Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology) [Hardcover]

George Saliba (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262195577 | ISBN-13: 978-0262195577 | Publication Date: March 2, 2007

The Islamic scientific tradition has been described many times in accounts of Islamic civilization and general histories of science, with most authors tracing its beginnings to the appropriation of ideas from other ancient civilizations--the Greeks in particular. In this thought-provoking and original book, George Saliba argues that, contrary to the generally accepted view, the foundations of Islamic scientific thought were laid well before Greek sources were formally translated into Arabic in the ninth century. Drawing on an account by the tenth-century intellectual historian Ibn al-Nadim [macron over i] that is ignored by most modern scholars, Saliba suggests that early translations from mainly Persian and Greek sources outlining elementary scientific ideas for the use of government departments were the impetus for the development of the Islamic scientific tradition. He argues further that there was an organic relationship between the Islamic scientific thought that developed in the later centuries and the science that came into being in Europe during the Renaissance.Saliba outlines the conventional accounts of Islamic science, then discusses their shortcomings and proposes an alternate narrative. Using astronomy as a template for tracing the progress of science in Islamic civilization, Saliba demonstrates the originality of Islamic scientific thought. He details the innovations (including new mathematical tools) made by the Islamic astronomers from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, and offers evidence that Copernicus could have known of and drawn on their work. Rather than viewing the rise and fall of Islamic science from the often-narrated perspectives of politics and religion, Saliba focuses on the scientific production itself and the complex social, economic, and intellectual conditions that made it possible.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"George Saliba has for more than thirty years written some of the most original and advanced studies of the sciences in Arabic. In this remarkable book, which he calls a historiographic essay, he addresses the question of the origin of Islamic science, using accounts of early Islamic scholars to show the essential roles of government bureaucracies; the great enlargement of Greek science, particularly astronomy, in the Islamic world; and new evidence for the paths of transmission of Arabic science to Europe, shown most clearly in the work of Copernicus. Finally, Saliba considers the so-called decline of Arabic science, showing that well into the fifteenth and even sixteenth centuries there was no decline, but rather that the sciences of Europe left behind the more traditional sciences, not only of Islamic civilization, but of the entire world. This is an essential book for understanding the place of science in the world of Islam and its fundamental importance to the development of modern science in the Western world."--N. M. Swerdlow, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The University of Chicago

About the Author

William Kaizen is currently writing "The Immediate: Early VideoArt and Mass Media America, 1965--1975," a Ph.D. dissertationin art history at Columbia University. In the spring of 2003,he helped organize the conference Communities of Sense:Rethinking Aesthetics in Practice.

The rise and fall of the Islamic scientific tradition, and the relationship of Islamic science to European science during the Renaissance.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 360 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (March 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262195577
• ISBN-13: 978-0262195577
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,006,414 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Non-Europeans' Scientific Contributions and the European Renaissance, August 12, 2009

By 

Ayman "muslimmediareview.blogspot.com" (Augusta, GA, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology) (Hardcover)

This monograph is a series of lectures which challenge the dominant narrative of the history of science culminating in the European Renaissance. The dominant narrative is that Muslim rulers in the early Abbasid period, under the influence of the Mu'tazila theological school (aka rationalists), sponsored a translation of Persian, Indian and Greek scientific and philosophical texts. When the ahl al-hadith theologians (aka irrationalists), who in large part adopted the Asha`ari theology and who are most identified later with Imam al-Ghazali, persuaded later Abbasi rulers to cease sponsoring rationalist theology, scientific production began to decline. Finally, the Mongol destruction of Baghdad in 1258 CE combined with religious hostility to science to cement cessation of scientific thought and production throughout Muslim lands. In key contact points, such as Sicily and Andalus, Europeans were able to reacquire the Greek scientific and philosophical legacy which had been faithfully transmitted by Muslims, and these Europeans later used this legacy to develop the Renaissance. In short, Muslims were a storage facility for Europeans' intellectual property until the Europeans could complete renovations.

Professor George challenges this narrative at the following points:

* Scientific activity among Muslims and others in the areas Muslims ruled began during the period of the Bani Umayyah when the ruler `Abd al-Malik ordered that the state administration use Arabic rather than Syriac and Persian. Scientific activity was the result of competion for a more efficient beauracracy among the educated Arabic-speaking Muslims, Syriac speakers and Persian speakers. This persisted through the ascenscion to power of Bani al-`Abbas. Rulers' sponsorship of scholars was not the main force for scientific activity.
* Byzantine science was not the source of scientific knowledge. Science was too far in decline in Byzantine-ruled areas. Scientists in Muslim-ruled areas used ancient Greek sources to supplement their scientific production.
* Despite an attachment to an Aristotelian cosmology, scientists quickly discovered errors in the ancient Greek sources. In fact, as they translated them, they corrected them to correspond to their own astronomical observations and mathematical advances. In particular, by the 13th century, no serious astronomer wrote without challenging ancient Greek sources like Ptolemy's Almagest, and many advocated different mathematical models to predict the motions of the planets and stars. Furthermore, new instruments and observational methods were developed.
* Most of the scientists were religious functionaries as well. Religion's main impact on astronomy was to force its seperation from astrology and to compel attempts to harmonize Aristotelian cosmology and Ptolemian physics. Theology compelled astronomers to deny the universe's objects divine attributes, and thus their motions had to be explained according to the mathematical laws of their models. In short, theology did not obstruct science.
* While more research is needed, it is likely that Renaissance Europe pursued the knowledge contained in the astronomy books written in Arabic in the 13th century and that Europeans studied these books in Arabic and that Copernicus himself had access, through someone knowledgeable in Arabic, to the advances made by astronomers in Muslim-ruled areas in the 11th through 13th centuries CE.
* The so-called age of decline in Muslim-ruled countries after the 13th century is filled with scientific production and advances. It was a decline only relative to the Europeans' tremendous advances brought about through their interactions with the Americas.

Although Muzaffar Iqbal's review in Islam & Science (Volume 7, No 1, Summer 2009) criticizes the book for its pushing the analysis of the rise of the "ancient sciences" without enough evidence and for reiterating the revisionist perspective which serious scholars have adopted for decades, even he admits that the book brings coherence "to the revisionist narrative scattered across various papers and books over the last few decades ..." For me, and for most readers of this blog, this book is the simplest way to access this debate in the history of science, and it is an effective response to the continuing Western exceptionalist narrative.

4 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why, and how, Islamic science was born and grew and taken up in Europe, October 31, 2009

By 

ROROTOKO (rorotoko dot com) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology) (Hardcover)

"Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Saliba's book interview ran here as cover feature on October 23, 2009.