Ottoman decline stemmed from institutional resistance to Western science, not internal decay

Evidence

The decline of the Ottomans was due not so much to internal changes as to their inability to keep pace with the rapid advance of the West in science and technology, in the arts of both war and peace, and in government and commerce. The Turkish leaders were well aware of this problem, and had some good ideas for its solution, but they could not overcome the immense institutional and ideological barriers to the acceptance of new ways and new ideas. As a distin­ guished Turkish historian put it: “The scientific wave broke against the dykes of literature and jurisprudence.” Unable to adapt to the new conditions, the Ottoman Empire was destroyed by them, as was the Soviet empire in our own day. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1741

Categorization

• XREF: The institutional-barriers-to-innovation account connects to wider modernization and Weberian rationalization literature; the Turkish historian’s epigram on science vs. law echoes debates in Late Ottoman historiography this reader may want to verify. — connects to: The claim of Islamic scientific decline is a Eurocentric projection, not history — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 352; The decline-of-Islamic-science narrative is a Eurocentric fabrication.
• QUESTION: Whose distinguished Turkish historian said this, and how does citing an anonymous native voice function rhetorically in Lewis’s argument?