Museum explores 'hidden history' of Muslim science

[JI7]

<From about 700 to 1700, many of history's finest scientists and technologists were to be found in the Muslim world.

In Christian Europe the light of scientific inquiry had largely been extinguished with the collapse of the Roman empire. But it survived, and indeed blazed brightly, elsewhere.

From Moorish Spain across North Africa to Damascus, Baghdad, Persia and all the way to India, scientists in the Muslim world were at the forefront of developments in medicine, astronomy, engineering, hydraulics, mathematics, chemistry, map-making and exploration.

A new touring exhibition, hosted by the Science Museum in London, celebrates their achievements.

There is one big question the exhibition does not address: why, after so many centuries, did the Muslim world's scientific leadership falter? From the 16th Century onwards it was in Europe that modern science developed, and where scientific breakthroughs increasingly occurred.

Prof Al-Hassani has his own theory, though there are others. Science flourished in the Muslim world for so long, he believes, because it was seen as expanding knowledge in the interests of society as a whole.

But in the later Middle Ages, the Muslim world came under attack from Europeans (in the Crusades) and the Mongols (who sacked Baghdad in 1258) and the Ottoman Turks overran the remnants of the Byzantine empire, setting up a formidably centralised state.

The need for defence against external enemies combined with a strong centralised government which put less value on individuals' scientific endeavour resulted in an intellectual climate in which science simply failed to flourish, he says. >


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8472111.stm

[Aristus]

1. The history of Muslim scientific achievements in the Middle Ages is not "hidden".

All one has to do is read a book. It's all there.

And Muslim achievement in science decreased due to an all-too-familiar problem we still see today: Religious fanaticism. What happened to Islamic science during our own Renaissance is happening to the Western world today. Religious fanaticism (Christian rather than Muslim this time) is crowding out and putting down scientific inquiry and advancement. That's why we have "Creation Museums" and concerted efforts on behalf of religious fundamantalists to push science instruction out of the public schools.

Another hundred or so years of this, and we here in the United States will be beheading "heretics" and drowning our teenage daughters in the family swimming pool for the crime of falling in love.

[HeresyLives]

2. It's 'hidden' when people don't know about it.

And since it's not usually taught, or even mentioned...people don't.

Same with China and India. Major contributions to the world, but few people know about them.

Africa has a rich history of civilizations, but all the public knows about are poor current conditions.

[Igel]

3. It's taught.

But many Muslims hurt their own cause.

Take the 0 for instance. It's a Muslim invention, I've heard. Except it wasn't. It was first used widely by Muslims, but was obtained from mss. looted from N. India centers of learning. The Muslim contribution: Using it in business, for the most part. Which is precisely why it was imported to Europe.

Or there are other things. You find things "invented" and then forgotten, yet even though forgotten it's still the source of the same discovery later in Europe. Which makes little sense. It's interesting that Aristotle may have made great strides towards calculus, but he contributed nothing to Newton and Liebnitz because his work wasn't known.

Or you find things invented by Muslims but not really applied by Muslims. It's a problem. Advocacy history is usually bad because it advocates more than it enlightens. Most history has a viewpoint, but good historians have traditionally tried not to one's overt and touted ethnocentricism dictate the history. It happens, but to set out with that as the goal tacky.

The humorous thing is the explanation given as to why Muslims lost their drive for science--because of big bad outsiders taking away territory and tax revenue. Well, we could mention internal schisms and warfare, but that would be fitna and that's bad. Or Islamism, but that's bad. So they blame outsiders. I personally find a few things: Rise of extremists as the clerics got entrenched, loss of diversity as the minorities were all assimilated (as the clerics got entrenched), a feeling of being so much better that hoping for improvement is a lost cause, and booty from foreign lands, letting the petty tyrants feel flush enough with cash to support parasitic scholars who decorated their courts, combined with ever fresh research from abroad to fire the scholars' imaginations.

The same could be said for why Europe's Dark Ages and Middle Ages didn't end (weather permitting). Except then the bad guys were mostly the Muslims, preventing a re-flowering of the Roman Empire in 800 AD. Instead, the Muslims were good for more than a millennium of warfare against Europe, punctuated by brief periods of peace or even take-backs. Of course, the Vikings and the Mongols helped, too.

[Codeine]

5. "Advocacy History."

I did not know this phrase, but damned if it isn't precisely the term I've been looking for when these sorts of conversations come up.

Thanks! :hi:

[Codeine]

4. Anybody who would be even vaguely interested

in that sort of knowledge finds it out. It's in a bazillion books and is taught in school.

The average person in any society doesn't give a dead moose's last two shits about the historical origins of everyday scientific knowledge and thus does not learn it. That's not hidden, that's just people.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

6. Rent this movie:

THE KEEPER: THE LEGEND OF OMAR KHAYYAM starring Vanessa Redgrave. (2005)

About Omar Khayyam of Naishapur, Persia (Iran), and his mathematical discoveries, and his modern day descendants.

Best movie, I believe, that I have ever seen.