LOL csteele

You don't know much about the ancient world do you?

Most farms or villages were nowhere near any Roman road. The better wagon wheels were an important innovation because they broadened access to markets over a wide area.

It is easy in this motorised age of abundant food to sneer at better ploughs and wagon wheels. But at the time they multiplied the productivity of farmers and dramatically cut the cost of getting produce to markets. The combined effects of these two innovations, both of which depended on the development of other technologies, were more far-reaching than the effects of, say, the polio vaccine in the post-war era.

Just as most Australians know nothing of the history of Australia before the arrival of Europeans so most Muslims, and non-Muslims, are ignorant of the history of Dar-ul-Islam prior to the advent of Islam. It was not a sort of barbaric "Terra Nullius." North Africa and the Middle-East was home to what was for the day an advanced commercial and scientific culture. The so-called "golden age of Islam" was actually the tail-end of that pre-Islamic culture that Islam ultimately strangled.

The Persian mathematician and poet, Omar Khayyam, was very much part of that pre-Islamic tradition. Most of his work has nothing to do with Islam. In fact he had a much greater influence on the Western world than he ever had in his native Persia.

Unfortunately the Muslim world seemed to prefer Al Ghazali. Here is what he had to say about astronomy:

>>He labels astronomy as futile and trivial. He regards only limited astronomy for a select few to be permissible – such astronomy which is necessary for navigation and finding direction in the land and sea. He argues that astronomy is guesswork and blameworthy. He propagates the truth of the Hadith that it is better to remain ignorant of some branches of learning. This is a position which is unpalatable to the modernist palate soured by mental corruption. He therefore advocates: “Do not indulge in such sciences which the Shariah brands as useless.”>>

mac,

The Tea Party and the West-hating left have this in common. They allow their ideology to blind them to the facts.

They are opposite sides of the same coin.

csteele,

"Roman roads became hard to maintain because the knowledge and expertise had gone along with the infrastructure to upkeep them."

Agreed, but we have to consider the reason the expertise disappeared, the political system in post Roman Europe was fragmented, with feuding principalities and minor kingdoms. What baron would want a road from his enemy's domain into his own? There was no need for a Roman style network, so innovation adapted to the new environment.
Late Medieval Europe, in many ways, was technically more advanced than the Romans, even though the roads were non-existent by Roman standards. So the fact that European roads were crap really isn't indicative one way or the other.

I'm not suggesting that Moslem scholars didn't make contributions to science and philosophy, but their work is insignificant compared with those of Western Scholars--The claims that some Islamic apologists make are sometimes actually comical, they're grasping at straws.

Omar Khayyam's "Rubaiyat" is marvellous, however it doesn't seem to be the work of a devout Moslem to me.

The fact that Al Ghazali was able to suppress independent philosophy and science in the Islamic world as successfully he did indicates a deep dysfunction in that society's culture. Christian theocrats were never able to silence the West's secular ethos.

Steven,

The West hating left are far more dangerous than the far right.

PC and multiculturalism are very effective camouflages, and they're certainly blinkered, as anyone who has tried to discuss immigration and multiculturalism rationally, will confirm.

"They allow their ideology to blind them to the facts."

Lol.

I had been just thinking the same of you two.

My goodness, we seem to have the heels dug in labeling any contributions to science that might have been said to have come from the Islamic period as parasitic, or non-existant, or non-Muslim and you are accusing me of being blinded by ideology?

Yeh right. 

Perhaps it might be a little more useful if you hop off the high/hobby horses for a moment. 

About 85% of Americans believe God had a hand in making humans and nearly two thirds of those believe in Creationism.

Given the high number of Jewish people represented in ranks of our Nobel prize winners including scientists like Einstein then why can't I make a similar argument about the fallacy of the superiority of the Christian empires since without the input of a Semitic people they would be rightly regarded as backward? 

Are you going to put forward the argument as you did with Omar that because Einstein wasn't an orthodox Jew his contributions shouldn't be counted?

Dial it down a touch gents.

csteele wrote:

>>Are you going to put forward the argument as you did with Omar that because Einstein wasn't an orthodox Jew his contributions shouldn't be counted?>>

Einstein's scientific achievements owed nothing to Judaism. He did not get the ideas underpinning special relativity from the Talmud but from Maxwell's equations and trying to imagine what he would see if he ran alongside an electromagnetic wave.

Now Galileo was a devout Christian. To my mind he was a greater scientist than Newton. But his contributions too owed nothing to Christianity.

However both Einstein and Galileo were both part of a broader "Western" culture that valued their types of scientific endeavour and had set up the networks that could expand on their work.

Poor old Omar was stuck in Dar-ul-Islam

Christianity mostly, not always, but mostly, tolerated a scientific culture that was separate from itself. Sometimes the toleration was grudging. Sometimes it imprisoned scientists or even burned them at the stake. But most of the time it was tolerant.

Islam never tolerated a scientific culture that was separate from itself.

Under Christianity a scientific culture could and did arise.

Under Islam a pre-existing scientific culture was extinguished.

That's the difference.