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How the West Won : The Islamic Worldview and the End of Science
Breakpoint ^ | 1 Jan 03 | Chuck Colson

Posted on 01/02/2003 12:34:04 PM PST by Mr. Silverback

Breakpoint with Charles Colson

Muslim scientists were once the best in the world. A professor of the history of science at the University of Oklahoma says, "Nothing in Europe could hold a candle to what was going on in the Islamic world until about 1600."

The question of how they achieved it and then lost it is more than of academic interest. Many analysts believe one motive for September 11 was Islamic resentment against the United States for having displaced it in science and technology.

The book, THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE AND NATURE WRITING OF 2002, contains a thought-provoking article titled "How Islam Won, and Lost, the Lead in Science" by Dennis Overbye. Overbye says that by the Middle Ages, Islamic academics had invented algebra, named the stars, and produced a million-word medical encyclopedia. And the requirement to face Mecca when praying required knowledge of the size and shape of the earth.

A science advisor to former Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat said knowledge was part of Islam's creed. "When you know more, you'll see more evidence of God."

For five centuries, the Muslim world pioneered cutting-edge science. Today, by contrast, Abdus Salam, the first Muslim to win a Nobel Prize in physics, calls modern Islamic science "abysmal." Dr. Osman Bakar, of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, says, "Muslims have a kind of nostalgia for the past, when they could contend that they were the dominant cultivators of science." But a Pakistani physicist says that now, although Muslims are almost 20 percent of the world's population, they produce fewer than one percent of the world's scientists.

What dimmed the light of Islamic scholarship? A Pakistani professor says one major factor is an increasing emphasis on rote learning based on the QUR'AN. In his words, "The notion that all knowledge is in the Great Text is a great disincentive to learning. It's destructive if we want to create . . . someone who can analyze, question, and create." A Muslim astrophysicist in Paris adds that Islamic fundamentalists reject science "simply because it is Western."

On the extreme edge, some groups have abandoned the principle of cause and effect. For example, the Institute for Policy Studies in Pakistan once issued guidelines recommending that physical effects not be related to causes. Allegedly the Islamic worldview prohibited saying that combining hydrogen and oxygen would make water. A Pakistani physicist explained, "You were supposed to say that when you bring hydrogen and oxygen together, then, by the will of Allah, water was created."

That would be as if Sir Isaac Newton observed an apple falling, but shrugged off any thought of gravity by simply saying, "God did it," without asking how God did it.

So what made Islamic science great for centuries? Worldview: embracing the universe as God's creation and studying it as God's handiwork. And what caused Islamic science to decline? A change of worldview: rejecting science as the invention of "the great Satan."

The Muslim world needs to revisit its past and get over its anger toward the West. But there's a lesson here for Christians, as well as for Muslims: A healthy worldview promotes healthy science. A flawed, or false, worldview leaves you in the dark.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: duhhhhhh; greatsatan
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To: RonF
There are some activist scientists and activist philosophers these days. Their opinions on matters of state are worth as much as anyone's, but they don't often get into positions of real power. Once in a while an engineer such as Hoover or Carter might end up in the top slot. When that happens, look out!
21 posted on 01/02/2003 2:38:27 PM PST by RightWhale
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To: RightWhale
THE BYZANTINES WERE THE WEST.
22 posted on 01/02/2003 2:40:22 PM PST by wideawake
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To: wideawake
until about 1600

That date is very late. The statement was true in 1148, but by the time of Galileo/Mersenne, things were cooking nicely in the West.

23 posted on 01/02/2003 2:41:29 PM PST by RightWhale
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To: wideawake
The Byzantines probably seemed like the West to the Muslims, but they weren't the West. The Byzantines were Greek, the West the former Rome. The West consisted of a miserable, backward, disease-ridden, warring set of barbaric kingdoms until about the First, Frankish [Norman,] Crusade in 1099. Quite a fall from the glory of Rome.
24 posted on 01/02/2003 2:46:38 PM PST by RightWhale
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To: Coeur de Lion
A lot of what we might consider 'simple' was profound for the time. Even the idea of "zero" had to be understood and developed. Much of Greek mathematics - even Euclid - was 'forgotten' in Europe until 1200 AD or so. So much of it is not obvious.

The Caliphate of Islam from the 7th to 10th centuries, learned from the christians of syria who held the byzantine texts which came from the Romans and Greeks - this was the conduit for the Arabs learning the Greek science and philosphy. in this way the Arab empire came to learn the science of the the Greeks and Romans, and developed it further in some cases (eg astronomy). In Europe's 'dark ages' much of this learning was lost. In 1100 AD, Europe could not build things the romans could. Of the civilizations of the world, Europe was behind both the chinese and the Arabs - probably CHina was the most advanced civilization in 1300AD.

When christians reconquereed spain in 1100-1300, much of the Greek learning that was lost was 'rediscovered'. It started cycles of learning that accelerated with the Renaissance in the 1400s. We tend to discount the learning of the middle ages, but a book I am reading right now makes the case that Europe's technological revolutions began as early as 1150 AD witht he cathedral building boom (the 'cathedral crusade').

Even in 1300AD, the Muslims could construct 'astrolabes' that Europeans could not - but they became models for clocks and other instruments that Europeans developed at later dates. And Islam had silk weaving that was imported into Europe. Probably after 1350AD or so, there was not much that Islamic nations knew that Europe didnt.

I think there is an over-reaction to the book's premise here by saying the Arabs developed nothing. There was much done in years 800 to 1200, in particular in Moorish states in Spain, that was advanced. The premise that Arabs were ahead of Europe up to 1600 might be untrue as once Europe had gunpowder, the press and dicsovered the new world, it had opportunities and powers not all found elsewhere. In 1492, Spain discovered the New World and kicked out the Jews. Many Jews fled to the Ottoman Empire and helped support him financially in finishing off the vestiges of the Byzantine empire, the same empire that the Saracens (Arab warriors) first defeated and the Arab Caliphate learned from back in the 7th and 8th centuries.

To sum up: Yes, the Arab Caliphate was advanced vs. Europe from 800 to 1350. Most but not all of that learning was from other civilizations.
While Europe advanced after 1500 rapidly, other civilizations were not, and by 1600 Europe has the printing press, universities and had initiated, thanks to men like Galileo, conceptions of scientific inquiry that enabled them not just to learn what had gone before, but discover new truths in organized ways. The laid the groundwork for Newton and our modern scientific and technological revolutions.

It is quite possible that China might have advanced, but I think their lack of pluralism and their unified state prevented the kind of diveresity needed to advance and push societies towards change. The same with Islam - it was a culture of stasis much like Europe in the Middle Ages - and did not have large numbers of nations vying for power, but was dominated within an economic zone by a single power. We should not over-criticize a culture for this, because stasis was in fact the assumption of the whole world and all cultures and European plurality was an accident of history and certainly not the design of anyone.
25 posted on 01/02/2003 2:56:15 PM PST by WOSG
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To: RightWhale
See my other comment ... Culturally, Europe owes almost everything to Byzantium, because this was the conduit for Greco-Roman culture and learning ... Greece -> Rome -> Byzantium -> Arabs -> Europe. (NB. note the Greeks and Roman culture pretty much fused ... what Byzantium controlled in 600AD was similar to the Greek/Alexandrian empire of 300BC; Rome's conquest of Greece had fused the cultures, and Europe's 'debt' to Rome is really the debt to the ancient Greek philosophers and scientists.)

Without Byzanium, Christianity would not have come to the Rus, Europe would likely be Islamic and/or would be a medieval backwater still (who knows?).

Why it took 600 years and such a route for Europeans/ex-Romans to learn was was known 1000 years prior? blame the German hordes that destroyed the Western Roman empire in the 400s AD, ie, blame the Franks --- the French!


Coming soon to a bookstore near you ...
"How the French Screwed Up Civilization"
26 posted on 01/02/2003 3:03:50 PM PST by WOSG
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To: RightWhale
The Byzantines and the Muslims got along fairly well. (1000AD) Er, the Muslims had carved out most of the Byzantine Empire by then and destroyed their dominance... It's like saying we get along well with Canada. :-) ...

The Arabs started becoming more intolerant of Christians around this time (1000AD), which raised hackles in Europe and helped kick of the Crusades wanting access tot eh 'holy land' for pilgrimages ... which if you do the James Burke imitation of how every innovation is connected to another, could be said to lead to our modern age of science, our building of WTC, jumbo jets and thus 9/11. That is, Islamic Arab intolerance was both the immediate and distant cause of 9/11.

27 posted on 01/02/2003 3:10:14 PM PST by WOSG
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To: RightWhale
Another thought --- according to Tynbee we are still the Roman civilization --- and so was Byzantium. Given that Byzantium was also Orthodox Christian - a christianity undivided from the West prior to 1050AD, with a culture that survived in many respects in Russia, and given that politically Byzantium was just the Eastern Roman empire, you could indeeed put it in the West. I would.

28 posted on 01/02/2003 3:13:17 PM PST by WOSG
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To: WOSG
Muslims had carved out most of the Byzantine Empire by then and destroyed their dominance

That would have been Turks, who adopted Islam just as the Normans adopted Christianity, by deliberate, conscious, voluntary action.

29 posted on 01/02/2003 3:13:28 PM PST by RightWhale
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To: RonF
Every time I hear about the crusades of 1000 years ago, and the great injustice done, I invite a look back 300 years earlier. Egypt, Syria, and other such now-Moslem lands were once Christian. Then the invaders came. Do you think everyone converted because earnest young men came to everyone's front door and said, "I'd like to share the Qu'ran with you today?" No, conversions were done at the point of the sword, as opposed to how Christianity had spread in those lands. I'll hold no brief for the Crusades, but I'll not grant the Moslems that were attacked any moral superiority.

I agree. Damascus was once a Christian city, and there once wer 80 million Christians in the mid-east regions of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and the 'holy land'. Where is that culture now? Suppressed for 1500 years by Moslem majority.

30 posted on 01/02/2003 3:15:33 PM PST by WOSG
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To: Mr. Silverback
Bump
31 posted on 01/02/2003 3:18:54 PM PST by Fiddlstix
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To: Mr. Silverback
Muslim scientists were once the best in the world. A professor of the history of science at the University of Oklahoma says, "Nothing in Europe could hold a candle to what was going on in the Islamic world until about 1600."

Actually no, muslim scientists never discovered much of anything, and the only reason they could be considered "better" than other scientists is because other scientists did not exist at the time. In fact, a strong argument could be made that there never was such a thing as a muslim scientist. Any honest historian will admit that. The "enlightened muslim" of the european middle ages is largely a myth. The one very important thing they did do was preserve classical knowledge from the ancients. Some history we have only exists because muslims kept the records. That is all. Pretty sad that their positive contributions can be mostly summarized in a paragraph.
32 posted on 01/02/2003 3:24:22 PM PST by newguy357
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To: RightWhale
Me:Muslims had carved out most of the Byzantine Empire by then and destroyed their dominance --- You: That would have been Turks, who adopted Islam just as the Normans adopted Christianity, by deliberate, conscious, voluntary action.

I was referring to the Saracen invasion that carved out half the byzantine emipre ... see this timeline:

639 -Muslim armies conquer the southern territories of the Byzantine Empire (Syria, the Holy Land, Egypt, and Jordan).

http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/Byzantium/time.html

33 posted on 01/02/2003 3:29:09 PM PST by WOSG
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To: WOSG
as early as 1150 AD witht he cathedral building boom (the 'cathedral crusade').

Not a formal Crusade at first, it was a movement among the poor, who remained behind while the rich went off to Jerusalem. It could have been a revolt against the warlike ways of the Crusaders and the disasters that befell the poor pilgrims who accompanied the rich Crusaders. The poor banded together and began to build cathedrals with their own hands and in reverent silence.

34 posted on 01/02/2003 3:31:03 PM PST by RightWhale
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To: Mr. Silverback
the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University

There's a long row to hoe.

35 posted on 01/02/2003 3:36:55 PM PST by Nick Danger
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To: WOSG
By 1099, the First Crusade, the advance of Islam by the sword had pretty well played itself out. It was old news. The residents of the region were getting along fairly well and interacting in a civilized manner. The Crusaders were lucky to reach Jerusalem at all, but when they did, and when they slaughtered the residents, all of them, 40,000, the people back home were distressed. The intent had not been to destroy Islam, but to reach Jerusalem, and by the way come to the aid of the Byzantines, who were under attack by Turks. Further Crusades further screwed up the situation in the ME, and eventually the West did in the Byzantines, their former ally.
36 posted on 01/02/2003 3:41:13 PM PST by RightWhale
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To: WOSG
We should not over-criticize a culture for this, because stasis was in fact the assumption of the whole world and all cultures and European plurality was an accident of history and certainly not the design of anyone

I mostly agreed until this sentence. It is wrong for the same reason that the leftist argument of "the US is prosperous because of luck" is wrong. Prosperity does not happen by accident. In the same way, plurality does not arise by accident.
37 posted on 01/02/2003 3:48:54 PM PST by newguy357
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To: Mr. Silverback
Seriously, and likely knowingly, false thesis. The intent is clearly to try and 'build bridges' of flattery to the stone-age koranic barbarians. In virtually every case, the 'science' attributed to Muslims, was in fact derived from subjugated peoples, Christian, Hindu, etc. From math to medicine. Every single claim for authentic muslim origin of science founders on the rock of Mohammed and Koran and the mulish mullahs of the Madrassas.
38 posted on 01/02/2003 3:54:54 PM PST by Paul Ross
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To: RightWhale
Well, just so. Politicians don't do science. But at least until recently, European and American political systems encouraged science among their citizens, through support of education and support of a free market that enabled technical entrepreneurship. I would differentiate that from conquering a bunch of smart people but doing little or nothing to encourage your own citizens to be innovative in the sciences.
39 posted on 01/02/2003 3:55:17 PM PST by Cicero
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To: WOSG
Bump.
40 posted on 01/02/2003 3:59:33 PM PST by Paul Ross
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