Ibn Al-Haytham: First Scientist (Profiles in Science) [Library Binding]

Bradley Steffens (Author)

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From Booklist

Ibn al-Haytham ("Alhazen" in Library of Congress cataloging) was born in Basra in 965. A Muslim who studied the works of Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, and Ptolemy, he developed an approach to science using experimentation and deduction and made significant observations and discoveries, particularly in the field of optics. Translations of his books influenced medieval European scientists and mathematicians from Bacon to Fermat to Kepler. Steffens notes that al-Haytham's discovery of the cameraobscura may have changed Western art as well. Steffens has organized what is known of his subject's life and work into a coherent narrative. He is quick to acknowledge gaps, but backs up inferences logically. Like the history of mathematics, the history of science is incomplete without an acknowledgment of early scholars in the Middle East. This clearly written introduction to al-Haytham, his society, and his contributions does that. The book concludes with a time line, source notes, a bibliography, and a list of Web sites. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Library Binding: 128 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Reynolds Publishing (January 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1599350246
• ISBN-13: 978-1599350240
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,057,826 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in Waterloo, Iowa--Ioway as my maternal grandfather pronounced it. My family moved to Tucson, Arizona when I was two.

I don't remember Iowa or the trip to Arizona, but I do remember the Mayflower moving van backing into our driveway on Eli Drive and crushing one of the concrete curbs--a lesson in the transience of the world.

I also remember playing with the sand between the stones in the driveway, looking up, and seeing a monster headed straight at me. I ran to my father, imploring him to get his shotgun. "Well, let's take a look at this monster," he said. When he saw it, he said, "I don't think I need my shotgun. I think I can use the rake." He lifted the thick, brown worm--at least a foot long--off the driveway and tossed it over the back wall into the alley. I was amazed at his courage and ingenuity.

My father was a machinist--a turret lathe operator. When he was laid off from Hughes Aircraft, he traveled to Los Angeles and got a job making parts for the Apollo space program. We sold the house in Tucson and joined him in Canoga Park. I was ten.

I attended Sunnybrae Elementary School. One of the teachers there, Betsy Crawford, encouraged my writing. I had a cheap printing set and my father had taught me to touch type on an old Royal manual typewriter. I used to make faux sports pages for his amusement. He told Betsy Crawford about my hobby, and she suggested that I try writing newspaper accounts of historical events. I did, and Betsy reproduced my handiwork and distributed copies to the class--my first publication.

I attended Sutter Junior High and was awestruck by the massive, delicately colored mural in the library. It was painted by the Danish artist Kay Nielsen, who had traveled to Southern California to work at Disney Studios. Nielsen worked on a version of "The Little Mermaid" that was never released, but he did receive a posthumous credit for the 1992 version.

I served as student body president at Sutter, representing the school when it received an award from the Freedom Foundation in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

During the L.A. teacher's strike of 1970, I collected some articles that the principal had ordered removed from the school newspaper and published them in an underground newspaper. I also wrote a scathing critique of the administration, which did not seem to be living up to the ideals acknowledged by the award the school had received. I was suspended from school for the duration of the strike--an experience that helped inform the five or six books I have written about free speech and censorship.

I was in line to receive several graduation awards, but I got none. I was bewildered. My counselor, Mr. Wright, saw I was crestfallen and pulled me into his office. "You were nominated for every award," he told me, "but you were blackballed because of your newspaper." Mr. Wright looked me in the eye. "I believe you will go on to accomplish more than any of the students who received awards." It was the kindest, most helpful thing anyone ever said to me. I walked out of his office with my head held high.

I wrote my first published poem as an assignment in Jim Malone's creative writing class at Canoga Park High School in 1972. I graduated in 1973.

I attended Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, for a year. I dropped out to be a writer.

I published a few poems over the next few months. In 1975, I self-published a 28-page chapbook of poems. I supported myself as a street poet for a couple of years, including a year I lived in Ajijic, Mexico.

I began writing dramatic poetry. In 1981, the Olympia Arts Ensemble in Minneapolis produced an evening of my plays-in-verse. I published my first nonfiction book in 1989. I have followed it with twenty-six more.

My latest book is Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist. It is the first full biography published in English about the eleventh-century Muslim scholar (known in the West as Alhazen) who developed the scientific method.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine blend of history and science biography., March 6, 2007

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ibn Al-Haytham: First Scientist (Profiles in Science) (Library Binding)

Bradley Steffens' IBN AL-HAYTHAM: FIRST SCIENTIST will reach into the advanced elementary grade levels with an unusual survey of a scientific pioneer who lived from 950 to 1040 and whose work fostered several scientific and mathematical fields from physics to astronomy and geometry. Chapters consider his life, achievements, and experimental processes in this fine blend of history and science biography.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Biography With Few Errors, March 30, 2007

By 

Robert A. Williams "libertarian" (Oberlin, OH United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ibn Al-Haytham: First Scientist (Profiles in Science) (Library Binding)

The author did a nice job of fleshing out the biographical story of Ibn Al-Haytham. Ibn Al-Haytham, a Muslim, had grown up amongst Muslims in Baghdad and seriously entertained the arguments between different schools of thought. In the end, he decided that there was only one Islam and that interpretations were the result of the different comprehension abilities amongst individuals. How then, he asked, can the religion of Islam (peace through submission to God) be articulated so that all may understand equally? The answer, he determined, lies in mathematics. No one argues that 2+2=4. If he could mathematically describe Islam, then everyone would understand God's Final Testament equally.

He studied the mathematics of the ancient Greeks. Then he wrote books on geometry and building construction. When his unappreciated genius riled the anti-Islamic dictator in Baghdad, he pretended mental illness. Just as Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber, put himself into a Denver psychiatric hospital to escape the mob after Sonny Liston was murdered, so too had Ibn Al-Haytham sought to escape the dictator's ire.

Then he went to Egypt after being summoned to build a dam. He determined that a dam could be built where it was eventually built in the 20th century, but he knew that logistically it would cost the Egyptian dictator too much to build and the high cost might upset him. The dictator was upset anyway, and again Ibn Al-Haytham pretended mental illness. He was arrested anyway and wrote 'The Book of Optics' while incarcerated. He was finally released and he returned to Baghdad where he wrote 90 more books on science before he died.

The author, Bradley Steffens did a good job transliterating the Arabic into English. However, he made some serious blunders concerning Spain. Spain was created in the early 1470s when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella merged their respective kingdoms and formed the new Catholic country of Spain in Iberia. So when Steffens writes that "The only area of medieval Europe that had eluded the grasp of Christendom was Spain, which remained under Muslim rule" (p 95), he blunders. Replace Spain with Iberia, then you have it. There's no such thing as "Spanish Muslims" (p 96), only Iberian Muslims. It's like saying that 10,000 years ago the Ice Age hit the U.S.; or Native Americans arrived in the United States when they crossed a land bridge at the Bering Strait. The U.S. did not exist back then. And Spain did not exist in Iberia until the 1470s.

That said, Steffens did a nice job showing how unIslamic the governments were that terrorized Muslim populations and Ibn Al-Haytham in particular. All this before MI6 and CIA moved into the dictator installation and maintenance game in the Middle East. Muslims cannot point the finger at the colonizers alone, because why were dicators governing Muslims when Islam requires Muslims to choose their leader? The Muslim world was so topsy-turvy in Ibn Al-Haytham's time that he had to pretend to be crazy on two separate occasions in order to escape the carpricious wrath of unIslamic dictators in Muslim lands.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Some misleading information included, July 12, 2009

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A. Nor (Ohio, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ibn Al-Haytham: First Scientist (Profiles in Science) (Library Binding)

I find the book interesting, for it accords and recognizes a Muslim scientist his proper place as a first scientist who is responsible for advocating experimental work in verifying conceived scientific ideas (hypotheses) instead of ascribing it to Roger Bacon. Nevertheless, it seems that the author, at the same time, tries to equate Islam with Chrisianity with regard to philosophy vs. religion. He tries to project an idea that as in Christianity, Islam also rejects science. He even quotes a prophetic saying (prayer): "May God protect us from useless knowledge" (pp. 92). Useless knowledge is knowledge that does not bring us closer to God (such as astrology). How could that prayer include science when the Qur'an clearly invites/urges people to ponder over the physical phenomena?: Surrah 'Ale-Imran-THE FAMILY OF IMRAN-Verse:189-190

In the creation of the earth and the heavens and the alternation of night and day, there are signs for those gifted with understanding. These people keep Allah's Laws in mind whilst standing, sitting or reclining. After reflecting upon the creation of the heavens and the earth, they cry out, "O our Sustainer! You have not created this Universe in vain or for destructive purposes. Your Schemes of things are much above flaw. Grant us the insight to understand the functioning of these things, so that we benefit from them and remain safe from suffering."

(The Qur'an: Verse 189-190)

(it would be interesting if parallel biblical verses could be brought forward)

It must be noted that the universe is His other Signs (Aayah in Arabic also means signs apart from verses).

The conflict between philosophy and religion in Islam is different from that of Christianity. In Islam, the rejection of philosophy pertains to metaphysics and not natural sciences (at that time, still considered as part of philosophy). Imam Al-Ghazali even discourages the Muslims to study only fiqh, abandoning medicine as he considers studying medicine (and other natural sciences) is fard-kifayyah (if a section of the Muslim Ummah has embarked upon them, then the rest of the Muslims are relieved from that religious obligation; it does not mean the rest should not study as well if they want).