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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... took place during the early period of the Abbasid times (circa 750–900 A.D.) and how they quickly generated a veritable golden age of Islamic science and philosophy. In this context, very few authors would go beyond the characterization ...
... took place during the early period of the Abba- sid times, mainly during the latter part of the eighth century and the early part of the ninth, as a result of one or more of the following processes of transformation: (1) Contact between ...
... took place. This, to say nothing of the motivation of the early Abbasid caliphs for the acquisition of these ancient sciences, which had been already abandoned for about 700 years before those early Abbasids began to translate them. Why ...
... into Greek at the time of Alexander is not such a reliable story that it could be used as an explanatory basis for the translation movement that took place during the early Abbasid times. In fact, the story itself 12 Chapter 1.
... took place during his reign, but I know of a great number of books that were translated for three brothers, known collectively as Banu ̄ Mu ̄sa ̄, who worked at his court, and sometimes at great risk. I shall have reason to return to ...
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 |