Download or read book Pathfinders written by Jim Al-Khalili and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2010-09-30 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over 700 years the international language of science was Arabic. In Pathfinders, Jim al-Khalili celebrates the forgotten pioneers who helped shape our understanding of the world. All scientists have stood on the shoulders of giants. But most historical accounts today suggest that the achievements of the ancient Greeks were not matched until the European Renaissance in the 16th century, a 1,000-year period dismissed as the Dark Ages. In the ninth-century, however, the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad, Abu Ja'far Abdullah al-Ma'mun, created the greatest centre of learning the world had ever seen, known as Bayt al-Hikma, the House of Wisdom. The scientists and philosophers he brought together sparked a period of extraordinary discovery, in every field imaginable, launching a golden age of Arabic science. Few of these scientists, however, are now known in the western world. Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, a polymath who outshines everyone in history except Leonardo da Vinci? The Syrian astronomer Ibn al-Shatir, whose manuscripts would inspire Copernicus's heliocentric model of the solar system? Or the 13th-century Andalucian physician Ibn al-Nafees, who correctly described blood circulation 400 years before William Harvey? Iraqi Ibn al-Haytham who practised the modern scientific method 700 years before Bacon and Descartes, and founded the field of modern optics before Newton? Or even ninth-century zoologist al-Jahith, who developed a theory of natural selection a thousand years before Darwin? The West needs to see the Islamic world through new eyes and the Islamic world, in turn, to take pride in its extraordinarily rich heritage. Anyone who reads this book will understand why.
Download or read book The House of Wisdom written by Jim Al-Khalili and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-03-31 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A myth-shattering view of the Islamic world's myriad scientific innovations and the role they played in sparking the European Renaissance. Many of the innovations that we think of as hallmarks of Western science had their roots in the Arab world of the middle ages, a period when much of Western Christendom lay in intellectual darkness. Jim al- Khalili, a leading British-Iraqi physicist, resurrects this lost chapter of history, and given current East-West tensions, his book could not be timelier. With transporting detail, al-Khalili places readers in the hothouses of the Arabic Enlightenment, shows how they led to Europe's cultural awakening, and poses the question: Why did the Islamic world enter its own dark age after such a dazzling flowering?
Download or read book A History of Arabic Astronomy written by George Saliba and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1995-07-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A History of Arabic Astronomy is a comprehensive survey of Arabic planetary theories from the eleventh century to the fifteenth century based on recent manuscript discoveries. George Saliba argues that the medieval period, often called a period of decline in Islamic intellectual history, was scientifically speaking, a very productive period in which astronomical theories of the highest order were produced. Based on the most recent manuscript discoveries, this book broadly surveys developments in Arabic planetary theories from the eleventh century to the fifteenth. Taken together, the primary texts and essays assembled in this book reverse traditional beliefs about the rise and fall of Arabic science, demonstrating how the traditional “age of decline” in Arabic science was indeed a “Golden Age” as far as astronomy was concerned. Some of the techniques and mathematical theorems developed during this period were identical to those which were employed by Copernicus in developing his own non-Ptolemaic astronomy. Significantly, this volume will shed much-needed light on the conditions under which such theories were developed in medieval Islam. It clearly demonstrates the distinction that was drawn between astronomical activities and astrological ones, and reveals, contrary to common perceptions about medieval Islam, the accommodation that was obviously reached between religion and astronomy, and the degree to which astronomical planetary theories were supported, and at times even financed, by the religious community itself. This in stark contrast to the systematic attacks leveled by the same religious community against astrology. To students of European intellectual history, the book reveals the technical relationship between the astronomy of the Arabs and that of Copernicus. Saliba’s definitive work will be of particular interest to historians of Arabic science as well as to historians of medieval and Renaissance European science.
Download or read book Success and Suppression written by Dag Nikolaus Hasse and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-28 with total page 683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Renaissance marked a turning point in Europe’s relationship to Arabic thought. On the one hand, Dag Nikolaus Hasse argues, it was the period in which important Arabic traditions reached the peak of their influence in Europe. On the other hand, it is the time when the West began to forget, and even actively suppress, its debt to Arabic culture. Success and Suppression traces the complex story of Arabic influence on Renaissance thought. It is often assumed that the Renaissance had little interest in Arabic sciences and philosophy, because humanist polemics from the period attacked Arabic learning and championed Greek civilization. Yet Hasse shows that Renaissance denials of Arabic influence emerged not because scholars of the time rejected that intellectual tradition altogether but because a small group of anti-Arab hard-liners strove to suppress its powerful and persuasive influence. The period witnessed a boom in new translations and multivolume editions of Arabic authors, and European philosophers and scientists incorporated—and often celebrated—Arabic thought in their work, especially in medicine, philosophy, and astrology. But the famous Arabic authorities were a prominent obstacle to the Renaissance project of renewing European academic culture through Greece and Rome, and radical reformers accused Arabic science of linguistic corruption, plagiarism, or irreligion. Hasse shows how a mixture of ideological and scientific motives led to the decline of some Arabic traditions in important areas of European culture, while others continued to flourish.
Download or read book The Development of Arabic Mathematics Between Arithmetic and Algebra written by R. Rashed and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-18 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An understanding of developments in Arabic mathematics between the IXth and XVth century is vital to a full appreciation of the history of classical mathematics. This book draws together more than ten studies to highlight one of the major developments in Arabic mathematical thinking, provoked by the double fecondation between arithmetic and the algebra of al-Khwarizmi, which led to the foundation of diverse chapters of mathematics: polynomial algebra, combinatorial analysis, algebraic geometry, algebraic theory of numbers, diophantine analysis and numerical calculus. Thanks to epistemological analysis, and the discovery of hitherto unknown material, the author has brought these chapters into the light, proposes another periodization for classical mathematics, and questions current ideology in writing its history. Since the publication of the French version of these studies and of this book, its main results have been admitted by historians of Arabic mathematics, and integrated into their recent publications. This book is already a vital reference for anyone seeking to understand history of Arabic mathematics, and its contribution to Latin as well as to later mathematics. The English translation will be of particular value to historians and philosophers of mathematics and of science.
Download or read book Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance written by George Saliba and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-01-21 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise and fall of the Islamic scientific tradition, and the relationship of Islamic science to European science during the Renaissance. The Islamic scientific tradition has been described many times in accounts of Islamic civilization and general histories of science, with most authors tracing its beginnings to the appropriation of ideas from other ancient civilizations—the Greeks in particular. In this thought-provoking and original book, George Saliba argues that, contrary to the generally accepted view, the foundations of Islamic scientific thought were laid well before Greek sources were formally translated into Arabic in the ninth century. Drawing on an account by the tenth-century intellectual historian Ibn al-Naidm that is ignored by most modern scholars, Saliba suggests that early translations from mainly Persian and Greek sources outlining elementary scientific ideas for the use of government departments were the impetus for the development of the Islamic scientific tradition. He argues further that there was an organic relationship between the Islamic scientific thought that developed in the later centuries and the science that came into being in Europe during the Renaissance. Saliba outlines the conventional accounts of Islamic science, then discusses their shortcomings and proposes an alternate narrative. Using astronomy as a template for tracing the progress of science in Islamic civilization, Saliba demonstrates the originality of Islamic scientific thought. He details the innovations (including new mathematical tools) made by the Islamic astronomers from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, and offers evidence that Copernicus could have known of and drawn on their work. Rather than viewing the rise and fall of Islamic science from the often-narrated perspectives of politics and religion, Saliba focuses on the scientific production itself and the complex social, economic, and intellectual conditions that made it possible.
Download or read book The Unity of Science in the Arabic Tradition written by Shahid Rahman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-07-15 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: the demise of the logical positivism programme. The answers given to these qu- tions have deepened the already existing gap between philosophy and the history and practice of science. While the positivists argued for a spontaneous, steady and continuous growth of scientific knowledge the post-positivists make a strong case for a fundamental discontinuity in the development of science which can only be explained by extrascientific factors. The political, social and cultural environment, the argument goes on, determine both the questions and the terms in which they should be answered. Accordingly, the sociological and historical interpretation - volves in fact two kinds of discontinuity which are closely related: the discontinuity of science as such and the discontinuity of the more inclusive political and social context of its development. More precisely it explains the discontinuity of the former by the discontinuity of the latter subordinating in effect the history of science to the wider political and social history. The underlying idea is that each historical and - cial context generates scientific and philosophical questions of its own. From this point of view the question surrounding the nature of knowledge and its development are entirely new topics typical of the twentieth-century social context reflecting both the level and the scale of the development of science.
Download or read book The Rise of the Arabic Book written by Beatrice Gruendler and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The little-known story of the sophisticated and vibrant Arabic book culture that flourished during the Middle Ages. During the thirteenth century, Europe’s largest library owned fewer than 2,000 volumes. Libraries in the Arab world at the time had exponentially larger collections. Five libraries in Baghdad alone held between 200,000 and 1,000,000 books each, including multiple copies of standard works so that their many patrons could enjoy simultaneous access. How did the Arabic codex become so popular during the Middle Ages, even as the well-established form languished in Europe? Beatrice Gruendler’s The Rise of the Arabic Book answers this question through in-depth stories of bookmakers and book collectors, stationers and librarians, scholars and poets of the ninth century. The history of the book has been written with an outsize focus on Europe. The role books played in shaping the great literary cultures of the world beyond the West has been less known—until now. An internationally renowned expert in classical Arabic literature, Gruendler corrects this oversight and takes us into the rich literary milieu of early Arabic letters.
Download or read book The Rise of Early Modern Science written by Toby E. Huff and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-08-18 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 2003 study examines the long-standing question of why modern science arose only in the West and not in the civilizations of Islam and China, despite the fact that medieval Islam and China were more scientifically advanced. To explain this outcome, Tony E. Huff explores the cultural - religious, legal, philosophical, and institutional - contexts within which science was practised in Islam, China, and the West. He finds in the history of law and the European cultural revolution of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries major clues as to why the ethos of science arose in the West, permitting the breakthrough to modern science that did not occur elsewhere. This line of inquiry leads to novel ideas about the centrality of the legal concept of corporation, which is unique to the West and gave rise to the concepts of neutral space and free inquiry.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science Technology alchemy and life sciences written by Rushdī Rāshid and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Arab contribution is fundamental to the history of science, mathematics and technology, but until now no single publication has offered an up-to-date synthesis of knowledge in this area. In three fully-illustrated volumes the Encyclopedia of the History of Arab Science documents the history and philosophy of Arab science from the earliest times to the present day. Thirty-one chapters, written by an international team of specialists, cover astronomy, mathematics, music, engineering, nautical science, scientific institutions and many other areas. The Encyclopedia is divided into three volumes: 1. Astronomy--Theoretical and applied 2. Mathematics and the Physical Sciences 3. Technology, Alchemy, and the Life Sciences. Extensively illustrated with figures, tables, and plates, each chapter is written by an internationally respected expert, guaranteeing accuracy and quality. Each volume contains an extensive bibliography of sources and suggestions for further reading, and the set is fully indexed. This set will interest mathematicians, engineers and scientists, as well as students of history, the history of science, and Middle Eastern studies."--Publisher's information.
Download or read book Lost History written by Michael Hamilton Morgan and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the major role played by the early Muslim world in influencing modern society, Lost History fills an important void. Written by an award-winning author and former diplomat with extensive experience in the Muslim world, it provides new insight not only into Islam's historic achievements but also the ancient resentments that fuel today's bitter conflicts. Michael Hamilton Morgan reveals how early Muslim advancements in science and culture lay the cornerstones of the European Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and modern Western society. As he chronicles the Golden Ages of Islam, beginning in 570 a.d. with the birth of Muhammad, and resonating today, he introduces scholars like Ibn Al-Haytham, Ibn Sina, Al-Tusi, Al-Khwarizmi, and Omar Khayyam, towering figures who revolutionized the mathematics, astronomy, and medicine of their time and paved the way for Newton, Copernicus, and many others. And he reminds us that inspired leaders from Muhammad to Suleiman the Magnificent and beyond championed religious tolerance, encouraged intellectual inquiry, and sponsored artistic, architectural, and literary works that still dazzle us with their brilliance. Lost History finally affords pioneering leaders with the proper credit and respect they so richly deserve.
Download or read book The First Arabic Annals written by Edward Zychowicz-Coghill and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-03-22 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The earliest development of Arabic historical writing remains shrouded in uncertainty until the 9th century CE, when our first extant texts were composed. This book demonstrates a new method, termed riwāya-cum-matn, which allows us to identify citation-markers that securely indicate the quotation of earlier Arabic historical works, proto-books first circulated in the eighth century. As a case study it reconstructs, with an edition and translation, around half of an annalistic history written by al-Layth b. Saʿd in the 740s. In doing so it shows that annalistic history-writing, comparable to contemporary Syriac or Greek models, was a part of the first development of Arabic historiography in the Marwanid period, providing a chronological framework for more ambitious later Abbasid history-writing. Reconstructing the original production-contexts and larger narrative frames of now-atomised quotations not only lets us judge their likely accuracy, but to consider the political and social relations underpinning the first production of authoritative historical knowledge in Islam. It also enables us to assess how Abbasid compilers combined and augmented the base texts from which they constructed their histories.
Download or read book The Enterprise of Science in Islam written by J. P. Hogendijk and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent historical research and new perspectives on the Islamic scientific tradition.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science written by Roshdi Rashed and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 1135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Arabic contribution is fundamental to the history of science, mathematics and technology, but until now no single publication has offered an up-to-date synthesis of knowledge in this area. In three fully-illustrated volumes the Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science documents the history and philosophy of Arabic science from the earliest times to the present day. The set as a whole covers seven centuries. Thirty chapters, written by an international team of specialists from Europe, America, the Middle East and Russia cover such areas as astronomy, mathematics, music, engineering, nautical science and scientific institutions.
Download or read book Science Islam written by Ehsan Masood and published by Icon Books Ltd. This book was released on 2009-11-05 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Musa al-Khwarizmi who developed algebra in 9th century Baghdad to al-Jazari, a 13th-century Turkish engineer whose achievements include the crank, the camshaft and the reciprocating piston, Science and Islam tells the story of one of history’s most misunderstood yet rich and fertile periods in science: the extraordinary Islamic scientific revolution between 700 and 1400 CE.
Download or read book Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period written by Tarif Khalidi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994-12 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A survey of an entire tradition of historical thought and writing across a span of eight hundred years.
Download or read book Religion Learning and Science in the Abbasid Period written by M. J. L. Young and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-11-02 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writings in learned subjects from the period eighth to thirteenth centuries, AD.
