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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)

#351

Post by Anthony-G »

dragontamer wrote: post #331
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…

> (Romans -> Ottomans -> mandates) Hittites -> Assyrians -> Babylonians -> Macedonia (aka Alexander the Great) -> Egyptian -> Romans -> Byzantine -> Mongols -> Ottomans That area has been locked in war and conquest for pretty much all of human history.

Shouldn’t Persian (Achaemenid) follow the Babylonians and precede the Macedonian empire?

In 334 B.C, he utterly beat the armies of Persia – Steve Harris

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

#352

Post by temp007007 »

webmobdev wrote: post #188
bg117 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were more than one university in India thousand years back and hosted thousands of students. Islamic Invasions destroyed the culture.

And the Mongols destroyed the Islamic empire. All that's in the past, and it feels good to live in the imagined glory of the past - but what's the excuse today for us indians when our idiot Prime Minister Narendra Modi claims that ancient India had nuclear weapons, aeroplanes and spacecraft and did inter-species head transplant by citing religious mythology as the proof for it? Or when his government wants to promote…

Where do you see these claims being made by Modi? Just curious.

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

#353

Post by dragontamer »

Anthony-G wrote: post #351
dragontamer wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Romans -> Ottomans -> mandates) Hittites -> Assyrians -> Babylonians -> Macedonia (aka Alexander the Great) -> Egyptian -> Romans -> Byzantine -> Mongols -> Ottomans That area has been locked in war and conquest for pretty much all of human history.

Shouldn’t Persian (Achaemenid) follow the Babylonians and precede the Macedonian empire? In 334 B.C, he utterly beat the armies of Persia – Steve Harris

I'm working off of my High School history class from 16 years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if I forgot something (or got something out of order).

I did play some Age of Empires, Civilization, and a few other history games that helped solidify my memory though.

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

#354

Post by kalenx »

feralimal wrote: post #322
kalenx wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is extremely simple to do that. But you won't accept it. You would say the gas canister containing oxygen to be "unproved", or the ignition source to be "unproved to be so", or the camera to be "unproved to truly reflect the reality", or the container in which the gases are put in "unproved to be empty". You do not really care about knowing, you care about being right. And there's nothing I can do for you on this…

Seriously, post a video of you doing that. Or someone else's. If you think I will refute it whatever the case, what can I do? I can only say that I will watch in good faith. If, as you seem to suggest, I do see issues with the video and evidence, and you don't, what does that tell you about your threshold for the acceptance of what is presented as true to you?

Sure, here's the first youtube result I got: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQaYLbsl33g

> I can only say that I will watch in good faith.

You won't.

> If, as you seem to suggest, I do see issues with the video and evidence, and you don't, what does that tell you about your threshold for the acceptance of what is presented as true to you?

Of course my threshold of acceptance is lower than yours! This whole discussion, my point was that your "threshold of acceptance" is ridiculously, insanely high.

For instance, I do think that the BBC guy in this video is acting in good faith. Also, given the two following hypothesis: - Thousands of people around the globe have been putting up complex magic tricks and keep the secret for more than two centuries to make me believe that a gas can burn an produce water; - Hydrogen and oxygen mixed together and ignited produce water vapor.

The latter is far, far more likely than the former.

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

#355

Post by kalenx »

feralimal wrote: post #329
kalenx wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you test, and in one case you find something different to what is presented, what do you do? First, you check for external factors which may have affect the test. If you can confirm you cannot reproduce past results, you may consider discussing with other people about your findings, and publishing if no one can find a reasonable explanation. In any case, you are happy because that's how science progresses. > M…

Knowledge IS a binary thing. Either it is coherent with reality or it is not.

We sent Voyager probes through the solar system using Newton laws, although we know that general relativity is more accurate. Knowledge is a spectrum. If you think that anything has a definitive answer, then I don't know what you are doing, but it is not science.

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

#356

Post by dragontamer »

dragontamer wrote: post #325
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…

> Why not the Middle east? When Japan was conquered by USA in 1940s, the USA treated it with much more respect than the Europeans did vs the Ottoman Empire from WW1. As a result, Japan was able to regrow into a world power. While the countries that formerly constituted the Ottomans are under a constant civil war (and major military groups, like ISIS, dream of re-establishing a religious empire of old: https://en.wiki…

> (eastern part) of the Soviet Union

Erm, Eastern part of Europe: the Soviet Union.

Whatever, I bet people know what I'm talking about. Cutting up countries is bad for their health!

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

#357

Post by kalenx »

feralimal wrote: post #324
kalenx wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm saying, everyone - EVERYONE - is accepting claims all day long, without any proof. You included. But saying "no one is checking" is false. For every claim, there are people who do, actually, check. But you ask for _everyone_ to check _every claim_, which, I repeat myself, is, plainly put, impossible. So either you still do not accept that this is impossible, and going further in the discussion without this axio…

You are mis-representing what I'm saying. I'm saying people are relaying information as if it was true and that they had verified it, when they haven't. Its hearsay, gossip. Or even, lying. I don't say check every case. That's impossible. I'm saying be a bit clearer about what you know and what you believe. Don't say 'I know' when you haven't verified whatever it is. To say you do, is in fact, a type of lie. You are…

Sure, prepend all your sentences by "The evidence that I have seen indicates" if it makes you happy. It changes nothing about the fact that knowledge exists even if you can personally experience it using solely your senses. I know that we've been to the Moon (do you?) although I wasn't even born when this happened.

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

#358

Post by DanBC »

OminousWeapons wrote: post #216
DanBC wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They knew that masks worked from the get go Can you point to the studies that they would have used to confirm this belief?

If you insist I'm happy to go hunting for studies, but let's remember that the CDC from the start was advocating that people reserve masks for healthcare workers. If they didn't believe that masks worked, why would they do that?

I do insist. You're making the claim that WHO / CDC knew that masks work. So, let's see the evidence that you think they had.

> If they didn't believe that masks worked, why would they do that?

Because a healthcare professional stuck in a room with symptomatic people is a different situation to a member of the public walking around.

Especially because HCPs are trained to use masks, they use them in combination with other PPE and routine handwashing; their PPE is made to standards and tested to make sure it complies with those standards; HCPs are audited on their use of handwashing and PPE.

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

#359

Post by Yetanfou »

throwaway123x2 wrote: post #41
Yetanfou wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect many people conflate scholarship with clergy because that was the way things worked in the middle ages in Europe: if you wanted to have enough time for scholarly pursuits the clergy was probably the best place to be. Once it became possible to make a career as a scientist this practice changed but the association between clergy and scholarship still lives in the public perception.

This definitely used to be true, but I don't think it survived colonialism. Nowadays as kids are growing up, there are pretty much two paths: secular (in a manner of speaking) Western style schools, or traditional madrassas (not dissimilar to pre-colonial schools in the region). At least in my middle class socio-economic circles, people who undertook exculsively religious study (as opposed to studying it on the side…

The concept definitely lives on in places like Jesuit educational institutions, one of which I attended for 6 years in the Netherlands [1]. These are not religious schools, they are schools started by people from a religious group which had the odd effect of several of my teachers being priests teaching mathematics, classical and modern languages, physics, etc. The only religious aspect of the school was that the school year was opened and closed in church with the French teacher leading the sermon, the Latin teacher playing the organ, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_Gymnasium

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