The Glaring Fact

Introduction:

• Shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric planetary system
• By the end of the Scientific Revolution (early 18^th century):
  Merging of terrestrial and celestial physics
  Religious views successfully challenged
  New fields of research
  Scientific authority and scientific community
  Public science
  New technologies
• These sorts of changes did not happen elsewhere, why not?
• We considered astronomy in Islam and China

Huff’s Analysis:

• Why didn’t the scientific revolution happen in the Islamic world, where science was the most advanced anywhere?
  Copernicus and Islamic astronomical models
  “Metaphysical” differences between Ptolemy and Copernicus, complexity
  Practical success of Arabic astronomy, Al-Battani (d. 929)
  Experimental method
• “Cultural and structural impediments” to science in Islam

Standard Explanation

• Conquest of Spain in the 11^th century

Huff’s assumption: The breakthrough to the modern scientific viewpoint was premised upon the ability of natural philosophers to describe nature in ways that were at variance with the established religious viewpoint

• Institutional neutral space
• What was the institutional space in Islamic society:
  Religious objections
  Legal Corporations
  Personalized or particular authority
  Marginalization of foreign sciences
• Conditions necessary for scientific expansion (Huff):
  Neutral zones free of political and religious censure
  Individuals must be conceived to be endowed with reason (science worth investigating)
  The world must be rational and law like (predictions)

The Western Institutionalization of Science

• Norms or values of scientific practice, “Scientific Ethos” according to Robert Merton
  
  Universalism: that truth claims are to be subjected to preestablished impersonal criteria consonant with observation and with previously confirmed knowledge. (Scientific knowledge has rational, universal standards)
  
  Communalism: that the substantive findings of science are a product of social collaboration and are assigned to the community. They constitute a common heritage. (Scientific knowledge is public)
  
  Disinterestedness: that the scientist searches for truth for its own sake, apart from the interests of class, nation or economic reward. Such rewards may be received, but work should not be specifically directed towards obtaining them. (Scientific knowledge is enough on its own)
  
  Organized Scepticism: that judgement should be suspended until the facts are at hand and beliefs have been scrutinized in terms of empirical and logical criteria. (Science is sceptical)
• Regulative ideals
  Interpretive flexibility
  Role-Sets
• Huff: These norms were institutionalized in European science, and allowed the scientific revolution to come to full fruition

Universalism: Scientific knowledge has rational, universal standards

• Legal Models:
  Particularistic models and legal theory
  Europe on the Roman model
• Legal Reality: Corporations
  “… corporate personalities such as business corporations, guilds, cities, towns or universities did       not exist in Islamic law”
  Religious interference
  Lack of standardized curriculum

In the west, the “… collective appropriation of uniform standards of teaching (and practice) by a professional group located in an institutionally autonomous location – the university, but also in professional guilds – and hence the exclusion of extraprofessional and religious censors and overseers.”

Communalism

• Scientific knowledge is public
  Restrictions on questions about nature
  Methods for concealment of knowledge:
  The printing press

Disinterestedness and Organized Scepticism

• Scientists pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge
  Science is skeptical about all knowledge claims
  All scholarship anchored in religion in Islam
  Astronomy linked to religion
  Limitations in reason of man