Review of Sonja Brentjes, Teaching and Learning the Sciences in Islamicate Societies, Renaissance Quarterly 73.2 (2020), 690-692. (original) (raw)
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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 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.
Science in Medieval Times and Its Undetermined Boundaries
Dr. Rasoul Jafarian is the associate professor of history at Tehran University. His remarkable CV is full of scientific studies, teachings, and executive activities. He has written a great number of articles, books, about Safavid dynasty, Shia, and Iranian studies. Moreover, he has daily notes on his personal website to introduce visitors with current cultural and political evolutions of the Islamic world particularly Iran. Digitalizing all manuscripts and documents of Parliament library, publishing numerous books and holding many national and international conferences are just some activities done by Jafarian when he was the director of the Parliament library. Moreover, he is the director of the library of Iran and Islam in Qum. One of his recent concerns is the history of science in Islamic Civilization in Medieval Times. In this regard, he has compiled his articles in “The Concept of Science in Islamic Civilization” which will be published at Elm publication in the near future.
Natural Philosophy [in Islamicate Societies], 100-700/700-1300 [2022]
In: Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies: Practices from the 2nd/8th to the 13th/19th Centuries. Edited by Sonja Brentjes with Peter Barker and Rana Brentjes. London: Routledge, 2022
Philosophy, as it was conceived in the Islamicate world, was "science" in its broadest terms. It was divided into theoretical sciences, practical sciences and applied sciences. While applied sciences included, for example, astrology, agriculture and medicine, practical sciences comprised, for instance, ethics and politics. The theoretical sciences, in turn, split into four areas: logic, mathematics, natural philosophy and metaphysics. Of these, natural philosophy was further divided into seven "particular" investigations. These were concerned with the heavenly bodies, the elements, meteorological phenomena, minerals, plants, animals and the soul, respectively. Additionally, one fundamental or "common" science – called "physics" – covered all concepts immediately relevant not only for all the seven particular disciplines within natural philosophy but also for a number of the applied sciences such as medicine and astrology. It is important to understand that the term "natural philosophy" was not synonymous with "physics" but demarcated a wide scientific area concerned with the exploration of all the aspects and the inner governing structures of the corporeal world, whereas "physics" was but one – if the most essential – of its disciplines. This contribution outlines salient points of theory and practice in natural philosophy as well as their development within Islamicate Societies from the second/eighth to the eighth/fourteenth century.
This paper raises the question as to what role teaching (teachers, teaching material, orality, students) played in intellectual activities and the codification of those activities into texts and manuscripts with respect to the mathematical sciences and natural philosophy in third/ninth-century Baghdad. This issue is approached via the question of how extant works of that period, which are predominantly seen by modern historians of science either as translations or as newly composed research works, can be identified as having had a teaching function. The question of relevance, organization, and content of teaching in the highly innovative context of the mathematical sciences and natural philosophy of the third/ninth century is historiographically significant beyond the recovery of historical details about texts and their character.