Appreciating Arabic science that predates Newton

Appreciating Arabic science that predates Newton
Jim Al-Khalili

In this era of intolerance and cultural tension, the West needs to
appreciate the fertile scholarship that flowered with Islam.
Watching the daily news stories of never-ending troubles, hardship,
misery, and violence across the Arab world and central Asia, it is not
surprising that many in the West view the culture of these countries
as backward, and their religion as at best conservative and often as
violent and extremist. It has never been more timely or more resonant
to explore the extent to which Western cultural and scientific thought
is indebted to the work, a thousand years ago, of Arab and Muslim
thinkers.

If there is anything I truly believe in, it is that progress through
reason and rationality is a good thing — knowledge and enlightenment
are always better than ignorance. I proudly share my world view with
one of the greatest rulers the Islamic world has ever seen: the ninth-
century Abbasid caliph of Baghdad, Abu Ja’far Abdullah al-Ma’mun. Many
in the West will know something of Ma’mun’s more illustrious father,
Harun al-Rashid, the caliph who is a central character in so many of
the stories of the Arabian Nights. It was Ma’mun, who came to power in
813 AD, who truly launched the golden age of Arabic science. His
thirst for knowledge was such an obsession that he was to create in
Baghdad the greatest centre of learning the world has ever seen, known
throughout history simply as Bayt al-Hikma: the House of Wisdom.
Important period

We read in most accounts of the history of science that the
contribution of the ancient Greeks would not be matched until the
European Renaissance and the arrival of the likes of Copernicus and
Galileo in the 16th century. The 1,000-year period sandwiched between
the two is dismissed as the dark ages. But the scientists and
philosophers whom Ma’mun brought together, and whom he entrusted with
his dreams of scholarship and wisdom, sparked a period of scientific
achievement that was just as important as the Greeks or Renaissance,
and we cannot simply project the European dark ages on to the rest of
the world.

Of course, some Islamic scholars are well known in the West. The
Persian philosopher Avicenna — born in 980 AD — is famous as the
greatest physician of the Middle Ages. His Canon of Medicine was to
remain the standard medical text in the Islamic world and across
Europe until the 17th century, a period of more than 600 years. But
Avicenna was also undoubtedly the greatest philosopher of Islam and
one of the most important of all time. Avicenna’s work stands as the
pinnacle of medieval philosophy. But Avicenna was not the greatest
scientist in Islam. For he did not have the encyclopaedic mind or make
the breadth of impact across so many fields as a less famous Persian
who seems to have lived in his shadow: Abu Rayhan al-Biruni. Not only
did Biruni make significant breakthroughs as a brilliant philosopher,
mathematician, and astronomer, but he also left his mark as a
theologian, encyclopaedist, linguist, historian, geographer,
pharmacist, and physician. He is also considered to be the father of
geology and anthropology. Yet Biruni is hardly known in the Western
world.

Many of the achievements of Arabic science often come as a surprise.
For instance, while no one can doubt the genius of Copernicus and his
heliocentric model of the solar system in heralding the age of modern
astronomy, it is not commonly known that he relied on work carried out
by Arab astronomers many centuries earlier. Many of his diagrams and
calculations were taken from manuscripts of the 14th-century Syrian
astronomer Ibn al-Shatir. Why is he never mentioned in our textbooks?
Likewise, we are taught that English physician William Harvey was the
first to correctly describe blood circulation in 1616. He was not. The
first to give the correct description was the 13th-century Andalucian
physician Ibn al-Nafees.

And we are reliably informed at school that Newton is the undisputed
father of modern optics. School science books abound with his famous
experiments with lenses and prisms, his study of the nature of light
and its reflection, and the refraction and decomposition of light into
the colours of the rainbow. But Newton stood on the shoulders of a
giant who lived 700 years earlier. For, without doubt, one of the
greatest of the Abbasid scientists was the Iraqi Ibn al-Haytham (born
in 965 AD), who is regarded as the world’s first physicist and as the
father of the modern scientific method — long before Renaissance
scholars such as Bacon and Descartes.
But what surprises many even more is that a ninth-century Iraqi
zoologist by the name of al-Jahith developed a rudimentary theory of
natural selection a thousand years before Darwin. In his Book of
Animals, Jahith speculates on how environmental factors can affect the
characteristics of species, forcing them to adapt and then pass on
those new traits to future generations.

Clearly, the scientific revolution of the Abbasids would not have
taken place if not for Islam — in contrast to the spread of
Christianity over the preceding centuries, which had nothing like the
same effect in stimulating and encouraging original scientific
thinking. The brand of Islam between the beginning of the ninth and
the end of the 11th century was one that promoted a spirit of free
thinking, tolerance and rationalism.
Rulers’ indifference

The golden age of Arabic science slowed down after the 11th century.
Many have speculated on the reason for this. Some blame the Mongols’
destruction of Baghdad in 1258, others the change in attitude in
Islamic theology towards science, and the lasting damage inflicted by
religious conservatism upon the spirit of intellectual inquiry. But
the real reason was simply the gradual fragmentation of the Abbasid
empire and the indifference shown by weaker rulers towards science.
Why should this matter today? I would argue that, at time of increased
cultural and religious tensions, misunderstandings and intolerance,
the West needs to see the Islamic world through new eyes.
And, possibly more important, the Islamic world needs to see itself
through new eyes and take pride in its rich and impressive heritage. —
©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

(Jim Al-Khalili is a professor of physics at the University of Surrey
and the 2007 recipient of the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday Prize.)

( This article was published in THE HINDU , but most of the Muslims
did't read this .....
very good article says that the Muslims are advanced in Science ......)

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