> That story begins in a palace library nearly a thousand years ago, at a time when most of Western Christendom lay in intellectual darkness.
Laughable revisionism already thoroughly debunked by Sylvain Gouguenheim many years ago. A real shame as it makes me doubt the objectivity of the entire article.
I dislike invoking the idea of the "dark ages" as it's usually a misrepresentation of events. That said, Fibonacci is credited with spreading the Hindu-Arabic numeral system to Western Europe, showing that at least in the area of mathematics they were in a relative darkness.
I hadn't heard of Gouguenheim but his ideas seem rather absurd. He seems to believe the Islamic golden age never occurred, and I can't find how he tries to explain where something like Liber Abbaci came from. His objectivity seems far more suspect than this piece.
Also, the Islamic Golden Age is not only about mathematics, but also about other sciences.
The chemistry progressed a lot during that time. Several preserved Arabic works contain a much improved classification of the known chemical substances, better than anything that existed before them.
That chemical classification was improved only in the 18th century, by several generations of Swedish chemists, leading eventually to the modern chemistry based on the notion of chemical elements, which was created by Lavoisier and his French colleagues, shortly before the French Revolution.
Attempting to deny the essential Arabic/Islamic contributions to the evolution of the sciences shows just ignorance or bad intentions.
I don't know where you are reading about his work, but his Aristote au mont Saint-Michel isn't about his ideas or beliefs, it's about providing historical evidence of significant intellectual developments in the early middle ages as well as translations of key ancient texts in French monasteries half a century before they were alledgedly imported from the Arab world, which completely changes the narrative of knowledge transmission. That's his main thesis as far as I can recall.
I'm not sure why you were downvoted so low that I had to vouch you up; but the concept of a western intellectual dark age has well and truly been contradicted by modern scholarship.
It is contradicted by some modern scholarship, but it is by far not the consensus in the field. There are many scholars who do believe that Europe entered period of civilizational and intellectual decline for a number of centuries after the fall of the western Roman Empire. The debate is very much open on the issue.
≈‘In spring, the roses hide the thorns they have on earth, | My rosery springs up and takes away my thorny mood’ from the Divan (Ghazal Foruzanfar-1945) maybe.
You need to learn history my friend. And FYI I'm not attacking nor defending Islam here.
What is referred to as "Islamic" culture did not come from Arabia/modern day gulf countries. It came from Iraq, the Levant, Egypt and North Africa. The Caliphates' capitals were based in Damascus, Baghdad, Egypt or south of Spain. These were diverse societies and "Islamic" progress was diverse by people from different religions and races.
Also, the Ottomans never occupied Arabia/the Gulf. They stopped at the Levant. Because there was simply nothing to occupy in an empty desert.
You're confusing Arabia, Levant, Iraq, Egypt and North Africa. Arabia has a very distinct culture and different languages & history.
The Levant, Iraq, Egypt and North Africa are far far from "still a desert with no social, architectural or technological progress". They don't even have oil, apart from Iraq.
I am also not attacking Islam but the premise of the article that it ushered an era of "scientific progress".
> Also, the Ottomans never occupied Arabia/the Gulf. They stopped at the Levant. Because there was simply nothing to occupy in an empty desert.
AFAIK Ottoman ruled up to Mecca yet it remained undeveloped. Seems a little bit strange that they had made advancements in architecture yet did not develop the holiest place.
I know you're not attacking Islam, just prefacing that I am not.
Mecca was never important. It was symbolic but that's where it ends. Ignore the Ottomans, even the first few Caliphs, the minute they left Arabia, no one cared about Mecca beyond symbolism.
That you see espoused as "religious" is almost always BS. Its all politics and economics. You cannot develop anything in a desert. Why would you focus on a desert when you can focus on much richer areas by the Mediterranean with already a lot of culture and resources and wealth?
This piece of article is filled with misinformation. Indian calender system called "panchang" incorporated the motion of earth, sun, moon and stars long before the dates mentioned in this article[1]. Various Sanskrit Astronomy treatise calculated and continuously refined the calculation.
> Dharmic (Hindu) scholars kept precise time by observing and calculating the cycles of Surya i.e. the sun, moon and the planets. These calculations about the sun appear in various astronomical texts in Sanskrit, such as the 5th-century Aryabhatiya by Aryabhata, the 6th-century Romaka by Latadeva and Panca Siddhantika by Varahamihira, the 7th-century Khandakhadyaka by Brahmagupta and the 8th-century Sisyadhivrddida by Lalla.[24] These texts present Surya and various planets and estimate the characteristics of the respective planetary motion.[24] Other texts such as Surya Siddhanta dated to have been completed sometime between the 5th century and 10th century present their chapters on various deified planets with stories behind them.
Hindu India have names for time scale ranging from 10e-17 to 10e22 long before Greece and Arabia[2].
I really don’t understand the ethnocentric zero-sum perspectives from some people responding in this thread. People seem to forget that knowledge is cumulative. While there is no doubt that plenty of knowledge predates the Arabic philosopher-scientists, and surely they inherited traditions from those who came before them, but it is also clear that they added to the universal body of knowledge. To pretend otherwise or to downplay those accomplishments in order to raise up others, is (to my mind) profoundly sad and anti-scientific. If we are giants, it’s because we stand on the shoulders of giants. And to paraphrase Terry Pratchet, it’s giants all the way down.
Laughable revisionism already thoroughly debunked by Sylvain Gouguenheim many years ago. A real shame as it makes me doubt the objectivity of the entire article.