xiv, 409 pages : 24 cm

This is a study of the long-standing question of why modern science arose only in the West and not in the civilizations of Islam and China. The author points out that from the tenth century to the thirteenth the Arabs had the most advanced science in the world. Arab astronomers even invented non-Ptolemaic planetary models that are equivalent to those of Copernicus, yet they failed to develop modern science. While the Chinese underwent a high level of mathematical development during the European High Middle Ages, they generally lagged behind the Arabs in physical theory, optics, astronomy, and experimentation

To explain this outcome the author explores the cultural - religious, legal, philosophical, and institutional - contexts within which science was practiced in Islam. China, and the West. He finds in the history of law and the European cultural revolution of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries major clues as to why the ethos of science arose in the West, permitting the breakthrough to modern science that did not occur elsewhere. This line of inquiry leads to novel ideas about the centrality of the legal concept of corporation which is unique to the West and gave rise to the concepts of neutral space and free inquiry

Includes bibliographical references (pages 365-385) and index

1. The comparative study of science. The modernity of science. Science as a civilizational institution. Elements of the sociological perspective. The role of the scientist. The ethos of science. Paradigms and scientific communities. Comparative civilizational sociology of science: Joseph Needham. Benjamin Nelson: universalization and wider spheres of discourse. Conclusion: the issues at hand -- 2. Arabic science and the Islamic world. The problem of Arabic science. The achievements of Arabic astronomy. Role-sets, institutions, and science. Social roles and cultural elites. Institutions of higher learning and research. Institution building and the marginality problem -- 3. Reason and rationality in Islam and the West. The Islamic legal background. Reason, man, and nature in Europe. Reason and conscience -- 4. The European legal revolution. The development of modern Western law. The papal revolution. The breakthrough in inherited logics. Corporations and jurisdiction. Revolution and the parting of the ways

5. Colleges, universities, and sciences. Madrasas: Islamic colleges. Universities and the west. Islamic protoscientific institutions. Western universities and the place of science. Medicine and the universities: the quest for universalistic norms -- 6. Cultural climates and the ethos of science. The arresting of Arabic science. Internal factors. External factors: cultural and institutional impediments -- 7. Science and civilization in China. The problem of Chinese science. China and the comparative context. The emergence of imperial China. Chinese law. Education and the examination system. Reprise -- 8. Science and social organization in China. Some problems of written Chinese. Chinese modes of thought. Institutional impediments and patterns of opportunity -- 9. The rise of early modern science. The Copernican revolution. The institutionalization problem. Science, learning, and the medieval revolution. The revolution in authority and astronomy -- Epilogue: science and civilizations East and West