ISLAM’S CONTRIBUTION TO MODERN SCIENCE
Conquest of Nature
ISLAM inspires and propels its followers to seek knowledge for the pleasure of their Lord, and to work towards and facilitate promotion and welfare of humanity. In other words, the motto of education in Islam is: acquisition of knowledge for the sake of serving God and His creatures. That is why throughout Islamic history, equal attention has been paid to the learning of both the religious sciences and the natural sciences.
Islam places great emphasis on learning, and in order to facilitate learning, supporting factors which are necessary to make progress in learning have been provided by God. One of these special factors is the freedom to conduct research.
Here is an example from the Prophet’s life. Once the Prophet passed by an oasis where he found date palm planters at work. Upon enquiry he found that they were pollinating the clusters of dates in order to produce a better yield. The Prophet expressed his disapproval of this process. Knowing this, the farmers immediately stopped it. Later on the Prophet was told that due to lack of proper pollination the yield had been very low compared to the previous years. On hearing this, the Prophet replied, “You know your worldly matters better.” (Sahih Bukhari) In other words, experiment and observation should be the final criteria in such worldly matters.
Islam places great emphasis on learning, and in order to facilitate learning, supporting factors which are necessary to make progress in learning have been provided by God. One of these special factors is the freedom to conduct research.
In this way, the Prophet of Islam separated scientific research from religion. This means in the world of nature man must enjoy full opportunities to conduct unrestricted research and adopt the conclusions arrived at. Placing such great emphasis on knowledge resulted in the awakening of a great desire for knowledge among the Muslims. This process began in Makkah, and then it reached Madinah and Damascus, later finding its centre in Baghdad. Ultimately, it entered Spain. Spain flourished, making extraordinary progress in various academic and scientific disciplines.
This flood of scientific progress entered Europe and culminated in the modern scientific age.
Dr. Donald Campbell, a reputed British scientist in his book ‘Arabian Medicine and its Influence on the Middle Ages’ writes: “When Europe was lying torpid in the depth of intellectual obscurity and gloom in the dark ages, culture and civilization were spread in the Islamic States under the high patronage of the Caliphs of Baghdad and Cordova, and at a time, when the Barons and Ladies of Medieval Europe could not even sign their names, almost every adolescent boy and girl in Islam could read and write freely and with ease.”
An article in The Guardian dated February, 2010 begins with these insightful words: (…..) Science is the most universal of human activities. But the means to facilitating scientific advances have always been dictated by culture, political will and economic wealth. What is only now becoming clear (to many in the west) is that during the dark ages of medieval Europe, incredible scientific advances were made in the Muslim world. Geniuses in Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus and Cordoba took on the scholarly works of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, India and China, developing what we would call “modern” science.
The Quran lays great emphasis on acquisition of knowledge that is based on observation, experiment and the inferences drawn from them. In fact, the faith based upon discovery is given a status much higher than faith based upon tradition.
The Quran lays great emphasis on acquisition of knowledge that is based on observation, experiment and the inferences drawn from them. In fact, the faith based upon discovery is given a status much higher than faith based upon tradition. With its unambiguous segregation of the Creator from the created, Islam made the entire universe an object of investigation.
Fuelled by the zeal to conquer nature, the chief subjects that excited the interest and exercised the ingenuity of the Arabian scholars were astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. The practical phases of all these subjects were given particular attention.
Mathematics
It is well-known that the so-called Arabian numerals date from this
period. The revolutionary effect of these characters, as applied to practical mathematics, can hardly be overestimated. Another
mathematical improvement was the introduction into trigonometry
of the sine—the half-chord of the double arc—instead of the chord
of the arc itself which the Greek astronomers had employed. This
improvement was due to the famous astronomer and mathematician
Al-Battani (d. AD 929).
Astronomy
For measurement of the Earth, instead of trusting to the measurement
of angles, the Arabs decided to measure directly degree of the Earth’s
surface. Selecting a level plain in Mesopotamia for the experiment, one
party of the surveyors progressed northward, another party southward,
from a given point to the distance of one
degree of arc, as determined by astronomical
observations. The result found was fifty-six
miles for the northern degree, and fifty-six
and two-third miles for the southern. It is
interesting to note that the two degrees were
found of unequal lengths, suggesting that the
Earth is not a perfect sphere—a suggestion
the validity of which was not to be put to the
test of conclusive measurements until about
the close of the eighteenth century. The Arab
measurement was made in the time of Caliph
Abdullah al-Mamun, the son of the famous
Harun-al-Rashid.
In medieval Europe, Arabian science came to be regarded with superstitious awe, and the works of certain Arabian physicians were exalted to a position above all the ancient writers.
Harun-al-Rashid (d. AD 809) sent Charlemagne, as a token of friendship, a marvellous clock which let fall a metal ball to mark the hours. This mechanism, which is alleged to have excited great wonder in the West, furnishes yet another instance of Arabian practicality.
Al-Battani made the important discovery of the motion of the solar apogee. He found that the position of the sun among the stars, at the time of its greatest distance from the Earth, was not what it had been in the time of Ptolemy. The Greek astronomer placed the sun in longitude 65 degrees, but Al-Battani found it in longitude 82 degrees, a distance too great to be accounted for by inaccuracy of measurement.
Physical Science
Ibn al-Haytham’s work on Optics, published about the year AD 1100,
found great favour throughout the medieval period. His original
investigations of the eye, and the names given by him to various parts of the eye, as the vitreous humor, the cornea, and the retina, are still
retained by anatomists.
Al-Haytham carried forward these studies, and made the first recorded scientific estimate of the phenomena of twilight and of the height of the atmosphere. The persistence of a glow in the atmosphere after the sun has disappeared beneath the horizon is so familiar a phenomenon that the ancient philosophers seem not to have thought of it as requiring an explanation. Yet a moment’s consideration makes it clear that, if light travels in straight lines and the rays of the sun were not deflected, the complete darkness of night should instantly succeed to day when the sun passes below the horizon. That this sudden change does not occur, al-Haytham explained as due to the reflection of light by the Earth’s atmosphere.
Chemistry
In Chemistry, we find the greatest Arabian name that of Jabir ibn
Hayyan (d. AD 815), who taught in the College of Seville in the first half
of the eighth century. The most important
researches of this remarkable experimenter
had to do with the acids. The ancient world
had no knowledge of any acid more powerful
than acetic acid. Jabir vastly increased
the possibilities of chemical experiment
by the discovery of sulphuric, nitric, and
nitromuriatic acids. He made use also of
the processes of sublimation and filtration,
and his works describe the water bath and
the chemical oven. Among the important
chemicals which he first differentiated is oxide
of mercury, and his studies of sulphur in its
various compounds have peculiar interest. In
particular is this true of his observation that,
under certain conditions of oxidation, the
weight of a metal was lessened.
It is certain that in the time when Western Europe was paying little attention to science or education, the Caliphs and viziers were encouraging physicians and philosophers, building schools, and erecting libraries and hospitals.
Medicine
Among Arabian physicians, there were always some investigators
who turned constantly to nature for hidden truths, and were ready to
uphold the superiority of actual observation to mere reading. Thus, the
physician Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi (d. AD 1231), while in Egypt, made
careful studies of a mound of bones containing more than twenty thousand skeletons. While examining these bones he discovered
that the lower jaw consists of a single bone, not of two, as had been
taught by Galen. It was the Arabs who invented the apothecary,
and their pharmacopoeia, issued from the hospital at Gondishapur,
and elaborated from time to time, formed the basis for Western
pharmacopoeias. It is certain, however, that through them various
new and useful drugs, such as senna, aconite, rhubarb, camphor, and
mercury, were handed down through the Middle Ages.
In medieval Europe, Arabian science came to be regarded with superstitious awe, and the works of certain Arabian physicians were exalted to a position above all the ancient writers. It was not the adoption of Arabian medicines, however, that has made the school at Salerno famous both in rhyme and prose, but rather the fact that women there practised the healing art. Greatest among them was Trota, who lived in the eleventh century, and whose learning is reputed to have equalled that of the greatest physicians of the day. She is accredited with a work on Diseases of Women, still extant.
Avicenna (d. AD 1037), whose million-word encyclopedia, Canon of Medicine remained the supreme medical reference book for six centuries, can be considered the greatest physician of all peoples, places and times. Furthermore, his philosophical encyclopedia, Book of Healing, and his Book of Knowledge, place him among the world’s foremost thinkers.
There can be little doubt that while the Arabians did copy and translate freely, they also originated and added considerably to knowledge. It is certain that in the time when Western Europe was paying little attention to science or education, the Caliphs and viziers were encouraging physicians and philosophers, building schools, and erecting libraries and hospitals. They made at least a creditable effort to uphold and advance upon the scientific standards of an earlier age.
(This article makes extensive use of the material furnished in Chapter 2: Mediaeval Science among the Arabians in Volume 2 of A History of Science by Henry Smith Williams and Edward H. Williams)