26 May 2007
Inventions, Enlightenment and Islam
In the May 14, 2007 New Yorker, John Seabrook asks why the Ancient Greeks did not use their mathematical and modeling skills to solve problems that complicated their material existence. When did humanity begin to engage in intellectual speculation and search for solutions to problems of existence? Surely the wheel was recognized as a labor saver almost as soon as it was invented. But was its discovery the result of an intentional effort to find a way to make life easier, or was that merely the convenient use to which it was reflexively put?
The Enlightenment made European men realize that if they put their minds to it, they could help themselves live more productive lives. That was a change in motivation for most people from appeasement of imaginary powers and their self-anointed surrogates to purpose-driven lives. It occurred about the time that the Islamic world infused Western civilization with its world view that incorporated the science of the Ptolemaic universe. Ironically, the culture that in the 21st Century hosts a nihilistic threat to the material well-being of the West rescued the latter civilization from its stagnation under the mystical helplessness of early Christianity.
Even today, it is not Islam that threatens the advance of Western civilization. Cultures that haven’t developed habits of civil order do threaten the world’s progress and peacefulness, particularly when those cultures are empowered by the information technology revolution. Islam happens to be a religion that appeals to members of those societies. Islamophobia says Dr. Tawfik Hamid in the May 25, 2007, Wall Street Journal, can be combated with an education campaign that brings Islamic societies into the modern world. That is a reversal of the roles of the two cultures, Western and Islamic, that would once again rescue the world from extinction.
In the May 14, 2007 New Yorker, John Seabrook asks why the Ancient Greeks did not use their mathematical and modeling skills to solve problems that complicated their material existence. When did humanity begin to engage in intellectual speculation and search for solutions to problems of existence? Surely the wheel was recognized as a labor saver almost as soon as it was invented. But was its discovery the result of an intentional effort to find a way to make life easier, or was that merely the convenient use to which it was reflexively put?
The Enlightenment made European men realize that if they put their minds to it, they could help themselves live more productive lives. That was a change in motivation for most people from appeasement of imaginary powers and their self-anointed surrogates to purpose-driven lives. It occurred about the time that the Islamic world infused Western civilization with its world view that incorporated the science of the Ptolemaic universe. Ironically, the culture that in the 21st Century hosts a nihilistic threat to the material well-being of the West rescued the latter civilization from its stagnation under the mystical helplessness of early Christianity.
Even today, it is not Islam that threatens the advance of Western civilization. Cultures that haven’t developed habits of civil order do threaten the world’s progress and peacefulness, particularly when those cultures are empowered by the information technology revolution. Islam happens to be a religion that appeals to members of those societies. Islamophobia says Dr. Tawfik Hamid in the May 25, 2007, Wall Street Journal, can be combated with an education campaign that brings Islamic societies into the modern world. That is a reversal of the roles of the two cultures, Western and Islamic, that would once again rescue the world from extinction.
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