Science Was Never Unique to the West

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro caused a stir recently when he declared that experimental science and basic research are unique to Western culture:

Other commentators were quick to pounce on this assertion, noting that the idea of experimental science is widely believed to have originated in the Middle East, with a Muslim physicist named Hasan Ibn al-Haytham (known in Europe as Alhazen). Born in Basra, Iraq in 965, al-Haytham moved to Cairo and worked on civil engineering projects while privately studying optics and astronomy. His use of experiments to challenge and refine optical theories was similar to the work of Newton, while his insistence on evidence-based skepticism presaged the work of Sir Francis Bacon, the British philosopher who developed the modern notion of the scientific method. And al-Haytham was no anomaly: He was part of a network of scientists and thinkers that arose in Central Asia and the Middle East during the era of the Abbasid Caliphate.