The article looks back at the rich Arab intellectual tradition of the Middle Ages, and the question of what happened is intriguing indeed. I heard a fascinating interview with Robert R. Reilly, the author of _The Closing of the Muslim Mind_[1], and I think his book could be a significant contribution to understanding this problem. Here is what I remember from the interview:
The issue of how God interacts with the created world was an open question in the Middle Ages. Everyone agreed that God was the creator and sovereign Lord of the universe, but there were differing views about how that played out.
One school of thought had the concepts of primary and secondary causality. God is responsible for the existence of all things; he is the primary cause. However, God gives created things the power of causality so that they are secondary causes. Therefore a billiard ball has the "power" to cause other billiard balls to move when it strikes them. These powers of secondary causality are properties of created things and thus they can be studied and understood. Such a belief led to early forms of scientific inquiry.
The other school of thought was that God is the direct and only cause of everything that happens. Secondary causality is just an illusion. God directly moves all of the billiard balls. Just because billiard ball B starts to move after ball A comes into contact with it does not mean A was the cause of B's movement. Rather, God is the cause of all movement. It is the ultimate "correlation does not imply causation" argument. In fact, the current state of the universe has no bearing on the state of the universe in the next instance of time. God recreates the universe every moment in time solely according to his Will, rather like a video game engine completely renders the screen image for every frame. The image of one frame does not cause the image of the next frame. All frames come directly from the game engine.
The second school of thought ended up winning in the Muslim world because it exalted the Will of God as ultimate and without competition. Philosophical and scientific inquiry were squelched, but fortunately this happened after the great works of the first school had already passed into Christian hands. Since God is primarily Love rather than Will in Christian theology, it was reasonable to think that God, motivated by love, would give a measure of control to his creatures.
I hope I have not misrepresented the ideas of the book. It is on my reading list, but I have not gotten to it yet.
The issue of how God interacts with the created world was an open question in the Middle Ages. Everyone agreed that God was the creator and sovereign Lord of the universe, but there were differing views about how that played out.
One school of thought had the concepts of primary and secondary causality. God is responsible for the existence of all things; he is the primary cause. However, God gives created things the power of causality so that they are secondary causes. Therefore a billiard ball has the "power" to cause other billiard balls to move when it strikes them. These powers of secondary causality are properties of created things and thus they can be studied and understood. Such a belief led to early forms of scientific inquiry.
The other school of thought was that God is the direct and only cause of everything that happens. Secondary causality is just an illusion. God directly moves all of the billiard balls. Just because billiard ball B starts to move after ball A comes into contact with it does not mean A was the cause of B's movement. Rather, God is the cause of all movement. It is the ultimate "correlation does not imply causation" argument. In fact, the current state of the universe has no bearing on the state of the universe in the next instance of time. God recreates the universe every moment in time solely according to his Will, rather like a video game engine completely renders the screen image for every frame. The image of one frame does not cause the image of the next frame. All frames come directly from the game engine.
The second school of thought ended up winning in the Muslim world because it exalted the Will of God as ultimate and without competition. Philosophical and scientific inquiry were squelched, but fortunately this happened after the great works of the first school had already passed into Christian hands. Since God is primarily Love rather than Will in Christian theology, it was reasonable to think that God, motivated by love, would give a measure of control to his creatures.
I hope I have not misrepresented the ideas of the book. It is on my reading list, but I have not gotten to it yet.
1: http://www.amazon.com/Closing-Muslim-Mind-Intellectual-Islam...