Sher Khan

About the printing press in the Ottoman Empire, it should be noted that the 'religious qualms' were in fact stiff economic opposition from the many guilds of scribes in the empire (and throughout the Middle East) that made their livelihoods doing what the printing press did cheaply. The 'religious' resistance to its introduction in Ottoman society wasn't a matter of obvious theological problem with Arabic being printed but instead an argument that what the scribes did was a sacred task which would cut into their holy profit margins and monopoly.

A lot of resistance to Western tech and science was due to these guilds who dominated the cities like union gangs and would brook no threat to their livelihood like a printing press or a factory.

jehosafats

Good point. I imagine the futuwwa scribes weren't happy about the printing press.

Sher Khan

Definitely not, and in fact plenty of scribal guilds in Europe expressed the same animosity towards the printing press and fought to keep it out in places like Paris. Unlike the Ottomans though the scribes were just local artisans and had no bureaucratic clout to institute long lasting laws.

Ottoman illumination was not only an important artistic movement but also closely tied to the sultan's authority. Legitimacy and authority of documents from the porte depended not on, say, candlewax seals with emblems but highly artistic signatures developed by royal scribes that would be difficult for any but the most skilled to duplicate.

Bart Dale

Thanks for the information.

Guaporense

Hahaha....

"remains unconvincing...."

Only to the pro-islamic-anti-european zealot.

It is an obvious fact that Newton alone was greater than the whole of non-european science put together over the entire middle ages, like it or not. Newton alone was also much greater than the whole european science during the whole middle ages as well.

Not to speak of Descartes, Galileo, Bernoulli, Euler, Gauss, Leibniz and other first class geniuses from the late 16th to the 18th century that far dwarfed anything done before by a factor of a thousand times.

First, we need a decent metric. Let's try the timeline of mathematicians:

Time Line: 600-1500

I counted 38 islamic mathematicians from 700 AD to 1200 AD. A very respectable number, but nothing that indicate efforts of order of magnitude greater than past efforts.

The Ancient timeline of mathematicians:

Time Line: 800BC-700AD

I counted 45 Greek mathematicians from 600 BC to 100 BC.

Dwarfing in fact the number of Islamic math dudes. So clearly, while Islamic science was the biggest in the world from 800 AD to 1200 AD, it was not the biggest ever up to that point and was not bigger than European science after.

Also considering the fact that Ancient Records are in a much worse state of preservation indicate that the real difference in the number of mathematicians was actually greater: i.e. there were really several times more Greek mathematicians than Islamic mathematicians over their corresponding golden ages, 600 BC to 100 BC and 700 AD to 1200 AD.

Also, I counted 29 European math dudes from 1000 AD to 1500 AD that had reached 40 years of age before 1500 AD. That's not much less than the 38 Islamic math dudes from 700 AD to 1200 AD.

Now, for the Western European scientific onslaught:

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/...TimelineC.html

I counted 207 great European mathematicians for 250 years from 1450 AD to 1700 AD. That's equivalent in rate to 414 mathematicians for 500 years, or about 11 times the rate of great mathematical output that was achieved by the Islamic Golden Age. Clearly, the European Scientific Revolution that was the real golden age.

It was in the 17th century that finally the knowledge of an existing culture surpassed the level attained by the Ancients.

However, it remains a fact that the vast majority of the output of mathematics during the middle ages was Islamic. As the rest of sciences. However, their output as measured by the number of significant authors was clearly not greater than earlier efforts (Greeks) and much smaller than those achieved in modern times.

It was not, it was the result of the facts that:

1 - Europe's population was 4 to 5 times larger than the middle east from the 14th century though the 18th century. The middle east had 20-25 million inhabitants from the 14th though the 17th century, while Europe had between 70 million and 120 million inhabitants over the same period.

2 - Europe had achieved a higher level of social and economic development than the middle east, enabling a greater number of people the free time to pursue scientific activities.

Wrong. There is a very, very, very clear correlation today and in the well documented past (last 200-300 years) between scientific development and freedom, in all it's aspects, from economic freedom, allowing economic development, to freedom of expression.

That guy is clearly in state of ignorance regarding the history of science in the 20th century.

Nazi Germany represented the death of European science, before the Nazis, Germany was the world's leading center of scientific research as one third of all nobel prizes in sciences came from Germany. After 12 years of the Nazis, Germany declined from 35% of the nobel prizes to 7% over the 30 years of the post-war period.

The Nazis also damaged science in the whole of Continental Europe, only Britain didn't lose it's share in scientific production, thanks to the fact that the Nazis never touched it.

While the Soviet Union clearly damaged Eastern Europe and prevented it from progressing towards the same level of civilization as attained in Western Europe and the United States. As result in 1980, the 450 million inhabitants of the Soviet Union and their Eastern European satellites produced 40,000 scientific articles while the 550 million inhabitants of the US and Western Europe published 350,000 scientific articles in the same year.

Make me laugh.

The single most important scientific development before the Modern Scientific revolution was the Euclidean space, developed in 300 BC, and the method of formal argumentation: theorem - proof, developed in the same work. That was the single greatest scientific achievement of the pre-modern world.

Actually, it was the Greeks that invented the first heliocentric model of the universe:

Aristarchus of Samos.

While 1,700 years later that Copernicus managed to finally make a popular heliocentric model of the universe.

Guaporense

To understand Islamic science and it's rise and fall I think it is important to understand the great socio-economic developments of Western Eurasia over the last 3,000 years.

During Classical Antiquity there was a great process of economic growth from 800 BC to 100 BC in the mediterranean. As evidenced in the archeological records:



This process of fast economic and social progress created the conditions for the development of a large number of people with the free time to do science. As result, scientific research blossomed.



With the stagnation and later economic decline of the Mediterranean world from 100 AD to 700 AD, scientific output declined and the state of scientific knowledge declined or at best remained stagnated: by the 8th century the state of scientific knowledge was certainly not better and probably worse than it had been 1,000 years previously.

This was reflected by the sorry state of society in the 8th century after several centuries of nearly continuous decline. The decline, however, was greatest in western europe and smallest in Egypt, Syria and Anatolia.

As result, by the 8-9th centuries, when recovery began, these places were the most advanced centers of civilization and hence were able to reestart the research programs left from antiquity.

Economic progress continued in the Islamic world from 700 AD until 1200 AD. By the 13th century the Islamic world stagnated in economic terms.

While, with the demographic and economic development of western europe, which was recovering from the fall of Rome during the high and late middle ages and specially with the development of the highly dynamic city state culture of Northern Italy that housed the great artistic and scientific developments of the renaicansse, by the 14-15th centuries, Western Europe took the lead in scientific output.

By the early 14th century, Europe as a whole had 90 million inhabitants, while the middle east had only 20 million. Also, the degree of social and economic development reached in some places in europe such as northern italy enabled a greater degree of scientific activity than anywhere else:



Note how Italy was already much wealthier than any Islamic place in the 14th century. So the Islamic world couldn't compete: Western Europe had a much larger population, wealth and higher level of political, economic and social freedom, specially in the northern Italian city states by the Late Middle Ages.

By the Early Modern period France alone achieved a higher total population than the whole middle east, now politically unified under the Ottomans.

The idiotic explanation that it was the Mongol sack of Baghdad that caused the end of the Islamic golden age is actually not worth of a refutation.

jehosafats

What's this? What happened to the much bandied "Western Eurasian Civilization"?

Sher Khan

Would you say then the 'Islamic golden age' either ended some other time or never actually ended at all - merely eclipsed by European output due to the obvious advantages in population and production?

Lazyman

Here

Al-Hajjāj ibn Yūsuf ibn Matar
Khalid ibn Yazid (Calid)
Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (Algorismi) - father of algebra[19] and algorithms[20]
'Abd al-Hamīd ibn Turk
Abū al-Hasan ibn Alī al-Qalasādī (1412–1482), pioneer of symbolic algebra[21]
Abū Kāmil Shujā ibn Aslam
Al-Abbās ibn Said al-Jawharī
Al-Kindi (Alkindus)
Banū Mūsā (Ben Mousa)
Ja'far Muhammad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir
Al-Hasan ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir
Al-Khwarizmi
Al-Mahani
Ahmed ibn Yusuf
Al-Majriti
Muhammad ibn Jābir al-Harrānī al-Battānī (Albatenius)
Al-Farabi (Abunaser)
Al-Khalili
Al-Nayrizi
Abū Ja'far al-Khāzin
Brethren of Purity
Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi
Al-Saghani
Abū Sahl al-Qūhī
Abu-Mahmud al-Khujandi
Abū al-Wafā' al-Būzjānī
Ibn Sahl
Al-Sijzi
Ibn Yunus
Abu Nasr Mansur
Kushyar ibn Labban
Al-Karaji
Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen/Alhazen)
Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī
Ibn Tahir al-Baghdadi
Al-Nasawi
Al-Jayyani
Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī (Arzachel)
Al-Mu'taman ibn Hud
Omar Khayyám
Al-Khazini
Ibn Bajjah (Avempace)
Al-Ghazali (Algazel)
Al-Marrakushi
Al-Samawal
Averroes
Avicenna
Hunayn ibn Ishaq
Ibn al-Banna'
Ibn al-Shatir
Ja'far ibn Muhammad Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi (Albumasar)
Jamshīd al-Kāshī
Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī
Muḥyi al-Dīn al-Maghribī
Maryam Mirzakhani
Mo'ayyeduddin Urdi
Muhammad Baqir Yazdi
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, 13th century Persian mathematician and philosopher
Qāḍī Zāda al-Rūmī
Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi
Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī
Sharaf al-Dīn al-Tūsī
Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf
Ulugh Beg
Cumrun Vafa

List for Guarenpose . Should I also provide Astronomers and Physicists?

Fantasus

I have a comment to the idea of comparing - say - "islamic" and "western" science. Islam is obviously a religion - it is about faith, but neither are "the west" nor "Europe", since the later of course is a geographical area, that in principle caqn be anything - atheist, agniostic, christian, muslim, jewish, buddhist or whatever.