This thread asks a question that I've had on my mind for quite a while now. Now, I understand that the industrial revolution was so successful in Europe because of the large reserves of coal, and in Britain because the geography just lent itself really well to industrial infrastructure, but there had to have been an intellectual/scientific buildup to that sort of revolution, right? One that, for reasons that still aren't very clear to me, was not echoed or even co-opted by the Islamic World until it was too late.
What I want to know is this- is it possible for the Islamic World to resume the illumination that it had before and that the European sphere had just begun with a POST-renaissance pod? And there doesn't just have to be one thing. Take a kinder reception for the Sephardim press- may not save the whole thing on its own, but maybe in combination with something else; and so on. I know it is possible for them to at least not fall as far behind as they did, especially in North African polities, but I want to know how.
One thing I want to make clear- I am not trying to figure out how to Wank the Islamic World! I do not want to know how crazy good things would be if the Mongols were butterflied or if some super Caliphate conquered Europe. I just want to know how to lessen, maybe even resolve, the gross inequality between one mediterranean civilizational family, and another- in spite of these things, and not just make the initial setbacks disappear.
Any ideas are appreciated. I hope for the input of a few certain scholars...