Decline of Arabic science needs another explanation

Thursday January 31, 2008
The Guardian

Jim Al-Khalili claims the post-medieval decline of science and academic inquiry in the Islamic countries was due to "the gradual fragmentation of the Abbasid empire and the indifference shown by weaker rulers toward science" (It's time to herald the Arabic science that prefigured Darwin and Newton, January 30).

This argument does not convince me, given that, historically, political fragmentation was often correlated with advances in academic thought and in other cultural fields. Thus, western philosophy originated in the politically highly fragmented world of pre-classical Greece, ancient engineering advanced under conditions of political diversity during the Hellenistic age, and it was arguably competition between the states of early modern Europe that triggered discoveries, technological innovations and sustained economic growth.

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At the very least, political fragmentation allows academics who have fallen foul of political authorities to evade repression. It is perhaps not a necessary, but in the long run a sufficient condition for the freedom of inquiry that is fundamental to scientific progress. The decline of Arabic science needs to be explained in other terms than those used by Professor Al-Khalili.
Oliver Volckart
London School of Economics

It is extraordinary that even today Arab and Islamic contributions to science, philosophy, maths, medicine and the like are still ignored or glossed over.

At best, the Arab and Islamic era is credited as acting as a deep freeze for Greco-Roman thought, whereas of course Arab and Islamic thinkers borrowed from a huge range of civilisations, not to preserve for future generations but to use and develop themselves, which they did to great effect. Like any successful civilisation, it built on previous ideas. Indeed in many cases Arab and Islamic thinkers refuted or revised Greek thinking.

Perhaps the lesson for the modern Arab and Islamic world is to recreate that brilliance through developing their human resources, and recreating the climate of thirst for knowledge and thinking which fuelled that extraordinary era.
Chris Doyle
Director, Council for Arab-British Understanding

How could science flower under dictatorial, fundamentalist regimes where scholarship and pursuit of knowledge are being actively curbed? According to Unesco, the lowest number of books in science and technology are being translated in the Middle East. The only Muslim to receive the Nobel prize in science, the late Professor Abdus Salam, lived and worked in the UK; and Pakistan, his native country, didn't even consider him a Muslim because he belonged to the Khadiani sect. Jim Al-Khalili should realise that the atmosphere in any Arab or Muslim country today is not conducive to the development of science.
M Riaz Hasan
Pinner, Middlesex