Decline of Science in the Muslim World

Godot,

That a plausible explanation, and certainly a possibility.

My chief objection to assigning uniqueness to European culture is that we ignore the effects of time: we compare the most recent European phenomena with those of much earlier periods in human experience - over a thousand or two thousand years ago.

godot:

``My point being is that while the Chinese and the Indians worried about life, death and God, the West was most curious about the mundane, why was it the way it was and how it worked.``

You have summed up very well the reason for the lack of scientific progress in India. It`s not that they did not have idle curiousity, but that it was not directed towards ``mundane`` matters. The question is why? My speculation is that Buddhism may have something to do with it. It seems that most of the progress in India in the scientific, mathematical, medical (ayurvedic), even statecraft (arthshastra) was done up to the Gupta period. And then came Buddha who de-emphasised attachment to materialistic pursuit of life. Buddhism was not so much defeated by Hindu religion in India as absorbed by it. Not only was Buddha made into a Hindu avtar of God, his message of renunciation (Vaanprasth, Sanyas), vegetarianism, etc. became an integral part of the Hindu religion and society.

I am quite ignorant about the Chinese civilsation; though Buddhism affected China, too, it was a different strand of Buddhism that went there but if the Tibetan Buddhism is any guide, the effect could have been similar. Moreover, the colonial influence may also have dampened the entrepreneurial spirit of a people who lay claim to almost every original invention from ink to paper to noodles.

The case of Islam is probably easier to study. Dr. Gill seems to grope in the right direction but is not willing to make the logical conclusion. Yes, blasphemy is a big hurdle; but once blasphemy is removed, the effect will not only be to question Darwin`s theory but the very basis of the quran itself. Is it a coincidence that Muslims who contributed most to scientific advancement also questioned whether quran was revealed or created?

The thing about the ``idle curiousity`` is that it doesn`t stop with the study of natural phenomenon. Some Hindus may start to question whether Ram and Krishna were reincarnations of God, ordinary mortals or even fictional characters. The same would be true of other religions. I think that christians succeeded because they were allowed to question the deepest held beliefs of their religion. It did not end the faith, those who believe in virgin birth still do and jews who believe that Moses got tablets of ten commandments still do. But those who pooh-pooh such concepts are allowed to express their opinions freely. In case of Islam, it would mean that the whole concept of blasphemy would be blasphemous, not merely whether it is in conformity with ``true`` Islam.

Re: # 121 Freethinker

Gill sahib,

Very good post.

I agree that non-separation of state and religion is one of the major impediments.

I will submit that there are at least two additional reasons that I can think of for the stagnation.

1. Oil money – Saudi Arabia has been a major contributor to retardation of scientific thought processes due to its financial stranglehold on Ummah. You see, India and other poor countries had to earn survival money and the only way to do it was technology and hard work. Saudis have used their petrodollars to keep muslim orthodox strain in control of decision making authorities in many of the muslim countries. If the Saudis had the modern outlook, they could have used their 800 pound gorilla power to seed science and technology farms rather than madrassas.

In addition, muslim civilization has really not touched the bottom in terms of defeat and humiliation which forces introspection and brings to power new voices that were ignored and suppressed before (Turkey did suffer that fate in 1917 and they came out better from that experience. Pakistan suffered the 71 debacle but unfortunately the defeat was just rationalized away without any revamping of the system). I will say that Oil money has again repeatedly cushioned serious shocks throughout the last 50-60 years that perhaps would have forced any ordinary people to face the hard facts.

2. Coward intellectuals - I also think that muslim intellectuals have not shown courage like Chinese and Indians in facing their orthodox compatriots in a sustained manner. Chinese of course followed their Commie model and executed as many people as they had to and outlawed the religion. Indian reformers ridiculed and taunted the orthodoxy and/or outlawed what was necessary. This reform process started at least 100 years ago and is a work in progress with no doubt about its direction. Question is why there are no muslim real liberal leaders who are willing to take the matters in their hands, and suffer personally and physically if necessary, in order to ensure prouder future for their children.

May be Chinese and Indians got lucky that those gutsy folks were not allowed to immigrate at that time like now, and they didn’t have corrupt super rich saudi cousins who co-opted the “troublemakers” way ahead of time.

Regards.

Dost Sahib:

Ancient hindu thoughts developed quite well.

Interesting thing is that Al-Baruni and other Arabs took concepts to the West but put down ancient hindu thoughts in their writing. The Chinese scholars learned and glorified them. Some of the best write-ups on old Indian thoughts still exist in scrolls in South China and Tibet. Chairman of Tatung a very large Taiwanese electronic company, a few years ago showed me some of his personal collections of old Sanskrit and Pali scrolls.

After creating mathematical, geometrical and trignometry (trikone-miti) abstractions, Ancient Hindu thoughts moved into clausal logic whereas the Arabs took these abstractions, zero, decimal system to the west. The West evolved powerful and more concise mathematical tools to study and express scientific thought.

Whereas Indians uses 80 old grammar meta rules of Sanskrit laid out Panini. MIT`s computer science department in 70s and early 80s had done very interesting research on this aspect. No doubt Sanskrit has a very prescie grammar, and its applications in romance to court, to scriptures. But the ``rishis`` started becoming very lazy and started dropping the context of their expressions and that created confusion. If you read Sanskrit literature whether it is Kalidasa`s Meghdoot or even Geeta you can see several meanings. With Sanskrit, precise grammar, about 25 years ago, a couple of my American colleagues who were quite expert in computer language and Sanskrit, we tried to write a simple program in Sanskrit to see how difficult will be to express solution simple algeraic identities as against thru algebraic notations. The amount of steps involved was exponentially different.

Interestingly, especially South Indian brahmins have carried the tradition of remembering Sanskrit Gardhaan and Shlokas, which are like the foundation of Computer language notations and abstractions too. While Chinese build a vocabulary of 20,000 character recognition, like Geshtalt. Such pattern recognition in Chinese is so amazing, that they obviously became some of the best chip designers, while Indians thru clausal logic became good in software. Indeed if you talk to some these Indian software engineers they will readily tell you that they visualize a complete fabric of the software like symphony in their mind. There is very interesting book written on Godel, Escher and Bach about this phenomena in human intelligence.

Dost Sahib, it was not Buddhism that destroyed the old traditions in India. In fact Nalanda and Taxila are indeed examples to the contrary. It started with subsequnt Brahmin revolution that four Shankaracharyas started to reassert Hindu authority in India, the slide later continued with the arrival of Muslim thought of believing in one absolute power, one book and one institution that caused further decline very contrary to the ancient hindu thoughts.

Godot Sahib:
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?`` Such tradtion of questioning and evolving was called ``Shashthrarth``. Jews have similar tradition of question. Any upcoming scholar could challenge even his Guru, if the Shishya prevailed, the Guru was supposed to retire and leave for Vanprasth.

Gill sahib:
I beg to disagree, religion and science cannot mix. Infact they are two opposite sides of the same coin. As humans we may need both. But their can never be Muslim Science, Christian Science or Hindu Science to mean anything other than implying application of probity to study religion.

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.

Anil Kapuria

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..............

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!

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

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: # 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.

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.

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.......

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.

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: # 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. ``

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.

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 ?)