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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... theorem claims that some class of geometric objects is uniquely characterised by a definite property common to all the elements of the class . An example of the situation is given by the classical Darboux theorem : each spatial surface ...
... (Theorem 3.36) and a theorem on the level of mod l representations (Theorem 3.55). Next, we introduce the notions of deformation rings and Hecke algebras, which are incarnations of Galois representations and modular forms, respectively ...
... ( Theorem I ) that the above theorem is true when r = 1 . Hence when ( 23 ) S1 , S2 , Sn ... ... converges to s so does ( 24 ) mS , „ S , ... „ S ... 2 , Applying Theorem I to S , we see that the sequence m mS ?, mS12 , mS ( 21 1 29 ...
And McGinnis' Theorem of Derivative Equations in an Absolute Proof of Fermat's Theorem ; Reduction of the General Equation of the Fifth Degree to an Equation of the Fourth Degree ; and Supplementary Theorems Michael Angelo McGinnis.
... theorem (2.16) holds. Note that this proof applies to a finite value of τ unlike that of the steady-state fluctuation theorem, which is valid only in the long-time limit. We also note that, even when noncontiguous regions in phase space ...
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 |