Enabling Scientific Progress

As the 21st century geopolitical competitions heat up, a common refrain now heard in the US is the need for renewed growth: to get back to building and innovating, to both reignite the economy and to win in new technology domains.

The question then becomes, what are the factors — e.g., governmental, economic, and societal — that enable countries to grow and innovate?

One era worth examining is the Islamic Golden Age. This unique period in Islamic history saw fantastic contributions to science, mathematics, medicine, and astronomy.

Let’s understand what led to this era, and in turn why it ended, and what we may take away to the US’s current situation.

The Islamic Golden Age

Spanning a period of roughly 500 years — from the 7th century starting with the Abbasid Caliphate and ending in the 13th century with the Mongol sack of Baghdad —the Islamic Golden Age marked a period in which the Arab world made material advancements across the fields of science, technology, and culture.

The foundation of this period was an ambitious effort to translate into Arabic Greek works on medicine, mathematics, and philosophy.

Two Islamic philosophies underpinned this period, Falsafah and Kalam. Falsafah emerged from the Greek tradition and emphasized logic, mathematics, astronomy, and anatomy; Kalam provided explanation and rationale of Islamic religious beliefs. The Persian philosopher and physician Avicenna was paramount during this period.

Within the field of astronomy, Islamic scientists built observatories to study the stars, invented the astrolabe (a handheld model of the universe) and quantrandt. They used astronomy for navigation and for religious practices. One achievement was mathematician al-Biruni’s near perfect measuring the Earth’s circumference; using his own trigonometric method, he was off by only 200 miles!

Within mathematics, Islamic scholars pioneered Algebra as a new field of study, as well as created the Arabic numeral system based on Indian numerals.

Within medicine, Islamic physicians were pioneers of modern surgery. They introduced over 200 new surgical devices such as probes, scalpels, and knives. They invented a new way to surgically treat eye cataracts among many other procedures, and Avicenna authored a book called The Canon of Medicine that was translated into Latin and became the authoritative book for doctors for six centuries.

Religious rules prevented artists from portraying God or human figures, so they invented new patterns such as arabesque, tessellations, and calligraphy. New literature emerged, the most famous of which was the collection of Arab folktales known as One Thousand and One Nights.

Factors Enabling Islamic Golden Age

A multitude of factors enabled this remarkable period in Islamic history.

The early days of Islam were marked by rapid expansion, often via military conquest. By the emergence of the Golden Era, Islam spread from India to the Atlantic Ocean, and had successfully defeated both the Byzantine and Persian empires.

The Arab empire opened new trade routes that connected India and the Eastern Mediterranean, which generated significant new wealth. Relative political and economic centralization allowed scholars from different regions and backgrounds to travel and collaborate. Increasingly common use of Arabic facilitated communication.

Trade and wealth coincided with greater urbanization, which created unique opportunities for collaboration. The House of Wisdom was a library and intellectual center in Baghdad founded by al-Mansur that was both a convening place and provided economic and political support to intellectuals.

Another byproduct of military conquest was absorbing knowledge and culture of regions it conquered. Arabs took in the best of Egyptian, Greek, Indian, Chinese, and Persian civilizations. Another example is Arab popularization of paper; invented in China around 105 CE, it dramatically reduced the cost of reproducing books.

To the question of underlying motivation for the translation efforts, scholars offer several theories. First is practical knowledge that would be useful in day-to-day life. Islamic scholars did not translate Greek works of poetry and history, but rather practical works of engineering, irrigation, and inheritance laws.

Second was using science to aid in religious observance. For example, use of stars to determine the direction of Mecca, the proper times of day to pray, and the start of Ramadan. Ibn al-Shatir was an astronomer and also timekeeper of the Great Mosque of Damascus. Greek works on logic and rhetoric were used to aid in converting people under the Caliphate to Islam.

Finally, the translation movement itself was a continuation of efforts previously started under the Sassanid Persian empire. Persians featured heavily in the Abbasid Caliphate and many leading thinkers and scientists were Persian; some scholars hypothesize the translation effort at least partially reflected on-going Persian influence.

Decline of the Islamic Golden Age

The Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258 marked the end of the Abbasid regime, and coincided with Arab military losses in Spain and elsewhere.

But this invasion was preceded by vastly divergent views on the role of science in society. Since at least the 9th century there had been tension between the rationalist school of thought based on Greek and Aristotelian philosophy — Mu’tazilism — and a competing philosophy based on religious determinism.

By the end of the 11th century, the deterministic view was winning. A new school of thought known as Ash’ari had emerged. Its biggest proponent was al-Ghazali, who in 1095 published a book called The Incoherence of the Philosophers that rebutted Avicenna and falsafah rationalism.

Ash’ari philosophy argues for “occasionalism,” or the idea that because God’s will is completely free, all events occur because they have been ordained by God and do not follow a natural set of rules to be studied and understood.

Occasionalism is a theological attempt to describe the role of God in the world but is controversial; it has been criticized in other religions, such as by Maimonides in his The Guide for the Perplexed, Thomas Aquinas, and Pope Benedict XVI.

The relative importance of occasionalism in precipitating the decline of the Islamic Golden Era and subsequent deemphasis of science is subject to on-going debate, but one can easily discern a causal relationship that was passionately advanced during this time by Islamic scholars such as Ibn Rushd.

For example, in reference to mathematics, al-Ghazali said, “We forbid the study of the science of Euclid and Ptolemy — although it makes the mind and the spirit stronger — because of what it leads to; indeed, it is the preliminary to the sciences of the ancients, which contain wrong and harmful creeds…”

Takeaways for Modern Day

Reflecting on the factors that enabled the Islamic Golden Age, the US has all the right ingredients.

But underlying these ingredients is a commitment to scientific inquiry, logic, and reason, which in turn relies on factors such as freedom of speech and pursuit of truth.

These factors are fragile, and throughout history have been often sacrificed to ideology — whether religious, political, or social.

During the Islamic Golden Age opposition was religious. In the US today, opposition is increasingly from the political and social arenas.

Ultimately, pursuit of truth is a slippery slope and needs to be renewed each generation. As the 21st century’s competitions heat up, it is worth making that recommitment.

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