering? The conspiracy theorist will tell you, the truths are carefully and systematic distorted in a way that appears to be self-consistent, enough for some applications, but it's distorted enough to kill truth. And since any pre-existing results couldn't be trusted and one is unable to derive or verify anything from first principles due to limited time and resources, science is hence rejected.

Conclusion: The theoretical and epistemological foundation of many conspiracy theories are the equivalent of Reflection on Trusting Trust - they claim the vast majority of knowledge is manipulated for malicious purposes, in the same way that the hypothetical attack by Ken Thompson claims one's compiler could be backdoored and no program in one's computer can be trusted.

feralimal33• 6 years ago

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

We call it Social Constructionism. It's the basis of all knowledge in society.

I object already! Knowledge does not reside in society. A library cannot know, nor can a computer. Knowledge that state that a man or woman over something in the objective world and can be objectively confirmed. You and I can know. It is not a societal exercise.

You raise the flat earth. And you say:

"I used the absurd example of Flat Earth to illustrate the point of non-obviousness of personal verification"

Well, having given a bunch of detailed examples to show why it is not possible to prove a spherical earth, why do you call it an 'absurd' theory? How was the earth being a sphere proven to you? You are supporting my point that people believe they know but are in error. Belief has no part in knowledge.

I wouldn't object to you saying 'I believe the earth is spherical', or 'my hypothesis is that the earth is a sphere', or that 'a sphere is the best theory to explain the movement of the planets'. All good. But to say 'you know', when you were only taught and shown imagery on a TV - that's overstepping things!

Did you 'know' that the film 'Independence Day' was true too, seeing as you saw that on TV? Or did you know it was false, because someone told you it was fiction. Why are you happy to assume film images are false, but news images are true?

rcxdude• 6 years ago

'no-one' verifying is too steep. Many people test many results from science all the time. I've personally followed and tested many papers because their claimed results were useful to me. Sometimes they aren't correct, or at least I am not able to verify them as such. More fundamental ideas are put to the test every time I design something, and they have held very strong in my experience. Equivocating religion with science by raising your standards so high they are impossible to meet in practice is disingenious, especially when one stands up to far more testing than the other. I agree that we need more critical thinking in this world, especially from the general public, but when you retreat to deciding nothing is verified because you have not seen or understood it directly and personally, you retreat in another direction which is just as useless and potentially harmful.

feralimal33• 6 years ago

Thank you for your comment. Although you think you are arguing against me, I think you are supporting my point.

When you design and it works - that is what I am calling applying the scientific method personally. When you test other's papers you should have a 100% confirmation rate, unless you are making an error in methodology. It seem to me that you did not find that.

I'm not raising my standards high. When I have not personally verified something, I would say - that I haven't verified something. I just wouldn't say 'I know'. This a statement of reality - it is not a standards thing. There is no faith involved.

But most people, it seems to me, would take it all on trust and step out to say 'they know'. I would say their standard are too low. That they are acting on faith - they are believers.

Thanks again for your comment.

Shorel2• 6 years ago

Except science is not static like religion, it changes with new discoveries and explanations.

And, at high school level, basic science is tested and experiments are repeated.

So at the very least, some people learn proper scientific thinking, while others just learn to repeat "facts".

In contrast, everything that religion is, is just memorization of some old ideas, and treating personal anecdotes and made up stories like they are statistically significant data.

pvaldes4• 6 years ago

But no one - NO ONE - is verifying anything personally. No one is testing the claims. My point is that no one is personally verifying science

Each science article is extensively reviewed. First when you need to force yourself to read previous articles in the same field. Second by your boss and other members in the team. Third time by a peers system, and is not easy at all to pass. Sometimes must be corrected two or three times more. Often is rejected and sent to other journal, that will require the same process. Journals can ask for your laboratory notes and raw data and repeat the calculus by themselves. Is not unusual.

After an article is published anybody can point to something found incorrect on it.

So the truth is that science, the real science, is extensively reviewed. There are groups specially prone to fraud, and many articles are garbage, but are most the exception than the norm.

afrcnc• 6 years ago

tl;dr: Muslim religious leaders realized that if they keep their followers dumb, they're easier to manipulate.

bonoboTP3• 6 years ago

Some interesting excerpts:

[...] this view sees natural things that appear to be permanent as merely following habit. Heat follows fire and hunger follows lack of food as a matter of habit, not necessity, “just as the king generally rides on horseback through the streets of the city, and is never found departing from this habit; but reason does not find it impossible that he should walk on foot through the place.” [...] tomorrow coldness might follow fire, and satiety might follow lack of food. God wills every single atomic event and God’s will is not bound up with reason. [...] “Were it God’s will, we would even have to practice idolatry.” [...] “Nothing in nature can act spontaneously and apart from God.” [...] Mohammed Yusuf, the late leader of a group called the Nigerian Taliban, explained why “Western education is a sin” by explaining its view on rain: “We believe it is a creation of God rather than an evaporation caused by the sun that condenses and becomes rain.” [...] the 2010 eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano was the result of God’s anger at immodestly dressed women in Europe.

We often overlook in hindsight how unclear it was how the world works at its basics in earlier times. In other words, it could have turned out that way. It was partially luck that the West got it right. For all they knew, it could have been really God micromanaging everything with no humanly discernible consistency or laws to it. Certainly not ones that are as simple as Newton's laws for example. It was not at all inevitable that, say, the intricate dance of celestial bodies can be reduced to 3 laws of motion plus the inverse square law for gravity.

mrwnmonm18• 6 years ago

I am an Arab and I am pretty sure the article is full of misinformation before even reading it, but will read it anyway.

Take the first paragraph

Contemporary Islam is not known for its engagement in the modern scientific project. But it is heir to a legendary “Golden Age” of Arabic science frequently invoked by commentators hoping to make Muslims and Westerners more respectful and understanding of each other. President Obama, for instance, in his June 4, 2009 speech in Cairo, praised Muslims for their historical scientific and intellectual contributions to civilization.

So first it says Contemporary "Islam" is not known for its engagement in the modern scientific project.

Then it says Golden Age of "Arabic" science.

Funny distinction. If you gonna use 'Arabic', use it everywhere.

Also another funny thing that the "Idealistic" president, Obama, who they say praised muslims for their historical scientific and intellectual contributions to civilization, had no problem working with dictators who are the main reason for the decline of scientific study in the region. And also had no problem supporting Al Sisi coup after the Egyptian revolution.

Edit: Adding that the Obama administration didn't want to admit it is a coup to be able to keep giving aid to the Egyptian military, which is prevented by the American constitution in case of a coup. Professor Chomsky always said that the US won't allow true democracy in the middle east. He even had a lecture in 2011 just after the revolution started predicting exactly what happened.

So the US uses its power to keep the situation as it is, then the very much honest westerners come and say that we are backward in scientific study. Thanks guys. You are very wise and honest.

abdullahkhalids• 6 years ago

Israel has good universities and has research output comparable to European/NA countries.

The author is also including in Contemporary Islam, SEA countries like Malaysia.

He also discusses Pakistan and ancient Indian civilizations as separate entities, which have geographical overlap, because Pakistan (and Bangladesh) is far behind India in terms of research productivity.

mrwnmonm18• 6 years ago

Israel has that because the US accepts and supports that development. They won't allow that in the islamic countries.

diegoholiveira• 6 years ago

I would guess that Islam have no issues with good science, right?

In my opinion, blaming religion for any decline of science is completely accepted even if there's no direct correlation between both, which is very bad because it's creates a false believe that religious people aren't educated.

rob74• 6 years ago

There's nothing inherently wrong with being religious, I think the major problem is fundamentalism: if you consider your Holy Book (be it the Koran, the Bible or whatever else), or even more commonly a narrow interpretation of it, as the single source of truth and condemn all who deviate from it, that's a recipe for stagnation. That happened in Europe in the Middle Ages, and it's happening in the Arabic world now.

mrwnmonm18• 6 years ago

It depends on what do you mean by Islam.

If you mean that some muslims won't accept some scientific results because of their islamic beliefs, then you are very much correct.

I would even say that some Quranic verses don't sound scientific at all, but it is somehow complex to judge it, since it is not intended to be a science book.

Anyway, this is far from my point. My point is the US wants the situation to be like that, period.

yamrzou• 6 years ago

Islam has no issues with good science. On the contrary, the Quran has some verses which encourage enquiry, such as:

"Say: 'Travel through the earth, and reflect on how he [god] started the creation." - 20 Al-'Ankabut.

sumedh6• 6 years ago

had no problem working with dictators who are the main reason for the decline of scientific study in the region.

If you get rid of the dictator you end up like Iraq and Libya after Saddam and Gaddafi were removed. Its better to deal with the devil you know.

mrwnmonm18• 6 years ago

Nonsense, Egypt had a democratic elected president (which I didn't support), who won in a fair elections.

And it is very funny that you mentioned two countries which the US were responsible for their destruction.

DSingularity3• 6 years ago

Funny you mention Saddam. He was supported by the CIA to overthrow a government which leaned communist.

chewz• 6 years ago

I am an Arab and I am pretty sure the article is full of misinformation before even reading it...

Yeh, that sums up the the article pretty well

mrwnmonm18• 6 years ago

You cutting the last part of the sentence sums up a lot too.

DSingularity3• 6 years ago

Even in the comments here people will bring up countries like japan as a contrast. Why did the Japanese, unlike the Arabs, rise again after their fall?

Could the centuries of direct colonial rule by the Ottomans and Europeans played a role? The Ottomans were by no measure gentle but the Europeans were nothing short of barbaric. Take Palestine. To solidify their hold the British simply rounded up and executed fighting age men the moment rebellion started brewing.

The stakes are high and the Europeans knew this. The Arabs sat on oil. Lots of it. Colonialism is doomed to fail because the uncivilized eventually rise up (imagine that). Enter Sykes-Picot and neo-colonialism. Give them the illusion of being free, back brutal dictators over the people, and divide and conquer along sectarian lines.

Finally enter Israel. To really support for Israel Herzl, the founder of Zionism, wrote that Israel would “form part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism.”. And they played their part. They are the wildcard ready to bomb any middle eastern country should they rise up and crawl towards independence. See all the nuclear power plants they bombed while they were still being built.

watwut• 6 years ago

Japan had democracy imposed on them and so did Germany, both had them imposed by winning forces. The comment you are responding to complains about demoracy in Arab world being subverted by west.

acituan2• 6 years ago

Why did the Japanese, unlike the Arabs, rise again after their fall?

Because the ways Japan and Middle East were neo-colonized was different. After the bombs Japan wasn’t allowed to hold any army of significance and was enforced to have democratic institutions, which makes it very difficult for any dictatorial player to emerge, whereas in the middle east dictatorial regimes were not only embraced but even sometimes installed in the hopes that they could be easily controlled.

Authoritarianism wreaks havoc on meritocratic processes such as scientific knowledge production, intellectual property rights and other institutions democracies take for granted to flourish.

pvaldes4• 6 years ago

You don't need to have a democracy to do science. Many great scientists in Europe or Asia were able to work in the context of absolute monarchies, terrible dictators or a context of patronage. None of those were "democratic" at all.

Having a true democracy would be a bless for sure, but don't think that will magically produce scientists, or revolutionary new points of view. You need to seed, nurture, care for and harvest decades later. And this is one of the causes of decline of science. Everybody is now planned, arranged and forced to fit in chunks of 4 years, so the people now in power can take all the credit.

As bad as dictators are, a stable dictatorship could ironically lead to a much more comfortable environment for scientists than a democracy. The first thing that many politicians do after stepping in power is to fire the scientists identified with the previous government (or discredit their work, or remove their funds...).

throwaway4132• 6 years ago

You already know when you read “Arabic world” vs Arab world...

AlexSW• 6 years ago

It goes on to talk about its usage of "Arabic science" at the beginning of the second section.

"A preliminary caution must be taken about both parts of the term “Arabic science.” This is, first, because the scientists discussed here were not all Arab Muslims. Indeed, most of the greatest thinkers of the era were not ethnically Arab. This is not surprising considering that, for several centuries throughout the Middle East, Muslims were a minority (a trend that only began to change at the end of the tenth century). The second caution about “Arabic science” is that it was not science as we are familiar with it today.[...]"

mrwnmonm18• 6 years ago

So why did they use Islam in the beginning?

29athrowaway5• 6 years ago

The Islamic Golden Age is the true cause behind the European Reinassance.

1) Introduction of paper.

2) Latin translations of the 12th century from Toledo and Sicily, former Islamic territories.

3) Higher education (Madrasas -> Universities)

4) Philosophical reforms of the church that made science legal (Averroism -> Scholasticism), paving the way to Secularism.

grahoho• 6 years ago

I'd say the invention of the printing press had a far more profound influence.

29athrowaway5• 6 years ago

The printing press becomes a practical invention only once:

1) You have something to print on

2) You have content worth printing

The introduction of paper to Europe and the Latin translations in Toledo and Sicily (cities in former Islamic territories) are the answer to 1 and 2.

Paper is cheap, scalable, durable and portable. Pre-paper technology such as papyrus, parchments, tablets and carvings have issues in those regards.

Greek literature from Archimedes, Aristotle, Apollonius, Euclid, Diocles, Galen, Hippocrates, Ptolomy, and many others, was reintroduced to the West through those translations.

filterbubble• 6 years ago

I've been saying this for years. At the risk of hyperbole, it's not an accepted explanation bc teaching such in school would be tantamount to saying something other than Western culture has value.

Can down voters please explain why you disagree? (Unless hn is just overrun with deluded brainwashed lunatics.)

29athrowaway5• 6 years ago

My guess is:

1) Because it is not a widely accepted POV, although there is overwhelming evidence for it.

2) Because Classic Islamic philosophy is often seen as mistaken by Scholastic philosophers (even if Scholastic philosophy would not exist without Averroism) and those philosophers are the precursors of modern philosophers.

3) Because Ancient Greeks are considered Western but Islamic caliphates are not.

4) Because the Crusades were associated with significant revisionism, including book burning of Arabic books, which makes it harder but not impossible to susbstantiate this POV.

5) Because some people (usually the far right people that listen to historically inaccurate podcasts and radio shows) believe that the West civilized the world and a POV that sounds opposite to that and credits their religious/ideological adversaries cause them to become very, very upset.

bobdupneu• 6 years ago

What an elaborate piece of nonsense ! Modern science needs money, human capital and democracy.

Some Arab countries have money but have to use it to buy western consumer goods rather than invest it in knowledge or their own production capacity -- otherwise a coup might happen.

Autocratic Arab rulers are also understandably reluctant to invest in human capital. Knowledge and critical thinking are the basis of any scientific endeavor, but will also undermine their rule.

Finally sustained progress in science needs democracy to ensure technology is used in the interest of the many and not against them by the few.

To get things right, the Arab street needs "only" to get rid of their inept ruling class and cut the influence of their Western overlords. Islam is not the problem and will adapt to the new political rule, much better than Christianity could ever do.

hannofcart3• 6 years ago

The Islamic world has no exclusive monopoly on inept, corrupt, undemocratic overlords.

Notable examples of regions afflicted by the same problem are the entire Soviet bloc. And China. And yet these are typically at the vanguard of scientific and technological development.

The Soviets beat the Americans to space under exactly that class of autocratic ruling elite.

Sporktacular2• 6 years ago

Hard to put my finger on why this feels off. The title 'Arabic World' is strange, it's usually the "Arab world" unless they're referring to the regions where Arabic is spoken.

It then gives statistics for Iran and Turkey, neither of which are significantly Arabic speaking countries, by which point you realise they're conflating ethnic-linguistic groups with the most region's most popular religion.

So by the time it's quoting Bernard Lewis this feels like the old Zionist reductionist talking points you periodically hear from right wing conservatives bashing Islam. A quick search of the publication shows why this isn't an accident. "Islam has no tradition of separating politics and religion", well neither did Christianity, until it did.

This is not to say the state of education there is fine, nor can it be said people there are happy about it either. Every one of those countries have had nascent democracy movements crushed by their governments with the help of foreign backed interests and companies. We're supposed to buy that it's just Islam, please don't look at NSO Group and Finfisher cashing in on the strangulation of reform - reform led by, yes, students, academics and other such terrorist armies of the night.

hannofcart3• 6 years ago

The article elaborates on that choice of words.

Sporktacular2• 6 years ago

It did. Just not well enough for the sweeping generalisations that followed.

g8oz• 6 years ago

Indeed the article starts off okay, but by the time it gets to the "Why Inquiry Failed in the Islamic World" section it rapidly turns into a dumpster fire.

The usual Western triumphalist brain farts in discussing the Islamic world are present:

* exaggerating the extent of separation of Church and State in Christianity.

* exaggerating the marginalization of non-Muslim minorities in medieval Muslim societies and framing it as unique while completely ignoring the treatment of non-Christian minorities in Christian societies in the same period (hint: not that great)

* implying that Muslim success are a fluke and it's failures reflect the true nature of Islam

You know in 1980 some blowhard could have surveyed the world's Catholic countries and noted how many of them were under authoritarian regimes. Said blowhard could have then wrote a long essay detailing the authoritarian history and nature of the Catholic Church, linking it to present political conditions. He could then contrast it with the nature of Protestantism and success of Protestant nations, explain away France as an outlier to due to lingering Huguenot influence.

"From Latin America to Spain & Portugal to the Philippines the unquestioning obedience to an unaccountable organization in spiritual matters has primed the Catholic world for predisposition to dictatorship" he would solemnly declare. "Contrast this with the marketplace of ideas that exists in the Protestant sphere and the idea of the worshiper having a direct relationship to God rather than an intermediating hierarchy".

You get my point.

From Wikipedia: "In science and philosophy, a just-so story is an untestable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or behavior of humans or other animals."

simonh8• 6 years ago

The reason for this is that historically most civilizations, or phases of civilizations have lacked two things. One is the strong, persistent social institutions needed to maintain the momentum of scientific progress. The other is a solid socialised understanding of scientific methods. To maintain consistent scientific and engineering development you need both, and possibly a third in the from of the printing press, otherwise advances are at the whim of individual people, their influence and attitude to methods.

Solid rational investigative techniques go back a very long way. Even the Romans had a good understanding of how to prove a theory. Galen's work on the renal system for example involving public demonstrations on live pigs. The Antikethyra mechanism shows how advanced engineering could be in the Greek world at the time. The problem was there was no institutionalisation and formalisation of these methods to enable their systematic and sustained application, so they melted away when the thinkers and artisans, or small groups of them that made these advances died or disbanded. In the Arab world yes there were universities and medical schools, but these were the personal projects of particular rulers and their favourites that lasted a while and then melted away.

There was nothing wrong with the Arab world, or ancient China, or India. It's just that the several necessary ingredients for sustained progress in science happened to come together in Europe first.

bg1172• 6 years ago

There were more than one university in India thousand years back and hosted thousands of students. Islamic Invasions destroyed the culture.

webmobdev8• 6 years ago

And the Mongols destroyed the Islamic empire. All that's in the past, and it feels good to live in the imagined glory of the past - but what's the excuse today for us indians when our idiot Prime Minister Narendra Modi claims that ancient India had nuclear weapons, aeroplanes and spacecraft and did inter-species head transplant by citing religious mythology as the proof for it? Or when his government wants to promote Astrology as Science today??

simonh8• 6 years ago

Yes exactly, there was just too much social, economic and political volatility that far back to maintain a sustained pace of scientific development. Frankly the pace of advancement was very slow, so more value was placed on understanding and propagating existing knowledge rather than valuing the processes for developing and testing new methods.

It was really the switch over to valuing processes and methods, rather than facts and knowledge, that turbo-charged the rate of development.

bayesian_horse4• 6 years ago

Which is a shitty reason to hate Muslims today.

webmobdev8• 6 years ago

More than all of this - the key is political leaders. Visionary political leaders make or break their country or end civilizations. Both India and America are witnessing this currently with their respective elected right-wing "leaders" in Narendra Modi and Donald Trump.

In India Astrology is now being treated as a Science and the Modi government is considering allowing alternate medicine (Ayurveda / Homeopathy / Unani) "doctors" to prescribe allopathic medicines.

This when India's first Prime Minister sought to promote "scientific temper" in independent India:

"[What is needed] is the scientific approach, the adventurous and yet critical temper of science, the search for truth and new knowledge, the refusal to accept anything without testing and trial, the capacity to change previous conclusions in the face of new evidence, the reliance on observed fact and not on pre-conceived theory, the hard discipline of the mind—all this is necessary, not merely for the application of science but for life itself and the solution of its many problems." —Jawaharlal Nehru (1946) The Discovery of India

And the constitution of India itself emphasises:

[It shall be the duty of every citizen of India] To develop scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform.

Political leaders are the key, and the answer to why science and culture flourish and die in any civilization. The west will experience this too.

simonh8• 6 years ago

Of course rulers can have a huge influence, but I think what differentiates the modern scientific enterprise from past models is that it's not dependent on the whims of individual rulers. It just has so much established momentum and support.

Modi may well promote nonsense, but the institutions of higher education and science in India still exist and have enough prestige and social and economic momentum that I believe they will continue to sustain themselves. Similarly Trump continues to talk utter nonsense about Coronavirus, and even knowingly misled his followers throughout the first 6 months of the outbreak, but still has Dr. Fauci leading the medical response because even Trump can't completely sideline the scientific community.

connectsnk2• 6 years ago

This seems like overstating the facts to support your own views. Can you please tell which recently enacted laws treat Astrology as a Science?

sbmthakur• 6 years ago

In India Astrology is now being treated as a Science and the Modi government is considering allowing alternate medicine (Ayurveda / Homeopathy / Unani) "doctors" to prescribe allopathic medicines.

I have had Astrologers visit my house when Modi was no where around in the national political scene. And exploring alternative medicine is hardly specific to Modi government. Even WHO is doing it:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/24/health/traditional-chines...

Though I agree that pseudo-science like Homeopathy should not be promoted in any way and ancient medical knowledge like Ayurveda should be strictly regulated and rigorously tested.

wobbly_bush3• 6 years ago

The period from 1947-2014 didn't really lead to major improvements in scientific ecosystems, apart from creation of few educational institutes (IITs, IISc). The left-wing governments weren't much better. The problem is much deeper than a simplistic left-wing vs right-wing debate.

0823498723498726• 6 years ago

Heterodox explanation:

”Nothing in Europe,” notes Jamil Ragep, a professor of the history of science at the University of Oklahoma, “could hold a candle to what was going on in the Islamic world until about 1600.”

Before the portuguese (1498-1974?) and the spanish (1492-1976?) overseas empires, the arab world was in the middle of the prime trade routes between asia and europe. Afterwards, their status as middleman was increasingly cut out (especially once the dutch and then british got into the maritime empire game).

Science happens where there are rich people; rich people happen where there are bottlenecks in trade.

As they say in the asteroid belt: na desh walowda walowda peyeting; imim na xunyam sasating?

JPLeRouzic• 6 years ago

As they say in the asteroid belt: na desh walowda walowda peyeting; imim na xunyam sasating?

That's a language which is still missing in Google's translator.

kkshetty• 6 years ago

Most likely Belter Creole => https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Belter_Creole

It is a fictional language :)

0823498723498726• 6 years ago

Yes, sorry, it was just a restatement. The english would be: "no massive trade flows; no science researched."

(sasating is not attested, but sasa is. I would draw the line between sciences and humanities as sasating and kengting)

(Anyone at google or yandex who cares to get cracking on this? The grammar is small and the vocabulary miniscule. Unfortunately the corpus as well...)

Edit: OTOH, maybe it may be useful to have a creole without extant sentiment analysis, etc. tools?

"Look at me still talking when there's science to do"

kwhitefoot• 6 years ago

Google Translate auto-detect claims it is Igbo. But it can't translate it.

narag3• 6 years ago

...rich people happen where there are bottlenecks in trade.

I was nodding all the way until "bottlenecks in"... and then the Expanse slang. Tsk tsk :)

0823498723498726• 6 years ago

For the bottlenecks: I like to think of value chains as a young seasonal river. In season, there are alternations of pools and waterfalls, and exploitable margins are where the topography protrudes, at the waterfalls. In the pools the topography still exists, but doesn't matter. Until it does, because something changes significantly upstream or downstream, and now the waterfalls appear in different places.

Kowltim vedi fong bap unte kuwang. Depelesh imim ge sekrip. (Watch out for bottlenecks and corners. That's where money is made.)

Compare the parts of a program worth optimising...

Kowltim vedi fong bap unte kuwang. Da Dzhin im showxa desh deplesh imim du fashting gut. (Watch out for bottlenecks and corners. Amdahl's Law says that's where to make speedups.)

galfarragem2• 6 years ago

Science happens where there are rich people; rich people happen where there are bottlenecks in trade.

It can't be that simple. How do you fit there, for example, russian space exploration?

0823498723498726• 6 years ago

Easy: the КПСС was the bottleneck between the oil and natural gas fields of the Union and the fuel importers of the West. They were the funders of the Космическая программа СССР from the 1930s on.

Two things happened in 1985: KSA opened the taps to full production, tanking oil prices, and the Plaza Accord weakened the dollar. Since oil is denominated in USD, this further kneecapped soviet hard currency income. While they were simultaneously attempting to fight a war in afghanistan, the real price of oil had dropped by a factor of 3. Elsewhere, as a result of the Plaza Accord, west germany used its stronger marks to buy out east germany as a fire sale from the Warsaw Pact, but I still have no idea what japan (or perhaps just the LDP selectorate?) got from its stronger yen, other than (averaged across the whole country) stagnation.

TIL Polan can into space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirosław_Hermaszewski (double checking received opinions never hurts, compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737221 )

====

Conspiracy theory:

Compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24736853 and consider that anyone outside who for whatever reason had been modelling the soviet economy might have been able to show to the actors within it (especially after Gorbi's transparency reforms) that it was worth more in pieces than as a going conglomerate, in which case the implosion of the soviet union would have been the ultimate stakeholder activism geopolitical LBO.

If Mark Felt had been a Belter, he would have said du chesh peyeting instead of "follow the money."

eternalban2• 6 years ago

Muslim science is not Arab science. Muslim world is not Arab world. In general, Muslim =/= Arab, and Arab =/= Muslim. However, Arabs do spend quite a lot of money in various quarters and apparently are deep into a cultural appropriation program of denuding all other Muslim nations of their substantial claims (more than actual Arab scientists) to “Islam’s Golden Age”.

Indeed, most of the greatest thinkers of the era were not ethnically Arab.

Yet the author perversely chooses to call it Arab science, and Arab Golden Age.

He then puts forward a completely unsupported theory that this is because “for several centuries throughout the Middle East, Muslims were a minority”.

Let’s follow Hillel’s tortured logic here:

- Most of Muslim thinkers of Muslim Golden Age were not Arabs.

- This is because Muslims were a minority in Middle East.

- Thus we need “caution” before we go ahead and call them Arab Scientists.

It is also necessary to correct Hillel’s implicit that most “Arab Scientists” were non-Muslim non-Arabs. The fact remains that most of these non-Arabs were Muslims.

Hillel is invited to offer a list of non-Muslim “great thinkers” of the era.

Arab money is making a mess in all sort of places. But it will not be permitted to mess with the history and heritage of the Muslim nations.

naringas• 6 years ago

"Why was Arab science so good during their golden age? because they copied the greeks"

pknerd3• 6 years ago

Every nation copied others work. It's called wisdom of crowd or knowledge transfer. The West then had copied the work of Arabs.

WorkLobster2• 6 years ago

Something to remark on: Abdus Salam (the Pakistani Nobel Physics laureate mentioned near the top) and Steven Weinberg (quoted two sentences later as saying he hasn't read anything worthwhile from a physicist working in a Muslim country) collaborated together on the work that won them that same nobel prize (Glashow-Weinberg-Salam model of electroweak interaction).

jchb3• 6 years ago

Abdus Salam belonged to a school/sect of Islam that encourages open debate and promotes a scientific interpretation of the Quran.

"Salam was an Ahmadi Muslim, who saw his religion as a fundamental part of his scientific work. ... In 1974, the Pakistan parliament made the Second Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan that declared Ahmadi to be non-Muslim. In protest, Salam left Pakistan for London." [0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdus_Salam#Religion

WorkLobster2• 6 years ago

Thanks for that extra info. I'm wondering if Weinberg's comment may in fact have been in support of Salam and his (possibly frustrated) experiences in Pakistan, rather than in contradiction of it. I think it would have been a fruitful avenue for the article to pursue.

amai3• 6 years ago

Unfortunately the following happened according to Wikipedia:

"The epitaph on his tomb initially read "First Muslim Nobel Laureate". The Pakistani government removed "Muslim" and left only his name on the headstone. They are the only nation to officially declare that Ahmadis are non-Muslim."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdus_Salam

wrnr• 6 years ago

I just love facts like this: Although Spain is hardly an intellectual superpower, it translates more books in a single year than the entire Arab world has in the past thousand years.

The links to the UN report seems to check out, but on the other hand I've heart that publishing is not a very lucrative business in Arabia and most translations are fan translations

Mediterraneo102• 6 years ago

It also has to do with translations in the Arab world being made into Modern Standard Arabic, a somewhat artificial language that is totally different from the local dialect people actually speak. Arabs don't want to read books in MSA just like younger generations of Greeks don't want to read books in katharevousa.

And in the Maghreb, French has become established as the language of literature and magazines, so those peoples are doubly aloof from MSA.

tgflynn• 6 years ago

This article makes for an interesting read. I'm not qualified to evaluate its historical claims but its claims about the current state of science in the Muslim world don't agree with what little knowledge I have in that area. That knowledge comes from having been acquainted with a number of Muslim students and scientists both in the US and in France. I did not at all get the impression that they came from a culture that does not value open rational inquiry, despite several, at least, being devout Muslims. I'm sure Fundamentalists are deeply opposed to anything resembling science but as far as I know they are a minority in most of the Muslim world. I should qualify these statements by noting that most of the Muslims I knew came from the Maghreb rather than say the Persian Gulf area so maybe things are very different there.

There are also some other possible explanations for the relative lack of success of scientific research in Muslim countries today that the article does not consider. First many of these countries are relatively poor and under-developed so if you are born there and have the opportunity to study science you are likely to be encouraged to go into more practical fields, like engineering, rather than pure research, which is very under-funded in these countries, again mostly due to overall lack of resources. Secondly if you really want to go into research your best bet is to emigrate to the west if that is at all possible. Again some of this doesn't apply to the oil rich states of the Persian Gulf, but I think the brain drain effect is at work even there.

xiaolingxiao• 6 years ago

Same. In college some of the smartest people I know come from Iran Syria Lebanon and such. Tehran university is good at producing scholars.

Not sure about the average person, but I do get a sense that scholarship is valued.

nashashmi• 6 years ago

your best bet is to emigrate to the west if that is at all possible

And THAT is the problem in any non-western country. The extent of brain drain by more flourishing economies are the prime reasons why certain countries are plagued by lack of education, lack of opportunity, spread of corruption, and spread of gang-like entities.

hannofcart3• 6 years ago

While your point is well taken, note that the brain drain would not be as rampant if the countries themselves as a matter of policy emphasised investing in research.

Note also that a significant portion of the current problems bogging these nations down stems from conflict along religious and sectarian lines (Shia-Sunni enemity).

captain_price72• 6 years ago

I'm from a 3rd world Muslim country, I also agree that the number of people who actively oppose "western education" is extremely small. They are on the fringe even in the rural, comparatively religious society I grew up in.

It's important to remember that most people don't really worry about this kind of ideological questions, like whether studying in university is incompatible with Quran. Hell, most people don't even know what's in Quran. So at least in contemporary world, I think lack of Muslim progress is better explained by poverty and not through those ideological analyses.

bayesian_horse4• 6 years ago

I agree. I am and live among white first world people and I often hear the opinion that the problems of muslim immigrants both here and in their home country are caused by their bad character traits, either culturally or genetically.

To me this is bullshit. Most of these problems are caused by poverty. If you're poor you don't have good education, information, nutrition, health systems and all the like. And that causes all sorts of disadvantages people can't imagine. It's not character or genetics.

pknerd3• 6 years ago

Sunnis embraced al-Ghazali as the winner of the debate with the Hellenistic rationalists

Let's assume it is true and Sunnis followed Ghazali and stopped thinking, pondering and doing research work but what about Shias and other factions of it? Why did not they produce something amazing in science? One can't blame Ghazali for all the mess, especially when he was not followed by all Islamic sects. I will not blame Islam or Quran either. It is something else, probably some kind of excuse or laziness. I wanted to say that the "Hunger for Heaven" might have made them not to use brains but then I see non practising and liberal/modernist Muslims, they did not do anything remarkable either.

I guess it is a culture, some kind of viral disease like thought that propagated in entire Muslim world and it affected regardless of someone is practising Muslim or not. Being a Pakistani muslim I observe that people have no interest of asking questions, they never ask questions. They accept things as it is which is quite irritating. They just accept things as a "gift of God" and prefer to move on rather than finding out WHY is it around.

captain_price72• 6 years ago

Not disputing you, just wanted to note that Shia Iran is doing far, far better than it's Sunni neighbors, which is even more impressive when you consider the kind of government they have and all those sanctions.

And while we Muslims undoubtedly carry the biggest blame for our demise- lets' not forget the west has real interest in keeping the status quo- a free thinking, rational government is fundamentally at odds with the fundamentalist dictators west has been supporting (e.g. in Saudi arabia) for past few centuries.

pknerd3• 6 years ago

Tell me some recent Iranian inventions/discoveries. We are not talking about working in some existing field. I am clear about R&D.

PeterStuer• 6 years ago

Diving straight to the core:

"With the rise of the Ash’arites, the ethos in the Islamic world was increasingly opposed to original scholarship and any scientific inquiry that did not directly aid in religious regulation of private and public life. While the Mu’tazilites had contended that the Koran was created and so God’s purpose for man must be interpreted through reason, the Ash’arites believed the Koran to be coeval with God — and therefore unchallengeable. At the heart of Ash’ari metaphysics is the idea of occasionalism, a doctrine that denies natural causality."

"According to the occasionalist view, tomorrow coldness might follow fire, and satiety might follow lack of food. God wills every single atomic event and God’s will is not bound up with reason. This amounts to a denial of the coherence and comprehensibility of the natural world."

Pretty sure the article was posted to HN to draw parallels to today's rise of constructivism and the decline of positivism as a philosophical reference frame in the West.

HenriTEL• 6 years ago

And also

"Mohammed was not only a prophet but also a chief magistrate, a political leader who conquered and governed a religious community he founded. Because Islam was born outside of the Roman Empire, it was never subordinate to politics."

"Islam needs a state to enforce its laws, and the state needs a basis in Islam to be legitimate."

ffhhj• 6 years ago

Philosophy is mind hunger, an ambition of knowing that takes individuals to risky results like being depressed, isolated and poor. People content with religion, entertainment (social media, consumerism, etc.), or being pressured by their families/relatives to follow non-phylosophical behaviours of hard-workers and breadwinners won't feel the hunger, or will find a replacement for it.

eternalban2• 6 years ago

Science flourished in Muslim lands until the devastating invasion of Mongols effectively destroyed the social and political networks that supported the “Golden Age”. Many families dedicated to learning migrated ahead of the Golden Horde to western parts of Muslim lands. The mystic poet Rumi is a famous example, and even got his name “Rumi” because his family migrated from Khurasan to Anatolia.

Based on that background, we know that the cause of the famous decline has little to do with religious doctrine. The Golden Horde of Mongols destroyed the Golden Age of Muslims. Simple enough.

West should count its lucky stars that Muslims took the brunt of the Mongol destruction.

sasaf52• 6 years ago

Undoing the clickbait:

After many paragraphs telling that the reason is not simple, it finally centers in occasionalism.

At the heart of Ash’ari metaphysics is the idea of occasionalism, a doctrine that denies natural causality. Put simply, it suggests natural necessity cannot exist because God’s will is completely free. Ash’arites believed that God is the only cause, so that the world is a series of discrete physical events each willed by God.

disease• 6 years ago

I'll admit to not having read the full article, but would a belief like this make the assumption that God's will could even overrule logic itself. Could God will 2 + 2 = 5? How would you rationalize this? Or perhaps the point is to irradiate rationality.

sasaf52• 6 years ago

The point is not to rationalize. God could 2 + 2 = 5 and stop trying to understand His will as it is arbitrary. And then of course use this narrative to legitimize some autocrat.

mmmmmk• 6 years ago

Yes, Al-Ghazali made that point. I don't remember the specific passage but he made the comment that if he left a book in his library, he has no way to know that god did not turn it into a donkey, which was at that moment pissing on all his other books. I'll search for that quote, because it was pretty exciting for a medieval philosophy class.

bg1172• 6 years ago

If not for the invasion by outside forces like (Turks/Mongols) from around 11th century in present day India, the scientific culture would not have been broken. Invaders destroyed Nalanda university in present day Bihar during one such invasion. Destroying knowledge is the goto activity by invaders and this continues to this day under ISIS also.

Mediterraneo102• 6 years ago

India's learning tradition destroyed at that point in history is more the destruction of philosophy and philology, not so much the hard sciences as in the case of the Arab world which had made considerable strides in these centuries. Unfortunately, many people on this STEM-focused forum probably are not greatly concerned with e.g. the destruction of fora for debating Mahayana Buddhist metaphysics.

shekharshan• 6 years ago

The more strong your faith the more likely you are to suppress reason with violence, particularly when reason challenges strongly held beliefs.

Stierlitz• 6 years ago

I recall reading somewhere, the reason the Arab world turned away from science was when a particular Caliph came to power and gave the order to destroy any material that wasn't mentioned in the Quran.

rootsudo• 6 years ago

This is a great post, alongside the fall of Roman, this is something I never looked into it and should be covered in any normal education.

Thanks :)

bayesian_horse4• 6 years ago

In my opinion such developments have less to do with turning to or turning away from "science" and such, but more with the general economy.

Western Europe developed into an economic powerhouse during that time, both through population growth and later and concurrent the industrial revolution.

That didn't happen in the islamic world (and many third world countries), or only "under the boot" of the Europeans.

So now the lesser developed countries are catching up in terms of population numbers but lagging in terms of wealth. And with that, in their investments in science.

jackcosgrove• 6 years ago

At the heart of Ash’ari metaphysics is the idea of occasionalism, a doctrine that denies natural causality. Put simply, it suggests natural necessity cannot exist because God’s will is completely free. Ash’arites believed that God is the only cause, so that the world is a series of discrete physical events each willed by God.

Oof, that's a handicap. I never knew of this strain of thought until now. It's not unreasonable until you accept the failure of theodicy (or observe the long-term consequences).

Being a people of the book can get you far, but at some point you need to stop being a people of the book, and become a people of all books.

jononomo• 6 years ago

It seems to me that the connection between Europe and Science has to do with the prevalence of Christianity in Europe.

amai3• 6 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdus_Salam is one of the mentioned nobel prize winners (Physics 1979).

Unfortunately the following happened according to Wikipedia:

vivekpandian• 6 years ago

It's incorrect to say that algebra was from Arabia or middle-east. Mathematics, science, medicine etc travelled from India to Arabia. During their trade with India, Sanskrit works were translated by arabs. And during their european conquest, these arabic works travelled to europe

aaronblohowiak2• 6 years ago

this is explicitly addressed and refuted in the article.

rdiddly• 6 years ago

An opportunity was missed to mention that al-Khwarizmi not only invented algebra but also is the namesake of the algorithm.

Another opportunity was missed to even breathe a word about the Crusades whatsoever.

Finally even I was insulted to hear about "Avicenna, also known as Ibn-Sina." By those who knew him best and first, he was known as Ibn-Sina, but he also later became known to faraway mispronouncers and romanizers as Avicenna.

Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

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