Decline of Science in the Muslim World

anil/dost-mittar/hamidm mian #

Interesting discussion........

I am a scientist by education, a soldier by training, a small businessman by profession, and a Muslim by faith. Probably a practicing religionist by Western standards, and a non-practicing one by Pakistani standards, and perhaps even an apostate by some Pakistani standards. During the past twelve years of my life, I have been to the mosque, once. Yet I read about my religion (and to some extent other religions) extensively. Second only to what I read about science and computers. At the moment, I cannot imagine my life without my science and my faith. I would probably go nuts, without either.........And contrary to what seems to be the opinion, on this site regarding these two, I have never had any problem associating and separating the two. Perhaps much like Abdus Salam never did..........

Every inquisitive mind, at some stage of their life, goes through the questions I mentioned earlier. Each reacts to it differently. But every inquisitive mind will demand an answer. In my experience, the only people who can gloss over them, are individuals who are quite well off and content in their material surroundings. At the same time, I have seen some of the most athiestic people, turn to God, when they have had a huge unexpected tragedy, i.e. death of a child, death of a spouse etc. I would add physical handicaps to that. Because, all the science in the world cannot satisfy them......All the theories about microbiology will not satisfy a father whose six year old daughter dies of cancer. And all the laws on Newtonian physics will not satisfy a husband whose wife dies in a car crash...They will ask, ``Why.`` And when science cannot answer, where will they go?

One can call that metaphysics or faith or religion or anything else. But it is an inhernet belief in a superior concept of creation. Something that goes contrary to pure scientific thought. Since science refuses to recongnize anything, which cannot be proven. It demands searching for answers, not a blind acceptance of answers.

But what about the answers that science can never ever give us. The anomolies I mentioned. That is where religion comes in. Or faith comes in.....It starts where science stops........So what should happen if science contradicts religion? Easy. One should go with science. The religion then becomes incomplete. That to me is the litmus test for religion.

But what to do, when science just cannot give the answers, yet one is anxious for the answers. You go with religion, in that case. Not just any religion. But the one that stands up to the test of science. Or at the very least, one goes with the metaphysics or the concept of faith.....How else can someone satisfy this curiousity?

I think too many people try to map religion into local events and politics, etc. That is a very limited view. They should, infact, study it as a philosophy. Forgetting about the time and space, they are in at the moment. It should be a journy of discovery. Much like science is a journey of discovery. It should not be a blind acceptance of absolute truths. But, at the same time, it should not be a stubborn denial of questions, which have no alternative answers in science.

I will become an athiest the day, science can answer the two questions I mentioned (along with why certain tragedies occur in life, of certain poeple for no reason). If someone has the answer, I am all ears.......Other than that, I think perhaps I am just too curious, and cannot suppress my desire to have some kind of answer to that. Not out of fear. But out of inquisitiveness..............

Re: # 146

Hamid

“believeing in ``nothing`` is a lot less complicated than speculating about all kinds of weird things”

True. The less complicated a person is, the happier he is. That’s why a philosopher is never happy.

Re: # 145

godot,

....... believeing in ``nothing`` is a lot less complicated than speculating about all kinds of weird things ......... personally i think we will be reunited with our parents in a parallel universe - kind of like in the movie ``contact``............ it is a soothing thought unless your father was charles manson ...........

Re: # 144

Hamid

“What will happen after death...nothing (is that such a difficult concept to grasp ?)”

Yes, it’s a very difficult concept to grasp. Science, because of its analytical and factual nature, cannot verify what will happen after we die. Hence, it’s all speculation. Believing that “nothing” will happen after we die is as speculative as saying “something” will.

romair mian,

..... you have lived up to your reputation by asking yet more profoud questions......... here are the answers :

1. What is the meaning of life
A: monty python answeed this question years ago : ``Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations, and, finally, here are some completely gratuitous pictures of penises to annoy the censors ......... ``

2. What will happen after death
B: nothing (is that such a difficult concept to grasp ?)

hamidm2#140:

I would tend to include metaphysics also as a legitimate branch of philosophy, although some would prefer to think of it as a science. See, for instance, the Epicuran riddle in ballukhan`s post.

Re: # 138

dost-mittar,

here is what betrand russell, my favourite philosopher (because he is the only one i can understand ), has to say about the contributiion of religion to mankind :

``I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others. ``

re: 139

Great post, ballukhan. There is a sharp conflict between Christianity and Greek thought. Christians in the West pay lip service to Christianity but have clearly shifted their allegiance to their Greek heritage. So, today no child is raised in the West without some exposure to Greek classics.

Without access and return to this heritage, European might not have broken free from the shackles of medieval Christianity.

re: godot # 137

Not fair, godot :)

True, Indians probably spent more time thinking about philosophical issues than most (except perhaps the Greeks), but they, like the Chinese, were very curious about many other issues as well.

But we may be more in agreement than seems apparent. In India, the intellectual focus (and the prestige associaed with it) was certainly and decisively on advances of the mind than of advances in dealing with material things. The main areas of contribution being philosophy, grammar and linguistics, logic, mathematics, symbolics, astronomy, and music and dance (our caste system could be partly to blame.)

The European civilization may have most sharply focused on systematically studying and analyzing the MATERIAL world and its properties.

Talking about ancient scientific materialism.............amongst the greek atomists the Epicurians were one of the most intelligent of the lot............let me restate the dilemma that he so succinctly put regarding the concept of an omnipotent god:

``The Riddle of Epicurus
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?``

No wonder, unlike us the Western civilization has been so politically correct in tracing its rich intellectual traditions to the ancient greeks............only if we could move out of the ``theologically correct`` historiagraphy of and exclusive ``MUSLIM`` intellectual tradition and start accepting the influence of the Greeks, Romans and Christian thought.......

Anil#132:

Thanks for another post with useful and original information.

I believe that the examples of Hindu contribution to mathematics that you mentioned all took place in the pre-Buddhist period. It is not that Buddhism discouraged idle curiousity but that this curiousity was directed at the questions man has always faced and referred to by Romair in his post to you. I think that Buddhism – which I find most satisfying for personal contentment – goes further than even Islam in negating the significance of this life. While Islam emphasised that the purpose of this life should be to secure a comfortable, permanent place in the afterlife, Buddha went further and called this life miserable, and our desires the reason for this miserable cycle of life and death. I think that this essential message of Buddhism was also accepted by the Brahminism which followed Buddhism. Therefore, while the Indian contributions to physics disappeared after Buddha, its contributions to metaphysics continue to this day (e.g., Theosophical Society, Aurobindo, J. Krishnamurti).

Romair#133:

The question is not whether religion is important for man but whether it is important for science, or rather if the scientist should be constrained by any religious boundaries? Although the questions you mentioned in your post to Anil cannot be answered by science, the human need is met not necessarily by religion but by faith and there could by any number of faiths providing any number of answers. Religions, especially those which calim to have a monopoly over The Truth, are indeed more of a hindrance than help as far as science is concerned. The questions you raise could be called belonging to metaphysics, which greatly exercised the minds of ancient Greeks and Indians, and is not to be confused with theology: Metaphysics does not depend upon revelation, theology does; while theology merely discusses and debates the nature of the answers provided by revelations, metaphysics can challenge the very core of those answers.

Re: # 132

Anil

``Rig Vedic hindu thought is full of idle curiosity that according Carl Sagan it is the only ``religious`` which poses a question ``Is Man the Best Creation of the God, or is the God the Best Imagination of Man?````

I rest my case.

Well, culture/religion is only one of the factors determining the progress of science. So culture-based explanations have their limitations. But a point that Anil has made needs to be emphasized: the impact of diffusion.

Cultures, ideas, philosophical constructs flow from place to place over time. And science builds on pre-existing building blocks.

So later civilizations have an advantage.

This flow of knowledge shouldn`t be misinterpreted as `copying.` Rather, it is the absorbing up of ideas floating around, heard in snatches, and then building on those ideas.

Time also impacts in many other, profound, ways.

---

IMO, the author has done a great job of highlighting some possible factors behind the decline of Science in the Muslim World. Such ``within-civilization` analyses are very useful. But it is much harder to draw precise lessons by studying different civilizations that rose and fell at widely varying points in historical time AND interacted with one another.

Re: # 133
Romair:

``The day science answers these two questions, is the day either religion will, depending on the answer, either disappear, or it will be universally established, throughout the world. However, I cannot see how science can answer these two questions. It is an anomoly. A problem that requires its solution to occur first, to solve the problem. The ultimate Catch-22.``

Not so fast, Romair. I have full faith that there shall never be finality of human thoughts. Therefore, as long as human race lives, there will be new unanswered questions and the quest will go on through both ends - belief system - a la religion, and probe and question system- a la science.

So was Einstein (``God does not play dice`` - Albert Einstein), so was Newton, and so many scientists who were and are religious. They reconciled their thoughts quite well, I will say that.

Regards.
Anil

Re#126 FreeThinker

Dear Dr. Gill:

I was not aware of the cases that you mentioned in that post. I went and did some research and am just AMAZED at how much worse the problem of blasphemy laws is than what I had thought. I truly appreciate this eye-opening information.

It also increases my admiration – by over an order of magnitude – for the members of intelligentsia who actually have to live in such authoritarian setups and balance their act between maintaining integrity and survival. These are true heroes, and I will NEVER make light of those individuals again. Things which have been around for over 800 years are unlikely to go away on their own without an external stimulus. All of us in the west must make sure that our countries stay engaged – otherwise there is little hope.

Regarding the individual cases you mentioned, the news from Pakistan and Iran is not all bad, but that from Egypt is not so good. Based on googling, below is a sort of update:

[There was one Dr. Sheikh in Pakistan who was sentenced to death on a blasphemy charge. I don`t know about his fate now. The last that I heard of him was that he was still in prison under the death sentence. ]

As per the web-site of the Committee on Human Rights he has been released.

Pakistani Medical Doctor Younis Sheikh Released from Prison, January 23, 2004
Following a second trial, Pakistani medical doctor Younis Sheikh was acquitted of blasphemy charges and released from prison on November 21, 2003. Given that a number of former prisoners acquitted of blasphemy charges in Pakistan have been targeted by Muslim extremists when released—and in some cases killed—Dr. Sheikh accepted an asylum offer from the Swiss government. He arrived safely in Switzerland on Monday, January 19, 2004. We did not post this article on the CHR’s website until now at the request of his friends, who did not want his release to be publicized until he was safely out of Pakistan.


[A history professor (a Ph.D.) in Iran was sentenced to death on blasphemy charge because his comments were taken out of context by the theocratic government. His death sentence was relaxed but he was still in prison when I last heard of him.]

I believe he is also free now.

[There was another scholar similarly condemned in Egypt; I am forgetting the details of that case.]
The news from Egypt is not so good. I found the following five cases on the web.
Naguib Mafouz (world-famous Egyptian author and Nobel Laureate. Mafouz, physically and mentally traumatized by a knife attack, no longer writes.)
Farag Foda (An Egyptian writer and human rights defender. Foda was shot dead by militants from an Islamic fundamentalist group after being branded as an apostate by officials at Al-Azhar, the leading Islamic educational institute in the world.)
Nasr Abu Zaid (Egyptian Quranic scholar. He escaped to the West in fear of his life as a convicted apostate, where he reunited with his wife, but remains a target for assassination from Islamic fanatics.)
Rashad Khalifa (Islamic reformer, an Egyptian immigrant to the USA. Declared an apostate in a fatwa issued by 38 Islamic scholars in Saudi Arabia, Khalifa was murdered in 1990 in Tuscon, Arizona.)
Nawal El-Saddaawi (Egyptian feminist and author of many books. Once imprisoned for her outspoken feminist views, El-Saddawi courageously remains in Egypt although clearly a target for assassination from a radical Islamist.)

Thanks again for your patience in explaining this to me!

Anil #132: ``Religion at its core prevents you to question its foundation. The foundation of Science is to probe and question everything. One is based on belief and faith, the other is based on probe and question.``

I have always felt that things that last for a long long time have something inherent strength built into them, which makes them last. Religion, of some sort, has been around for a long long time.There are two unanswerable questions due to which religion has survived, and will continue to survive. These are:

1. What is the meaning of life
2. What will happen after death

The day science answers these two questions, is the day either religion will, depending on the answer, either disappear, or it will be universally established, throughout the world. However, I cannot see how science can answer these two questions. It is an anomoly. A problem that requires its solution to occur first, to solve the problem. The ultimate Catch-22.

In my opinon, any inquisitive mind will, thus, continue to be bothered by these questions. It will demand answers. And when it cannot get them, and realizes that it may never get them, it will do something to satisfy itself. This is why animals do not have religion and humans do. Animals are not inquisitive.

While evolution is being proved through science. Science, so far, even outside of the above two questions (which it may never answer) has not been able to answer the questions regarding the creation of a human cell. I read an interesting reply on this site, which explained how scientists are completely clueless on how a living cell occured. The tornado running through a junkyard creating a 747 theory........

This curiousity and inquisitiveness, at its core, is what keeps people in some sort of a religion, with the concept of some sort of a Creator. People mistake this for rituals and cusoms. Those are only the by-product of this inquisitiveness.

Thus, at its core, religion is popular due to the fear of the unknown. Can science replace that fear of the unknown? Can it explain to us what will happen to us after death? Can it gaurantee that we will just turn into carbon? And most of all, can it tell us the meaning of life. Why and how we were created in the first place? And who created us? Or the monkeys before us, or the amphibians before them.........

One can, at best, disassociate one`s self from religion by suppressing this curiousity. One can never eliminate it all together............

Along with this, I would like to add one more factor which adds to the curiosity. Why are you very wealthy. And me, kind of wealthy. While there are handicapped poor souls dying of starvation. What if I go blind tomorrow? Why did that happen to me? How do I answer these questions. Can science answer them? If it is just a random roll of the dice, then the world is an extremely unfair place. And in such a place, only the well-off can afford the luxury of not worrying about the meaning of life, and subsequently, religion......

Perhaps when there is universal prosperity, and we run into the aliens who created us, and continue to create us, will science and life become independent of religion. Until then, most sceintists will themselves have some sort of, ``faith`` which they, themselves, will never be able to prove or disprove scientifically...........

On the whole, if one keeps the attitude that religion starts, where science stops (or cannot answer the questions), one can relate to both quite easily. An attitude that I have always had. Dr. Abdus Salam, a top scientist, and quite religious, has written on this subject, quite well..............