From a speech by UCLA computer science professor Judea Pearl:
What Galileo showed us is that you cannot have one honesty without the other; scientific truth demands scientific honesty, and scientific honesty demands intellectual honesty overall.
We all remember the 1000 years of zero scientific progress through the middle ages -- what caused it?
The conventional answer is that the Church was repressive of scientific discourse. But this could not be the whole story, there was no repressive Church in the Muslim world. And Muslim scientists had access to the richest libraries of the time, well-funded astronomical observatories and all the writings of the Greek and Roman philosophers. So why didn't a genius like Galileo emerge in Cordoba or Alexandria or Baghdad in the 8th or 9th century?
Why was science held back, in almost total stagnation for 1000 years, until, as though by miracle, the genius of Copernicus, Vieta and Galileo emerged in dark-ages Europe, of all places? Can you imagine where mankind would be today had the renaissance and the scientific revolution taken place in the 5th century instead of the 15th?
What Galileo taught us is that permission to read, translate, observe and use fancy equipment is not enough; the development of Science requires a restless and rebellious spirit, a spirit that puts the individual at the center of the universe and proclaims: "I don’t care about Aristotle and his fancy books, I want to see these two rocks dropped from the tower of Pisa, and I want to see them with my own two
eyes."
In other words, what Galileo showed us is that you cannot truly search for the truth unless you are free to rebel against the detractors of truth: conventional wisdom, peer pressure, sacred cows, wishful thinking, revered authority and hidden agenda, in short, free to perceive yourself as an AGENT, in control of your destiny, not an OBJECT, at the mercy of destiny.
Remarkably, this Western perception of man as a free agent, sometimes called the "scientific philosophy", it not always taken for granted, even today.
and here is my answer:
There's something to be said for this professor's opinion. Here's another thought (credit goes to others who first proposed it):
The Revelation of Baha'u'llah required certain scientific and technological developments to be already in place so that His Cause could reach the whole world, as it was intended to do. (Note that the Spirit of Baha'u'llah has been eternally alive and has directed the course of human affairs since the beginning of history.)
Without the ease and speed of travel that enabled Abdu'l-Baha, Martha Root, and others to undertake their world-shaking journeys, the constant, reliable and near-instant communication between the center of the Faith and the followers of the Faith scattered throughout the world, the inexpensive mass-production of literature, and the rise of a global media network, among many such requirements, the Faith of Baha'u'llah could not have grown and blossomed as it has nor reached the thousands of citizens around the world whose lives are being transformed by His redeeming message of unity and peace.
This is why science flourished when it did. In my experience, scientific insights are not the result of a person's "own unaided efforts"–they are a divine gift entrusted to a receptive soul. The purpose of study and effort is to purify the soil so that the seed of insight may take root. How many and which kinds of seeds are planted is up to God–whether they are cared for and flourish is up to us.
In summary, we have to accept that we are objects of mercy and bounty while at the same time acting as free agents, responsible for the portion that has been given us in this life.
