Islam Opted Out

I found another source analyzing why some nations made progress in science and technology, but others did not. Tim Rutten writes a column for the LA Times.

"Back in the High Middle Ages the three great monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — reached one of those fundamental forks in the historical road.” [paraphrasing] Judaism (largely thanks to Moses Maimonides) and Christianity (largely thanks to Thomas Aquinas) chose to believe that reason and faith led to the same truth.

Ironically, Islam, whose early scholars had preserved the works of reason’s first apostle, Aristotle, “held that there were two truths — that of revelation and that of the natural world. There was no need to reconcile them because they were separate and distinct.

"It was a form of intellectual suicide and cut off much of the Islamic world from the centuries of scientific and political progress that followed."

Via Rich Karlgaard at Forbes.com, an excellent source.