Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

> In trying to explain the Islamic world’s intellectual laggardness, it is tempting to point to the obvious factors: authoritarianism, bad education, and underfunding (Muslim states spend significantly less than developed states on research and development as a percentage of GDP). But these reasons are all broad and somewhat crude, and raise more questions than answers. At a deeper level, Islam lags because it failed to offer a way to institutionalize free inquiry.

This is a pretty blunt and unconvincing dismissal of some pretty huge factors.

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The article makes some pretty strong claims that Islam currently has some fundamental beef with science due to a philosophical beef with causality as a "natural" force that does not exist in the West. I must disagree, not with the idea that Islam has this beef, but that this beef does not exist in the West. It is simultaneously true that Christians have been scientists, and that Muslims have been, and that both institutions have, at various times both endorsed and indicted the scientific method - and more specifically the idea that natural phenomena are causal without the influence of god.

Perhaps the author has heard of Leibniz's seminal work, Monadology? In this work Leibniz essentially argues that all action and causality in the universe is the result of God's great plan unfolding, that every action and reaction is predetermined, stored in every fragment of matter and that causality effectively does not exist. Now, according to the article, this kind of denial of causality is antithetical to scientific thinking and progress. Leibniz, along with Newton, is widely credited with the discovery of Calculus.

On that webpage, why is Zuck pictured in the middle of the Chinese and Russian leaders, is he the real supreme leader of the US :]

Saudi Arabia has made significant investments in STEM[1], so I am not sure it is an ideal counterexample, but a corroborating piece of evidence would be Turkey's higher ranking in STEM graduates than the US[2].

1: https://www.usnews.com/education/arab-region-universities/en...

2: https://www.businessinsider.com/most-technological-countries...

>Hmm, always suspect when you see a thesis about a large and varied group of societies doing anything en masse.

No, history is not just a confusing mass of details. There are larger patterns, and I bet you make use of them in your own thinking.

More specifically, the picture the author presents is in fact what the scholars who have studied the issues have determined to be true.

>Perhaps the author has heard of Leibniz's seminal work, Monadology? In this work Leibniz essentially argues that all action and causality in the universe is the result of God's great plan unfolding, that every action and reaction is predetermined, stored in every fragment of matter and that causality effectively does not exist.

Leibniz's strange philosophy has had no impact at all on science in the West.

> It is simultaneously true that Christians have been scientists, and that Muslims have been, and that both institutions have, at various times both endorsed and indicted the scientific method - and more specifically the idea that natural phenomena are causal without the influence of god.

The author did not deny that. He is talking about the overall trends.