Ehsan Masood > Quotes

“It is as if the memory of an entire civilisation and its contribution to the sum of knowledge has been virtually wiped from human consciousness. Not simply in the West but in the Islamic world too, the achievements of Islamic scientists were, until recently, largely forgotten or at least neglected, except by a few diligent specialists such as Harvard University’s Abelhamid Sabra, David King, Jamil Ragep and George Saliba.”
― Ehsan Masood, Science and Islam: A History

“If anything, the genesis of colleges in the Islamic world seems to have been a way to organise those scholars who were opposed to philosophy and rationalism. Knowledge and science in ancient times were supported by individual patrons and when these patrons changed their priorities, or when they died, any institutions that they might have built often died with them. This is a major reason why no observatory lasted more than 30 years in any of the Islamic empires.”
― Ehsan Masood, Science and Islam: A History

“This is the myth of the Dark Ages, the idea that history and progress pretty much stopped for a millennium after the fall of Rome. The trouble is that the myth is just that, a myth.”
― Ehsan Masood, Science and Islam: A History

“The industrial civilization has promoted the concept of the efficient man. Groups or individuals who are less competitive, less efficient, are regarded as lesser breeds.”
― Ehsan Masood, The Great Invention: The Story of GDP and the Making and Unmaking of the Modern World

“In mainstream science education in Britain - until very recently - the history of scientific progress has tended to leapfrog from the classical era of Euclid, Aristotle and Archimedes straight to the birth of the Age of Science in 16th- and 17th- century Europe, with only a cursory mention, if any, of the great swathe of Islamic science in between.”
― Ehsan Masood, Science and Islam: A History

“Greenspan was correct. GDP is neither a measure of welfare nor an indicator of well-being.”
― Ehsan Masood, The Great Invention: The Story of GDP and the Making and Unmaking of the Modern World

“Why does it take a war to produce jobs; [why does it take a war to produce] the resources to get an economy moving?”
― Ehsan Masood, The Great Invention: The Story of GDP and the Making and Unmaking of the Modern World