ComradeSharkfucker

They/Them

“There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.” - Mark Twain

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • Pointing to specific instances of scientific development and religious interference with scientific development does not create an argument. You have to add analysis that places these examples within their respective historical, political, economic, and cultural contexts. Then use that to support a defensible claim.

    Regardless, none of your examples address the core of my argument which was, to clarify, that investment in abstract sciences originates from specific economic necessities rooted in the dominant mode of production rather than ideological dispositions. The existing ideological perspectives surrounding scientific development form as political and social justification for the meeting of those material economic needs. Not the other way around.


  • The UK did not “discover” science and the Islamic world didn’t “turn their backs” on their scientific methods out of an ideological disposition as you seem to be implying. The decline of material studies (golden age specifically) in that region coincide with the increase of social inequality and resulting concentration of political and economic power in the hands of a small elite who had little interest in funding these pursuits on account that they were not strictly/directly “productive”. This, followed by the decimation of scientific institutions, records, and the regional economy generally at the hands of Mongol invasion made this trend effectively irreversible.

    Under the Ottoman empire there was a relative resurgence in scientific studies as was necessitated by industry and military parity which, again, declined as the empire declined. The dissolution of the Ottoman empire after WW1 and subsequent consumption of its parts for the satisfaction of British and French imperial desires once again cemented this decline. The colonizer has no need for domestic scientific inquiry, they need resources and labor.

    The various cultures of West Asia and North Africa did not “abandon” abstract scientific inquiry because islam made them irrational and backwards. Oppressed people simply have more direct concerns preoccupying them. Should we leave them the fuck alone they would have the time and money to invest in such things.

    I would also like to note that the U.K. and other European nations developed the scientific method as a result of their advancing economic needs in regards to industrialization (of course only made possible by plundering the world) not because they just decided to be “rational people”

    Your knee-jerk reaction to my insult of Cromwell, and following denigration of the modern people of West Asia betrays your racist idealist conception of the world and its people’s histories.