Ottoman History Podcast - Science in Early Modern Istanbul

Episode Date: March 25, 2020

Episode 456 with Harun Küçük hosted by Sam Dolbee and Zoe Griffith What did science look like in early modern Istanbul? In this episode, Harun Küçük discusses his new book, Science without Leisure: Practical Naturalism in Istanbul, 1660-1732 (University of Pittsburgh Press), which tackles this question in a bold fashion. Tracing the impact of late seventeenth and early eighteenth transformations of the Ottoman economy, Küçük argues that the material conditions of scholars greatly deteriorated in this period. The changes did not, however, stop people from wanting to know about the world, but rather reoriented their work toward more practical applications of science. Küçük contrasts these conditions with those in some parts of northwestern Europe, where a more leisurely version of science--often theoretically inclined--emerged. He also grapples with the parallels between educational institutions in the early modern period and today.    « Click for More »

It's the Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Sam Dolby. For some historians, there's no dirtier word than presentist. It means you're using concepts or ideas from the now to understand the past, and in the process you distort what that past was. You're violating the supposedly inviolable tenet of history that the past is a foreign country. But then sometimes you encounter something from 100, 200, maybe even 400 years ago, and you not only see some familiar quotidian dilemma that someone from centuries ago also felt, you also might even see yourself. For me, the most common way this happens is when I see a letter between people begin with the line, I'm sorry for taking so long to respond.

Because that apology that this person several hundred years ago wrote with a pen on paper to begin a letter, chances are that on any day in 2020, I too have conveyed that same message in a long-delayed email or text message response. Sorry, everyone. And it makes me feel, for a moment, a connection across time. It makes me feel that, to paraphrase this American life's paraphrase of Us Weekly, historical figures, they're just like us. Okay, so maybe that's a trivial example. But there are also more consequential, more poignant cases. Here's one from 1700, when an Ottoman poet by the name of Nabi wrote a poem of warning to his son regarding his career choices. Advice that will perhaps hit a little too close to home

for those of us trying to find academic work these days. Never think that the scholastic path is a leisurely path. Verily, it has no safety or security. There are no limits to the dangers of that path. The destination is always far off. Getting a chair in the schools is hard. You fight for each step forward. During your first years, you live in poverty

with the hope that you will get respect in your later years. But neither your early respect in your later years but neither your early years nor your later years will provide leisure tremendous hardship awaits between each rank after a 50 there is a 50 actually teaching post you become a man of the road you take your home to Aleppo and Damascus you hope eventually to have the comforts of a high post, that is, if you live long enough to see one. This is a poem? Yes, this is, this is, this is, yes, some lines of that. That poem was read by Harun Kuchuk, who is an assistant prof...

You know what? Actually, I'll let him introduce himself. I'm not intimidating, am I? No, no, no. Okay, no, I don't want to be, right? So, my name is Harun Kucuk. I'm an assistant professor of history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania. I'm an early modernist and I'm a general purpose historian of science. I teach introduction to the history of science. I teach general historiography courses and also some early modern seminars. and on a more amusing level i'm the guy who asks about money

whenever i share a room with others in a seminar setting as in like well you know how much money does this person make etc so you're not asking like a seminar guest how much they make you're asking about historical historical actors right so i'm, well, how much do you make? I ask like, okay. Zoe Griffith and I talked recently with Harun. We met at Baruch College in New York City. Zoe, who is Bernard Baruch? Financier. Financier. We discussed Harun's new book, which is called Science Without Leisure, Practical Naturalism in Istanbul, 1660-1732, published by University of Pittsburgh Press. We explored how asking questions about the money has helped him see connections between early modern Istanbul and the institution many of us work in or are affiliated with today, the university.

And fair warning, we might even get a little presentist. But we're going to start in 17th century Istanbul. So Istanbul, 17th century, you don't have much that is old that's left in Istanbul. So I mean, there is like a really, again, well articulated social structure to the Ottoman Empire well in the 17th century you don't really see that structure anymore in the 17th century what you see is generally like an esnaf society so you have a society of like entrepreneurs and shopkeepers and people who are like in business for one thing or another and even people who are um officials you know quote unquote unquote, they themselves

have their like side gigs, like trading in this, running a shop in that, etc. So this is, you know, the background. Istanbul is super crowded. Topkapi Palace is super crowded. And the government continues to be the only source of salaried jobs, right? So this is something that's happening in the 17th century. Period. As far as I know, yes, period. Period. And the government isn't paying good salaries. So like salaried jobs are going through a general collapse. So, you know, there is this whole issue of likeissaries becoming like Esnaf. Well, it's not like they wanted to become Esnaf, but if you pay them what would be the equivalent

of maybe like $200 a month. Here you are asking about money again. Yeah, I'm asking about money. So why do you become Esnaf? Because it's not like I want to be a soldier and an Esnaf. That doesn't strike me as like a childhood dream. You might want to be a soldier and an esnaf. Like that doesn't strike me as like a childhood dream. Like you might want to be a soldier or an esnaf. But I know you never like imagine yourself as like, I want to be an underpaid soldier.

Right. Soldier who also sells like lemons on the side or something. Right. But that's like, you know, that's the that's the fate like most Istanbulites are facing in the 17th century. that's the fate like most istanbulites are facing in the 17th century and um so the numbers of people who are working for the state are like extremely swollen i mean there is one account of topkapı palace in the 17th century where like a european visitor says i think there are about 40 000 people living in topkapı palace it's like rush hour New York Metro, but think of it as the size of a palace. And there are like 50,000 janissaries, again, like really making extremely low salaries. And professors, again, who are like making extremely low salaries.

Yeah, maybe we could talk more. What is the educational infrastructure of this place? And is that connected to these state institutions? I mean, one thing we don't talk about is like, what a monstrous thing the educational scene in Istanbul is. So by the end of the reign of Ahmed III, 1730, there are 275 madrasas in Istanbul. I think that's a number that's like unheard of, that many educational institutions in a city that's got a population of like half a million, give or take. So, you know, on paper, you should be thinking, wow,

this is like, like the city of Atlantis or something, right? That's, that's the scale that, you know, the numbers suggest for Istanbul. And, you know, if you look at what Madeleine Zilfi said, you know, she thinks that there are even more professors who aren't necessarily attached to physical madrasas. So there are like madrasas on paper that also hire professors. So, I mean, it's like every other person is a professor or a student, right? So that's the setting in Istanbul. But, of course, you know, just like some educational institutions today, you also have to think that

madrasas maybe like real estate holdings with like classrooms attached to them, right? This is one of the sad realities of the madrasas and madrasas that use not to be like this are turning into this. So you know, the the royal or the imperial medrases, like most of them, they have like huge endowments. They are bringing in just massive amounts of money. But what's happening is, you know, that money is being like rerouted to the central treasury

and away from like the charitable activities that they are supposed to be undertaking. Especially after the siege of Vienna, the, you know, the sultans use a lot of, like, madrasa endowments, etc., to fund wars. So on a structural level, maybe these madrasas are real estate holdings with some educational component, but what does it seem like to the students who are going there? What are they trying to get out of it? For one, like, it's really hard to find, like, people who are completely, like, regular in their academic careers. So, you know, people either have, like, exceptionally long professorships or they have, like, exceptionally short professorships.

And if you look at just, you know, the personal observations in the 17th century, the idea is, well, you know, you enroll in a madrasa simply because you must enroll in a madrasa. You know what you know already by the time you get to the madrasa, or maybe you don't even need to learn anything. But, you know, this kind of like step by step, like, you know, you start at the bottom, you like, you know, go through your years, and then you start with a junior job, and then you go through the steps, etc. That's quite unusual for anybody living in the 17th century. There are other things, like texts actually get shorter in the 17th century. So what you would call textbooks are much briefer, much simpler in the 17th century compared to what you would find, say, at the end of the 15th century.

compared to what you would find, say, at the end of the 15th century. And so everyone who enters, or the students who enter these medreses and the professors, is there any goal other than replicating the medreses profession? I mean, do people enter the medreses in order to become professors themselves or qadis or bureaucrats? I mean, what are the possible outcomes for somebody going through the educational system in the 17th century? Right. Judicial career, I think, is the only goal. And this, again, isn't because like everybody wants to be a kader. It's because that's the only way to make a good living with a medrese degree, as it were, a medrese education, or at least some appearance of having a madrasa

education. When you look at the, like, the late 15th century, 16th century, there is a phenomenon where the high-ranking madrasas are kind of, like, as far as, like, you know, the teaching posts are concerned, they are, like, interlaced with kadıships. So, you know, you can be like the kadı of Üsküdar, then you can come back and teach at, I don't know, like Süleymaniye or something like that. By the end of the 17th century, that doesn't exist. All teaching career, all teaching posts are below all judicial posts, right? So that's also something that happens over the 17th century. You don't, you know, teaching is no longer a prestigious occupation in relation to, you know, kaddiships. And this is largely happening because of these broader

economic structures and their impact on things like salaries. I think so. I mean, that's the way I see it. It's just that, you know, you don't make a good living even by a long shot if you're teaching. So you kind of want to get one of those kaddiships. And not all kaddiships pay well either. It's just that you have direct access to monetary resources of other sorts when you occupy a kaddiship. So it's much more lucrative in comparison. Harrison. Okay, so this is Mustafa Ali.

And Mustafa Ali is, well, he's somebody who went to the madrasa but couldn't get a teaching appointment. So he's just, he's got this like really choleric temperament throughout this book, which is a book of counsel for the sultans for those illustrious great who are known as the great molas never stop shoving off vis-a-vis each other merely by putting on the robe and claiming to be philosophers just because they have acquired a woolen garment they are always hiding under the robe with their tail turbans and

enormous sleeves. They are full of great words. They never come together with their equals, that is, they never gather because each one claims superiority over the next one. They fear that a conversation on a scholarly topic might take place and that everyone's scholarly talents might come to light. They don't allow those to talk who are by rank inferior to them, that is, who are rank-wise their subordinates, occupying an office of the lower grades, but who might possibly be superior to them in scholarship and would show a high degree of learning,

if they were to share in the conversation. If one of them would dare to open his mouth when the conversation turns around a scholarly subject, they silence him with the words, who are you to speak in this gathering, and they pay no attention to him. In this way their clothes and underclothes are perfect but their personal erudition is a perfect nonentity. No doubt the king of the world, the monarch with numerous retinue, should demand works from such ones year by year, and when they come up for a new appointment he should examine them together with their rivals so that

each one's degree of learning becomes manifest and also the stupidity of those who regard it as a scholarly achievement when someone is just able to explain in Turkish the meaning of some Arabic compounds. Today's academic job market, you wouldn't think that it would be applicable to 17th century Istanbul, partly because we think of where we are as a point in the development of capitalism. So we are at the late capitalist stage, we're looking at neoliberalism. So we would not expect to find this like, you know, quasi Mad Max scenario back in 16, 17 centuries. Like I didn't know how to use these things plausibly, because without the economic evidence as a substrate in the analysis, it's very difficult

to talk about passages like this as anything other than discourse. So you're like, okay, there is an angry guy, so what? Right? But then when you put it together with why he's angry, then you're like, aha, okay, now I understand him. So what was it that you were investigating at the time that once you realized there was this economic component, like things started to fall into place? What was the discourse that you were sort of skeptical of and then the materiality started to make sense?

Well, thank you. That's actually the big issue that I've had. So as it usually happens, I think, with much of Ottoman history, we look at 15th, 16th century stuff. That's the classical age. And then it's like mumble mumble and then modernization. Right. So I wanted to understand, you know, what's happening in that like mumble mumble period. Because it's yet unnamed.

Right. Um, and because it's yet unnamed, right? Um, so in that period, um, and I think mumble mumble is not entirely wrong, uh, for that period because nobody really tells you, well, you know, you had stuff going on in the 15th, 16th centuries, then you no longer have this stuff going on in the 17th centuries, 17th and 17th and 18th centuries. So you wonder, well, did you not like it? Is there a reason why you give up on this? Were you against this? And then nobody really tells you anything. It's just silent.

You have some stuff there, 15th, 16th centuries, and then it's not there anymore. So I'm wondering, okay, so so what happened you don't have a someone narrating it for you and then you know people who are narrating it for you are generally considered like doing like a discourse like this like a person like we just see a pure subjectivity in people's understanding of what was going on. Well, what was happening like objectively, if you want to like get down to it. And the best I could find was basically inflation. And actually, I should interject here that the term that Harun uses for this crisis of political economy is in his own words, by far the most loaded and most controversial element of the book.

And that's decline. Of course, many people have used this term. In recent decades, many have criticized it. And what Harun is doing is employing it advisedly here to refer to the material conditions of scholarship, in which professors' salaries became about one-tenth of what they had previously been. Where the interview picks up again is Harun describing how these material conditions affected intellectual production. It is tremendously deleterious. Well, so just to lay a baseline, start with like some of the simplest things. So kelam, right?

So a sense of religious doctrine. There is kelam in the 15th, 16th centuries. And it's very much in your face Because it's something that, you know, if you want a high teaching post It's something you need to teach at Sahne-Seman In the 17th century, there is no such thing as Ottoman Kelam And it does a bunch of things So one might want to talk about things like, you know, Ottoman theology

Or Ottoman doctrine. Well, if you don't have anybody who's actively engaged in figuring out the systematic connections within religion or within religious beliefs, well, then it's quite unlikely that you would have any doctrine or theology. So you might have certain precepts um generally very brief ones or you your religion may be reduced to just what you do like you know it's like go to the mosque uh you fast and that may be that like you could get circumcised if you're a guy but you know there is no like i have to conceive of the world as such a place if I'm like faithful. So that like all of that apparatus is no longer there. Nobody's producing it anymore.

A lot of the things that, you know, people who are working on earlier periods of Islamic astronomy talk about, like, you know, all these mathematical devices that made it to Europe and then, you know, gave rise to Copernicus, etc. Well, nobody in Istanbul is interested in any of that. Large scale investigations of heavenly motion. Are we at the center of the world? Is sun at the center of the world or whatever? Like, you know, nobody cares.

Another thing that's happening, of course, is there is also a public health infrastructure in Istanbul. So you have like hospitals and you even have a medical medresa. So, you know, at some point in the 15th, 16th centuries, there is actually like a fairly modern way of like educating people, licensing them. And there's like a fairly high level of like intellectual engagement with what's generally called Islamic tradition. In the 17th century, that also isn't there. So all of the genres that define what Islamic tradition in astronomy means to us,

again, is no longer there. So nobody's doing like large scale observations. Nobody's doing theory. So if people aren't interested in questions of theory, what are they interested in? When people are interested in questions of theory, that's they interested in? When people are interested in questions of theory, that's usually a sign of like geekery, right? So you're interested in something for the sake of itself, because you may want to know, well, when is the sun going to rise? That question is quite different from say, what determines the regularity at which you know, the sun rises and

sets or something like that, right? So suddenly, you are engaging in what may be called like a second order, third order reflection on something which you wouldn't necessarily care about, right? So I mean, even today, like, you know, lots of things I want to know, like little tidbits, but I'm not going to like sit down and try to like build a theory of that thing. Like what kinds of things? When you get sick, like you're like, okay, like I have a headache. How do I get rid of this headache? Or, you know, my son has a headache. Like, how do I get rid of this headache? But, you know, I'm not going to... You're not going to have a conversation with your son about the metaphysics of pain. Right. So I'm not, yes, I get rid of this headache? But, you know, I'm not going to... You're not going to have a conversation with your son about the metaphysics of pain.

Right. So I'm not, yes, I'm definitely not going to have a conversation about metaphysics of pain. And furthermore, I'm not going to ask, like, what causes a headache anyways, right? That's not going to, that's not going to be like, you know, the first thing that I ask. That might be like second, third, fourth thing that I ask. But if I'm not running into like problems, I probably won't give it a second thought. And so in the book, this is what you call practical naturalism. Correct. That's what practical naturalism is. So people still, you know, Ottomans, their ships still float. People, you know, if you get sick, you're still

getting treatment. You still have like, you know, if you want to like buy products of like some technical sophistication you can still buy them if you need services you can still get them but what you're not going to get is again like you know somebody who's like professing like anatomy at the medresse like you know that's the thing that you're going to be missing the history of science has been engaging with this kind of inquiry for a while now. They have generally focused on, say, like artisans or practitioners, etc. Now, what practical naturalism maybe adds to this already like massive body of literature is it defines practical naturalism in relation to theory, right? So these people aren't artisans, like they don't really have many special things going for them. Or, you know know this general category doesn't require

you to have like this special expertise in one branch of practice or another it just tells you that a lot of the things that you think are science or you think are early modern science looking back at it from today they don't even care about and that's I think that's the thing that I really want to put forward. Like, you know, a lot of what we call science, nobody cares about them, even when they're doing like technically sophisticated things. And how does money play into this? Practical naturalists have some material engagement with the subject of their inquiry. So

they aren't like idly curious about theory. And they also, I guess, aren't engaging with those things where there is like no money, like there is no like service attaching to this, etc. So they went to the madrasa, there are limited options for employment. Right. There are low salaries if there is employment. And so figure out a way to sell the thing that you know about. Right. Yeah, i also just i love a line where you mentioned that the way we think about theoretical science or the kind of pursuit of greek knowledge that is going on in european universities uh what's eurocentric about that is how it ignores the way people experience nature experience the world around them is generally through suffering. When you said, I don't think about what causes a headache.

Yes, you do. And so far as like, oh, I'm dehydrated, I better or something like this, you know, like you're interested in knowing what causes the headache so that you can fix the headache. Beyond that, it's not not that relevant. It's certainly not what you care about when you have a headache. But so this question of affluence versus suffering or lack of leisure, which is, you know, a big theme in your book. I mean, I'd just love to hear a little bit more about what is the role of leisure in science? This seems like a really important aspect of what you're doing as well. And it's in the title of the book. So science with leisure looks like generally an interest in like theoretical things, a sort of disengagement from what one may call material life.

And in a way, you know, this is quite easy to understand, like when you are at a university today, look, I mean, what I do is entirely irrelevant to like pretty much everybody. Like if I didn't exist in this world nobody's life would be worse well you know i'm enjoying this interview well i mean right it's like you wouldn't have this much fun that's true i mean even today i don't think you have like a science of something unless you have someone doing it with leisure and generally speaking in some very useless way right and it seems like the question of use and leisure is really tied up with time you probably know this know this meme like uh

you know there is uh they're asked they need a doctor like you know somebody's dying on the plane and like the historian says everybody's already dead it's like that's like the perspective you give or like you know as a philosopher the perspective you give or like, you know, as a philosopher, the perspective you give is like everybody dies anyways, right? Different timescales. Different timescales, right? So it's the absence of this urgency that makes your like perspective a scientific perspective. In order to cultivate this distance from material realities of things, well, you need to be kind of shielded from the material realities of that thing and that's where like time comes in right in order for me to cultivate perspective like i need time

away from pressing material needs yeah and so in some ways you're making this materialist point that these basic necessities aren't being met by intellectual life in Istanbul. And as a result, people had to marshal their knowledge for money. Right. In a very direct way. In a very direct way. Rather than counting on a chair at a university that would pay them a living wage. This also goes back to the training aspect of things also. of things also. So, I mean, if you're not going to be writing about, say, like, high aspects of,

like, religious doctrine, you're like, why am I even studying this, right? This is kind of like what we experience with our undergraduates today for the most part. You know, if you do, like, a tough course, they're like, well, you know, how is this going to help me? And I'm like, okay, like, you know, most things in college, you know, you may or may not know this, but they don't help you in that way anyways, right? But they are becoming pragmatic because they think that they will have to deploy every bit of their knowledge towards like pragmatic ends. So that's kind of like how it colors, like, you know, the moment of use colors, you know, what comes before and what comes after if you, you know, the, the moment of use colors, you know, what comes before and what comes after if you, you know, over a long period of time, that's, that's the other thing, right? So there is a, there's an important like morphological or like historical element to this.

So when things aren't good, like people's reaction isn't at first to like, say, Oh, my God, like, you're just let's ditch education, like some people react that way, but not everybody does. But, you know, if this is this unleisurely situation is your life for like one generation, two generations, then things get transformed in some permanent way. Like, you know, you forget that there was that thing in the first place. You make a few points in the conclusion that you say are playfully provocative. And I wonder if I could throw some of these out there and you could briefly explain what you mean by them. One of them that comes through the book in a number of places is you don't believe the Islamic world exists.

History of science is generally considered to be like one of like the feet on which our sense of an Islamic world stands. So Islamic science, you know, well, what's so Islamic about the Islamic world? Well, first of all, you know, they have this thing called like Islamic science. That's actually, you know, the thing on which the whole civilization's contribution to the world history kind of argument rests. In this period, you don't have that. In the 15th century, maybe you had that. In the 16th century, maybe you had that. In the 16th century, maybe you had that. And I leave it to 15th, 16th century experts to be the judges of

this. Because your sense of what's happening in Istanbul is not necessarily connected to Cairo or Aleppo or other places. No, that's not the sense I get at all. And furthermore, right, there is like a certain exceptionalism that comes with this sense of the Islamic world, that we have these special Islamic things going on. Well, Istanbul doesn't really have any of those going on. I'm very lucky in that lots of studies of other parts of the world have already been published, so there is what may be called a global historiography of science that's emerging. And when you look at Istanbul, you realize what a regular normal like middle of the bunch place it is so you know you look at astronomy in china or astronomy in spain at around

the same time it's like it's the same you know what they all share is like you know it seems nobody cares about like copernicus or kepler or new, etc. So yes, I definitely don't think that there is like a unified scientific tradition that defines the Islamic world anymore. So when I look at it from the perspective of science, there is no Islamic world. Another point that you make, a bold point, is that what's happening in Istanbul is, if anything, hyper modern. Look, I mean, we think about the unfolding of history in some modernist fashion, as in like, you know, modernity is that thing that you want to reach. It's an enduring extremity, right? So it's like you're trying to like catch up because like there

is this extremity that's like moving and then you're either falling short or you're catching it. But we never think that, well, maybe like, you know, the pinnacle of modernity isn't like the unification of Germany in the middle of the 19th century. Maybe it's more like what we're seeing today, right? So like this like high entropy situation rather than like this fairly low entropy, like orderly society type of situation that you find in 19th century. So what do you mean by entropy? Low entropy, like the lowest entropy society is the comical image of medieval society. Well, you know, what you do, you do exactly, you know, what your parents did, and you make exactly the same amount of living doing what your parents did.

And unless like somebody comes and decides to like conquer your territory, your life does not change at all. I mean, of course, this is comical, but this is really, you know, the lowest entropy, like furthest from modernity kind of living. And we think that, you know, modernity is like a high entropy situation where like people are moving all the time, like super dynamism, like innovation, social mobility, like all of those things. Well, it seems to me that Istanbul had too much of those and what they were lacking is like a bit more

of that like low entropy situation. Every person is kind of like showing up from nowhere. Like- You describe them as entrepreneurs. Yeah, they're like entrepreneurs. Like, you know, they hit it big, They hit it big, they make big money. So a lot of those stabilizing things that we associate with medieval society, which is by all means what the Ottoman Empire should be if it's going to modernize,

are what's absent. That's why I'm calling it hypermodern. So one more bold claim. I'm not sure if this is the boldest, but you say that the thing called the scientific revolution is actually the scientific counter-revolution. Again, there's like a very deep historiography of the scientific revolution that tells you, well, one, like scholastics, they were the bad guys, you know, the scientific revolution. And scholastics are? Yeah, scholastics they were the bad guys you know the scientific revolution over scholastics sorry yeah scholastics are like um people at the universities like these sleepy fellows like

who are like no good they don't even do like you know good research etc these like low entropy characters who had like no dynamism to their work scientific revolution was about overthrowing that and you know even like Kant's uh what is enlightenment is somewhat about that you're kind of like removing the shackles like you're like you know opening yourself to like intellectual like freedom like free thought like all that good stuff well in Istanbul if you're a scholastic you're pretty much at like the bottom of society very Very few people respect you. So, I mean, it's not like you are putting any shackles on anybody to begin with. Like, you know, so you got that freedom.

But when you get that freedom at the level at which, you know, Istanbul gets it, then you realize, well, people give up on what you call theoretical science altogether. And this also has to do with the bourgeoisie, right? We talk about, well, bourgeoisie emerged and they created their own scientific culture. Well, the fact is, if you have a purely bourgeois society, which is, again, what you would find in Istanbul, it doesn't seem like anybody is doing physics or luxury to think about these questions of theory is actually an accumulation of medieval knowledge. Exactly. So it's the accumulation and preservation of medieval knowledge. You know, the fact that, you know, you can still find people who will teach you like Aristotle for years, like all that stuff that I think a lot of people have loved to hate are actually the reasons why Europe has something looking like the scientific revolution. Because the real revolution looks like Istanbul.

And again, I don't think like, you know, even today, like looking at this, I don't think a lot of people will have much taste for it because the university has had, I think, tremendous success, especially in the West. University has had, I think, tremendous success, especially in the West. And I don't think many people like to think about, seriously think about the world without the university, which is, again, something that we may be looking at, given the current situation. So that's a question I wanted to ask about is, what has it been like writing this book personally, as you're also within the institution that in some ways you're writing about? This has been partly about me, right? I mean, you can read this whole book as my plea to get tenure. Like, you know, I need more leisure. Please give me more leisure.

I can't do science without leisure. That's one way to like read it at the purely like narcissistic level like when you open it up then i look at well the situation in the united states you know if you make the mistake of like reading the chronicle of higher education with some frequency you realize oh like hey i i know a guy who said what you said except he said that in like 300 years ago right um so there is partly that and partly you know this has to do with turkey and turkish politics so there is a huge industry of just giving people things to be proud of things to feel good about things people living today

didn't do so you know there is like you know somebody goes on tv and says you know if my like great-grandfather didn't teach you like mathematics you wouldn't be able to like count your money at the grocery store and things like that right so there is like a lot of cultural heritage value assigned to islamic science but then i think the case of istanbul shows that you know that islam Islamic science whatever it may be flourished when you took good care of your scholars and kind of disappeared when you just you stopped taking care of them so what's happening to today's academics in Turkey is kind of like what happened to Turkey's academics like 300 years ago right so there are all these things that are

kind of connected so I guess in a way I try to develop a perspective from which I could look at all of these things critically. You know, you said it's hard to read the Chronicle sometimes because you see these long historical connections. How conscious were you of those connections between your own life and what you're reading? I have to say, like, when you are feeling the precarity, it's hard to cultivate the distance to say, oh, this is like, just like 300 years ago. So if I didn't have a tenure track job, I probably wouldn't be able to cultivate this historical perspective. The fact that I have seen these things, but also the fact that fact that you know I am able to like distance myself from these realities allows me to bring historical perspective to it so I can be useless and scientific about you know what's happening to the job market today in a way that

I couldn't be useless and scientific about when I was still looking for a job so something that's striking to me about this book is you have a lot of these very arrestingly direct comparisons between the past and the present. You make bold claims. I wonder if you could talk about that writing process because a lot of times people like to hedge. People like to be careful. And it seems like you've made a conscious choice here,

as I said earlier, to be playful, but also provocative. And I wonder, you know, were the first drafts of this less provocative? people's experiences in conferences go like you know i had i kind of had to be even more defensive sometimes because people are like well you know this isn't this doesn't sound right to me where you assume and i assume that everybody knew this stuff better than i did so that's you know one thing this book actually carries like a lot of like the skepticism i encountered from others, but then it turns it back to them as like playful provocation. And I picked a conversational tone. Again, like there is like a way of writing, especially in area studies where like you have to like stack the footnotes and make sure like, well, I mean, I set out to do that. It's a lot of work and you don't get to many places because that kind of scholarship also commits you to what may be called like a conservative hyper-empiricism,

where you're really not able to challenge any of the biggest issues hounding the field that you're in. And part of it is, it just was too much of a burden at some point. I was like, OK, like I can't write a book. Like I don't feel like writing a book. I had those days that I guess most academics have where you just you're just stunned like you can't write. And at the end of those days, sometimes when you're going to bed, you get some good ideas. is so and those good ideas that you get as you are going to bed is when you also don't have the voices of those critics in your head anymore so I said okay you know what I'll just write this ideally I should have written a book like this after getting tenure.

I don't think anybody would advise, if they knew exactly what this book was going to be like, I don't think anybody would have said, okay, you know, go ahead. This is how you should write. But I did. And a lot of people supported me like after they started like seeing bits and pieces of it. So I'm very grateful for that. But there are lots of things that axiomatically you must accept as true like i said you know what i don't believe in any of those i'm not seeing it um am i seeing everything i probably am not but

from what i know like none of it makes sense so i had to say these things so i hope like it encourages other people too. If I wrote this and had it published and survived to see it in publication, I think other people may too. That's Harun Kuchuk speaking with me and Zoe Griffith. His new book is Science Without Leisure on University of Pittsburgh Press. So I just need to run up to the library and see if I can do this

really quick. It's right here. As always, you can find a bibliography and some images on our website, ottomanhistorypodcast.com. You can also join us on Facebook, where we have over 35,000 followers. That's it for this episode of the Ottoman History Podcast. Until next time,000 followers. That's it for this episode of the Ottoman History Podcast. Until next time,

take care. © transcript Emily Beynon