The Scientific Revolution

Lesson 1: Sources of the Scientific Revolution

Arabic Science

Some of the most important science that occurred between the Greek era and the scientific revolution had been practiced by thinkers who wrote in Arabic, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim. The Arabs were respected in many fields, most notably mathematics, medicine, astronomy (with astrology), alchemy and optics.

Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980-1037), “the Prince of Physicians” and Averroes, (Ibn Rushd, 1128-1198) “the Commentator” (on Aristotle) were weighty authorities in Renaissance universities. The Arabs had the most sophisticated astronomical theories and techniques, as well as the most accurate body of astronomical observations available in the West before Tycho Brahe began observing in the late sixteenth century.

Arab observations were used by European astronomical theoreticians into the eighteenth century. Al-Hazen, as Europeans referred to Ibn Al-Haytham (d. 1040) was universally acknowledged to have gone beyond the Greeks in optics. European mathematics continued to build on Arab advances. Evidence of the influence of Arab mathematics can be seen from the fact that the words “algebra” and “algorithm,” along with other mathematical terms, were originally Arabic.

The Arabs were less creative and original in medicine than in mathematics, but the enormous Canon of Avicenna was the most complete and systematic treatment of Galenic medicine available, and remained central to the medical curriculum at many Renaissance universities. Arabs also had great reputations as magicians, and were frequently referred to as authorites in magical, astrological, and alchemical literature.

One of the most important contributions of the Arabs to early modern science was not original to them, but to India. This was the modern system of numerals, which was replacing the old, cumbersome system of "Roman numerals" in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. By streamlining calculations, "Hindu-Arabic" numerals immeasurably expanded the ease of doing mathematics.

Early modern Europeans had conflicting attitudes to Arabic science. During the sixteenth century, the political and military conflict between "Latin Christendom" and the Islamic world was much on people’s minds, due to the aggressive expansion of the Muslim Turkish Ottoman Empire. Humanists trying to revive or defend the purity of classical Greek science attacked the Arabs as “barbarians” who had sullied it.

A common move in sixteenth and seventeenth century debate was to present oneself as purifying Greek truth from Roman, Arab, and medieval Latin corruption, and unlike the admired ancient Romans or even the medieval Latin writers, the Arabs could be insulted with impunity. There was an only partially successful drive to purify scientific language of Arabic derived words, as in the shift from “alchemy,” incorporating the Arabic article al, to “chemia.” However, since many classical Greek works survived only in Arabic translations, even the most anti-Arab scientists had to grudgingly admit the importance of Arabic knowledge.

Interest in Arabic was expanding in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as Arabic presses and chairs of Arabic were established in a number of European centers, and European travelers and merchants in the Middle East collected Arabic manuscripts.