the Islamic Golden Age vs. European science

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

-Isaac Newton

Universites, the Catholic Church

Islamic regression into fundamentalism

many factors

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>>1847284


Anon i agree that arabs are near dindu-tier but there are already threads up about this.

Always remember to check the catalog and please chan responsibly.

>>1847292
but why did Newton arise in the Middle East

Islamic society was more advanced than Europe for centuries

>>1847301
Islamic society declined post-Mongolians because people saw it as punishment from God for straying from the fundamentalism of the early Ummah

And the fact that when a muslim dies his estate is split between 1001 people rather than 1 or 2 heirs, europeans in comparison can concentrate wealth more easily. The fact that european women married late and had fewer children prevented malthusian catastrophe. Then you have the re-discovery of ancient knowledge from the classical and medieval muslim worlds to build on.

>>1847292
That was just him being modest, it was actually his superior genetics, resources, hair, etc.

>>1847301
>Islamic society was more advanced than Europe for centuries
And then it wasn't. Same reason why there wasn't a Newton before Newton, why there was a Leibniz, why Alhazen was from 10th century Iraq and not 10th century England nor 13th century Iraq, etc.

The West was developing while the East was stagnating.

>>1847301
> why wasn't there a *scientist name here* before *same name* was there?

I swear this board is a bunch of pseudo intellectual retards like yourself

>>1847334
Not really

A genius living in the Paleolithic wouldn't invent calculus

>hair
The fuck?

>>1847441
It was a joke, I should've added virginity in there to make it more clear.

>>1847301
>but why didn't Averroes arise in Byzantium

>Byzantium was more advanced than Islamic civilization for centuries

>>1847284
The real answer is that societies can't be described by the one dimensional phrase advanced or sophisticated. Societies have some differences among them that make them more suited for certain activities but this can change through time.
You can make the argument that European science came from it separation of church and state into two spwreate organizations. This allowed for some level of debate and discussion among different groups of people and a certain level of balance to develop in society. Sometimes it was a conflict of ideas and sometimes of weapons.
Islamic Societies were much less open in general to having opposing structures and power was more centralized. Certain groups were allowed to keep there religion but they second class citizens. This lack of an independent force since the church and state were really one being meant that opposing ideas could only be allowed to foster if the politically powerful allowed them to foster. So it was much more prown to being removed.

Also middle east Persia are easier to invade than western Europe and that is just based on geography and distance from other major powers. This means Europe was able to maintain a certain level of stability and freedom of thought not experienced in the Islamic world especially by the time of the late middle ages.

Also remember this is such a super summarized view and could very well be bull shit. So go do your research and see what you come think and accept.

>>1847284

Because of 14th century Scholasticism. The mathematization of physics started there in Merton School logic textbooks. Oresme set the stage for Leibniz's fully developed calculus there ( which was that far removed from what Oresme had done). Likewise, the Merton school philosophers had already began on new theories of motion and cosmology that broke with Aristotle more definitively than before, though they never reached the systematic end results that early modern scientists like Galileo and Newton would. Newton was born in a time right after much of Scholasticism had been recovered and allowed for an intellectual resurgence after the rise and fall of mysticism, fideism, and rhetoric-heavy apologetics that characterized the Renaissance and Reformation. Early modern european science combined the new technological advances they had access too, the emphasis on experimental practice from alchemy that was popular in the Renaissance, and the recovered( but still lessened due to a lack of recovering proper medieval logic) scholastic rigor that had found its way back into European intellectual life, and then used it all to form the Scientific Revolution. Newton was not alone in his massive accomplishments, it was more a matter of all the right ingredients being there for strong intellects like his to be nurtured in just the right way.

Alchemy offered a way out by having as a philosophical underpinning that non-material influences – spirits – existed. These needed no physical contact and could induce transformations or movement through the triggering of "active principles" within an object.

Primed to believe in these ideas, Newton discovered a simple, elegant mathematical equation that described the behaviour of gravity

He called this principle "action at a distance" and instead of "spirit" began using the word "force" to better reflect its mathematical character.

His equation also reveals the "active principle" that governs an object's response to gravity. It is mass. With such direct analogies to spirits and active principles, Newton must surely have felt some sort of vindication for his alchemical beliefs.

The theory of gravity was so successful that it became one of the triggers for the Age of Enlightenment. Although hardly anyone now believes in the concept of alchemy, we do still believe that gravity can exert an influence across empty space. Engineers still use Newton's maths to launch satellites and send spacecraft to distant planets.

So was Sir Isaac a scientist or a sorcerer? He was a bit of both. And that was why he could succeed where others had failed.

This thread won't end well.