Islamic Science and the Making of the European RenaissanceThe 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. |
From inside the book
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... developed in some major respects—to those who do not read Arabic. The main features of the thesis expressed earlier in al-Fikr are supported here by fuller evidence. Furthermore, the new literature that has appeared since the ...
... developed in this book. Those people patiently listened to what must have sounded to them like half-baked thoughts, and always pushed me to develop those ideas further in order to reach the form they have now reached. In the same breath ...
... develop on its own any science that could be of interest to other cultures. This civilization began to develop scientific thought only when it came into contact with other more ancient civilizations, which are assumed to have been more ...
... developed some basic astronomical and medical sciences that survived well into Islamic times. In a chapter that was written about 15 years ago but not published until 2001, I tried to summarize the scientific knowledge of pre-Islamic ...
... developed by the Arabic-writing algebraists of Qusta ̄'s time, as is evident from Qusta ̄'s reference to the title of Diophantus's work as sina ̄at al-jabr (Art of Algebra), a term that does not exist in Greek, and as was discussed by ...
Contents
1 | |
Question of Beginnings II | 27 |
3 Encounter with the Greek Scientific Tradition | 73 |
The Critical Innovations | 131 |
The Case of Astronomy | 171 |
The Copernican Connection | 193 |
The Fecundity of Astronomical Thought | 233 |
Notes and References | 257 |
Bibliography | 289 |
Index | 307 |