Rise and Decline of Sciences in Medieval Islam (original) (raw)
The Rise and Fall of Science and Philosophy in Islamic Civilizations
Islam arose in the seventh century. History has recorded a huge number of Muslim scientists between the eighth and the sixteenth century, who contributed to the civilizations that flourished in that era. Among them were astronomers and astrophysicists, chemists and alchemists, mathematicians, physicists, biologists, architects, geographers, etc. However, a great mystery which has engaged many contemporary scholars is that why the progress stopped. Why while Europe, after experiencing Renaissance, rapidly and increasingly developed in science and technology and, as a result, prospered materially, Islamic civilizations—mainly the Middle East, ceased to thrive? This essay is concerned with exploring the cause of decline of science and philosophy in Islamic world after a period, the three centuries of which has come to be called the Islamic Golden Age. In order to do so, first I need to demonstrate that there actually was a Golden Age, that is, a period of rise of great Muslim scientists and philosophers in the Muslim civilizations, which is taken to refer to the region which today is called the Middle East as well as the Medieval Muslim region of what is now Spain. These will be discussed in Part One. In Part Two, some of the most important proposed explanations for the decline will be looked at.
In recent years, the subject of science in the Muslim World in the pre-modern period has largely been discussed in the context of two master narratives: (1) how and to what extent did Muslim scholarship influence European intellectual history, and (2) the nature of the decline of science and intellectual life in general in the Muslim world during the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods. This essay moves beyond these two narratives by first summarizing the history of European studies of science in the Muslim world. It then draws upon recent developments in Europeanist history of science and outstanding work by historians of Islamicate science to stress the importance of avoiding Whiggish readings of the history of the natural sciences in the Muslim world as well as the necessity for situating the same sciences in relation to developments in theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, and mysticism.
Humanomics, 2004
Islamic science was originally viewed as mere translator and transmitter of Greek, Indian and pre‐Islamic Persian science. Recent research has shifted our understanding of Islam's contribution to what is now called “the exact sciences.” We now know that Islamic science “was even richer and more profound than we had previously thought.” A substantial amount of genuine science was done in Islam, it predated similar discoveries in the West, and it also impacted upon the Renaissance. For example, in the late 1950apos;s, E. S. Kennedy and his students at the American University of Beirut discovered an important work of a fourteenth century Muslim astronomer by the name of Ibn al‐Shatir. This discovery showed that Ibn al‐Shatir's astronomical inventions were the same type of mechanism used by Copernicus a few centuries later,” and may have played a key role in the Copernican revolution. Consequently, an unprecedented acceleration of research into Islamic science started from the 1...
The contribution of Muslims to science during the Middle Abbasid Period (750-945
student, 2020
A history of Muslims' contribution to present-day science and technology is the exploration of the missing account of their glorious past. Muslims integrated science, theology, and philosophy as they were urged to study, acquire knowledge, and learn from others' expertise and civilization. The significance of this study lies not in recounting the specific contribution of Muslims to the individual disciplines of science such as medicine, mathematics, astronomy, geometry, geology, mineralogy, chemistry, philosophy and architecture, and trigonometry. Those accounts though greatly important in their own right have been the central focus of a number of works. This paper highlights those aspects of Muslims' contribution to scientific body of knowledge that are subtle and perhaps more important to the development of the entire body of the scientific knowledge. Through an analysis of socio-cultural and historical context, the paper concludes that the contribution of Muslim scientist lies in (a) bringing to light the work of ancient Greek scholars in the field of science, and (b) bringing to the knowledge of Europe the works of Indian men of science, especially in mathematics, astronomy and medicine. Abstrak Sejarah sumbangan umat Islam terhadap bidang sains dan teknologi masa kini merupakan sejarah gemilang yang dilupakan. Umat Islam telah menyepadukan sains, ilmu agama, dan falsafah apabila mereka didesak untuk belajar dan mencari ilmu, serta mempelajari kepakaran dan ketamadunan masyarakat lain. Kajian ini sebenarnya tidak berfokus terhadap sumbangan-sumbangan yang spesifik oleh umat Islam dalam disiplin-disiplin sains seperti perubatan, matematik, astronomi, geometri, kaji bumi, mineralogi, kimia, falsafah dan senibina, serta trigonometri. Kajian-kajian menunjukkan bahawa pelbagai sumbangan orang Islam yang penting telah banyak diketengahkan. Walau bagaimanapun, kertas ini akan memberikan penekanan terhadap sumbangan umat Islam terhadap dunia sains ilmiah yang kurang ditonjolkan dan mungkin lebih penting peranannya dalam asas perkembangan terhadap dunia sains ilmiah secara keseluruhannya. Melalui analisis berdasarkan sosiobudaya dan konteks sejarah, kertas ini merumuskan bahawa sumbangan saintis Islam sebanarnya a) membantu menonjolkan hasil kerja orang Greek purba dalam bidang sains, dan b) mengetengahkan hasil kajian saintis-saintis India ke serata benua Eropah, terutamanya dalam bidang sains, matematik, astronomi dan perubatan.
POLARISING ʿIlm: SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN EARLY MODERN ISLAM
'Ilm: Science, Religion, and Art In Islam, 2019
The polarisation of the traditional concept of ʿilm, ‘knowledge’, into ʿilm, modern ‘science’ versus dīn, ‘religion’, has a short history in the Islamic tradition. Emerging awareness of the conflict between ʿilm and dīn can be traced back to the early decades of the 19th century; however, intense public debate of the polarity began later in the same century. Views about the conflict emerged after exposure to the European Enlightenment ideas generally, and the works of the fabricators of the ‘conflict thesis’, JW Draper and AD White, specifically. Arab and Turkish scholars celebrated Draper’s view that, unlike Christianity, Islam nurtured and advanced science. Taking this as evidence of Islam’s superiority over Christianity, they restricted the conflict thesis to Christendom and saw it as a result of the repressive practices of the Church. By the mid-20th century, new adaptations of the conflict thesis emerged, which mapped the polarity of science and religion over the traditional Islamic division of sciences into rational (ʿaqlī) and transmitted (naqlī). This chapter discusses the polarisation of ʿilm into science and religion, which occurred in the 19th century, in order to show, first, its inconsistency with pre-19th century Islamic sources on the classification of the rational and transmitted sciences, and, second, the distinct trajectory the polarity took in the Arab-Islamic context. It argues that the questions the polarity has raised in the Islamic context are concerned primarily not with historiography and the lost moral guidance of the scientific enterprise, but rather with Islam’s schizophrenic approach to modernity and its humanistic foundations.
Science pre- islam UNESCO different aspects of Islamic culture Volume
Different Aspects of Islamic culture, 2001
In order to appreciate the actual status of science during Islamic times, it is essential to establish its status just on the eve of the Islamic era. For only then can w e determine the extent to which Islamic science, that which was written mainly in Arabic, did indeed develop and the direction it took when it was confronted with the new social realities. In a sense, the discussion of Islamic science from this perspective also implies a study of the sources of that science, and the manner in whch these sources were exploited by the new Islamic civilization.
Teaching and Learning the Sciences in Islamicate Societies (800-1700), by Sonja Brentjes
Teaching and Learning the Sciences in Islamicate Societies (800-1700), by Sonja Brentjes, 2020
First Paragraph: Studies on science in Islamic societies have been on the rise for a while. The book in question takes as its subject the learning and teaching of the sciences in Islamic (or “Islamicate,” as the author adopts Marshall Hodgson’s conceptualization) societies prior to the eighteenth century. It is penned by Sonja Brentjes, who has written extensively on various aspects of the mathematical sciences in Islamic societies. Her book is not a comprehensive account but rather “an erratic process, broken by many gaps and interrupted by too many questions I could not answer or perhaps not even ask,” but it should also be added that she skillfully engages with the large number of primary and secondary sources (p. 262).
The Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religions (CISMOR), Doshisha University, Japan, November 26., 2011
The paper primarily aims at taking an objective look at the factors that have led to the launching of the Arab - Islamic cultural project in the Middle Ages, as well as at identifying the ‘local’ elements of originality with regard to what was produced by the Arab - Islamic mind in science and philosophy. In other words, I will try to determine the exact position of the Arab-Islamic civilization in the course of the development of the human civilization in general. The results of my efforts will be used in order to answer a pivotal question, namely if it is possible, in the light of the current ‘locality’, to launch a contemporary Islamic civilizational project, which can be comparable to the great project of our ancestors.