I asked one boke about Rambam and Muslim philosophy/science, he summarized it very nicely: Rambam was not afraid to acknowledge the truth as he saw it, regardless of the source. [I hate to say it again, the gentleman is quite a traditional Chassidish bokeh before someone dismisses my source as “MO/Reform apikoires”]. While you definitely need to be careful, I don’t think we should cope out and say that only Rambam and R Meir should be doing this, we will just skip the truth if we stumble at it unless it is pre-approved. The differentiation seem to be simple conceptually as partially outlined by Avira – we trust Jewish sources in mesorah, but we trust any source of intellectual integrity on facts and logic. See an argument in Gemora somewhere between Jewish and Greek scientists whether the world was created. Greeks seemingly had a better argument that the world always existed, but Jews stayed with the Mesorah.
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