Synopses & Reviews
In this wide-ranging and masterful work, Ahmad Dallal examines the significance of scientific knowledge and situates the culture of science in relation to other cultural forces in Muslim societies. He traces the ways in which the realms of scientific knowledge and religious authority were delineated historically. The realization of a discrepancy between tradition and science often led to demolition and rebuilding and, most important, to questioning whether scientific knowledge should take precedence over religious authority in a matter where their realms clearly overlap.
Dallal frames his inquiry around three concerns: What cultural forces provided the conditions for debate over the primacy of religion or science? How did these debates emerge? And how were they sustained? His primary objectives are to study science in Muslim societies within its larger cultural context and to trace the epistemological distinctions between science and philosophy, on the one hand, and science and religion, on the other. He looks at religious and scientific texts and situates them in the contexts of religion, philosophy, and science. Finally, Dallal describes the relationship negotiated in the classical (medieval) period between the religious, scientific, and philosophical systems of knowledge that is central to the Islamic scientific tradition and shows how this relationship has changed radically in modern times.
Review
and#8220;Dallal masterfully controls the narrative with his encyclopedic approach to Islamic intellectual history and his full acquaintance with the literature. He is up-to-date on all aspects of Islamic intellectual and religious history, and has the superb skill of seeing many fields within that civilization within the shadows of each other.and#8221;and#8212;George Saliba, Columbia University
Review
and#8220;It is the first serious treatment of the whole subject, superseding all earlier partial, incompetent and, for the most part, biased (through ignorance) works.and#8221;and#8212;Dimitri Gutas, Yale University, author of
Greek Thought, Arabic CultureReview
andldquo;. . . demonstrates the authorandrsquo;s passionate and lifelong involvement with the topic of the relationship between religious and scientific knowledge. . . . a significant contribution.andrdquo;andmdash;Muzaffar Iqbal,and#160;Islamic Sciencesand#160;
Review
“The importance of new ideas about science in the development of new ideological currents in the late Ottoman Empire has been recognized for a while now, but no previous book has dealt with the topic in such detail and with such a focus as Yalçinkayas excellent Learned Patriots. Tracing the development and transformation of competing discourses on science in the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century, Yalçinkaya argues that these discourses were closely tied to debates on morality, cultural orientations, and ideological preferences during a period of intensifying military, political, and economic pressures on the Ottoman lands. The book will be of interest to scholars of the late Ottoman Empire, the modern Middle East, and anyone interested in the interplay between the dissemination of scientific knowledge and ideas and social and intellectual changes in the 1800s.”
Review
“Alper Yalçinkayas Learned Patriots will be greeted with enthusiasm by everyone interested in science and society in the late Ottoman Empire. Yalçinkaya brings together critical issues that earlier approaches have usually separated: history of science, political thought, elite formation, the polemics over issues of cultural change. Offering fascinating insights into change over time in the interactions of these issues, he shows that what mattered was not just scientific expertise but the social engagement and moral character of its custodians and its positive contributions to the communalistic universe of Ottoman social values.”
Review
“Professional historians and sociologists of science have been writing about the Ottoman Empire since the early 1940s, yet no work to date matches the sophistication and fascination of Alper Yalçinkayas Learned Patriots. In this engaging study of how nineteenth-century Turks embraced the ‘new science of the West to replace the ‘old science of the medreses, he sets a very high standard for future scholarship on the subject.”
Review
"A fascinating book for anyone interested in the entangled histories of science and modernity, and the ways that particular forms of identity and subjectivity emerged from inscriptions of that entanglement. I especially recommend it to readers paying special attention to the histories of the press, language, and the state as they are bound up with nineteenth century science and technology."
Review
"A rewarding reexamination of 19th-century Ottoman conversations about science and civilization. Rather than revisiting well-traveled narratives of the Ottoman adoption (or lack thereof) of modern 'science and technology,' and rather than asking how Ottoman bureaucrats and intellectuals established what was or was not properly science, Yalçinkaya asks a more 'naïve' question: 'What were the Ottomans talking about when they talked about science?' His answer—'people,' and in particular the ideal, scientifically informed, yet ethical and upright 'patriot'—turns much received wisdom concerning late Ottoman scientific discourse on its head. . . . This book is a welcome addition to scholarship on the rhetoric of science and technology in the Ottoman Empire. . . . Recommended."
Synopsis
The nineteenth century was, for many societies, a period of coming to grips with the growing, and seemingly unstoppable, domination of the world by the Great Powers” of Europe. The Ottoman Empire was no exception: Ottomans from all walks of lifeelite and non-elite, Muslim and non-Muslimdebated the reasons for Ottoman decline” and European ascendance.” One of the most popular explanations was deceptively simple: science. If the Ottomans adopted the new sciences of the Europeans, it was frequently argued, the glory days of the Empire could be revived.
Learned Patriots offers, for the first time, a descriptive analysis of the nineteenth-century Muslim Ottoman debate about the nature, benefits, and potential dangers of science. M. Alper Yalçinkaya reveals that discussions centered on science were at the same time about the present and the ideal society, the relationship between the state and its subjects, and the very identity of the people.” In such a setting the Ottoman debate was less about the meaning of science than about the proper characteristics of a man of science. At base, he argues, it was a debate about morality. While there existed a variety of views on the relationship (or lack thereof) between science, morality, and the state, the phenomena were never discussed separately, and the complex interconnections the author tracesall centered around what kinds of people the Muslim Ottomans were, and were not, and what kinds of people they should, and should not, becomeare still felt today.
About the Author
M. Alper Yalçinkaya is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology/Anthropology at Ohio Wesleyan University.