We sometimes claim our reading matter is western-centric. It was mentioned last week when we talked about The Silk Roads. I’ve just finished reading The Modern Mind by Peter Watson and this rather shocking comment is taken from the concluding chapter.
Asynchronists 
I have a visceral aversion to racism but it seems to me that culturism is undeniable.
And utterly fascinating
From the 8th to 11th century, Islamic culture was thriving and excelled in mathematics, medicine, astronomy, art and philosophy. And then it turned away from natural philosophy and has never recovered.
There is debate about the reason for this. Many sources identify an 11th century book by Persian Theologian/philosopher Al Ghazali called “The Incoherance of the Philosophers” as the tipping point.
In this YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl1nJC3lvFs, astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson claims that 25% of all Nobel prizes have been awarded to Jews who numbers less than 15 million (under 0.2% of world population) and 2 prizes have been awarded to Muslims who number 1.8 billion (c. 24% of world population). Even allowing for gross bias in the awarding of the Nobels, it’s a staggering statistic.
Staggering too is the level of achievement of people of Jewish culture in almost every field of human endeavor. Why is that? What can we learn from it?
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