Turkish-American physicist Taner Edis explains why science in Muslim lands remains stuck in the past — and why the Golden Age of Mesopotamia wasn’t so golden after all.
Q:Why did the scientific revolution happen in Christian Europe and not in the Islamic world?
A: … My perception is that a number of factors came together so that scientific institutions in Europe got lucky. They were able to break free of church constraints and unleash a powerful technology that plugged into emerging capitalism at that moment in history. After that, it was too late to go back and strangle science even if somebody wanted to.