Why did the muslims fail to keep up in science ?

[Darth Wong]

Does it not seem, however, that beyond a certain point, all of the major scientific discoveries were coming from Western Europe? I don't see how military victories are necessarily compelling or even relevant in a thread about scientific progress. It's as if you took a thread asking about scientific progress and somehow converted it into "why did the Muslims lose" in your mind: a question which necessarily involves a lot more factors than pure scientific progress does.

If that was so, wouldn't the economic wealth and prosperity of Western Europe play a part? The steam engine and other factors emerged primarily due to the increase in production from agricultural changes, brought about by global warming as well as the potato from the New World. Increased access to resources and the need and ability to exploit them led to increased incentive to improve technology, and thus science to use them. Similarly, increased wealth led to countries being better able to concentrate resources into scientific pursuits. Britain ruling the waves also isolated her from military threats, and the concert of power in Europe prevented any nation from being able to utterly wipe each other out, thus allowing them to concentrate resources into scientific progress as opposed to the military.

The religious backlash against knowledge and technology in the Muslim world also concided with the period when their wealth had declined and become concentrated in the hands of a ruling elite.

There seems to be a serious misconception here, that pure science even long before the 20th century necessarily required a heavy expenditure of resources on a national scale. You are not the first person to repeat this assumption. What are you basing this on?

[Omeganian]

Actually, the best of advances occur when there is recourse shortage. You must actually think how to survive with what you have. Spain received lots of resources from the New World - and the Inquisition flourished. The Protestants received far less, so they made inventions - and all the New World resources were invested in their countries (well, the advancement in pirate shipbuilding played its part). Spain produced nothing you could buy with the American gold.

[Lord of the Abyss]

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?

Pierre-Simon Laplace of France, speaking to Napoleon.

[Omeganian]

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?

Pierre-Simon Laplace of France, speaking to Napoleon.

Well, I heard this is an anecdote, and Laplace himself said that the God is a very good hypothesis, which can explain everything. The scientist himself was merely searching for an alternative

[PainRack]

There seems to be a serious misconception here, that pure science even long before the 20th century necessarily required a heavy expenditure of resources on a national scale. You are not the first person to repeat this assumption. What are you basing this on?

My intention was not to claim that pure science required a heavy expenditure of resources, but that access to greater wealth and prosperity freed up more people and attention towards the sciences. If societies had to spend more time towards military threats, or towards living, there would had been less focus and time on science. Assuming that each society had the same amount of talent,the one that could spare and allow more talent to be dedicated towards science as opposed to other endeavours would presumably had become more advanced.


Even if this wasn't true, one should address why it was during era of economic depression that fundamentalism and a reversion to strict Islam became more popular.

[Omeganian]

Even if this wasn't true, one should address why it was during era of economic depression that fundamentalism and a reversion to strict Islam became more popular.

When things are bad here, people naturally tend to look for something there.

[Sidewinder]

Even if this wasn't true, one should address why it was during era of economic depression that fundamentalism and a reversion to strict Islam became more popular.

When things are bad here, people naturally tend to look for something there.

For scapegoats? The "infidel=evil evil evil!" attitude is probably one reason the Muslim world is behind, i.e., automatically thinking that ideas from infidels and foreigners are wrong, and that blocking the flow of ideas into their countries is a good way to prevent cultural contamination.

[Kanastrous]

Thus, the Muslim world fell behind (though not that much) in scientific progress because they fell behind in everything else. It's all interrelated.

I think you're missing something, where you're relating Muslim Turkish technical sophistication to the degree of overall historical progress in the Muslim world.

The fact that the Turks had access to modern military technology, doesn't mean they had the technical sophistication or industrial base, to have produced it, any more than Saudi Arabia could produce F-15s without outside assistance.

Turkish deployment and morale, employing imported technology and doctrine, is why Turks won individual battles. A nonexistent parity of sophistication between Muslim and European powers doesn't support it.

And I don't think the difference amounts to "not much," when you consider by 1900 who had - for example - electrification and the internal combustion engine and manned flight, and who didn't.

[Spambot Jedi]

At the risk of repeating what I said in the other thread, the Muslims failed to keep up in science and all other areas because they didn't have the near-limitless funding that some European powers enjoyed by their access to the New World's riches. It just so happened that there were excellent routes from Europe to the Americas and back and from the Americas to Asia and back that nobody else had access to. If Muslim powers had that kind of access, we would be wondering why the Christians failed to keep up in science and coming up with all sorts of ideas about qualities intrinsic to Islam that propelled them forward, when it really had nothing to do with their society, traditions, or with them at all. When your society is awash in wealth, you can afford for more people to be thinkers, tinkerers, and experimenters. When it's not, well... you can't. This is why the people of Papau New Guinea never made it out of the stone age. The poor nutritional content of the local crops meant that virtually everyone had to spend their waking hours producing crops just for everyone to eat.

I don't buy this. A near monopoly on the New World's stock of precious metals failed to keep Spain from declining relative to France and Britain both in both political and scientific stature after reaching their zenith around the same time as the Ottomans.

Further most, New World crops were substantially inferior to the Near Eastern crops that had been introduced to Europe millenia prior. Other than quinoa, which, of the big three New World staple crops, was the only one not widely adopted by Europeans, traditional European staple crops such as wheat are superior in protein content. The cold-resistance of potatoes proved useful as Europe entered the Little Ice Age (although this would have mitigated against adoption of the other New World staple crop, maize).

Also, recall that the Ottomans were facing challenges from the Russians and the Safavids, so its not like they could afford to grow complacent as Western European nations began turning their guns on each other.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I don't buy this. A near monopoly on the New World's stock of precious metals failed to keep Spain from declining relative to France and Britain both in both political and scientific stature after reaching their zenith around the same time as the Ottomans.

Further most, New World crops were substantially inferior to the Near Eastern crops that had been introduced to Europe millenia prior. Other than quinoa, which, of the big three New World staple crops, was the only one not widely adopted by Europeans, traditional European staple crops such as wheat are superior in protein content. The cold-resistance of potatoes proved useful as Europe entered the Little Ice Age (although this would have mitigated against adoption of the other New World staple crop, maize).

Also, recall that the Ottomans were facing challenges from the Russians and the Safavids, so its not like they could afford to grow complacent as Western European nations began turning their guns on each other.

The Spanish empire rose to such fantastic heights because of the collapse of the Chinese paper money system in the 15th century, which caused the silverization of the country. Because it was by far the largest country in the world just as it is today, this caused the price for silver to skyrocket relative to the rest of the world. It just so happened the Spanish had recently acquired the richest sources of silver in the history of the world, such as the Potosi mine in Peru which in one year singlehandedly produced 60% of the world's silver. After about 100 years of exporting silver to China, the price of silver in China finally fell in line with silver prices in the rest of the world, and the arbitrage profits disappeared, and they could no longer sustain such excesses and their empire collapsed. Read any recent article by Flynn / Giraldez for more info.

As for New World crops, the protein content has absolutely nothing to do with their transforming effect on the places where they were introduced. The point is that they could prosper in areas which were worthless for existing crops, opening up vast new areas for agriculture that didn't exist before. The population of China tripled in the 18th century after the introduction of the sweet potato, for instance, since it could grow in the northern regions of the country where rice would not.

In any case, historical thinking has progressed from Eurocentrism based on overt racism seen in Max Weber's writings to Eurocentrism based on superior culture and / or superior geography. As newer and better historical research and data continually shows these claims to be false, Eurocentrics keep restating their claims of superiority of European people and culture in more and more vague terms that are harder and harder to disprove. In fact, European people and culture were simply not superior, and it was only by sheer accident that they ended up reaping the benefits of advanced technology and industrialization. Eurocentrics have been fond of making bold claims about technologies and practices that supposedly existed only in Europe only to have later research show that these things were going on concurrently or even earlier in other parts of the world. I cannot prove that certain European countries weren't the only parts of the world to have pioneered scientific thinking, but after so many years of mainstream history telling us things such as the heavy plow existing only in Europe when it was common in India a thousand years prior, you'll have to excuse me when I roll my eyes at the claim that the beginnings of scientific inquiry were happening in Europe and Europe alone.

[Darth Wong]

In any case, historical thinking has progressed from Eurocentrism based on overt racism seen in Max Weber's writings to Eurocentrism based on superior culture and / or superior geography. As newer and better historical research and data continually shows these claims to be false, Eurocentrics keep restating their claims of superiority of European people and culture in more and more vague terms that are harder and harder to disprove. In fact, European people and culture were simply not superior, and it was only by sheer accident that they ended up reaping the benefits of advanced technology and industrialization. Eurocentrics have been fond of making bold claims about technologies and practices that supposedly existed only in Europe only to have later research show that these things were going on concurrently or even earlier in other parts of the world. I cannot prove that certain European countries weren't the only parts of the world to have pioneered scientific thinking, but after so many years of mainstream history telling us things such as the heavy plow existing only in Europe when it was common in India a thousand years prior, you'll have to excuse me when I roll my eyes at the claim that the beginnings of scientific inquiry were happening in Europe and Europe alone.

That's a beautiful example of the Guilt By Association Fallacy, but do you have an actual criticism of the logic, which has nothing to do with white people or Christians being better than everyone else?

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

The criticism is that English-language historical research about what was going on culturally and technologically in non-European countries is very scarce, which makes it difficult to state with confidence that the kind of philosophical revolutions that were taking place in Europe weren't also taking place elsewhere. For instance, we know that agriculture arose in the Middle East at least ten to eleven thousand years ago, and we don't know that it arose that long ago elsewhere. But with so many archaeologists focused on that area and not so much on others, you would expect earlier findings in the area crawling with archaeologists than the one few people are studying even if agriculture had actually arisen in both areas simultaneously. A person can't prove that people in, say, prehistoric China had agriculture just as early, but the findings in China and other understudied regions pushing the date back further and further would lead you to suspect it.

[Darth Wong]

The criticism is that English-language historical research about what was going on culturally and technologically in non-European countries is very scarce, which makes it difficult to state with confidence that the kind of philosophical revolutions that were taking place in Europe weren't also taking place elsewhere. For instance, we know that agriculture arose in the Middle East at least ten to eleven thousand years ago, and we don't know that it arose that long ago elsewhere. But with so many archaeologists focused on that area and not so much on others, you would expect earlier findings in the area crawling with archaeologists than the one few people are studying even if agriculture had actually arisen in both areas simultaneously. A person can't prove that people in, say, prehistoric China had agriculture just as early, but the findings in China and other understudied regions pushing the date back further and further would lead you to suspect it.

I'm still not seeing any objection to the logic. It seems that you're just inclined to assume that the development of the scientific method was no big deal, and everyone else was probably getting around to it, even if we have no evidence to that effect.

[Vaporous]

I'd be willing to blame it partially on the rise of Sufi mysticism coinciding with the destruction of many centers of wealth and learning by the Mongols. Reason became increasingly unpopular everywhere in the Islamic world but Spain during the 12th and 13th centuries, which led to a decline in science and philosophy. The Mongol invasion left the East, barely recovered from the Crusades, in total ruin. Hundreds of cities and towns were depopulated, looted, and burned. Entire kingdoms were lost. The resulting loss of wealth and leisure made replacing the butchered educated classes nearly impossible, with those who sought to become learned at all turning inward to mysticism rather than outward to the world. Muslim science and logic were summarized by Avveroes in Spain, and passed into Western Europe.