Why did the muslims fail to keep up in science ?

[Sarevok]

Darth Wong's recent thread comparing Islam and Christianity inspired this. Untill 1500s the muslims were at a relative parity with the Europeans. After this the Europeans rapidly advanced scientifically and after the industrial revolution became undisputed leaders of the world. The islamic world never experienced anything like this. Why is that ? Why did not the muslims of 16th century feel the rapid changes going on in the world and need to keep up to avoid being marginalized later ?

Plus even if the islamic world did not produce any contemporaries to Newton, Descartes etc pioneers why did not they at least use their work and adopt the new maths and science that was going to create the foundations of modern world ? It seems the European education system had no parallel in the islamic world. While the muslims had European equivalents of monastic learning they had no serious universities doing research or transferring knowledge to future pioneers. Maybe this is the reason the muslims lagged behind ?

[Ariphaos]

Essentially what happened was the religious leaders among one of the major islamic empires (I think it was the Seljuks) decided that knowledge outside the Quran and such was of no value.

It's a parallel with what many fundamentalists want to do with education - 'Bible based teaching'.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Essentially what happened was the religious leaders among one of the major islamic empires (I think it was the Seljuks) decided that knowledge outside the Quran and such was of no value.

It's a parallel with what many fundamentalists want to do with education - 'Bible based teaching'.

That's not 100% correct (Although it did happen, and reflects a symptom).
In Europe, various kings did try to outlaw many innovations (such as gunpowder, crossbows), and the pope made various acts heresy or acted against them (Astrology anyone?), but the difference was that Europe was highly fragmented. If you didn't use cannons, then there was no guarantee that your neighbour wouldn't roll over and bombard you.
This lack of unity forced the use of the various "Revolutions" in technology & science, while in other parts of the world (Such as China) they were suppressed by a single, unified government.

So in short, Europe couldn't force anyone to stop advancing, while in Islam they stagnated, and didn't move ahead not just for religious reasons, but due to how unified, strong & stable they were. (Thus removing the forced need for change which exemplified Europe, resulting in stagnation).

This ignores the resources that eventually came from the New world, and the argument that Christianity, with it's very concept of seperation of church and state, and its fragmented state was more inductive to the breakthrough to the empirical method, unhindered by religion.

[Alyrium Denryle]

There were a couple things that really got this started. The first was the construction of the religions. Christianity is more flexible. There was, at this time, not a whole lot known, and not a lot that they knew that directly contradicted scripture. Even Aquinas and Justinian did not take all of the bible as the literal truth to my knowledge. So christianity was better placed to absorb and deal with changes that resulted from scientific inquiry. They did not have a hard limit placed on their knowledge by their faith like Islam does.

The second thing was the counter-reformation, and the creation of Universities. This was a catholic thing. They IIRC created the first universities since the hellenistic period, where scholars could gather, discuss and engage in science and other pursuits.

The last thing was the church, nobility, and city states pouring money into the arts and sciences. DaVinci financed himself as a military engineer for various italian city states for a good part of his career. This kind of investment was not seen in islamic states.

[Guardsman Bass]

Did the Islamic World start to stagnate in terms of technological invention, or was it rather a case of Europe simply starting to really outpace them in the rate of technological change? You read about how knowledge and science was appreciated in the muslim world in the Middle Ages, but that does not necessarily mean that it was an era of serious technological change - but at the same time, medieval Europe was not advancing rapidly in technology.

Also, keep in mind that "strong and unified" did not necessarily apply to the entire Muslim world. The Ottomans were powerful, but they didn't control North Africa or the descendants of Persia in Iran, and even Ottoman rule was fairly flexible; most local areas had significant autonomy. Moreover, you don't really have a unified Islamic agreement on scholarship - you have a mix of views on what Islam is and isn't.

My theory is that it was a combination of the lack of incentives for technological change (the Ottoman Empire was fairly strong during the period of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, when technological change began to rapidly expand in Europe, and they were not in dire straits for want of agricultural goods or money), and a lack of the strong selection pressure for military technological advancement that you had in the highly fractious political environment of the rising unified states in Europe. By the time the Ottomans in particular realized they'd been left behind and were playing catch-up in terms of military technology and technological advancement in general, they were already fighting an uphill battle.

[Rye]

Europe had protestantism and all sorts of violent schisms and an arms race. The muslim world had periods of science and secularism (often superior to the christians), and naturally, this led to "decadence" and "falling away from God" which then made the extreme religious authorities angry. During times of strife, the more extreme preachers are usually the more successful and so the muslim countries tended to backslide when the authorities became more religious.

There definitely was an element of "science doesn't seem to lead to God, the Quran is perfect" etc, so science started to lose out to the ready-made political system of islam, meanwhile the christians were having a schism every two minutes and monarchs didn't want to lose out to their rivals if at all possible.

[Zixinus]

In Europe, various kings did try to outlaw many innovations (such as gunpowder, crossbows), and the pope made various acts heresy or acted against them (Astrology anyone?), but the difference was that Europe was highly fragmented. If you didn't use cannons, then there was no guarantee that your neighbour wouldn't roll over and bombard you.
This lack of unity forced the use of the various "Revolutions" in technology & science, while in other parts of the world (Such as China) they were suppressed by a single, unified government.

There is also the fact that all bans were relieved when fighting againts heretics. The crossnow re-entered the European warfield not much after they were allowed to be used in the Crusades. The same goes for gunpowder I think, as the knight warfare was proven not enough againts the Osman invasion attempts.

[PainRack]

So in short, Europe couldn't force anyone to stop advancing, while in Islam they stagnated, and didn't move ahead not just for religious reasons, but due to how unified, strong & stable they were. (Thus removing the forced need for change which exemplified Europe, resulting in stagnation).

That doesn't really work, since various Islamic states were in contention with each other in terms of wealth and power, including trade.

This idea works for China, where it was technologically superior to its opponents, but the various Islamic states were on par technologically and had seperate centres of learning and industry.


Frankly, I agree with Zuul... The backlash of religious authorities against secular sources was probably what caused the whiplash........ The rest could probably be attributed to economic factors.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Europe had protestantism and all sorts of violent schisms and an arms race. The muslim world had periods of science and secularism (often superior to the christians), and naturally, this led to "decadence" and "falling away from God" which then made the extreme religious authorities angry. During times of strife, the more extreme preachers are usually the more successful and so the muslim countries tended to backslide when the authorities became more religious.

To add to that, as far as I recall, there's the concept with Islam (And many other fundamentalist strains, but there especially) where failure means that they haven't been close enough to god/Fundamentalist.
Success begets more freedom, but failure begets more religion and fundamentalism, which begets stagnation, which leads to more failure, which leads to even more fundamentalism, etc'.

That doesn't really work, since various Islamic states were in contention with each other in terms of wealth and power, including trade.

How many were in a state of all-out war, very frequently, no holds barred?
There was a far greater difference between, say, England and france, than, say, "Turkey"/Annapolis & Baghdad. (Sorry I don't have a better example handy). And France threw England back with the revolution of cannons rendering many English forts obsolete. (From what I understand. The end of the "100" years war has always been hazy to me).

This idea works for China, where it was technologically superior to its opponents, but the various Islamic states were on par technologically and had seperate centres of learning and industry.

China, Japan in its isolated phases (Cough, guns being outlawed until the resurgence after the Meijing revolution and outside force, cough) are examples, but still, when was there a state of all out, conquering war between the Islamic nations on multiple fronts, on the level, time-length and intensity of Europe?

Frankly, I agree with Zuul... The backlash of religious authorities against secular sources was probably what caused the whiplash........ The rest could probably be attributed to economic factors.

Social and religious. Unity is lovely, but war is a very strong factor against stagnation, since it forces the use of changes and innovations. (Women after WW1,2 for a more modern example). People don't cause upheavels and threaten their power if they can prevent it, only if forced by outside influences. (As a general rule).

[Knife]

I would submit that after the fall of Rome, the middle east just didn't crumble as bad as Europe did and in a lot of cases, moved to fill the vacuum. Instead of falling to warlordism, a lot of those provinces kept the Greek and Roman teachings and continued on.

I would say that Islam decayed that knowledge base, or rather fought against it, similar to how Christianity suppressed such knowledge in Europe.

[Omeganian]

Well, the Muslims took a lot from others, the most important innovation (the so called Arabic numerals) being from India. How many innovations were actually theirs - that can be argued.

[hawkwind]

Actually areas which were later taken by Islam served as vault of helenic culture and knowledge and they were on important route to Asia, which meant also connection to China and India.
But that knowledge and culture was present and cheriched before advent of islam and after muslims took over, they made their own attempts to actually etxerminate unwanted elements.
Avicena comes into mind.
They werent very keen on actually inventing much themselves which also meant that the ancient knowledge, which they were sort of safekeeping didnt kept up at certain moment. Hovever Jews could live relativelly freely under muslim rule and Jews were also another ellement which helped to keep some knowledge - many times we read about famous "Arab" doctor, mathematic, astrologe etc. the name is actually Arab mutation of originall jewish name.

On the other side in europe helenistic culture and knowledge was effectivelly lost (hence dark ages) and the silk road was cut off between 5 and 6 century.
(Charlemagne made futile attempt to reopen the last part of it 200 yrs later)

So there is more factors, but in the end the hostility of rabid theocracy against any sort of progress plays major role in the end.

J.

[Imperial Overlord]

There were a couple things that really got this started. The first was the construction of the religions. Christianity is more flexible. There was, at this time, not a whole lot known, and not a lot that they knew that directly contradicted scripture. Even Aquinas and Justinian did not take all of the bible as the literal truth to my knowledge. So christianity was better placed to absorb and deal with changes that resulted from scientific inquiry. They did not have a hard limit placed on their knowledge by their faith like Islam does.

This is incorrect. Islam is not a single, unified dogmatic whole. It split immediately after Mohammed's death and has generated off shots since then. Muslims invented Algebra, not Medieval Christians. Attempting to say that Christianity as a religion is better suited to dealing with scientific knowledge is certainly not supported by Medieval evidence.

The second thing was the counter-reformation, and the creation of Universities. This was a catholic thing. They IIRC created the first universities since the hellenistic period, where scholars could gather, discuss and engage in science and other pursuits.

Wrong. Universities were alive and flourishing in the 12th Century. The Counter Reformation was a religious movement aimed at subverting Protestantism. It did not release the djinn of higher education, it merely attempted to make use of it to serve the Catholic religion. The best example of this is the Jesuits. And you skipped the Renaissance and the 12th Century Renaissance (when the afformentioned universities were quite active), which is frankly fucking bizarre since your referenced Aquinas and was one of the most famous intellectuals of the 12th Century (regardless of what you think of the quality of his work).

The last thing was the church, nobility, and city states pouring money into the arts and sciences. DaVinci financed himself as a military engineer for various italian city states for a good part of his career. This kind of investment was not seen in islamic states.

The Renaissance again. The Turks were quite capable of building large scale siege cannons, one of the most impressive technological achievements of the era. Note that the Church wasn't exactly responsive to a number of the achievements of Renaissance scholars in the field of science, although Gallileo didn't exact help himself by waving the red flag in front of the bull.

Medieval Islam managed to preserve a considerable body of Hellenistic and Roman knowledge as well as make innovations of their own. Its in the post Medieval period that Europe pulls ahead in science and technology. I don't know enough about the Muslim nations during that time period to comment more precisely on them.

[Kanastrous]

Hovever Jews could live relativelly freely under muslim rule

If they paid the jizya.

If they stayed in their ghettos.

If they didn't mind the occasional murderous riots directed against them by Islamic scholars.

I think it kind of stretches the definition of "relatively."

[Darth Wong]

I don't think it is reasonable to discuss a topic like this without mentioning the fact that the modern scientific method as we know it was a fairly recent development. In fact, the scientific revolution that took place in Europe over a period of a few centuries was arguably kicked off by the (informal) adoption of this method.

And the thing is, the people who first started pushing this method were indeed grilled about their failure to incorporate God in their writings. Was it Kepler who retorted that he had no need of that hypothesis?

There had to come a point where science and religion would come into serious conflict. Improvements in metallurgy or chemistry or business accounting practices may meet some resistance but they don't really pose a problem for the Bible or the Quran. However, when you start contradicting dogma about the movement of celestial bodies through the heavens (and most spectacularly with the origin of man), then the nature of the religion becomes a bigger potential bottleneck to scientific development.

[Kanastrous]

when you start contradicting dogma about the movement of celestial bodies through the heavens

Didn't the whole complicated overworked system of epicycles actually function effectively, while the establishment was clinging to the geocentric model (and adding ever more epicycles to account for new observations)?

My understanding was that heliocentrism won acceptance on the principle of Occam's Razor, rather than a failure of epicycles to consistently describe celestial movements.

[Darth Wong]

when you start contradicting dogma about the movement of celestial bodies through the heavens

Didn't the whole complicated overworked system of epicycles actually function effectively, while the establishment was clinging to the geocentric model (and adding ever more epicycles to account for new observations)?

My understanding was that heliocentrism won acceptance on the principle of Occam's Razor, rather than a failure of epicycles to consistently describe celestial movements.

And Occam's Razor is the crucial component of the scientific method I was talking about. It is, in fact, the part of the scientific method which made science intrinsically atheistic, even if the scientists themselves did not need to be.

Occam's Razor may date back much longer than that, but its incorporation into the scientific method (with the famous line "I had no need of that hypothesis") was not a minor event in the history of science. It was a gigantic one, tantamount to the Magna Carta for the development of civil law.

[Surlethe]

The fact of the matter is, the humans have been constructing explanatory models of the world around them for as long as they've been capable. Not only do they informally have such models anyway -- that's what intuition is -- and need them to function in life, the species also seems to have a driving urge to know. The models have evolved and changed over time, but for most of human history, they've essentially been simply guesswork. Elaborate and highly detailed guesswork, but guesswork no less. Functionally, there is no difference between the Christian, Greek, and Buddhist models of the world: they serve as descriptions, but there is no measure of whether they are the correct descriptions.

The complete scientific method, on the other hand, is basically an algorithm which constructs a sequence of models. As opposed to the essentially random guessing which preceded it (and still, to some extent, continues today), the scientific method, given any starting point, generates a sequence of models which are increasingly accurate and precise when compared to the objective world.

Here's a fun analogy: think of models like seran wrap surrounding "reality". The scientific method continually vacuums out the air, making the models tighter and tighter and elminating the air bubbles.

Because the Christian God in particular is an artifact of some of the models humans have constructed, it is just as much subject to the scientific method as any other model. Therefore, when it was shown to be unnecessary, the Christian model and scientific understanding (I do not say "model", because science deals with a progression of models) naturally come into conflict.

[Kanastrous]

the species also seems to have a driving urge to know.

Which alas leads to people clinging viciously to blue-sky fantasies, when they are confronted with areas in which there's a great deal we don't know, rather than just admit and accept - for the time being - the gaps in our collective knowledge.

[Sidewinder]

One possible reason for the stagnation of the Muslim world is the Mongol invasion, which caused far more damage to Muslim lands than Western Europe, which was spared much of the destruction because the Khan died before the Mongols reached Western Europe, and the horde had to return to Mongolia to select his successor. (See What if? for more info.)

[Kanastrous]

"Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" suggests that the Mongols withdrew from Europe because they didn't find it particularly worth invading or occupying, compared to the territories farther east.

[hawkwind]

Hovever Jews could live relativelly freely under muslim rule

If they paid the jizya.

If they stayed in their ghettos.

If they didn't mind the occasional murderous riots directed against them by Islamic scholars.

I think it kind of stretches the definition of "relatively."

Compare to medieval Spain, particulary during and after reconquest and you see what I mean.

Chalif of Cordoba was actually rather protective of Jewish population seeing it as productive both in arts and science. Guess its always a matter of the ruler, but fact that jews were flying europe into states under muslim rule tells something.

J.

[Kanastrous]

Hovever Jews could live relativelly freely under muslim rule

If they paid the jizya.

If they stayed in their ghettos.

If they didn't mind the occasional murderous riots directed against them by Islamic scholars.

I think it kind of stretches the definition of "relatively."

Compare to medieval Spain, particulary during and after reconquest and you see what I mean.

Chalif of Cordoba was actually rather protective of Jewish population seeing it as productive both in arts and science. Guess its always a matter of the ruler, but fact that jews were flying europe into states under muslim rule tells something.

J.

That's true.

You *did* write, relatively.

[Omeganian]

Hovever Jews could live relativelly freely under muslim rule

If they paid the jizya.

If they stayed in their ghettos.

If they didn't mind the occasional murderous riots directed against them by Islamic scholars.

I think it kind of stretches the definition of "relatively."

I doubt even the Jews are masochistic enough to call such a time "Golden age".

[Darth Wong]

I doubt even the Jews are masochistic enough to call such a time "Golden age".

Well, they call themselves "God's Chosen People" despite the way he treats them in their stories. I'd say there are few limits to Jewish masochism