[HN Gopher] Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science
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       Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science
        
       Author : gradus_ad
       Score  : 22 points
       Date   : 2024-04-05 22:12 UTC (47 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.thenewatlantis.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.thenewatlantis.com)
        
       | JumpCrisscross wrote:
       | "Al-Mamun picked up the pro-science torch lit by the second
       | caliph, al-Mansur, and ran with it. He responded to a crisis of
       | legitimacy by attempting to undermine traditionalist religious
       | scholars while actively sponsoring a doctrine called Mu'tazilism
       | that was deeply influenced by Greek rationalism, particularly
       | Aristotelianism. To this end, he imposed an inquisition, under
       | which those who refused to profess their allegiance to
       | Mu'tazilism were punished by flogging, imprisonment, or
       | beheading. But the caliphs who followed al-Mamun upheld the
       | doctrine with less fervor, and within a few decades, adherence to
       | it became a punishable offense. The backlash against Mu'tazilism
       | was tremendously successful: by 885, a half century after al-
       | Mamun's death, it even became a crime to copy books of
       | philosophy. The beginning of the de-Hellenization of Arabic high
       | culture was underway. By the twelfth or thirteenth century, the
       | influence of Mu'tazilism was nearly completely marginalized.
       | 
       | In its place arose the anti-rationalist Ash'ari school whose
       | increasing dominance is linked to the decline of Arabic science.
       | 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. 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."
       | 
       | More controversially:
       | 
       | "Christianity acknowledges a private-public distinction and
       | (theoretically, at least) allows adherents the liberty to decide
       | much about their social and political lives. Islam, on the other
       | hand, denies any private-public distinction and includes laws
       | regulating the most minute details of private life. Put another
       | way, Islam does not acknowledge any difference between religious
       | and political ends: it is a religion that specifies political
       | rules for the community.
       | 
       | Such differences between the two faiths can be traced to the
       | differences between their prophets. While Christ was an outsider
       | of the state who ruled no one, and while Christianity did not
       | become a state religion until centuries after Christ's birth,
       | 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. As Bernard Lewis puts it,
       | Mohammed was his own Constantine.
       | 
       | ...
       | 
       | What is needed in Islam is less self-pride and more self-
       | criticism. Today, self-criticism in Islam is valued only insofar
       | as it is made as an appeal to be more pious and less spiritually
       | corrupt. And yet most criticism in the Muslim world is directed
       | outward, at the West. This prejudice -- what Fouad Ajami has
       | called (referring to the Arab world) "a political tradition of
       | belligerent self-pity" -- is undoubtedly one of Islam's biggest
       | obstacles. It makes information that contradicts orthodox belief
       | irrelevant, and it closes off debate about the nature and history
       | of Islam."
        
       | satellite2 wrote:
       | This article doesn't mention brain drain.
        
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       (page generated 2024-04-05 23:00 UTC)