Diving straight to the core: "With the rise of the Ash’arites, the ethos in the Islamic world was increasingly opposed to original scholarship and any scientif

Diving straight to the core: "With the rise of the Ash’arites, the ethos in the Islamic world was increasingly opposed to original scholarship and any scientific inquiry that did not directly aid in religious regulation of private and public life. While the Mu’tazilites had contended that the Koran was created and so God’s purpose for man must be interpreted through reason, the Ash’arites believed the Koran to be coeval with God — and therefore unchallengeable. At the heart of Ash’ari metaphysics is the idea of occasionalism, a doctrine that denies natural causality." "According to the occasionalist view, tomorrow coldness might follow fire, and satiety might follow lack of food. God wills every single atomic event and God’s will is not bound up with reason. This amounts to a denial of the coherence and comprehensibility of the natural world." Pretty sure the article was posted to HN to draw parallels to today's rise of constructivism and the decline of positivism as a philosophical reference frame in the West.