Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science

The Decline of Arabic Science: An Analysis

Introduction

Contemporary Islam is not known for its engagement in modern science, despite a celebrated "Golden Age" of Arabic science.
This Golden Age is often invoked to foster mutual respect and understanding between Muslims and Westerners.
President Obama, in a 2009 Cairo speech, praised historical Muslim contributions to science and intellect, which paved the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.
Such tributes often precede discussions of contemporary problems in the region, implicitly suggesting the absence of inherent barriers to tolerance and advancement in the Islamic Middle East.
The disparity between the intellectual achievements of the Middle East during the Golden Age (8th-13th centuries) and its present state is significant.
Historian Bernard Lewis noted that the Islamic world was at the forefront of human civilization for centuries.
Jamil Ragep stated that Europe couldn't match the Islamic world's progress until around 1600.
Many words like algebra, algorithm, alchemy, alcohol, alkali, nadir, zenith, coffee, and lemon are derived from Arabic, showcasing Islam’s contributions to the West.

Contemporary State of Science in the Muslim World

Today, science in the Muslim world is struggling.
According to Pakistani physicist Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy (2007):
- Muslim countries have only nine scientists, engineers, and technicians per thousand people, compared to a world average of forty-one.
- Approximately 1,800 universities exist in these nations, but only 312 have scholars who publish journal articles.
- Turkey hosts twenty-six of the most-published universities, Iran has nine, Malaysia and Egypt each have three, Pakistan has two, and Uganda, the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan, and Azerbaijan each have one.
- Despite around 1.6 billion Muslims globally, only two scientists from Muslim countries have won Nobel Prizes in science (one in physics in 1979, the other in chemistry in 1999).
- Forty-six Muslim countries contribute only 1% of the world’s scientific literature.
- Spain and India each contribute more scientific literature than all of these countries combined.
- Spain translates more books in a single year than the entire Arab world has in the past thousand years.
Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg stated that in forty years, he had not seen a single worthwhile paper by a physicist or astronomer working in a Muslim country.
Arabs, comprising 5% of the world’s population, publish only 1.1% of its books (U.N.’s 2003 Arab Human Development Report).
Between 1980 and 2000, Korea granted 16,328 patents, while nine Arab countries (including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E.) granted only 370, many registered by foreigners.
In 1989, the United States published 10,481 frequently cited scientific papers, while the entire Arab world published only four.
In 2002, Nature magazine identified desalination, falconry, and camel reproduction as the only scientific areas in which Islamic countries excelled.
Efforts to establish new research and science institutions in the Arab world still have a long way to go.

The Decline of Scientific Activity

Given the historical heights of Arabic science up to the thirteenth century, it's crucial to ask what went wrong.
It's important to remember that the decline of scientific activity is the norm, not the exception, for civilizations.
The West's sustained scientific and technological progress is unique.
Ancient Chinese and Indian civilizations, once more advanced than the West, did not produce the scientific revolution.
While the decline of Arabic civilization is not unique, its reasons offer insights into the history and nature of Islam and its relationship with modernity.
Islam's decline as an intellectual and political force unfolded gradually.
The Golden Age was extraordinarily productive, but the past seven hundred years presents a stark contrast.

Defining Arabic Science

A caution is needed regarding the term “Arabic science”:
- The scientists were not all Arab Muslims; many great thinkers were not ethnically Arab, especially considering Muslims were a minority for centuries.
- It was not science as we understand it today. Pre-modern science sought knowledge to understand philosophical questions.
- Modern science emerged from a revolution focused on individual comfort through mastering nature.
- Modern science dismisses ancient metaphysical questions.
- The intellectual activity of the medieval Islamic world differed from the European scientific revolution, which marked a radical break from ancient natural philosophy.
- The term “science” was coined in the nineteenth century; the closest Arabic word, ilm, means “knowledge,” not necessarily of the natural world.
Referencing scientific activity of the Golden Age as Arabic is sensible because:
- Most philosophical and scientific works were translated into Arabic, the common language of scholars in the region.
- Alternatives like “Middle Eastern science” or “Islamic science” are less accurate.
- Little is known about the personal backgrounds of these thinkers.
- Surprisingly little is known about the social and historical context of this era.

Original Contributions of Arabic Science

Arabic civilization contributed significantly more to the development of science than just the passive transmission of ancient thought.
The scholarly revival in Abbasid Baghdad (751-1258), resulting in the translation of almost all scientific works of the classical Greeks into Arabic, was significant.
Arabic thinkers made original contributions through writing and methodical experimentation in philosophy, astronomy, medicine, chemistry, geography, physics, optics, and mathematics.
Muslims largely invented algebra: al-Khwarizmi (died 850) wrote a book, the source of the term algebra; it explained how to solve issues involving trade, inheritance, marriage, and slave emancipations.
The methods involved geometrical figures to solve problems that would be solved algebraically today.
Despite grounding in practical affairs, this book contributed to the development of the algebraic system we know today.
Advances occurred in medicine. Rhazes (al-Razi, died 925), trained in Baghdad and director of two hospitals, identified smallpox and measles, writing an influential treatise.
Rhazes discovered that fever is a defense mechanism and was the author of a 23-volume encyclopedia of medicine.
Rhazes challenged the infallibility of Galen, disputed his theory of humors, and conducted a controlled experiment to test bloodletting.
Avicenna (Ibn-Sina, died 1037) authored the Canon of Medicine, an authoritative reference book for doctors that became a staple in the West for six centuries after being translated into Latin; it included the infectiousness of tuberculosis.
Al-Farabi (died ca. 950) wrote on Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, physics, psychology, alchemy, cosmology, music, and more and was known as the “Second Teacher” after Aristotle.
Al-Biruni (died 1048) wrote 146 treatises totaling 13,000 pages in virtually every scientific field; his major work, The Description of India, was an anthropological study on Hindus.
Al-Biruni nearly accurately measured the Earth’s circumference using his own trigonometric method, missing the correct measurement of 24,900 miles by only 200 miles.
Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham, died 1040) worked in optics, astronomy, mathematics, and engineering, showing flaws in the theory of extramission.
Averroës (Ibn Rushd, died 1198) was a philosopher, theologian, physician, and jurist known for his commentaries on Aristotle; his 20,000 pages included works in philosophy, medicine, biology, physics, and astronomy.

Factors Contributing to the Flourishing of Arabic Science

No single explanation exists for the development of Arabic science.
David C. Lindberg cites an “incredibly complex concatenation of contingent circumstances.”
Scientific activity peaked when Islam was the dominant civilization.
The material backdrop was provided by the rise of a powerful and prosperous empire.
By 750, Arabs had conquered Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, much of North Africa, Central Asia, Spain, and the fringes of China and India.
New routes connecting India and the Eastern Mediterranean spurred wealth through trade and an agricultural revolution.
The vast region was united politically and economically for the first time since Alexander the Great.
This resulted in an Arab kingdom under the Umayyad caliphs (661 to 750) and then an Islamic empire under the Abbasid caliphs (751 to 1258), marking the most intellectually productive age in Arab history.
The rise of the first centralized Islamic state under the Abbasids shaped life in the Islamic world, transforming it from a tribal culture to a dynamic empire.
The empire was theologically and ethnically diverse, and the removal of political barriers allowed scholars from different backgrounds to interact.
Arabic became the common language of all scholars across the vast realm.

The Role of Empire and Urbanization

The spread of empire brought urbanization, commerce, and wealth that helped spur intellectual collaboration.
Maarten Bosker and colleagues explain that in the year 800, the Arab world was highly urbanized, with twice the urban population of the West.
Large metropolises like Baghdad, Basra, Wasit, and Kufa were unified under the Abbasids, sharing a single spoken language and brisk trade via caravan roads.
Baghdad, the Abbasid capital, was home to palaces, mosques, joint-stock companies, banks, schools, and hospitals. By the tenth century, it was the largest city in the world.
The Abbasid empire expanded eastward, connecting with ancient Egyptian, Greek, Indian, Chinese, and Persian civilizations.

The Impact of Paper and Literacy

One of the most important discoveries by Muslims was paper, invented in China around a.d. 105 and introduced to the Islamic world in the mid-eighth century.
Paper made the reproduction of books cheap and efficient, encouraging scholarship, correspondence, poetry, recordkeeping, and banking.
Paper also improved literacy, encouraged since the dawn of Islam due to the Koran.
Medieval Muslims took religious scholarship seriously, and some scientists in the region grew up studying it.
Avicenna knew the entire Koran by heart before arriving in Baghdad.

Islam and Scientific Enterprise

Whether Islam encouraged scientific enterprise is debated.
Some scholars argue that parts of the Koran and the hadith (sayings of Muhammad) encourage believers to understand Allah’s creations.
One hadith urges, “Seek knowledge, even in China.”
Other scholars argue that “knowledge” in the Koranic sense is religious knowledge, and conflating it with modern science is inaccurate.

The Translation Movement in Baghdad

The most significant reason that Arabic science thrived was the assimilation of the Greek heritage, fueled by the translation movement in Abbasid Baghdad.
Dimitri Gutas considers the translation movement as significant as Pericles’ Athens, the Italian Renaissance, or the scientific revolution.
By the year 1000, nearly the entire Greek corpus in medicine, mathematics, and natural philosophy was translated into Arabic, providing the foundation for inquiry in the sciences.
Even the Golden Age scientific centers beyond Baghdad would not have thrived without Baghdad’s translation movement.
The Golden Age demands an explanation of the success of Abbasid Baghdad.

The Gift of Baghdad

The Abbasid caliphate's rise to power in 750 was a revolution in the history of Islam.
The Abbasids made religion and language the defining characteristics of state identity, allowing for a cosmopolitan society.
Their empire lasted until 1258, influencing politics and society from Tunisia to India.
The Greek-Arabic translation movement was centered in the households of great patrons seeking social prestige.
Baghdad enjoyed a high level of cultural support for philosophical and scientific activity.
The translation movement, flourishing from the mid-eighth century to the end of the tenth, was supported by the entire elite of Abbasid society.

Factors Inspiring the Translation Movement

First, the Abbasids found scientific Greek texts useful for technological progress, solving common problems to make daily life easier.
They translated works in mathematics for engineering and irrigation and Greek works on medicine for practical use.
Astrology was adapted to prove the caliphate's divine succession, although this sometimes clashed with Islamic teaching.
There were practical religious reasons to study Greek science, such as determining the direction to Mecca, prayer times, and the beginning of Ramadan.
Ibn al-Shatir, an Arabic astronomer, served as a religious official and timekeeper for the Great Mosque of Damascus.
Greek works were also valuable for rhetoric and ideological warfare, with Aristotle’s Topics used to aid religious disputation and conversion.
Second, Greek thought had already been diffused in the region before Islam, making the Abbasid Baghdad translation movement a continuation of Middle Eastern Hellenism.
Greek thought spread as early as Alexander the Great’s conquests, and Greek centers like Alexandria and the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom were productive centers of learning.
The Greek tongue was known throughout the vast region and was the administrative language of Syria and Egypt.
Greek thought was further spread by Christian missionary activity, especially by Nestorian Christians.
Nestorians contributed technical skill to the Greek-Arabic translation movement and filled translation-oriented administrative posts in the Abbasid government.
The distinguishing factor that led to the Abbasid translation movement was the attempt by the Abbasid rulers to legitimize their rule by co-opting Persian culture, which revered Greek thought.
The Abbasids incorporated Zoroastrianism and the imperial ideology of the defunct Persian Sasanian Empire into their political platform.
This led to the translation of Greek texts into Arabic to recover Persian knowledge, as the Persians believed that sacred Zoroastrian texts were scattered by Alexander the Great.
During the reign of al-Mamun (died 833), the translation movement was reoriented to recover Greek learning in order to oppose the Byzantine Empire.
The Abbasids warmed to the ancient Greeks because the Christian Byzantines did not embrace them.
Al-Kindi (died 870) devised a genealogy that presented Yunan, the ancestor of the ancient Greeks, as the brother of Qahtan, the ancestor of the Arabs.
Until its collapse in the Mongol invasion of 1258, the Abbasid caliphate oversaw the most intellectually productive movement in Arab history, preserving Greek and Persian works.
By making Greek thought accessible, they formed the foundation of the Arabic Golden Age.
Major works of philosophy and science far from Baghdad were influenced by Greek-Arabic translations.
The West benefited from both the preservation of Greek works and from original Arabic scholarship that commented on them.

The Fading of the Golden Age

Arabic civilization began to decline as the Middle Ages progressed.
After the twelfth century, Europe had more significant scientific scholars than the Arabic world.
After the fourteenth century, the Arab world saw very few innovations in fields it had previously dominated.
Innovations were mostly narrowly practical inventions like vaccines.
The Renaissance, the Reformation, the scientific revolution, and the Enlightenment passed unnoticed in the Muslim world.
A modest rebirth of science occurred in the Arabic world in the nineteenth century due to Napoleon’s 1798 expedition to Egypt, followed by decline.
The relationship between Christendom and Islam in the sciences reversed.
The civilization that had been open to the world regressed and became closed, resentful, violent, and hostile to discourse and innovation.

Causes of intellectual decline

Scientific decline is the norm of history, with the West being an exception.
Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani questioned why Arab civilization, after illuminating the world, suddenly became extinguished.
The most significant factor was physical and geopolitical.
As early as the tenth or eleventh century, the Abbasid empire began to factionalize due to increased provincial autonomy and frequent uprisings.
By 1258, the Mongol invasion swept away the Abbasid state.
In Spain, Christians reconquered Córdoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248.
The Islamic turn away from scholarship preceded geopolitical decline, traced back to the rise of the anti-philosophical Ash’arism school among Sunni Muslims.
Al-Mamun imposed an inquisition to promote Mu’tazilism, which was deeply influenced by Greek rationalism but was later opposed.
By 885, copying books of philosophy became a crime.
The de-Hellenization of Arabic high culture was underway.
By the twelfth or thirteenth century, Mu’tazilism was marginalized, and the anti-rationalist Ash’ari school rose.
The Ash’arites opposed original scholarship and scientific inquiry that did not directly aid in religious regulation.
The Mu’tazilites believed the Koran was created, and God’s purpose should be interpreted through reason.
The Ash’arites believed the Koran to be coeval with God and therefore unchallengeable.
Ash’ari metaphysics centers on occasionalism, denying natural causality and suggesting God’s will is completely free.
God is the only cause, and the world is a series of discrete physical events each willed by God.
Maimonides described this view as natural things following habit, not necessity.
According to the occasionalist view, God wills every single atomic event, and His will is not bound by reason.
This amounts to a denial of the coherence and comprehensibility of the natural world.
Pope Benedict XVI quoted Ibn Hazm, saying, “Were it God’s will, we would even have to practice idolatry.”
This doctrine could lead to dogma and the end of free inquiry in science and philosophy.
Al-Ghazali (died 1111) attacked philosophy and philosophers in The Incoherence of the Philosophers, worrying that philosophical arguments would make Muslims less pious.
Al-Ghazali argued that philosophy, in assuming necessity in nature, was incompatible with Islamic teaching that recognizes that nature is entirely subject to God’s will.
Al-Ghazali defended logic only to undermine philosophy.
Sunnis embraced al-Ghazali, and opposition to philosophy ossified.
Arab contributions to science became increasingly sporadic as anti-rationalism sank in.
The Ash’ari view endures, with its most extreme form seen in some sects of Islamists.
Mohammed Yusuf, leader of the Nigerian Taliban, explained why “Western education is a sin” by denying scientific explanations for natural phenomena.
Islamic leaders attribute natural disasters to God’s vengeance.
Robert R. Reilly argues that the disconnect between the creator and the mind of his creature is the source of Sunni Islam’s most profound woes.

Closing of Ijtihad

Ossification occurred in law.
The first four centuries of Islam saw vigorous discussion regarding legal issues, following the tradition of ijtihad or independent judgment.
By the end of the eleventh century, discordant ideas were increasingly seen as a problem, and rulers worried about dissent.
The “gates of ijtihad” were closed for Sunni Muslims:
- Ijtihad was seen as no longer necessary, since all important legal questions were regarded as already answered.
- New readings of Islamic revelation became a crime.
- All that was left was to submit to the instructions of religious authorities; to understand morality, one needed only to read legal decrees.
Thinkers who resisted the closing came to be seen as nefarious dissidents.
Averroës was banished for heresy, and his books were burned.

The Theological-Political Predispositions of Islam

The Ash’arites won and the Mu’tazilites lost, suggesting that Muslims found Ash’ari thought more convincing.
Muslim theologians appeared receptive to the occasionalist view as early as the ninth century.
The Ash’ari victory raises questions about the theological-political predispositions of Islam.

Comparing Islam with Christianity

Christianity acknowledges a private-public distinction and allows adherents liberty in their social and political lives.
Islam denies any private-public distinction and includes laws regulating the most minute details of private life.
Islam does not acknowledge any difference between religious and political ends.
Christ was an outsider of the state, while Mohammed was a prophet and political leader.
Islam was born outside of the Roman Empire and was never subordinate to politics.
For Islam, religion and politics were interdependent from the beginning; Islam needs a state to enforce its laws, and the state needs a basis in Islam to be legitimate.

Inquiry Compared

European scholars argued when the Bible contradicts the natural world, the holy book should not be taken literally.
Augustine held that knowledge and reason precede Christianity and encouraged Christians to use the classical sciences.
Galileo remarked that “the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.”
David C. Lindberg argues that the Christian church offered encouragement for the investigation of nature.
Rodney Stark notes that many of the greatest scientists of the scientific revolution were also Christian priests or ministers.
The Church's acceptance of philosophy and science was evident from the High Middle Ages.
Aquinas was rarely forced to contend with an anti-philosophic bias.
Institutional dedication to scientific inquiry was too entrenched in Europe for any authority to control.
Attacks on reason would have been regarded as bizarre and unacceptable.

Institutional Differences

Rational disciplines had not been institutionalized in classical Islam.
Toby E. Huff argues that modern science emerged in the West because it tolerated heretical and innovative ideas.
Islamic civilization did not have a culture hospitable to the advancement of science, while medieval Europe did.
The lack of a scientific curriculum in medieval madrassas reflects a deeper absence of a capacity or willingness to build legally autonomous institutions.
Madrassas were established under the law of waqf, obligating them to follow the religious commitments of their founders.
Islamic law did not recognize any corporate groups or entities, preventing the recognition of institutions such as universities.
Legally autonomous institutions were absent in the Islamic world until the late nineteenth century.
Madrassas nearly always excluded study of anything besides the subjects that aid in understanding Islam.
These were referred to as the “Islamic sciences,” in contrast to Greek sciences, which were widely referred to as the “foreign” or “alien” sciences.
The term “philosopher” in Arabic — faylasuf — was often used pejoratively.
The rigidity of the religious curriculum contributed to the educational method of learning by rote.
Repetition, drill, and imitation are habituated at an early age in many parts of the Arab world.
The exclusion of science and mathematics from the madrassas suggests these subjects were institutionally marginal in medieval Islamic life.
Inquiry was tolerated, and sometimes promoted by individuals, but it was never officially institutionalized and sanctioned by the intellectual elite of Islam.
When intellectual discoveries were made, they were not picked up and carried by students and did not influence later thinkers in Muslim communities.
No one paid much attention to the work of Averroës after he was driven out of Spain to Morocco until Europeans rediscovered his work.
The lack of institutional support for science allowed Arabic thinkers to be bolder than their European counterparts but also meant that they relied on the patronage of friendly rulers and ephemeral conditions.
The legal system that developed in twelfth- and thirteenth- century Europe was instrumental in forming a philosophically and theologically open culture that respected scientific development.
European universities were legally autonomous, developing their own rules, scholarly norms, and curricula.
The norms they incorporated were those of curiosity and skepticism, and the curricula they chose were steeped in ancient Greek philosophy.
A spirit of skepticism and inquisitiveness moved theologians and philosophers.

Technological Innovation

Europeans strove to invent labor-saving technology, such as the heavy-wheeled plow and the padded horse collar.
Eleventh-century England had more mills per capita than even the Ottoman lands at the height of the empire’s power.
The printing press was not introduced in the Islamic world until 1727, despite being in use since 1460 in the West.
The telescope appeared in the Middle East soon after its invention in 1608 but failed to attract excitement or interest until centuries later.

European Absorption of Knowledge

As science in the Arabic world declined, Europe absorbed classical and scientific works through cultural centers in Spain.
By 1200, Oxford and Paris had curricula that included works of Arabic science.
Works by Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy, and Galen, along with commentaries by Avicenna and Averroës, were all translated into Latin and formally incorporated into the program of study of universities.

The failure to reconcile faith and reason.

Islam lags because it failed to offer a way to institutionalize free inquiry.
That, in turn, is attributable to its failure to reconcile faith and reason.
Islamic societies have fared worse than the West and many societies of Asia.
Every country in the Middle Eastern parts of the Muslim world has been ruled by an autocrat, a radical Islamic sect, or a tribal chieftain.
Islam has no tradition of separating politics and religion.

The gold standard

The decline of Islam and the rise of Christianity has been deeply humiliating for Muslims.
Since Islam ascribed its political power to its theological superiority, its fading raised questions about where a wrong turn was made.
Muslim reformers have been debating how best to reacquire the lost honor.
The Muslim world tried and failed to reverse its decline by borrowing Western technology and sociopolitical ideas.
These tastes of “modernization” turned many Muslims away from modernity.
Can and should Islam’s past achievements serve as a standard for Islam’s future?
Knowledge of the Golden Age may exhort the Islamic world to improve itself and hate the West less.
The story of Arabic science offers a window into the relationship between Islam and modernity.

The Need for Self-Criticism

Appeals to emulate Muslim ancestors may be misguided because many medieval Muslims embraced ideas that presaged modernity.
On an intellectual level, this effort could be deepened by challenging the Ash’ari orthodoxy that has dominated Sunni Islam for a thousand years.
A return to the Mu’tazilites may not be enough, as even the most rationalist schools in Islam did not categorically argue for the primacy of reason.
It was not only Ash’arite but Mu’tazilite circles that produced numerous polemical treatises against Aristotelian philosophy.
Popularizing previous rationalist schools would not go very far in persuading Muslims to reflect on the theological-political problem of Islam.
While the rediscovery of the influential Arabic philosophers would provide great help, no science-friendly Islamic tradition offers a theological renovation in the vein of Luther and Calvin.
A return to the Mu’tazilites might not be enough.
What is needed in Islam is less self-pride and more self-criticism.
Today, self-criticism in Islam is valued only insofar as it is made as an appeal to be more pious and less spiritually corrupt.
Most criticism in the Muslim world is directed outward, at the West.
This prejudice is one of Islam’s biggest obstacles.
It makes information that contradicts orthodox belief irrelevant and closes off debate about the nature and history of Islam.
Inquiry into the history of Arabic science may have a beneficial effect if pursued in an analytical spirit.
Muslims would use it as a resource within their own tradition to critically engage with their philosophical, political, and founding flaws.
It will arise from Muslims’ own determination, creativity, and wisdom.