Needless to say, not a few commentators at the time questioned this idea of using NASA to heighten self-esteem among Muslims. However, the point of this blog post is not to rehash this issue, but to examine the following question: why, given the Muslim world's "historic contributions to science, math, and engineering," did modern science not emerge from Islam, but from Christianity?
The reason for this question is that Islam and Christianity seem to share a similar history of intellectual development. According to Nancy R. Pearcey and Charles B. Thaxton in their book The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy, "modern science emerged from a complex interplay of Christian and Greek thought. Christianity formed the comprehensive intellectual milieu of the early scientists...[but] those ideas were shaped in crucial ways by interaction with Greek philosophy" (p. 59). However, it was not only Christianity that interacted with Greek philosophy--Islam did as well. Indeed, sociologist Rodney Stark notes that "throughout the centuries when Christian Europe knew virtually nothing of Greek learning, it was alive and deeply appreciated in Islam" (The Triumph of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, p. 21).
The answer to our question lies in two important differences between Islam and Christianity. First of all, Islam and Christianity had rather different ideas about the relationship between God and natural laws. According to Stark:
[In Islam,] Allah is not presented as a lawful creator but is conceived of as an extremely active God who intrudes on the world as he deems it appropriate. This prompted the formation of a major theological bloc within Islam that condemns all efforts to formulate natural laws as blasphemy in that they deny Allah's freedom to act. Thus, Islam did not fully embrace the notion that the universe ran along on fundamental principles laid down by God at the creation but assumed that the world was sustained by his will on a continuing basis. (The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, p. 20).
In contrast, for Christians:
The Biblical God is the Divine Legislator who governs nature by decrees set down in the beginning. We see that conviction, for example, in the writings of seventeenth-century mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes, who said that the mathematical laws sought by science were legislated by God in the same manner as a king ordains laws in his realm. (Nancy R. Pearcey and Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy, p. 26).
Why is this distinction important? It is important because science pre-supposes that nature operates in a consistent and predictable fashion that can be discovered by human reason, that is, according to laws. Without natural laws, it is essentially impossible to do real science.
The second important difference between Islam and Christianity is the degree of deference the two faiths paid to Greek philosophy. For their part, medieval Muslim scholars were so impressed by the thinking of the ancient Greeks that they did not presume to question it. In fact, according to Stark, "Muslim intellectuals regarded Greek learning, especially the work of Aristotle, as virtual scripture to be believed rather than pursued" (The Triumph of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success, p. 21). The twelfth century Muslim philosopher Averroes and his students went so far as to become "intransigent and doctrinaire Aristotelians--proclaiming that his physics was complete and infallible, and that if an observation were inconsistent with one of Aristotle's views, the observation was certainly incorrect or an illusion" (Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, p. 21).
On the other hand, while medieval Christian scholars also held Aristotle in high regard--as exemplified by Thomas Aquinas' eforts to integrate Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology--by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (if not before) when modern science became to emerge, Christian intellectuals had begun to question Aristotle. This fact is illustrated by the case of Galileo. Contrary to popular belief, Galileo's conflict with the Catholic Church was not a matter of science versus religion. Rather, it was a conflict between two different views of science. The Catholic Church, had, in effect, adopted Aristotle's ideas as the basis for its approach to science. Galileo, however, questioned the validity of Aristotle's views. At the same time, Galileo contended "that he was a genuine Christian believer who had no intention of questioning religious doctrine per se but only the scientific framework inherited from Aristotelian philosophy" (Nancy R. Pearcey and Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy, p. 40). What is important for the sake of our discussion is the contrast between Muslim scholars like Averroes and Christian scientists like Galileo. The former accepted Aristotle as the final authority in scientific matters, whose pronouncements should be accepted on faith, while the latter actually tested Aristotle's claims. For example, Aristotle had "taught that the speed at which objects fall to earth is proportionate to their weight--that a stone twice as heavy as another will fall twice as fast" (Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, p. 14). Galileo actually tested this claim through an experiment and found it to be false--thus demonstrating a truly scientific attitude.
In short, given their differing perspectives on natural laws and Greek philosophy, it is not surprising that modern science first emerged in Christian Europe, and not the Muslim world. This is not to say that the Muslim world did not make advancements in fields like astronomy and medicine, but these achievements did not require the sort of general theorizing that is the hallmark of modern science. Nor does this mean that modern Muslims are incapable of doing science, simply that the theoretical basis for that science is, ultimately, borrowed from another faith.
Image of Aristotle from commons.wikimedia.org