Failed medieval scholarship still developed transferable habits of mind.

Evidence

The scholars who labored at the problem of Islam in the Middle Ages failed to find the solution they sought and desired; but they developed habits of mind and powers of comprehension which, in other men and in other fields, may yet deserve success. — R. W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle…, 581

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Reframes failure as the production of durable intellectual capacity — a paradigm-shifting view of what scholarship accomplishes beyond solving its stated problem.
• XREF: Echoes the same theme as the ‘Salamancan doctors turning from Islam to the Indies’ passage — redirected intellectual habits — and generalizes it.

Related

• Islam’s intellectual peak came within four centuries, far faster than the medieval West’s (similarity 0.79)
• Islam’s worldly success made it uniquely impervious to church refutation (similarity 0.78)