It was good, but it will be interesting to see how the series unfolds. I confidently predict that it will not include the story of how, although Arab science led the world between the eighth and the thirteenth centuries (above all in astronomy, mathematics and medicine), it then went into sharp decline as Christian Europe surged ahead at the start of the process that is still going on, and which has now spread throughout the world, including to the Arabs.
How and why did this happen?
In part, it was because the Catholic Church insisted on Her independence from the Sate, initially with regard to the appointment of bishops, but rapidly, once the principle had been established, in other areas as well. Under Her aegis, universities, cities and what we would now call professional bodies became legal entities in their own right, providing forums for free discussion. Islam simply did not, and does not, work like that.
But mostly, there was the impact of theological beliefs on the ability to do science. Many of the Arab scientists were in fact Christians, even if heterodox ones such as the translator ibn Masawagh of Baghdad, and his pupil Hunayan, who translated all the known Greek works into Arabic and Syriac, as well writing many medical treatises. The Christian physician ibn al-Quff of Damascus wrote one of the first treatises on surgery.
In Christianity, it is because God is both rational and free that His universe is both orderly and contingent. Since God is free, the universe is not necessary, and could have been otherwise: He need not have created it, and He might have created it any other way that He chose.
If God were rational but not free, then His universe would be necessary and could not be other than it is, so that there would be no need to conduct experiments in order to understand it. Or, if God were free but not rational, then His universe would be so chaotic that there would be no observable order within it, and so science would again be impossible.
In Islam, however, everything is directly dependent on the will of Allah, a view which weakens any expectation to observe rationality and order in the universe, even before considering how capricious that will is presented as being in several verses of the Qur’an.
Thus was science arrested in the Islamic world even as it soared away in Christendom.
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"If God were rational but not free, then His universe would be necessary and could not be other than it is, so that there would be no need to conduct experiments in order to understand it."
ReplyDeleteThis doesn't follow, for at least two reasons. First, if God is not free, it does not follow that the universe is necessary and could not be other than it is. There could be a number of logically possible universes, only one of which God was free to create - it depends on the reasons for his lack of freedom.
Second, the reason for experimental investigation of the universe is that (as a matter of fact) we do not fully understand the universe. Experiment is a good way of coming to understand it better. This would remain true if the universe were necessary. There is no reason to assume that if the universe were necessary, we would therefore automatically understand it perfectly and have no need to conduct experimental investigations into it.
Since the universe exists, and since it exists as it does, then, if God were not free, then the universe could not not exist, and could not exist other than as it does.
ReplyDeleteThere need not be - indeed, at least arguably, there could not be - a reason for God's lack of freedom.
"There is no reason to assume that if the universe were necessary, we would therefore automatically understand it perfectly and have no need to conduct experimental investigations into it."
The history of science does not bear this out. Anything other than an expectation to find order and contingency in the creation of a rational and free God has either stopped science from starting or killed it off, sometimes rapidly, sometimes (as in the Islamic world) quite slowly, but always eventually.
"Anything other than an expectation to find order and contingency in the creation of a rational and free God has either stopped science from starting or killed it off, sometimes rapidly, sometimes (as in the Islamic world) quite slowly, but always eventually."
ReplyDeleteThat might be broadly true of the history of science (at least if you artificially strip out of science the development of technology, which also requires a predictable and stable universe in order to function - and highly advanced technologies were developed in India and China earlier than in Europe). But it is self-evidently not the case now, when very many atheistic scientists conduct experiments to find out more about the universe, without having any expectation to find order and contingency in the creation of a rational and free God.
Of course there are plenty of scientists who are Christians, even now. But atheism does not appear to be any kind of bar to scientific curiosity or investigation.
"highly advanced technologies were developed in India and China earlier than in Europe"
ReplyDeleteOh, that one? Whatever else these things might have been, they cannot have been applications of science of which their inventors and modifiers had no knowledge. Pointers towards it, yes. Applications of it, obviously not.
"very many atheistic scientists conduct experiments to find out more about the universe, without having any expectation to find order and contingency in the creation of a rational and free God"
They might not know that this is what they are looking for, but it is, because they are within the scientific tradition that, as such, does in fact so expect.
If militant atheists really are becoming as dominant among scientists as is often claimed, then that will be ruinous for science. Indeed, the beginnings of that ruin can already be seen.
"But atheism does not appear to be any kind of bar to scientific curiosity or investigation"
The institutionalisation of it within science will be, and increasingly is.
Those who try and teach science in cultures not formed by Christianity regularly report how difficult it is so to teach people with no cultural assumption that the universe is rational and orderly, or that it has not always existed, or that it will not always exist, or that it is not in itself a living being, or that it is not in itself the ultimate reality (in which case it could not, in itself, be investigated much, if at all, by the mere human mind), or that everything has not happened and will not happen in exactly the same way an infinite number of times, or that events on earth are not controlled by the heavenly bodies in that eternalistic, animistic, pantheistic and cyclistic universe.
They also report such difficulties in teaching those who do have a very definite cultural assumption that everything is directly dependent on the capricious will either of Allah or of some popular parody of the Old Testament God.
All of these ideas are gaining ground in our own society. And the likes of Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Peter Atkins and others less noisy, but still specialised at the great expense of their general education, have no way of facing them down.
The "Two Cultures" problem is real, and it is serious. But it is not all on one side. Very far from it, in fact.
"Whatever else these things might have been, they cannot have been applications of science of which their inventors and modifiers had no knowledge. Pointers towards it, yes. Applications of it, obviously not."
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I understand what your point is here.
Inventing something that works may be an application of known science. Or it may just be luck, or an uncommon amount of common sense, or a flash of brilliance, or whatever.
ReplyDeleteIn a culture in which the science in question is unknown, it must be the latter.
Although, of course, it then points towards the science, and is a useful tool for future scientific education: "Look at your lanterns [or whatever]. Your people have been using them for many centuries because they work so well. And the reason why they work so well is..."
"Inventing something that works may be an application of known science. Or it may just be luck, or an uncommon amount of common sense, or a flash of brilliance, or whatever."
ReplyDeleteBut that doesn't account for gradual technological development, in which improvements are made on previous designs, based on a good understanding of how things work and what sort of things might work better, and also often based on experiment, trial and error.
You seem to be using "science" in a very narrow sense.
As for the idea that all scientists are looking for order and contingency in the creation of a rational and free God, whether they realise it or not - well, the idea is entirely impossible to test or disprove. In that sense, it's a claim which has nothing in common with the scientific enterprise you discuss in your post.
"Oh, that one? Whatever else these things might have been, they cannot have been applications of science of which their inventors and modifiers had no knowledge. Pointers towards it, yes. Applications of it, obviously not."
ReplyDeleteThis is a bit like saying that no culture can have poetry until it has linguistics.
"But that doesn't account for gradual technological development, in which improvements are made on previous designs, based on a good understanding of how things work and what sort of things might work better, and also often based on experiment, trial and error"
ReplyDeleteOh, but it does. There can be, and there is, such development within a particular field. Construction, say. Or weaponry. Or food production.
When that is not (and historically or cross-culturally it generally wasn't and isn't) an application of known science, then it is a prepartion for, and even a spur to, science.
"You seem to be using "science" in a very narrow sense"
Properly speaking, it has only a very narrow sense, if that is how you want to define the terms. Building a boat is not science. Why that boat does or does not sink is.
"the idea is entirely impossible to test or disprove"
But science could not have started or developed without presupposing it, as also the falseness of eternalism, animism, pantheism, cyclicism and astrology.
It depended on the condemnation of those propositions (specifically, as articulated by Aristotle), directly from the Bible as such, and directly by the Catholic Church as such.
And it depended on the order and contingency of the creation of the free and rational God, as taught directly from the Bible as such, directly by the Catholic Church as such.
It has been putting into practice those (scientifically) "entirely impossible to test or disprove" teachings ever since, whether or not individual scientists realise that that is what they are doing.
"This is a bit like saying that no culture can have poetry until it has linguistics"
No, no culture can have linguistics until it has poetry. None ever has, and none ever will. But that would be a whole other thread.
An interesting point on the effect of theology & you clearly know moslem history better than I.
ReplyDeleteHowever I would suggest 2 other reasons for the western triumph which must have been at least some influence.
The one that is pure luck is that the Mongols turned back to clebrate the coronation of Kublai Khan when they had overerun Hungary & Poland faster than Hitler did. On the other hand when they got to the Middle East they not only conquered it they destroyed the water system of Iraq turning it to destert (from their point of view to horse pasture). Even now Russia & Poland have not fully recoverd from the Mongol conquest.
The other one which is cultural is that Europe was & remained disunited, despite the attempts of French, German & Spanish kings. A common culture without common political control means that freedom of thouht cannot be suppressed everywhere & has been the common thread of classical Greece & renaissance Italy also & possibly even of pre-Prohibition USA. To that extent the fact that the Papacy provided an overarching legal system without being the supreme power may have been a very positive effect.
You can see why I hate the EU & the globalist politicians.
You are right, of course. My point is about what that common culture actually was and is.
ReplyDelete