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Science:
Islam’s forgotten geniuses by
Barney on 23 August 2009
Jim Al-Khalili For 700 years,
the international language of science was Arabic The
untold story of Arabic brilliance should be a timely reminder of a proud
heritage, says Jim Al-Khalili Next
year, we will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth,
and the 150th of the publication of his On The Origin of Species, which
revolutionised our understanding of biology. But
what if Darwin was beaten to the punch? Approximately 1,000 years before the
British naturalist published his theory of evolution, a scientist working in
Baghdad was thinking along similar lines. In
the Book of Animals, abu Uthman al-Jahith (781-869), an intellectual of East
African descent, was the first to speculate on the influence of the environment
on species. He wrote: “Animals engage in a struggle for existence; for
resources, to avoid being eaten and to breed. Environmental factors influence
organisms to develop new characteristics to ensure survival, thus transforming
into new species. Animals that survive to breed can pass on their successful
characteristics to offspring.” There
is no doubt that it qualifies as a theory of natural selection – even though
the Book of Animals appears to have been based to a large extent on folklore
rather than on zoological fact. Despite
the strong feelings Darwin provokes among many Muslims – many Islamic scholars
see the Koran as creationist, and so at odds with evolution – it seems
astounding that al-Jahith’s quote has been largely ignored. In
fact, although popular accounts of the history of science typically show no
major advances taking place between the Romans and the Renaissance, al-Jahith’s
work was part of an astonishing flowering of invention and innovation that took
place in the Muslim world, and in Iraq in particular, in the Middle Ages. This
world view, based on a mixture of theology and rational thinking, produced
wonderful advances in philosophy, astronomy, medicine and mathematics, in
particular the emergence of algebra and trigonometry. Although
the Muslim world is often now seen as ill-equipped for scientific discovery, we
can look back to Baghdad and see the origins of the modern scientific method,
the world’s first physicist and the world’s first chemist; advances in surgery
and anatomy, the birth of geology and anthropology; not to mention remarkable
feats of engineering. For
700 years, the international language of science was Arabic; and Baghdad, the
capital of the mighty Abbasid Empire, was the centre of the intellectual world.
The story starts around 813, when the caliph of Baghdad, al-Ma’mun, is said to have
had a vivid and life-changing dream. In it, he met the Greek philosopher
Aristotle, who instructed him to “seek knowledge and enlightenment”. This
was the starting point for a lifelong obsession with science and philosophy.
Al-Ma’mun created the famous House of Wisdom, a library, translation house and
scientific academy unmatched since the glory days of Alexandria. The
caliph would then recruit some of the greatest names in Arabic science, such as
the mathematician al-Khwarizmi and the philosopher al-Kindi. Although many of
these thinkers were not Arabs themselves, they conducted their science and
wrote their books in Arabic. In
the West, though, they were better known by their Latin names, such as
Alkindus, Alhazen, Averroes and Avicenna. The most famous of all was Avicenna
(or ibn Sina, to give him his correct name). Born
in Persia in 980, he was a child prodigy who grew up to become one of the
world’s greatest philosophers and physicians. His great work, the Canon of
Medicine, was to remain the standard medical text both in the Islamic and
Christian worlds until well into the 17th century. He
is credited with the discovery and explanation of contagious diseases and the
first correct description of the anatomy of the human eye. As a philosopher,
Avicenna is referred to as the Aristotle of Islam; as a physician, he is its
Galen. Indeed,
it would not be inappropriate to refer to Aristotle and Galen as the Avicennas
of the Greeks. My favourite of all the Abbasid scientists, however, is another
Persian scholar by the name of al-Biruni. Here
was a polymath with a free-ranging and formidable intellect: not only did he
make significant breakthroughs as a philosopher, mathematician and astronomer,
but he also left his mark as a theologian, encyclopaedist, linguist, historian,
geographer, pharmacist and physician. Famously,
having developed the mathematics of trigonometry, he was able to measure the
circumference of the Earth to within a few miles. The only other figure in
history whose legacy rivals the scope of al-Biruni’s scholarship would be
Leonardo da Vinci. So what went wrong? What
brought to an end this golden age of Abassid and Arabic science? The standard
answer is that the ending came suddenly, in 1258, when the Mongols ransacked
Baghdad. During the occupation, a large number of the books in the House of
Wisdom were destroyed. But
Baghdad was by this time far from the only centre of scholarship in the Arabic
speaking world – and wonderful advances continued to be made in Cairo and
Cordoba right up to the European Renaissance in the 15th century. There
is also an argument that the decline was due to a change in attitude of the
Islamic world towards science. This was primarily a consequence of the work of
the 11th-century scholar and theologian al-Ghazali, who famously criticised
Muslim scientists for their over-reliance on the philosophy of the ancient
Greeks. Yet
this, too, cannot be the whole story. Al-Ghazali was primarily attacking a
theological viewpoint that relied on ideas he deemed anti-Islamic. Hard science
should not have been so affected by this more metaphysical dispute. The
real decline had much more to do with a weakening of the power of the caliphate
as a whole, of which the Mongol invasion was merely one symptom. By
the end of the 11th century, Baghdad had lost control over much of its empire,
and weaker caliphs were simply less inclined to encourage and finance
scientific scholarship. But, just as the golden age of Arabic science began
with the translation of the great Greek texts of Aristotle, Euclid and Ptolemy,
so was the work of the Arabic scholars transferred to Europe .
For example, al-Jahith’s Book of Animals was a major influence on Arab scholars
of the 11th to 14th centuries, and the Latin translations of their work in turn
became known to Charles Darwin’s predecessors, Linnaeus, Buffon and Lamarck. By
the 16th century, while scientific and technological progress continued to be
made at a gentler pace in the Muslim world under Persian and Ottoman rule, the
European Renaissance was well under way. The
mystery is why the debt the West owed to Muslim scholars was then overlooked:
acknowledged at all, the Abbasids are normally credited with nothing more than
acting as the guardians of Greek science. In
a world of increasing religious tension, the untold story of Arabic science is
a timely reminder of the debt the West owes to the Muslim world – and, perhaps
more importantly, of the proud heritage today’s Muslims should acknowledge. ·
Jim Al-Khalili is professor of physics and public engagement
in science at the University of Surrey. Tomorrow night, he delivers the Royal
Society Michael Faraday Prize lecture, which will be webcast live at 5.30pm at royalsociety.org/live, and
will then address the invite-only Telegraph/Novartis Scientists Meet The Media
reception at the Royal Society in London. ISLAM’S FORGOTTEN GENIUSES • Ibn
al-Natis, a Syrian from the late 13th century, is credited with giving the
first correct description of blood circulation in the body, 400 years before
the work of Thomas Harvey. •
The Polish astronomer Copernicus (1473-1543) has Arabic astronomers to thank
for his calculations: indeed, there are diagrams in his books that appear to
have been lifted exactly from the work of the Arab astronomer Ibn Shatir
100 years earlier. •
The modern scientific method, based on observation and measurement, is often
said to have been established in the 17th century by Francis Bacon and René
Descartes. But the Iraqi-born physicist Ibn al-Haythem (Alhazen), had
the same idea in the 10th century. •
The word “alchemy” derives from the Arabic “alkimya”, which means “chemistry”.
The world’s first true chemist was a Yemeni Arab by the name of Jabir ibn
Hayyan, born in 721. • Al-Razi
(Rhazes) was the greatest clinician of the Middle Ages. Born near Teheran
in 865, he ran a psychiatric ward in Baghdad at a time when, in the Christian
world, the mentally ill would have been regarded as being possessed by the
devil. •
The word “algebra” comes from the Arabic “al-jebr”, and was made famous by the
great ninth-century mathematician al-Khwarizmi. But contrary to popular
myth, algebra was not an Islamic invention – its rules actually go back to the
Greek mathematician Diophantus. via telegraph.co.uk Why forgotten? This
fascinating article by Jim Al-Khalili about the scientists, philosophers and
thinkers of the Islamic world, particularly from the time of the Abbasid
caliphs, who led the world in the development of science, should prompt us to
ask why the contributions of these Muslim intellectuals have either been
forgotten or relegated to a footnote of Western history. Is this an example of
how history becomes the handmaid of power politics and of narratives about the
primacy of Western civilization? Many
years ago at a Baha’i summer school I listened to a wonderful historian, Firuz
Kazemzadeh, a professor at Yale, discourse about the challenges of writing and
teaching history. History, he said, is all too often used to by the victors to
claim their superiority. We tend to have an emotional investment in “our”
history and we often resist other perspectives on the events that have shaped
our lives, our countries, our nations, our religions, our ethnic groups. The
British get exasperated by Hollywood films that rewrite recent history to make
what were well-documented British achievements into American achievements. (I’m
thinking of U-571.) So how exasperated must others
become when their contributions to literature, medicine, astronomy, mathematics
be downplayed, misrepresented or even ignored? Perhaps
it is time to nurture a historiography that more faithfully reflects the
contributions of the whole human race to the development of civilization. This
would seem to be a matter of fairness, justice, equity – and could be one of
the great human accomplishments as we move towards a new global civilization.
No doubt it will be an intellectual and spiritual challenge. We can do it only
if we embrace the oneness of humanity, if we commit ourselves to solidarity
with all humans, if we each accept our responsibility for the welfare of all
others – and that includes ensuring that the unheard and oppressed can add
their stories to the wealth of human history. Perhaps
historians are already doing this. I love to read history, but I’m not a
historian. It would be good to hear of research projects that are setting out
to develop such a new historiography. Technorati
Tags: history, science, religion,
Islam,
Abbasid, civilization, Arabs,
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