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Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

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Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#241

Post by nickbauman »

29athrowaway wrote: post #99
pjc50 wrote: post #13

> "We will turn to this question later, but it is important to keep in mind that the decline of scientific activity is the rule, not the exception, of civilizations. While it is commonplace to assume that the scientific revolution and the progress of technology were inevitable, in fact the West is the single sustained success story out of many civilizations with periods of scientific flourishing. Like the Muslims, th…

The point that marks the end of the Islamic Golden Age is the Siege of Baghdad of 1258. As the Mongols expanded, each time they encountered an empire, they offered them two alternatives: a) Pay tribute to the Mongols, b) War with the Mongols and their vassal nations. The caliphate chose the war option, unaware of the true military strength of the Mongols, who they considered primitive barbarians. The result was the c…

Yes. But the Mongols (Golden Horde) reached Germany eventually in the late 14th century, but that was their apotheosis; they never came back after that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe#Agai...

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#242

Post by weswpg »

thisiscorrect wrote: post #240
rsynnott wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Japan went from insular agrarianism to a world power to collapse to continued scientific development through to the 21st century. As did much of the Far East. Why not the Middle east? There are lots of theories, of course, but one I find interesting is that East Asia, in addition to never being colonized to the same extent as most places, emerged with national boundaries largely intact. The Middle East was under fo…

Is this claiming that ethnic diversity within a country's borders causes strife, and in turn hinders scientific development?

Maybe national identity is the issue, rather than ethnic identity. In Japan's case, they had continuity of government and a professional bureaucracy.

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#243

Post by leftyted »

mrwnmonm wrote: post #111
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel has good universities and has research output comparable to European/NA countries. The author is also including in Contemporary Islam, SEA countries like Malaysia. He also discusses Pakistan and ancient Indian civilizations as separate entities, which have geographical overlap, because Pakistan (and Bangladesh) is far behind India in terms of research productivity.

Israel has that because the US accepts and supports that development. They won't allow that in the islamic countries.

Israel does not have successful academic institutions because of the US. They built it themselves.

The theory that the US "does not allow" the establishment of academic institutions in Islamic countries is equally wrong.

edit - There is a common attitude among Arabs (evident in this poster's comments in this thread) that everything bad in Arab countries is due to some combination of the US and Israel. One of my teachers, a Jordanian, told me how his father would poke fun at this attitude: when something in the house would break, his father would ironically blame Israel for it.

American foreign policy in the Arab world is complicated. It seems to me that many Arab countries oscillate between Islamist democracies and secular dictatorships. The US prefers the latter to the former. I think it's fair to criticize this stance but my sense is that the US would support a secular democracy, were it possible. The Obama administration supported the secular opposition to Assad...but it has turned out that the biggest faction of the Syrian opposition are Sunnis motivated by Islamism, hence America backing away from Syria.

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#244

Post by lappet »

pjc50 wrote: post #13

> "We will turn to this question later, but it is important to keep in mind that the decline of scientific activity is the rule, not the exception, of civilizations. While it is commonplace to assume that the scientific revolution and the progress of technology were inevitable, in fact the West is the single sustained success story out of many civilizations with periods of scientific flourishing. Like the Muslims, th…

> in fact the West is the single sustained success story out of many civilizations with periods of scientific flourishing

I find this statement problematic. The West is leading the current period of scientific revolution, as the Muslims, the ancient Chinese and Indians did during their periods of scientific achievement.

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#245

Post by rsynnott »

thisiscorrect wrote: post #240
rsynnott wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Japan went from insular agrarianism to a world power to collapse to continued scientific development through to the 21st century. As did much of the Far East. Why not the Middle east? There are lots of theories, of course, but one I find interesting is that East Asia, in addition to never being colonized to the same extent as most places, emerged with national boundaries largely intact. The Middle East was under fo…

Is this claiming that ethnic diversity within a country's borders causes strife, and in turn hinders scientific development?

National identity. Colonialism tended to produce totally novel countries, and often who was put in charge was largely random.

It’s not just a colonialism thing either; in Europe wars often resulted in territorial change; the territory was then the cause of the next war.

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#246

Post by sbmthakur »

webmobdev wrote: post #185
simonh wrote: post #90

The reason for this is that historically most civilizations, or phases of civilizations have lacked two things. One is the strong, persistent social institutions needed to maintain the momentum of scientific progress. The other is a solid socialised understanding of scientific methods. To maintain consistent scientific and engineering development you need both, and possibly a third in the from of the printing press,…

More than all of this - the key is political leaders. Visionary political leaders make or break their country or end civilizations. Both India and America are witnessing this currently with their respective elected right-wing "leaders" in Narendra Modi and Donald Trump. In India Astrology is now being treated as a Science and the Modi government is considering allowing alternate medicine (Ayurveda / Homeopathy / Unan…

> In India Astrology is now being treated as a Science and the Modi government is considering allowing alternate medicine (Ayurveda / Homeopathy / Unani) "doctors" to prescribe allopathic medicines.

I have had Astrologers visit my house when Modi was no where around in the national political scene. And exploring alternative medicine is hardly specific to Modi government. Even WHO is doing it:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/24/health/traditional-chines...

Though I agree that pseudo-science like Homeopathy should not be promoted in any way and ancient medical knowledge like Ayurveda should be strictly regulated and rigorously tested.

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#247

Post by kalenx »

feralimal wrote: post #203
kalenx wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I verified a _lot_ at school. Simple stuff, sure, but it's the method which matters, not the thing you verify. I guess it may depend on the education systems, but seeing it as an 'indoctrination system' is just dishonest, given that by _definition_ you want to change the minds of the children. There is no --or so little-- spontaneous learning when you reach something more complicated than the basic action/immediate c…

To all those that are telling me how much verification is going on, I want to offer this very simple and basic question. How was water proven to you to be made up of 2 gases? Please don't refer me to youtube videos where a showman's pop is made, and we see some water droplets from the air condensate on the bottle. I want to see 2 gases being added together and making a liquid, that is water. We are apparently on a pl…

It isn't much to ask at all, but what you describe makes little sense.

1) What's the issue with "showman pop and some water droplets"? What's the difference between producing 1 mL or 1 gallon of water in terms of _verification_?

2) You can verify it in various ways, including obtaining back oxygen and hydrogen from water. You can measure the weight of the water you've used (and derive the number of molecules), and the weight of the gases you obtain (and again check that it matches what you've provided).

3) Sure, your sensors (eyes, ears, etc.) are not accurate/fast enough to literally see two H2 molecules and one O2 molecule creating two H2O. If you feel that this in itself is enough to impede verification then we have an issue. You can always go back to a point where your eyes are enough to validate an hypothesis and build from there, so everything holds. But you seem to be asking that for _every_ scientific proof in our modern world, which is just mischievous.

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#248

Post by thisiscorrect »

rsynnott wrote: post #245
thisiscorrect wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this claiming that ethnic diversity within a country's borders causes strife, and in turn hinders scientific development?

National identity. Colonialism tended to produce totally novel countries, and often who was put in charge was largely random. It’s not just a colonialism thing either; in Europe wars often resulted in territorial change; the territory was then the cause of the next war.

Could you elaborate? In both Ireland's and Korea's cases, despite their relatively small size, both nations have notable scientific output. What's different about them?

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#249

Post by mcguire »

thisiscorrect wrote: post #240
rsynnott wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Japan went from insular agrarianism to a world power to collapse to continued scientific development through to the 21st century. As did much of the Far East. Why not the Middle east? There are lots of theories, of course, but one I find interesting is that East Asia, in addition to never being colonized to the same extent as most places, emerged with national boundaries largely intact. The Middle East was under fo…

Is this claiming that ethnic diversity within a country's borders causes strife, and in turn hinders scientific development?

A hypothesis: not diversity, but division. Consider the Kurds; their traditional territory is in about 5 modern countries, and they don't particularly get along with any of their governments.

That isn't directly related to "scientific development", but that, like most things, relies on economic and political stability.

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#250

Post by EForEndeavour »

feralimal wrote: post #213
EForEndeavour wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a perfect world, any random person would have the ability to independently verify any scientific claim they cared to. But as you imply, our world is far from perfect. Many scientific facts require heavy training and/or expensive equipment to verify that most people just don't have. But the cool thing is that IF you did have the skills and gear (and patience, free time, assistants, etc.), you absolutely can image a…

Have you heard of the reproducibility/replication crisis? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis "A 2016 poll of 1,500 scientists reported that 70% of them had failed to reproduce at least one other scientist's experiment (50% had failed to reproduce one of their own experiments). In 2009, 2% of scientists admitted to falsifying studies at least once and 14% admitted to personally knowing someone who did. M…

The replication crisis is only possible precisely because scientific claims are by definition falsifiable. What's the religious equivalent of the replication crisis? Holy wars?

The replication crisis is an alarming and embarrassing problem, driven largely by the slavish "publish or perish" incentive structure. But I don't think this relates to your original claim that "no one - NO ONE - is verifying anything personally. No one is testing the claims." It's through exactly those attempts at verification and testing that scientists are realizing that standards of statistics, transparency, and integrity are not good enough.

> I love science, and the scientific method. But, not the science we have. It really is akin to religion - both are means of governance of the masses by controlling what is acceptable to think about.

Science is inextricably linked to politics and society, as you rightly point out. Good science indeed can and should guide policy and governance, but calling that "controlling what is acceptable to think about" is wildly pessimistic.

Your argument has evolved into "scientists and science is imperfect due to various sources of bias." That's true, but I disagree that this makes science "absolutely equivalent to religion."

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