Has Religion Slowed Scientific Progress Through History?

ShahJahanII

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This had been an argument in one of the main game's thread, and I wanted to continue the discussion here.
So, what are your opinions on this?
I know the Catholic Church suppressed a lot of scientists during the Renaissance. But Islam actually supported science in the Middle Ages.
 
Short answer: No.

Long answer: Not really, no.

In fact, I think the Renaissance of the 12th(?) Century was pretty much a Catholic-driven progression, coming to an end only due to the numbers killed by the black death.

EDIT: Should note that I could be entirely wrong here, but from fragments of memories I'm pretty sure this is reasonably accurate from a simplistic overview.
 
Assumptions in the OP that need to be rectified:

1. Technology is not a straight line. "Progress" is not generally an item of universal agreement.
2. The characterization of history-as-progress is generally connected with a generalized form of a specific sort of historiography connected with the development of the British political system, referred to pejoratively as "Whig history". Whiggery, not least due to its teleological implications, has no place in historical thought.

So really, this thread should be rather DOA. On the specific issue of religion, technology, and progress, I recommend this blog post for a decent discussion of why, from a well-read atheist's perspective, this whole "we would have skipped the 'Dark Ages' if not for Christianity" stuff is garbage.
 
This had been an argument in one of the main game's thread, and I wanted to continue the discussion here.
So, what are your opinions on this?
I know the Catholic Church suppressed a lot of scientists during the Renaissance. But Islam actually supported science in the Middle Ages.

Actually, Islam can be said to be partially responsible for their slow scientific and technological decline in comparison to the European nations.
Not so much the Islamic religion but Islamic culture.

Click here for long Story. For short story, look below.
Spoiler :
Past Islamic governments were not against science. Taşköprülüzâde Ahmet, an Ottoman ulema (religious scholar) classified knowledge in four stages: Spiritual, intellectual, oral and written.
Spiritual sciences were divided into two branches, practical (ethics, political science) and theoretical rational(math, theology, natural sciences) and religious (Quran, Islamic studies).

Although the goal of knowledge was to understand the knowledge of God and be spiritually closer, one cannot just study religion. Islamic studies might have been the most important, but it cannot be divorced from more practical sciences. "The scholar who studies only the religious sciences is a poor man, excluded from the greater realities". The Sultans knew this, and Suleiyman I established dozens of medreses, some for general study, others for medicine.

Which is why a highly educated, although rigid, religious class of ulema emerged in Ottoman society.


However, the downfall of Islamic Scientific thought was its unwillingness to contact and learn from non-Islamic societies.
As a general rule, a Muslim's world view a thousand, three hundred years ago was simply Dar al-Islam, House of Islam and everything else, Dar al-Harb House of War. There was simply little room for differentiation and early Muslims sought little from Non-Islamic societies for they were 'barbarians' to Islam and so forth. It was either their way or the highway.

Obviously, the fact that Islamic expansion soon slowed down forced them to change their world view. However, it changed very slowly. In 1068, Said ibn Ahmad, a judge in Toledo, published a book that divided the human race into two parts, Civilised (who concerned themselves with science and learning) and non-civilised (Who don't).
In the civilised pile were Indians, Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Egyptian and Romans(Byzantines actually). Everyone else was a barbarian. Noticed that even after 350 years, much of Europe is excluded? This viewpoint changed very little and very slowly for hundreds of years after.

For example, for centuries, learning a non-Islamic language (not Persian, Arabic, Turkish) was considered barbaric. Usually, whenever a diplomatic exchange occurred between the Arabs/Ottoman Empire and Europe, it was usually the European who learned Turkish/Arabic. Turkish diplomats were either non-Muslim (Balkan Christians, Jews, European immigrants to Turkey) or converted Europeans with knowledge of a European language or a Turk diplomat accompanied by one of them above to act as an interpreter. It was only in Ottoman times where learning Greek and some some Slavic languages were accepted (probably due to the Ottomans being in the Balkans). That's assuming they go to Europe. Seldom do Turks set out into Europe as compared to Europeans into Turkey.

It's no surprise that there are very little translations of European works (except ancient Greek and Roman works) into Turkish/Arabic. Printing presses were also banned from printing non-religious books in Arabic for centuries in Turkey. It was usually Jewish families and some Greek households who handled any translation work. Thus, many European breakthroughs in technology reached Turkey slowly due to translation issues and a general reluctance to go to them to 'learn' from them.

An interesting observation by Nicholas de Nocolay, a visitor to Turkey in 1551.
"The Turks also have among them very excellent practitioners of all the arts and manufacturers, especially the Marranos(expelled Spanish Jews, Muslims and converted Christians) not long since banished and expelled from Spain and Portugal, who to the great detriment and injury of Christianity have taught the Turks several inventions, artifices and machines of War such as how to make artillery, arquebuses, gunpowder, balls and other arms. Similary, they have set up a printing press never before seen in these regions, but it is not permitted to them to print in Turkish or in Arabic."


Basically, any non-Islamic breakthrough of technology, up till the late 18th century, had to be maintained by a steady stream of immigrants from Europe to either show the Turks/Arabs or translate books for them, if they can/will read it, acting as a middle man because the Islamic states were too proud or deemed too 'civilised' or too apathetic to directly ask the 'barbaric' Europeans for technological breakthroughs.

So what is my point after a long and rambling post? Islam encouraged science, but only within their own circle and according to their at times, rigid rules. Thus the unwillingness to look outside said circle, the effect of Islamic cultural world view, slowed or stopped the Ottomans from matching up to the European advancement.

Note: The books I read dealt mainly with the Ottoman Empire and the Arab World and Iran. So I can't say for Islam in India, South East Asia and Africa.
 
This had been an argument in one of the main game's thread, and I wanted to continue the discussion here.
So, what are your opinions on this?
I know the Catholic Church suppressed a lot of scientists during the Renaissance. But Islam actually supported science in the Middle Ages.

Just a fun fact, the Catholic Church was one of the largest employers of "scientists" during the Renaissance. The only scientist I can think of is Augusto Salumbrino, the Jesuit fellow who brought quinine back to Europe; but the suppression of his malaria medicine was because of resistance on the part of other scientists (rather like those who fought the germ theory and sterilization of surgical utensils, and for similar reasons) who happened to be employed by the Church, not because the use of quinine itself was verboten by religious doctrine.
 
Interesting post arronax.
 
I'm proud of this forum for most of these responses refuting the myth of ignorant piety.

I'd just like to add that there's no such thing as "religion," and attributing any universal phenomenon to "religion" is a one-way tram to Bad Conclusionville.
 
Assumptions in the OP that need to be rectified:

1. Technology is not a straight line. "Progress" is not generally an item of universal agreement.
2. The characterization of history-as-progress is generally connected with a generalized form of a specific sort of historiography connected with the development of the British political system, referred to pejoratively as "Whig history". Whiggery, not least due to its teleological implications, has no place in historical thought.

Valid objections in general, but I think that we still accept the idea of objectively verifiable progress in the history of science. Scientific method, explaining and/or disproving stuff and all that.

aronnax said:
As a general rule, a Muslim's world view a thousand, three hundred years ago was simply Dar al-Islam, House of Islam and everything else, Dar al-Harb House of War. There was simply little room for differentiation and early Muslims sought little from Non-Islamic societies for they were 'barbarians' to Islam and so forth. It was either their way or the highway.

Can I quote that for the "religion of peace" thread? :p
 
Interesting post aronnax!
I some time back had a very passionate discussion with Masada over the role of Islam in the Arabian / Ottoman empire. It wasn't really helped by my sciolism, but your post substantiates the gist of my main point after all.

Interesting post arronax.

Thanks! I had to drag out my books to find the quotes and examples. Bernard Lewis and Halil Inalcik. It's actually surprising how small a role Muslim or Turkish sources play in the writing of Ottoman or Arabic history. There are many Islamic and Ottoman scholars and writers that seem to be quite well known to Turkish historians that are strangely absent from European historians.

What were the discussion points with Masada like?

Can I quote that for the "religion of peace" thread? :p

I know you speak in jest, but I think the way Islam and the Quran evolved into an Empire that sought subjugation of the world into believing in Islam or being ruled by Islam is too easy a topic for hardline, anti-Islamist to spin into 'Muslims are evil' due to failure to understand the context, bias against Islam and a historical upgrade in villainy in their actions and goals.

Not that Islam was in anyway peaceful in the same way Christianity is.
 
What were the discussion points with Masada like?
My memory is blurry and I prefer this thread resting with the dead. But primarily I argued that the role of Islam and its influence on innovation and science changed over time and that for the worse. I can't say how true that really is and wouldn't have the confidence to make such an argument today. I can't even sum up Masadas' position. As I recall he was mostly busy attacking my points than to bring forth an own comprehensive interpretation.
 
I seem to remember an episode when the Sultan (Murad IV, but I may be mistaken here) ordered the Islamic printing typeset he received as a gift from Venetians to be thrown into Bosphorus. That's more of a "slowing applied technology" rather then strictly "science", though, and the calligrapher lobby played a part here.
 
Assumptions in the OP that need to be rectified:

1. Technology is not a straight line. "Progress" is not generally an item of universal agreement.
2. The characterization of history-as-progress is generally connected with a generalized form of a specific sort of historiography connected with the development of the British political system, referred to pejoratively as "Whig history". Whiggery, not least due to its teleological implications, has no place in historical thought.

So really, this thread should be rather DOA.

Don't assume that just because ideas aren't currently fashionable they must necessarily be ruled out of court. Peter Harrison is currently conducting a research project investigating whether there is, in fact, room for the notion of "progress" in history. He may prove to be wrong but that doesn't mean the questions aren't legitimate.
 
Peter Harrison is currently conducting a research project investigating whether there is, in fact, room for the notion of "progress" in history.
I'm interested. How do you research that sort of thing? Isn't it a battle of mainly interpretations, rather then facts?
 
aronnax said:
However, the downfall of Islamic Scientific thought was its unwillingness to contact and learn from non-Islamic societies.
As a general rule, a Muslim's world view a thousand, three hundred years ago was simply Dar al-Islam, House of Islam and everything else, Dar al-Harb House of War. There was simply little room for differentiation and early Muslims sought little from Non-Islamic societies for they were 'barbarians' to Islam and so forth. It was either their way or the highway.

Islam =/ Ottomans or Arabs; Hanafi maddhabd =/ Islamic fiqh.
aronnax said:
Obviously, the fact that Islamic expansion soon slowed down forced them to change their world view. However, it changed very slowly. In 1068, Said ibn Ahmad, a judge in Toledo, published a book that divided the human race into two parts, Civilised (who concerned themselves with science and learning) and non-civilised (Who don't).
In the civilised pile were Indians, Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Egyptian and Romans(Byzantines actually). Everyone else was a barbarian. Noticed that even after 350 years, much of Europe is excluded? This viewpoint changed very little and very slowly for hundreds of years after.

How does this matter: Western Europeans used Moor with reckless abandon and made out Muslims to be barbarians. Yet we don't call out Western Europeans for being slow on the uptake of Arab/Greek learning?

aronnax said:
For example, for centuries, learning a non-Islamic language (not Persian, Arabic, Turkish) was considered barbaric. Usually, whenever a diplomatic exchange occurred between the Arabs/Ottoman Empire and Europe, it was usually the European who learned Turkish/Arabic. Turkish diplomats were either non-Muslim (Balkan Christians, Jews, European immigrants to Turkey) or converted Europeans with knowledge of a European language or a Turk diplomat accompanied by one of them above to act as an interpreter. It was only in Ottoman times where learning Greek and some some Slavic languages were accepted (probably due to the Ottomans being in the Balkans). That's assuming they go to Europe. Seldom do Turks set out into Europe as compared to Europeans into Turkey.

Europe was no different, vernacular languages were looked down upon. Instead, most elite Europeans conversed in Latin or a prestige language like French. And that's no different to Southeast Asia either where most elites spoke and wrote in prestige Malay/Court Malay between themselves.

aronnax said:
It's no surprise that there are very little translations of European works (except ancient Greek and Roman works) into Turkish/Arabic. Printing presses were also banned from printing non-religious books in Arabic for centuries in Turkey. It was usually Jewish families and some Greek households who handled any translation work. Thus, many European breakthroughs in technology reached Turkey slowly due to translation issues and a general reluctance to go to them to 'learn' from them.

*snort*

Europe did that too man. The Spanish are the most extreme example. But even in Protestant Geneva the presses were expected to churn out religious works. The other point to make is that there wasn't all that much in the way of secular works in the European literary canon at that stage. The thrust of world literature was still very much religious.

SiLL said:
I can't even sum up Masadas' position. As I recall he was mostly busy attacking my points than to bring forth an own comprehensive interpretation.

It's hard to have a comprehensive position on a topic this diverse and complex without having a PhD in the matter and a few good books behind one. The best therefore one can hope for is to point out specific wrongs, adopt a general position and work from there.
 
This is an interesting thread and I'll come back to it later; to quickly answer the OP's question: no, religion has not slowed scientific progress through history, in as much as we can speak of scientific progress in the first place. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, I'd actually argue that religion has been one of the primary driver behind what we generally considered to be scientific and technological progress - examples; Islamic natural sciences, the Western adoption of the printing press.
 
Islam =/ Ottomans or Arabs; Hanafi maddhabd =/ Islamic fiqh.

Since Selim I conquered Egypt and Hejaz, the Ottomans were practically, Islam's most powerful empire and leading state and representative. Given that there were also the most 'advanced'/'Europeanised' Islamic state for four centuries, I think it is fair to use the Ottomans as a general representation of Islamic Scientific thinking.

How does this matter: Western Europeans used Moor with reckless abandon and made out Muslims to be barbarians. Yet we don't call out Western Europeans for being slow on the uptake of Arab/Greek learning?

The point of that paragraph was to show that the general Islamic world view was against learning from who they deemed as barbarians and that this world view, even after centuries of political changes, changed very little. Western Europeans may have seen the Muslim as barbarians too, but their world view did not restrict them or eventually changed into engaging directly with Islamic societies for knowledge. Eventually, Western Europeans began en mass to translate and read Arab/Turkish books. But not vice-versa. The Quran, for example was already translated and reprinted in large numbers to be sold in the Ottoman Empire by the 16th century. By the 16th century, European Universities, such as Cambridge and Oxford, Salamanca that had departments for the study of Arabic and Oriental cultures. Again, the same cannot be said for the Ottoman Empire, much less, the rest of the Islamic Middle East. And this was because Islamic societies were less willing to engage with Europeans than Europeans were with Islamic societies.

Europe was no different, vernacular languages were looked down upon. Instead, most elite Europeans conversed in Latin or a prestige language like French. And that's no different to Southeast Asia either where most elites spoke and wrote in prestige Malay/Court Malay between themselves.

No, that's not the point. I wasn't talking about classic languages against vernacular languages. I was talking about European languages versus languages of Islamic societies. As I mentioned, in this and the previous post, elite Europeans were more than willing to study and learn the languages of the lands of Islam than elite Ottomans/Persians/Arabs were willing to learn the languages of the lands of Christendom. Thus, my lengthy post on the lack of Muslim Turkish diplomats that actually learned French/Latin/Elvish to talk to them, settling for substitution. It adds to my point that Islamic societies were adverse to engage with Europeans.


Here's a tissue. Runny noses are bad.

Europe did that too man. The Spanish are the most extreme example. But even in Protestant Geneva the presses were expected to churn out religious works. The other point to make is that there wasn't all that much in the way of secular works in the European literary canon at that stage. The thrust of world literature was still very much religious.

Are you saying that the rejection of the printing press by the elite courts of Europeans were on the same par as the rejection of the printing press by the Ottoman or Moroccan courts? Of course not. European learning was spurred on by the printing press because of nice cheap books and reprints. Islamic society did not have the same privileged having outright refused them for centuries on end.

And you didn't attack the main crux of my argument. The quote by Nicholas de Nocolay that summed up my argument about how the Ottomans only learned to use European inventions and warfare via immigrants who have moved into Turkey and not directly just send diplomats/officials/students whatever to said lands to learn.
It's not like they did not have the opportunity as the Ottomans had plenty of friendly enough relations with Venice, England, the Netherlands, France, Hungarian Protestants etc who wanted the Ottomans to help screw over their mutual enemies.

Although it's not possible for you to read 'The Muslim Discovery of Europe', Bernard Lewis made a compelling case for this Islamic reluctance to engage with Europeans. He cites books, the rare few diplomatic exchanges, diaries and so on so forth. In of the chapters, he states that the first real attempt to chronicle and describe European society, geography and politics was by Ottoman geographer, Katib Celebi who wroted "Guide for the Perplexed on the history of the Greeks and the Romans and the Christians" and he explains that he is writing this because "all that the Islamic histories offered about these people [Europeans] was manifest lies and grotesque fables" this was in 1655.

Lewis talks about how Tarih-i Naima, an Ottoman imperial historian, wrote about, recorded and archived in great detail, events that involved directly with Muslims, such as the Morisco Revolt, Ottoman-English Tobacco trade, Naval war in the Mediterranean. but absolutely very little on the Thirty Years War, despite it being a major event just across the Ottoman border.

He gives example after example in almost every medium possible, diplomatic exchanges, Turkish adventurers, official state letters, books written by Arabs, Turks, Iranians, Jews, captured Muslim and Christian slaves, trade accounts, religious edicts, scientific progress, Jewish doctors, in which it shows that Islamic societies were very reluctant to engage with Europeans due to their Islamic world view of Europeans, hence resulting in a slowing down of European ideas flowing into the Ottoman Empire and other Islamic societies.
 
ever remembering my reputation for having a penchant for conspiracy , here is one for the thread in reply to a post here . Islamic societies did not like talking to foreigners , maybe because it would unsettle their internal balances ? Say all the Ottoman diplomats for Europe were from minorities , adding Turks into the game would remove a turf for them and open them to foreign meddling ?

one can even find paralels with the reluctance to engage barbarian ideas in the Rome/Eastern Rome and Ottomans who actually took the name ...
 
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