Fear of Science
This is from an article on the contemporary fear of science in the Muslim world in Nature Magazine based on a lecture by Ziauddin Sardar
On Islam and science two things can be stated with some certainty. One, science thrived during the classical period of Islam; two, science in Muslim society has suffered a drastic decline. The difficulties arise in trying to ascertain when the decline began and what the causes were. Historians of science offer different dates and reasons.
It is tempting to blame Islam itself. There is something in the teachings of Islam, the argument goes, which does not allow science to take root in Muslim societies. This suggestion not only belies history but also the basic teachings of Islam, which proclaims itself as an intrinsically rational world view.
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If the basic teachings of Islam are the same now as they were 1,400 years ago, what was it that drove science, learning, knowledge and creativity from Muslim culture? Historians have tried in vain to fix a date, to pinpoint what provoked the downward spiral. There are many factors to consider — including colonialism and wars — but in searching for the genuine causes of decline, I believe we must consider that the practice, if not the teachings, of Islam has changed. By recognizing this, I will argue, Islam can then become part of the solution.
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The question today is how these driving forces sputtered to a halt. I would argue that the decline of science in Muslim societies is a product of the systematic reduction in the meaning of the basic concepts of Islam. This process not only reduced Islam from a holistic world view to a one-dimensional faith but also truncated the creativity of Muslim societies. If Muslim society is like a human body — an analogy once used by the Prophet Muhammad — then this process of reduction has taken the mind from the body. What is left is living and functioning — but without the brain. As a result, science and rationality have almost completely evaporated in contemporary Islamic culture.
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Muslim civilization wherever it spread was a city-building culture; architecture, city planning and land management, provision of clean water and sewage disposal all benefited from the application of science. The study of astronomy, geography and map making, alongside development of compasses and observational instruments, all facilitated long-distance trade. Consequently, the state was a major sponsor and consumer of science for multiple reasons — from building cities to warfare technology.
The great scientists of the classical era all contributed, directly or indirectly, to this social context. In turn, the institutions of Islam ensured that science prospered and served society. One of the pillars of Islam is zakat, the annual payment required of all Muslims and dedicated to social purposes such as education, health provision and the eradication of poverty. Charitable giving begat new social institutions called waqf. These charitable endowments funded projects such as hospitals, universities and research establishments. Science never emerges in a vacuum; it always has a cultural context; it is fed and shaped by the conditions of its time and place.
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My proposition is clear: the decline can only be reversed by a conceptual shift. Science will only take root in Muslim societies if they can rethink Islam itself as a holistic enterprise. Science will flourish, paradoxical as this may seem to many, when Islam re-emerges as an integrative way of knowing, being and doing; when it reconstructs the open intellectual climate and cultural paradigms it once sustained.
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This is the main message of the 2003 Arab Human Development Report on ‘Building a Knowledge Society’. It admits frankly that Muslims cannot merely continue to blame everything on colonialism and the West. Muslim states have failed, by their own Islamic standards, the challenge of independence. The report blames authoritarian thought, lack of autonomy in universities, the sorry state of libraries and laboratories, and under-funding in the Arab world. [More...]
Filed under: Changing World, Sloganism over Reality
Um, is there a fear of science or a lack of technological advancement in certain predominately Muslim areas? Is this because of the prevalence of poverty or because of a religious based aversion to science?
The reason I am asking is because I know plenty of Muslim doctors, engineers, etc. On Oprah I watched a team of Egyptian doctors that included a woman. In Muslim personal ads I see plenty of single women (doctors) looking for husbands.
I am not sure that contemporary Muslims feel that Islam doesn’t allow for scientific thinking. One of the interesting points in this post is the issue of zakat and institution building.
On another note I was recently listening to NPR and they were discussing the crisis in science education within the United States. The basic point was that American society, children and adults, have little general knowledge about science. This makes me think that a lot of the crisis in science is due to the changing structure of society or perhaps issues of access and the undemocratic nature of intellectual communities.
Does anyone else have other ideas?
A lack of patronage of the arts and sciences coupled with the ‘closing of the doors of ijtihad’ had something to do with the decline.
I don’t have statistics, Samira, but I think there may be a tendency for muslims to study science-based techniques rather than actual science- medicine rather than biology or biochemistry, engineering rather than physics. You only need look at muslims’ attitude to modern biology, with its evolutionist basis, to see that there are realproblems in accepting some aspects of modern science.
One reason for the decline, I’d guess, was the triumph of asharite philosophy over mutazalite in the muslim world, just when the mutazalites, especially Averroes and Avicenna, removed many of the constraints on European philosophy and enabled the “Rise of the West”.
I hope you realize what it means to have a headline; “fear of science”. What do you think the Pope’s speech at Regensburg was about?