Comparative Differences: Eastern Arab-Islam and the West

An Analysis of Technological Growth in the West

January 19th, 2009 at 8:45 pm - by admin

To continue on that metric, it’s important to realize that the transition between Arabic-Islamic technological dominance of the 100 AD-1450 AD period¹, and the dominance of the West from 1450 AD-present² happened evolutionarily, and occurred both as a case of the West’s technological development increasing in speed³ and the East providing fewer and fewer scholars over the two and a half centuries or so transitory periods of dominance.

We see such essential (and, path-dependent) innovations of today’s technology such as paper, use of almost all⁴ natural resources and literally hundreds of other technological advancements which were pioneered entirely during the pre-Western periods of dominance out of China, Islam, and the rest of the East. During this period, we still see limited technological advancement from the West, the important realization of this, is that significantly more technological development of this period came from Eastern society.

An analysis of the key legal differences between the East and the West which caused the transition of economic hegemony and technological dominance leads us to a duality of major points; philosophy of law and religion and the evolutionary structure of law. We find, simply, that a particular shift in legal belief away from that of strictly divinity toward an understanding of “natural” law, “human” law and “divine” law as separate entities⁵⁶ and the creation of an evolutionary structure of legal authoring.

Emerging from the West, particularly Italy, was a view from medieval Scholastics that suggested the universe was “an ordered machine” where law was dictated from a nature-oriented look at things. That is, the basic idea of natural law, or natural philosophy, exists a postulate for a set of rules or laws which is set out by nature, and is therefore axiomatic in it’s acceptance everywhere, making it inherently valid⁷⁸. An Italian monk, Franciscus Gratianus, with a significant interest in the idea of natural law, placed natural law below divine law, but above human law, creating a clear hierarchy of laws that profoundly affected the evolution of Western law; however, he went as far as claiming that natural law may be more involving than can be expressed through a simple hierarchy, suggesting that natural law is found both in “divine revelations” and in “human reason and conscience.” Gratianus’, and the evolving Western understanding of natural law took a very, very different look at law than the Islamic view - Eastern countries were still, at this point, heavily dominated by divine law, suggesting that prophets could only speak law once, from which point it was taken explicitly as the word of God⁹ leaving the only way to amend law through correcting misunderstandings or misinterpretations¹⁰

The important result from Gratianus’ philosophical publications¹¹ (which, alone, would be unlikely to cause a revolution in law) is a complete change in how many philosophical thinkers approached legal and natural law theory, a lot of which didn’t come to maturity until the 15th and 16th centuries¹² This stands to show an important theme in the changes, while most of them did in fact occur at first in the 11th and 12th centuries, the effects weren’t fully felt until many years later; recommitting the point that structural and philosophical changes in this period were only a framework for changes which did not fully occur for hundreds of years (particularly, the First Industrial Revolution) — this was a transitory period of sorts¹³

Islam and China had different issues in with regard to legal establishments. Islam tended towards a lack of progression due to divine law being seen as un-evolutionary, and therefore not progress-seeking. Islamic holy writings were, indeed, accepted as an “accurate record of God’s commands”, which could axiomatically not be amended. However, China, had little in terms of divine dominance. China showed a similar problem in legal progress though, showing very little in terms of divergence from the path of law and ethics being one in the same; such an analysis of legal behaviour not differing from that which was considered ethical prevented any rule of law from ever being formed, inherently eliminating the Western-type push for impartial and equal treatment under law¹⁴

Importantly to emphasize, Islam did have exposure to European and Western codified law at this point. The Roman Justinian Code and other legal principles and concepts at this point affected Muslims and Easterners who traded with the European West at this point however, the Quran and sunna were still considered complete records of God’s commands, and therefore axiomatically recognized as records of prophetic accuracy. The situation in the West, was modified from that, with little record of the Bible as the accurate source of all that should be, even with the high saturation (near absolute saturation) of Christians, Kings tended to hold their ground as leaders and the source of all law, holding an almost God-like control over their respective societies. It wasn’t until the Investiture Incident of the 12th century that this tradition started to break down and lead way to a more social understanding of modern institutions and of law. This simple social and cultural difference between the East and the West may be all it takes to understand how the West’s legal situation seriously differed from that of the East during and after this period. See the Toby Huff book mentioned in the Further Reading section of this article for more information and answers regarding this point.

It’s important, at this point, to address that this is not likely to be an Occident bias. It’s often the case, that anti-Eastern feelings and thoughts, and in particular, pro-Christian ideals are pushed through economic and social science type analysis through incorrect explanations¹⁵ to big questions. An answer, that is found in many papers regarding this topic, seems to be that the Eastern religions, particularly Islam, had a tendency to simply kill those who rebelled against the church (which, in this context, is really a synonym for “innovation”) and therefore, stifled innovation entirely. The fact is, both Christian and Islamic churches had a tendency to treat scientific progress negatively in a lot of contexts, while supporting it in many others; there was little to no difference between how the East and West treated their scientific scholars until well after the necessary foundation had been laid. It’s not fair to suggest that the creation of natural law, etc., which occurred in the West (and, importantly, not in the East) is something inherently better about the West or that Westerners are inherently smarter, rather, it’s likely an opportune set of historical accidents¹⁶ that caused different developmental paths between the East and West.

Saying that it ended in 1450 may be a bit optimistic for the East, many sources seem to suggest the number of contributory scholars declined rapidly at the end of the 13th century, while holding almost equal to Western scholars in the 12th century. [↩]
Of course, these dates are open to interpretation. When exactly the East stopped being clearly dominant and when the West began is unclear. What is clear, however, is that the transition was smooth, not abrupt as we imply with hard dates here. [↩]
Algorithmically, in fact, it’s difficult to claim that it’s explicitly exponential, but it certainly grows faster than linear growth over certain periods. [↩]
Not all, but a huge sample of natural resources that weren’t used in early hunter-gatherer and band-type societies. Oil is a good example of a natural resource that was seen as mostly valueless by early Eastern dominant societies. [↩]
Note, this has shifted again the 21st century, pushing for an entire disconnect between “human” law and “divine” law, with an aim towards an absolute disconnect between church and state. [↩]
Another important legal and philosophical revolution of the West, that did not occur in the East (at this point, if at all) is that of the pillared approach to legal decision making. Impartiality, coercion and equality is the structure of all Western law, where Eastern law at this point was absolute, impartiality and equality were not considered significant with respect to religious traditions of law beyond the extent of the religion itself. [↩]
To elaborate on this, one would be best to look directly to the source, reading Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics, and the works of Thomas Aquinas. The effects on law by the rise of natural law and natural rights is profound. [↩]
One finds the effects and axiomatic beliefs of natural law and natural rights as the basis for most modern day constitutions. [↩]
And therefore, irrefutable. [↩]
And thus, inherently inhibiting the entire progression of the evolutionary legal structure, unlike the West’s new evolutionary structure of the period, the East showed a forced inhibition of legal progress. [↩]
It’s important here, to note that Gratianus did not pioneer natural law. In fact, it’s arguable that Aristotle did, as far back as late 300 BC. Gratianus (along with Aquinas) brought it to the attention of Western society and further progressed the value of such a look at legal thought. [↩]
Particularly with Hobbes political philosophy in 1651’s Leviathan. [↩]
Note, that there was an Muslim “natural law” movement, pioneered mostly by Abu Rayhan Biruni, with his “law of the jungle” movement. It did not grow in the same way Gratianus’ philosophy grew in the Western society, and was in a number of ways mostly left behind in favour of more divine thinkers. [↩]
It might not be clear at this point why impartiality and equality are so important, or even, why rule of law is so important to the economic and technological progression discussed previously. The final section of this article, Long-Run Economies and The Results of Revolution, heavily analyzes the relevant details of this point. [↩]
Particularly, things, such as the following explanation, which seem to logically follow due to an Occident bias in those from the West, and even, with increased globalization and Western hegemony weathering the challenge, we start to see entirely unintentional Occidental biases in Eastern publications. [↩]
Effectively, evolutionary chaos. [↩]