Initiative

摘录《黑天鹅》，在11世纪的西欧：

The eleventh-century Arabic-language skeptic Al-Ghazali, known in Latin as Algazel wrote a diatribe called Tahafut al falasifa, which I translate as "The Incompetence of Philosophy." It was directed at the school called falasifah — the Arabic intellectual establishment was the direct heir of the classical philosophy of the academy, and they managed to reconcile it with Islam through rational argument.
Algazel's attack on "scientific" knowledge started a debate with Averroës, the medieval philosopher who ended up having the most profound influence of any medieval thinker (on Jews and Christians, though not on Moslems). The debate between Algazel and Averroës was finally, but sadly, won by both. In its aftermath, many Arab religious thinkers integrated and exaggerated Algazel's skepticism of the scientific method, preferring to leave causal considerations to God (in fact it was a stretch of his idea). The West embraced Averroës's rationalism, built upon Aristotle's, which survived through Aquinas and the Jewish philosophers who called themselves Averroan for a long time. Many thinkers blame the Arabs' later abandonment of scientific method on Algazel's huge influence. He ended up fueling Sufi mysticism, in which the worshipper attempts to enter into communion with God, severing all connections with earthly matters.

我们很多时候看到的是时代的下限，却忽略了它华丽的拱顶。

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