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Photo taken from medieval manuscript by Qotbeddin Shirazi, an Astronomer. The image depicts a star constellation.Islamic science is science in the context of traditional religious ideas of Islam, including its ethics and prohibitions. This is not the same as science as conducted by any Muslim in a secular context. However, certain liberal movements in Islam eschew the practice of Islamic science, arguing that science should be considered separate from religion.
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Rise of the Islamic science
Main article: Islamic Golden Age
Islam began to grow in the 7th century and in the following centuries, the Islamic Empire expanded to include Northern Africa, Middle East and parts of Spain. The capital of this powerful empire was Baghdad, which became a major cultural centre, favored by its location at the crossroads of the Eastern and Western worlds.
Science was encouraged by the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad and they established the "House of Wisdom", an academy of science where they gathered important Sanskrit and Greek manuscripts and supported scholars to study and translate them. Some of these manuscripts were thus saved for humanity only through the Arabic medium.
The important contributions made by Islamic scholars can be seen in many words still in use today: alkali, algebra, alchemy, alcohol, Aldebaran, Altair, Algol, alembic, algorithm, almanac, Almagest, through to zenith and zero.
Mathematics
Ancient Greek mathematics had an important role in the evolution of Arabic science, especially works like Euclid's classic geometry, and it is thought that they helped create the era of Islamic scientific innovation that lasted until the 14th century. Many ancient Greek books are only known because they were transcribed by Islamic scholars.
Spherical trigonometry was largely developed by Muslims, and systematized (along with plane trigonometry) by Persian mathematician Nasir al-Din Tusi (Nasireddin) in the 13th century.
An important figure of the Islamic mathematics was Al-Khwarizmi, the ninth century Persian astronomer of the caliph of Baghdad. He wrote several important books and it is today known for introducing the place-value decimal system, which we use today. The system was developed in India in the 6th century, but it was known to Europeans only in the 13th century, from a Latin translation of Al-Khwarizmi. European Medieval mathematical works used the phrase "dixit Algorismi" ("so says Al-Khwarizmi") when they used the decimal system; from this is derived the word "algorithm". Also the word Algebra is derived from one of his works, Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah, which dealt with equations, polynomials, etc - specifically it explained how to reveal unknown quantities in equations by executing balancing procedures which preserve the equality. Although some claim that Al-Khwarizmi's personal religion was Zoroastrianism, nevertheless his work has always been and remains in the mainstream of Islamic intellectual history.
Further development of algebra was by Abu Bakr al-Karaji in his treatise al-Fakhri, where he extends the methodology to incorporate integral powers and integral roots of unknown quantities.
Other notable Islamic mathematicians are al-Samawal, Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi, Jamshid al-Kashi, Thabit ibn Qurra, Abu Kamil, and Abu Sahl al-Kuhi.
Medicine
Main article: Islamic medicine
This section is a Scientific method
The scientific method in its modern form arguably developed in early Muslim philosophy, in particular, citation ("isnad"), peer review and open inquiry leading to development of consensus ("ijma" via "ijtihad"), and a general belief that knowledge reveals nature honestly. During the middle ages, the advances in mathematics, medicine, astronomy, engineering, and many other fields were evidence that Islamic civilization had some knowledge of science and technology. During this time Islamic philosophy developed and was often pivotal in scientific debates–key figures were usually scientists and philosophers.
Prominent Iraniana href="Arab.html" title="Arab">Arab scientist, Ibn Al-Haitham, used the scientific method to obtain the results in his book Optics. It's known that Roger Bacon (who is usually erroneously given the cr for having founded the scientific method) was familiar with Ibn Al-Haitham's work.
Decay of Islamic science
With the fall of Muslim Spain in 1492, scientific and technological initiative generally passed to Christian Europe and led to what we now call the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The fiqh of Islamic Law froze more or less along classical/medieval lines, and no longer encouraged science.
Modern Islamic philosophy of science
Modern Islamic philosophy has, in response to challenges of secular science and concerns that secular society is unwilling or unable to limit its uses of dangerous technology, especially nuclear weapon or biotechnology, begun to look at the origins of science to determine what ethics or limits can or should be imposed, and what goals or visions are appropriate for science. Key figures in these debates are:
- Ismail al-Faruqi who proposed an Islamization of knowledge
- Seyyed Hossein Nasr who focuses on interpretations of "khalifa"
- Ziauddin Sardar who advocates the creation of a modern Islamic science to tackle problems facing Muslims today
- Muhammad Nijatullah Siddiqui who focuses more specifically on Islamic economics
- F. Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant, explored the central importance of knowledge in Muslim civilization and explains how it generated "science". It is more a work of history. Also of some note in these debates have been
- Nasim Butt, Science and Muslim Societies, an introduction
- Ahmad Y. al-Hassan and Donald R. Hill, Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History
Further reading
- Berggren, J. L. Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam. Springer-Verlag: 1986.
- Burton, David M. The History of Mathematics: An Introduction. McGraw Hill: 1997.
- Rashed, Roshdi. The Development of Arabic Mathematics: Between Arithmetic and Algebra. Transl. by A. F. W. Armstrong. Kluwer Academic Publishers: 1994.
See also
- list of Islamic terms in Arabic
- philosophy of science
- Islamic banking
- applied ethics
- Islamic Golden Age
- List of Iranian and Afghani scientists
- Ophthalmology in medieval Islam