Re:Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)
by sangnoir on Friday October 09, 2020 @07:45PM
(#24735534)
> That happened in Europe in the Middle Ages...
This is a common misconception - the church was fundamental to the development of the scientific methods, and a long list of scientific contributors were men(and was almost exclusively men) of faith[1]. To do ground-breaking science, you had to have free time and this meant you had to be independently wealthy, or had benefactor (e.g. church) sponsor your upkeep. I suspect clergy and peerage are overrepresented in science because everyone else had to work the fields (or boats) and upward mobility wasn't yet a thing.
This is a common misconception - the church was fundamental to the development of the scientific methods, and a long list of scientific contributors were men(and was almost exclusively men) of faith[1]. To do ground-breaking science, you had to have free time and this meant you had to be independently wealthy, or had benefactor (e.g. church) sponsor your upkeep. I suspect clergy and peerage are overrepresented in science because everyone else had to work the fields (or boats) and upward mobility wasn't yet a thing.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scient...