TOWARDS A CLTURE OF PROGRESS.
(REFLECTIONS ON THE SCIENTIFIC ARREST OF THE ARAB MUSLIM & BYZANTINE EAST
AND ON THE SCIENTIFIC TRIUMPH OF THE WEST); Amin Ebeid; Cairo 2008
But now that we do have a modern science which is self sustaining and which is served by a carefully outlined methodology , where do we go from here? And why was it so important to investigate why the Byzantine-Arab- Muslim civilisations have failed to become the birth-place of the scientific revolution?
As this study was being undertaken, it became obvious that the very same factors that led to the development of the modern science, were also the reasons why Western civilisation has led the world not only in believing in the concept of “progress”, but in applying its principles in the development of a better standard of living.
Rodney Stark summarized the achievement of Western civilisation by noting that it was, after all, created as a result of the intellectual climate offered by Western Christianity. He then affirmed that without a theology committed to reason, progress and moral equality, today the entire world would be about where non European societies were in say 1800: A world with many astrologers and alchemists but no scientists. That, for Stark would also be “a world of despots; lacking universities, banks, factories, eye glasses, chimneys and pianos”. I might also add that it would have been a world unfamiliar with the basic principles of human rights. It would also have been a world still groping for freedom and justice for all; a world hopelessly deprived of a universal legislation that calls for the equality of all men and women irrespective of their race or creed . In addition, it would have certainly been a world without the means of modern transportation or instant communications.
Stark then added, that such a world, divorced as it would have been from a theology of progress; would have been “a world where most infants do not live to the age of five, and many women die in childbirth—a world truly living in dark age” . It is also obvious that such a world would never have known the blessing of modern medicine, which all men and women seek, including those who hate the West and what it stands for the most.
Today Western model modernity is available to all who wish to adopt it. It has reached a stage of development that permits it to be borrowed by all cultures irrespective of the specificity of their religious beliefs; provided that their people are prepared to accept the principle of progress and all what it entails.
Unfortunately what is rather distressing to the inheritors of the Near Eastern cultures like myself, is that civilisations, like those of India and China, whose people failed to satisfy more of the Duhem-Jaki criteria, than the brilliant participants of the Arab Muslim civilisation; -managed, nonetheless to catch, the train of scientific, industrial, economic and social progress in the 20th century, whereas this train seems to have passed by the Arab- Muslim world once more.
The Arabs’ frequent answer to that predicament is that there is a Western conspiracy against them.
But there is no credible proof to that, nor is there a reason for the Arabs to be singled out in a world- wide conspiracy against them . But the Arab/Muslim feeling of being under siege is real enough. That is why the call to progress and reform; has got to offer to the Arabs, examples of third world success with models, like those of India, and China, who never had imperialistic claims on the Arab Muslim world.
This is important because; even if there is a conspiracy against them, the Arabs will have to realize that; it is not their only problem, and certainly not their main one. Moreover to be paralyzed by conspiracies, real or imagined, can only lead to intellectual and cultural stagnation. That is why the real problem is inside the Arab realm, and is bound to its ethos. Therefore if progress is to be achieved, the Arabs will have to disentangle from their intellectual framework that which keeps them from achieving progress.
Analogously, if I believe that the world suffers from great problems, I will have to realize that I am part of that world and therefore, part of its problems. But since there is little that I can do about the world, reform will have to start with me, since this is the one factor of which I do have control and which I can alter.
The last paragraph was simply another way of calling in “progress”.
In order to achieve this, the Arab Muslim world will have to recognize its shortcomings, and work hard at their reversal. This is an achievable goal, since history is here to remind the Arabs of the causes of the ascent to glory of their great civilisation, as well as the causes of its demise.
The factors that led to the Arrest of science in the Arab Muslim world were addressed in some details and have filled the thirty pages that have followed the, equally long, description of the “golden age” of Islamic civilisations. The reader is invited to review the critique of both ages. For as much as there was a catastrophic arrest, there was also an age of glory. It may indeed help to direct the reader once more to Will Durant’s account of the Islamic tenth century, because, for Durant, that century not only witnessed the peak of Arab-Islamic brilliance, but rather that of a golden age of the universal history!
In other words, it will no doubt help to recall once more with well placed pride, the brilliance of the Arab-Islamic golden age; provided that all concerned remember that it was also an age of openness and a period of intellectual curiosity, and pluralism. At the same time it will be vital to expose once more the factors that were responsible for the intellectual arrest that followed the age of glory. And, despite the complexity of those factors, it is obvious that in order to recall progress, revive openness to the “other”, and at the same time resurrect receptivity to novel intellectual or philosophical constructs; there is today a pressing need to reject religious fanaticism, cultural auto-sufficiency and the paralyzing exclusivist mentality of the past few centuries, and more specifically in the past few decades. This will call for a radical reform of education which should demand a clear separation of the sacred from the secular aspects of its curricula and insist on the ascent of reason in order to engage the avenues of progress and intellectual development. Today; this need of social and cultural transformation, of the Arab-Muslim world, has become a most pressing imperative. Such a task will be most arduous. And yet it is only by accepting this challenge that one may hope to create the intellectual milieu that will eventually usher-in the long awaited dawn of a glorious Renaissance in Egypt and the Arab world.