In this manner, I believe that the major scientific developments in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the product of this dynamic cycle of wealth, mostly initiated by the "discovery" of the New World. Wealth drove further production of science, and in turn science allowed the acquisition of more wealth, and so on. This pattern seems to have been set then. And for those who look at the close relationship between modern corporations and the production of modern science, can easily discern the main features of this same dynamic cycle that is still going on.
At this sped-up rate, the production of science in what is now Europe began to grow almost at a logarithmic rate, leaving the rest of the world to struggle with its own depleted resources and its old ways of doing science. The Islamic, as well as the Chinese worlds, had up till that time a similar scientific status as that of Europe, as was so aptly noted by Needham more than 50 years ago.[394] But with the onset of the new dynamic cycle we just mentioned, that was set in motion by the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, European science began to surge on, and both of the Chinese and Islamic worlds were left behind.
Returning to the age of decline in the Islamic civilization, in my opinion, this age of decline was less caused by such factors as a book of Ghazālī or the invasion of the Mongols, than by the external world circumstances of the sixteenth century and thereafter. And since the term decline implied a comparative context, as was stated above, in my opinion too, what seems to have happened was the onset of a race between the European royal houses and the rest of the world, including the Islamic world. And in that race, the Islamic world lost. But no one should forget that the real race started in the sixteenth century as a result of the discovery of the New World, and that it was a race between Europe, on the one hand, and the rest of the world, on the other. This race continues to intensify till this very day. In relative terms then, when one culture begins to produce more and better science, for now it can afford to, the other culture will look like it declined, no matter what.
Of course, the translation of the European superiority, and now add the United States' as well, in commercial, scientific and technological terms, into further acquisitions of resources and manpower from the rest of the world, and actual subjugation of the rest of the world to military occupation between the eighteenth and twentieth century, the so-called age of colonialism, which is still going on in many places, did not help in leveling the field of competition. So naturally, all non-western cultures look like they are experiencing an age of decline in comparison. And their decline too started around the year 1600, nearly 100 years after the discovery of the New World and during which European royal houses learned how to translate the benefits of that discovery into political power.
As far as I can tell, neither Islamic science, nor Chinese science, for example, had managed to start a capital-driven cycle through their methods of production. In the Islamic world the institutions of science, such as observatories, hospitals, and even the various houses of science (individually called dār al-'ilm) that were mainly patronized by wealthy individuals, and at times the ruling sultan himself, were never directed at acquisition of further wealth, and never attained a self sustaining economic status that would have guaranteed their survival and perpetuity. They could produce brilliant scientists, such as the ones whose works we have examined, ever so briefly, but they could not guarantee the continuous production of the scientists themselves through the security of their income and position. As a result, the scientific production of the Islamic world was mainly driven by individual genius but only when those geniuses could by accident encounter the right patron who would offer the support.
For modern times, the problem of catching up with western science is not only a problem for the Islamic world alone. Instead it has obviously become the problem of the whole so-called second and third worlds as well. And now they all seem to be locked in this competitive race for which the non-western world neither possesses the necessary capital, nor the infrastructure, nor the manpower to compete on fair grounds. Add to that the constant brain drain that continues to feed the first world at the expense of the second and third, a fact that makes this race even harder to win.
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For a fuller appreciation of this fact, and its implications for the rise of modern science, see Joseph Needham,