Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science (2011)

> "We will turn to this question later, but it is important to keep in mind that the decline of scientific activity is the rule, not the exception, of civilizations. While it is commonplace to assume that the scientific revolution and the progress of technology were inevitable, in fact the West is the single sustained success story out of many civilizations with periods of scientific flourishing. Like the Muslims, the ancient Chinese and Indian civilizations, both of which were at…

I don't buy this argument. In the 1960s you could have made the same argument about cultural collapse in China, India, or South Korea, yet look at them today. And clearly, it's not Islam related based on Turkey's (automotive and aerospace) and Malaysia's (semiconductors and microelectronics) relatively decent R&D capacity despite being upper middle income countries neighboring R&D laggard non-Muslim countries (Greece and Thailand respectively), or even Iran and their fairly robust STEM R&D base (looking at you…

Hmm, always suspect when you see a thesis about a large and varied group of societies doing anything en masse. For example, today Iran is about 20% the size of the USA, but produces nearly as many engineers[1], in spite of being an Islamic republic. 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/06/09/the-co...

Much more detailed than I expected, and yet somewhat lacking in reach. It stops with Ash'ari and ignores further intellectually repressive trends that developed over the next thousand years, notably Wahhabism which has led to much of the problematic fundamentalists we currently have. (Note: Not a Muslim, or much of a theological scholar, just an occasional student of interesting historical stuff.)