In his continuing quest to prove the “centrality of Central Asia” Christopher I. Beckwith argues that Buddhists originally developed the scholastic method in what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan, wherefrom Muslims then transmitted it to the West. This is a fascinating argument that also, inevitably, raises the age-old question about the rise of the West; namely, if Buddhists and Muslims had this key “technology” why did they not develop a “fully scientific culture”? In short, what was it about the Europeans? Or to turn it around, what was wrong with everyone else? Beckwith has an answer, or at least an argument, about this question as well. Moreover, he also has an argument about the scientific method today, especially its retreat in the contemporary world, and what this may mean. Warriors of the Cloisters is thus really three-arguments-in-one about the recursive argument method.

The first of these arguments is rather straightforward. It expands eastwards George Makdisi's groundbreaking work by arguing that the recursive argument method – better known as the scholastic method – is first found in the writings of the Sarvāstivāda school of Buddhism; as, for example, evidenced in the “Central Asian” Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośabhāṣya. And, moreover, that the madrasa, the basis for the European college, was actually an Islamicized version – in terms of architecture, function, pedagogy and financing – of the Central Asian Buddhist vihāra. Thus, according to Beckwith, both of these institutions were absorbed into the Muslim tradition during the course of Buddhist Central Asia's Islamicization. In turn, both of them were subsequently transmitted to Europe, and the lynchpin in this process was Ibn Sīnā (980–1037), who had apparently learnt this method of disputation either through Buddhist books preserved in the libraries of Central Asia, or else through unofficial oral instructions outside the madrasa system. Of course, Beckwith recognizes that there is a “gap in the historical evidence” (p. 91) about these early transmissions. In fact, there is little evidence for any of them; but Beckwith nevertheless asserts that this must have been the case: it “cannot be accidental” (p. 93). Indeed, much of his argument in this section is built on a liberal use of “probably”, “seems likely” and “more work needs to be done”.

As Makdisi has already argued it was the simultaneous introduction of the scholastic method and the college into thirteenth-century European culture that laid the groundwork for the subsequent scientific revolution. Yet, while recognizing the importance of these two factors, Beckwith does not believe that these phenomena were, by themselves, enough to foster a “scientific culture complex”: Aristotle was also needed. Thus without all three of these ingredients (the recursive argument method, the college and Aristotle) no civilization can become scientific. So while China had both Buddhist vihāras and the scholastic method they did not have Aristotle, so they “never really got the idea of science, and certainly never developed a full scientific culture complex” (p. 134). Ditto the Greco-Romans, the earlier medieval Europeans, the Tibetans and the Byzantines.

The case of the Islamic world, however, presents a different scenario, since they had all three. Thus, echoing Bernard Lewis, Beckwith tries to explain what went wrong. First, he asserts that rather than becoming an engine of innovation like the university, the madrasa became mired in religion and Islamic law. Moreover, even though Muslims had both Aristotle and the recursive argument method they used this tool only for metaphysics and theology, not the natural sciences, as evidenced most notably in the work of al-Ghazālī (1058–1111). In fact, according to Beckwith, al-Ghazālī almost single-handedly destroyed the scientific culture of early Islam and replaced it with one of religious fanaticism. “The Islamic world thenceforth slipped increasingly into religious bigotry and scientific and technological backwardness” (p. 144).

Thus as historical fate would have it the medieval Europeans were the only people who had not only the three ingredients, but also apparently the wherewithal to put them to good use. A fully scientific culture therefore first appeared in Europe, and fuelled the scientific revolution, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and indeed created the modern world. Now, however, Beckwith believes that we are under threat of losing this scientific culture. Indeed, picking up the thread from his earlier book, Empires of the Silk Road, Beckwith argues that true “science” is currently under attack by his bête noire, “Modernism”, which “continues its unbridled course of destruction and antipathy toward anything that smacks of science outside of technologically critical fields” (p. 152). Thus the scientific method and the critical thinking that it fosters are not only under attack in the Western world, but in other places as well.

And nowhere does the situation seem more dire than in East Asia, where “[s]cience was accepted … quite late, and at first only as a necessity, insofar as it could help them to achieve military (and thus political) parity with the West. Other than in the physical sciences (including medicine) and related technology, science was soundly rejected” (p. 157). As a result, they still do not have a “full scientific culture”. Beckwith does not address whether he thinks East Asians can think scientifically; however, he is greatly troubled by the fact that none of these peoples – Chinese, Japanese and Koreans – know how to do a critical edition. “These cultures are therefore still fully nonscientific with respect to text philology … the crucial distinction is accordingly between a scientific field with a theory and method, on the one hand, and a nonscientific field, on the other. Historically, this distinction applies to cultures as a whole” (p. 158).

What to make of this odd late-in-the-game defence of philology, especially in relation to the author's larger argument about how East Asians continue to be not properly scientific is an open question. Or perhaps it is an open invitation to employ the scholastic method in order to challenge his arguments.