The enterprise of science in Islam

Between A.D. 800 and 1450, the most important centers for the study of what we now call "the exact sciences"--including the mathematical sciences of arithmetic, geometry, and trigonometry and their applications in such fields as astronomy, astrology, geography, cartography, and optics--were not in Europe but in the vast, multinational Islamic world.

Research from the last few decades has profoundly changed our understanding of the Islamic scientific tradition. We now know that it was richer and more profound and had more complex relations to other cultures than wehad previously thought. This book offers an overview of this newly energized field of historical investigation. The areas discussed include cross-cultural transmission; transformations of Greek optics; the philosophy and practice of mathematics; numbers, geometry, and architecture; the transmission of astronomy; and science and medicine in the Maghrib. The emphasis throughout the book is on the transmission of scientific knowledge, either from one culture to another or within the medieval Islamic world. The book also presents many unsolved historical problems, such as the question of when and where the Hindu-Arabic number symbols evolved from the Eastern Islamic forms to the Western Islamic forms, which are virtually identical to the modern forms 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0.

Contents

• Cross-Cultural transmission
  • The Transmission of Hindu-Arabic Numerals Reconsidered
  • The Transmission of Arabic Astronomy via Antioch and Pisa in the Second Quarter of the Twelfth Century
• Transformation of Greek Optics
  • The Many Aspects of "Appearances": Arabic Optics to 950 AD
  • Ibn Al-Haytham's Revolutionary Project in Optics: The Achievement and the Obstacle
• Mathematics: Philosophy and Practice
  • Mathematics and Philosophy in Medieval Islam
  • Tenth-Century Mathematics through the Eyes of Abu Sahl Al-Kuhi
• Numbers, Geometry, and Architecture
  • Quadratus Mirabilis
  • Calculating Surface Areas and Volumes in Islamic Architecture
• Seventeenth-Century Transmission of Astronomy
  • The Sarvasiddhantaraja of Nityananda
  • On the Lunar Tables in Sanjaq Dar's Zij Al-Sharif
• Science and Medicine in the Maghrib and al-Andalus
  • A Panorama of Research on the History of Mathematics in Al-Andalus and the Maghrib between the Ninth and Sixteenth Centuries
  • Another Andalusian Revolt? Ibn Rushd's Critique of Al-Kindi's Pharmacological Computus
• Index