Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

152 • The Making of Islamic ScienceObservatory in Islam with the title “The Causes of Decline of ScientificWork in Islam” in which he has questioned the basic assumption—implied in most works dealing with the cause of decline of science—that “left to itself, science would progress more or less automaticallyand that its decline would have to be brought about by definite forces,would have to be imposed by outside factors” (Sayili 1960, 408).We are left with a puzzle. The enterprise of science in Islamiccivilization did decline and eventually disappeared. So far, historians,sociologists, and orientalists have not produced any satisfactoryanswer to the question that naturally comes to mind—why? This isa compelling question; everyone writing on the subject is obligedto respond. What has been said, however, remains a regurgitationof what has already been said, save a few genuine insights that haveyielded only partial answers. This is not a book that can undertakea more detailed inquiry on this question. It is, however, useful topoint out that the question of decline of science in Islamic civilizationcannot be separated from the overall intellectual, economic, social,and political condition of the Muslim world at the time of decline.As such, this inquiry is actually a subset of a much broader inquirypertaining to the internal dynamics of Islamic civilization during theseventeenth and the eighteenth centuries.For our purpose, we can mark the seventeenth century as thedividing line between two very different kinds of Islam and sciencediscourses. The “old discourse” was based on an understanding ofscience that had emerged from within the Islamic worldview, andeven the tensions, heated exchanges, and long-standing debateswere reflective of this fact. The “new” Islam and science debates thatemerged in the eighteenth century totally transformed the basic termsof discourse. This new discourse is the subject of the next chapter.z