Neil deGrasse Tyson, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, and the Decline of Science in the Islamic World

bismillah Salam alaikum so I have been asked several times about a video that can be found on YouTube were in Neil deGrasse Tyson criticizes the Islamic scientific tradition what he does is he begins the list of stars and he shows how all of these stars have for the majority of these stars have Arabic names and then he talks about how in the Golden Age of Islamic civilization of the Abbasid era and he identifies this as being from about 800 to 1100 Islam led the world in scientific investigation particularly centred in Baghdad so of course there were other cities within such activities occurred and then he goes on and he asks the question so what happened and he provides an answer that is unfortunately incorrect and very misleading it's also quite simplistic he says that abu hamid al-ghazali in the year 1111 or who died in the year 1111 but in his works that he says abu hamid al-ghazali said that mathematics is satanic and that it is therefore a forbidden practice and then he goes on to say that this led to a great decline in practices of the mathematics and the sciences in the Islamic world now this is incorrect on several counts and I'm going to address two of them here first Mohamed Atta's Ali did not say that mathematics is satanic and secondly there was not a decline in mathematics after the death of a Bahaman occas Ali in fact if you were to identify what we could call the Golden Age of astronomy in the Islamic world it was yet to come the observatory South America in Samarkand founded in the 13th and 15th centuries respectively we'll probably the greatest observatories that the Islamic world had ever known and many of the stars that have Arabic names or in fact discovered at those two observatories now let me go back and address the first issue here which is what a Bahaman a causality actually said regarding mathematics now abu hamid al-ghazali probably addresses it in several places the two places where I've come across his discussions of it are his autobiography and monk with monopoly the deliverer from error and his magnum opus yeah a new medine revival of the religious sciences and here is the first volume of the ten volume Arabic Edition that recently came out which is really an excellent addition of this book now in the key table the book of knowledge which is the first book of the 40 book yeah a new Mateen abba hamid al-ghazali talks about mathematics in several places because he's trying to talk about all the different sciences and how he thinks they should be related to one another so I'm gonna read for you from this translation by kenneth honican of the book of knowledge of the of the dean here's what he says and it's bound on page 38 and i'm reading so you know I don't I haven't made this up I saw he says as for the praiseworthy disciplines such as medicine and mathematics they are associated with worldly benefit and that category is divided into those that become a communal obligation a fuddy kavaja and those that are of great merit but are not an obligation now the fact that he has referred to them as a foreign key FIYA means that he sees that they are actually necessary and play a necessary function within Islamic civilization he in fact goes on to say that if there are not people who are experts in mathematics within society that it will be a hardship on society and certain aspects of society suffer from it so he clearly sees this as as an obligation and that's something that is necessary he goes on to say in what is page 56 of the translation that this is a praiseworthy discipline but that nonetheless if you fear that somebody will exceed the bounds in it they should be prevented from their study in it now this is not a way in which Muhammad Ali is trying to limit mathematics itself because in fact he says this about every intellectual discipline any intellectual discipline in which people are going to use their knowledge for ends that will bring corruption to themselves or to society he says is something that should be restrained now the main way in which people do this is actually through their ego through trying to practice something in order to gain Fame for it and then there are other ways that people can use such knowledge to actually abuse other members of civilization and in fact al-ghazali doesn't really say all that much about mathematics it just works regarding this he's far more critical of the ulama that is the people who are practitioners of fit of jurisprudence and people who are practitioners of Kalam and sees ways in which these disciplines can be violated and in which they have been violated by many of their practitioners nonetheless what about how many of this Ally is doing here is actually arguing for the purity of knowledge a Bahaman occas Ally stated that the end of the human being is knowledge and that knowledge is the highest thing that the human being can achieve where he thinks mathematics sits within this is different than what somebody might think today it is also different than probably what Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks but he in no way says that this is satanic and does not say that people must not study it now what a Bahaman delicas Ally says was not even accepted by everyone there was a lively continuous debate regarding many of the points that he brought up many people disagreed him it was a culture of intense intellectual fervor nobody was going to say well Muhammad I because I said this therefore we'll do it this way money of his works were debated now as regards the second part of neil degrasse tyson's contention he says that after abu hamid al-ghazali the science is declined there is simply nothing in the historical record to substantiate this the sciences in the Islamic world went on well into the Ottoman period in fact there's a new book coming out on on Islamic science or not Islamic but on science and technology in the Ottoman period should be out in April and that is something that's April of 2018 and and that's something I hope to look at but let's go immediately to some of the people who followed Mohammed Atta's out his younger contemporary Omar Khayyam who is better known in the West for his works in poetry he actually wrote books on algebra and he and his works on Alice Rabat continued to be studied for several hundred years and he is known for having systematized they used to approach quadratic equations and some higher-level equations but more importantly Monsieur Dean to see who died in here 1274 and actually wrote some of his philosophical works defending certain contentions of Mohammed akka savvy he was probably one of the most important astronomers in all of history he convinced the leader of his time to found the observatory at Morocco in north north western Iran and and he himself wrote 125 works on philosophy and theology science mathematics etc his yes a five volume work that's just on on mathematics his work on on the knowledge of the of astronomy was very influential and people continued to write commentaries on it into the 16th century last great commentary is probably that of Abdali Muhammad Nabeel agenda a liberal agenda his commentary on on a to sees death karat in that is memoir or discussion of the knowledge of of the cosmos continued to be studied into the 17th century Albert jendi died in the late 16th century so this was really a continuous culture of mathematical and astronomical investigation the first person to have actually empirically demonstrated that the Earth rotates is Ali and push G who began in some account at the observatory in some account that was found at there in 1420 and then he moved to the Ottoman Empire where he was extremely influential and had many students he actually had two works that were translated into Latin at least two that I know of that were translated into Latin one on mathematics and one on astronomy and were published in the year 1650 in Latin showing that it was thought that the mathematical knowledge that came from parts of the Islamic world at that time was important for study within the Latin West now these are only a few examples we could go on and you could just list name after name after name and there are indeed scholars of mathematics and astronomy who are much better qualified than myself to do this one could also go into the Natural Sciences and discuss people such as even the feasts and even Bush who were the first people to identify the function of the pulmonary system to identify capillaries giving a push in 13th century was the first person to identify the function of the heart valve and how it actually works and so all areas of technological mathematical investigation scientific investigation continued to thrive after abu hamid al-ghazali in the last 200 years there has indeed be in a grave decline in many parts of the Islamic world in scientific investigation and there are various geopolitical factors that contribute to that and unfortunately there are some parts of the Islamic world today where in theoretical mathematics and science for the sake of science is not prioritized but only the technological application of it and that's a problem but it is not something that can be taken back to abu hamid al-ghazali and can be attributed to him in any way and it really is not something that is inherent to classical Islamic civilization in fact in classical Islamic civilization there was seen as being a wedding between the knowledge of the earth and the knowledge that we derived through empirical investigation and religious knowledge so this idea that there was somehow separate from one another and that religion in the classical Islamic period overcame the scientific investigation and relegated it to some dark corner of society is simply not correct it might be part of a narrative that many people wish to advanced nowadays but it is not in fact substantiated by the historical record thank you very much this is my first youtube video on such a thing and I'm responding to requests that I've gotten in questions I've gotten from several people if there are other videos that you would like to see please just mention them in the comment section thank you goodbye

Channel: Joseph Lumbard

Views: 21,147

Rating: 4.7974682 out of 5

Keywords: Islam, Science, religion, ghazali, deGrasse Tyson, islam and rationality, Islamic philosophy, Ghazzali, Islam and science, Islamic Studies, Islamic Studies lectures, neil degrasse tyson, ghazali tyson, degrasse tyson islam, neil degrasse tyson the downfall of islam

Id: 1qLSzhuTCXc

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 29 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/HopDavid]

Accurate criticism is a good thing. When we're made aware of our shortcomings we can work to correct them.

However Neil deGrasse Tyson's arguments against religion are often based on invented histories. Kudos to professor Lumbard for calling out Tyson's fiction on Hamid al Ghazali and the Islamic Golden Age.

The are other Tyson stories that are highly questionable. Tyson likes to claim Newton's creativity was shut down by his beliefs. "When you start basking in the majesty of God ... you're kind of no good any more," Tyson says of Newton. But this is another example of Tyson's arguments resting on invented histories.

We are all vulnerable to confirmation bias. James Randi, Michael Shermer and other prominent skeptics are correct that skepticism can help prevent error from confirmation bias. We should examine our assumptions and see if they are supported by evidence.

But Tyson's demonstrably false claims have been widely accepted by skeptics. The bad history of Islam Lumbard talks about was warmly received at TAM6, Beyond Belief as well as other skeptic gatherings. Clearly these self proclaimed skeptics don't practice what they preach.