Jan P. Hogendijk and Abdelhamid I. Sabra, The Enterprise of Science in Islam: New Perspectives

Islam & Science, Summer, 2004 by Muzaffar Iqbal

Jan P. Hogendijk and Abdelhamid I. Sabra, The Enterprise of Science in Islam: New Perspectives (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003), xxii 386 pp, HB, ISBN 0-262-19482-1

Writing during the formative period of contemporary Western studies of Islamic scientific tradition, Ignaz Goldziher constructed one of the first models of the twentieth century that pitched the so-called sciences of the ancients ('ulum al-awa'il or ('ulum al-qudama')--which included exact sciences--against a nebulous and ill-defined "old Islamic Orthodoxy". (1) This formulation was to influence the whole field in numerous implicit and explicit ways throughout the twentieth century, and it was not until the final decades of the century that his authoritarian position was seriously challenged by a few perceptive scholars who found his characterization of Islamic intellectual tradition highly problematic.

But, in spite of this reassessment, "Goldziherism" continues to reign supreme in numerous studies of Islamic scientific tradition. The central element of Goldziher's theory is that the "ancient sciences", which "included the entire range of propaedeutical, physical, and metaphysical sciences of the Greek encyclopedia, as well as the branches of mathematics, philosophy, natural science, medicine, astronomy, the theory of music and others", (2) were looked upon by the "strict orthodoxy" with mistrust and "with the growing influence of a narrow orthodoxy, this distrust which the religious circles of Eastern Islam felt for the works of the 'ulum al-awa'il expressed itself with an increasing intensity ... the pious Muslim was expected to avoid these sciences with great care because they were considered dangerous to his faith." (3) According to Goldziher, this opposition made decisive progress after al-Ghazali (d. 1111) and thus began the decline of Islamic science. This view, which has been cogently called "the marginality thesis" by Abdelhamid I. Sabra, co-editor of the book under review, (4) postulated that

   the scientific and philosophical activity in medieval Islam had
   no significant impact on the social, economic, educational and
   religious institutions; that this activity remained itself
   unaffected by these institutions, except when it was finally
   crushed by their antagonism or indifference; and that those
   who kept the Greek legacy alive in Islamic lands constituted a
   small group of scholars who had little to do with the spiritual
   life of the majority of Muslims, who made no important
   contributions to the main currents of Islamic intellectual life,
   and whose work and interests were marginal to the central
   concerns of Islamic society. (5)

Repeated, rehashed, and reformulated ad nauseam, this view of the scientific enterprise in Islamic civilization became the main working hypothesis for most Western studies of Islamic scientific tradition and, in spite of some well-documented refutations, remains the general framework of inquiry in such diverse disciplines as history of science, sociological studies of scientific enterprise, history of philosophy and various other related fields. (6)

A corollary of this theory is the dating of the so-called decline of science in Islamic civilization. Since al-Ghazali was held responsible for "killing" science in Islamic civilization, most early historians decided that this demise must have occurred shortly after his death in 1111 AD; more generous histories allow a greater margin and fix the date of this death of science in the thirteenth century. For instance, in his monumental work, An Introduction to the History of Science, George Sarton sets the eleventh century as the end of the vigor of the Islamic scientific tradition, with the twelfth century, and to a lesser extent the thirteenth century, as being the centuries of transition of the vigor to Europe. (7)

This view became entrenched in the Western academic world and most histories of science continue to repeat it with dismissive and categorical statements such as: "During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Islamic science went into decline; by the fifteenth century, little was left." (8) After passing their verdict, these historians attempt to answer the obvious question that arises out of this death sentence: "How did this come about?" The answer is provided by a recourse to Goldziherism. A case in point is the influential work by David Lindberg, The Beginning of Western Science. On the question of decline, Lindberg first acknowledges that "not enough research has been done to permit us to trace these developments with confidence", and then goes on to identify several "causal factors" for this decline. (9) The first of these is none other than what Goldziher had "identified" in 1916: "conservative religious forces". (10) The second causal factor identified by Lindberg is the "debilitating warfare, economic failure, and the resulting loss of patronage" without which "the sciences were unable to sustain themselves", and the third returns, once again, to a rehashing of Goldziher's hypothesis: