AlboreanNomad on Nostr: The Soviet intellectuals were right in their observation: under Communism, the future ...
The Soviet intellectuals were right in their observation: under Communism, the future is certain, yet history always changes. This notion—unintended, perhaps—casts a curious light on the world of scholarship, where even the most brilliant historians, armed with years of meticulous research, find their conclusions unmade.
Within a mere five years of retirement, the intellectual fortresses they constructed are often reduced to ruins by the advancing tide of new evidence.
So much remains unknown; so many ironclad hypotheses crumble into irrelevance.
Why, for instance, did the West industrialize and rise to dominance while other civilizations faltered? The answer eludes us still, tantalizingly out of reach. Consider the Netherlands: all conditions aligned in their favor, and yet it was the English who first breached the threshold of industrial revolution.
And what of the Islamicate world? What missteps led it astray? I have come to believe that the very framing of this question as a central focus of effort is a misallocation of intellectual resources.
Definitive answers are an illusion, especially when the historical record of the Islamicate world lies in shambles, its archives scattered, incomplete, poorly preserved. Even in the Occident, with its comparatively meticulous record-keeping, what we uncover is not certitude but directional truths—hints of causality, never the whole.
This is why I am drawn to the SAIF approach: a call to direct collective energy not toward the dissection of history, but toward the realization of future industrialization.
Thr future of the Ummah is certain, even though it's history always changes.
Within a mere five years of retirement, the intellectual fortresses they constructed are often reduced to ruins by the advancing tide of new evidence.
So much remains unknown; so many ironclad hypotheses crumble into irrelevance.
Why, for instance, did the West industrialize and rise to dominance while other civilizations faltered? The answer eludes us still, tantalizingly out of reach. Consider the Netherlands: all conditions aligned in their favor, and yet it was the English who first breached the threshold of industrial revolution.
And what of the Islamicate world? What missteps led it astray? I have come to believe that the very framing of this question as a central focus of effort is a misallocation of intellectual resources.
Definitive answers are an illusion, especially when the historical record of the Islamicate world lies in shambles, its archives scattered, incomplete, poorly preserved. Even in the Occident, with its comparatively meticulous record-keeping, what we uncover is not certitude but directional truths—hints of causality, never the whole.
This is why I am drawn to the SAIF approach: a call to direct collective energy not toward the dissection of history, but toward the realization of future industrialization.
Thr future of the Ummah is certain, even though it's history always changes.