The House of Wisdom - Arabic Science in the Middle Ages

I just finished reading Jim Al-Khalili’s “The House of Wisdom. How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance.”  A fascinating book. In general, it has long been known that Arabic Science acted as a transmission belt between the Greeks and the Renaissance. Translation of Greek texts into Arabic and then into Latin were the path by which Renaissance thinkers were able to make their advances. These Arabic scientists are frequently known today (if they are known at all) by latinized names such as Avicenna (Ibn Sina) or Averroes (Ibn Rushd),

Thus we use today “arabic numbers” (which actually originated in India). In Europe, decimal numbers were long resisted as “symbols of the evil Muslim foe” (“terrorist numbers,” anybody?). In fact, the French Audit Office was still using Roman numerals in the 18th century (have you ever tried to multiply Roman numerals?). But the advances of Arabic science were much more extensive than I ever realized.  Algebra was the creation of an arabic mathematician in the ninth century. Doctors wrote medical compendiums that were the definitive texts for 500 years thereafter and invented basic medical instruments such as the syringe. They perfected tracheotomies. Studies in optics pre-dated Newton. Arabic scientists knew the earth was round and were able to calculate its circumference to a relatively high degree of accuracy. They produced calendars that were more accurate than the one we use today. And the list goes on.

But the main contribution of these scientists, in Al-Khalili’s view, was the sytematization of the scientific method. Thus a quote from “the first real scientist,” Ibn al-Haytham:

    “We should distinguish the properties of particulars, and gather by induction what pertains to the eye and what is found in the manner of sensation to be uniform, unchanging, manifest and not subject to doubt. After which we should ascend in our enquiry and reasoning, gradually and orderly, criticizing premises and exercising caution in regard to conclusions – our aim in all that we make subject to inspection and review being to employ justice, not to follow prejudice, and to take care in all that we judge and criticize that we seen the truth and not be swayed by opinion.”   

Another leading chemist and clinician, al-Razi (c. 854 - c. 925), notes the following:

    “If the people of religion are asked about proof for the soundness of their religion, they flare up, get angry, and spill blood of whoever confronts them with this question. They forbid rational speculations, and strive to kill their adversaries. This is why truth became thoroughly silenced and concealed.... How can anyone think philosophically while committed to those old wives’ tales, founded on contradictions, obdurate ignorance, and dogmatism.”

Words that could equally refer to both Muslim and Christian fundamentalism today. And yet Iran celebrates “Razi Day” every year.

Even more than specific advances on which Renaissance thinkers from Copernicus to Newton built, the Arabic scientists gave the west scientific method: the insistence on gathering data through observation and measurement, then formulating and testing hypotheses to explain the data. 

Finally, consider al-Biruni, perhaps the pro-eminent scientist in the first half of the eleventh century:

    “The extremist among them would stamp the scientists as atheists, and would proclaim that they lead people astray in order to make ignoramuses, like him, hat the sciences. For this will help him to conceal his ignorance, and to open the door for the complete destruction of science and scientists.”

Words as applicable today as they were when they were written a thousand years ago.

Comments

[Barry Orkadasian]

Excellent review, I shall chase the book out, but I thought I should point out that these scholars were no more Arabic than (e.g.) Canadian, Australian or USA scholars are English - they were Persians who wrote in Arabic as the then current lingua Franca