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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... 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 advanced, but with a particular nuance to ...
... interest in such reclamation of original Persian sciences from the Greeks during the times of the Sasanians, when they were the masters of the domain, and in constant warfare with the Greeks. In fact, the same reports that speak of the ...
... interest in the philosophical sciences and a preoccupation with introducing the Mutazilite doctrines in the realm, so much so that he began to see dreams that justified his disposition. In one of those dreams he is supposed to have seen ...
... acquire Greek scientific manuscripts or Greek scientists speak to some interest this caliph may have had in such matters.32 But it is never clear whether those activities were indeed ordered by al-Mamu ̄n 14 Chapter 1.
... interest started with al-Mansu ̄r himself, and if we grant that they could recruit for the purpose of the horoscope the Persian astronomers Nawbakht and Ma ̄sha ̄alla ̄h, then who was this Ibra ̄hı ̄m al-Faza ̄rı ̄, obviously an Arab ...
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 |