Global voices of science. Science in the Arab world: vision of glories beyond.

Wasim Maziak Syria Of all its accomplishments, the West is perhaps most proud of its scientific revolution, which has been unfolding for the past halfmillennium. Only students of history remain consistently mindful of the pivotal and catalytic role that the Arab world played in the early phases of this revolution. Now, all of us should have a vested interest in advancing science and technology in the Arab community. Science and technology provide the means to feed people, improve their health, and create wealth. They can help to reduce societal tensions and build international bridges for badly needed dialogue and mutual understanding. To usher science and technology more thoroughly into Arab culture and society, however, the West needs to acknowledge the Arab world’s historical contributions, and the Arab world needs to stop dwelling on its golden past by also embracing lessons about science and technology that the West learned long ago. In medieval Europe, where the Christian dogma that the world unfolded according to a divinely predetermined plan prevailed, there was little space for those willing and eager to understand nature in order to use it for their own benefit. Beginning in the 11th century, the ailing Arab provinces in Spain (AlAndalus) were falling to European armies, and with them came priceless spoils that changed the world: the epic intellectual achievement of Arab-Islamic scholars since the 8th century. Flourishing libraries in cities like Toledo and Cordoba contained thousands of books on every field of knowledge. Unlike the Moguls, who in the 13th century destroyed Baghdad and its libraries, thereby abruptly ending the golden era of the Arab-Islamic civilization, the Europeans were quick to realize the value of these windfalls of knowledge. During the Abbasid reign (750 to 1258), learning in Islam was encouraged in every field of knowledge, and scholars of every color and creed traveled to Damascus and Baghdad to study and work. In these tolerant times, Islam’s leaders encouraged learning and the use of reason to understand nature. The early Abbasid Caliphs— most notably Al-Mansur, Harun Al-Rachid, and Al Ma’mun, who reigned from 754 to 833—embraced science as a state’s defining policy, ushering in a golden era of ArabIslamic civilization. An avid movement of translation and studying of ancient books and of advancing new knowledge ensued on an unprecedented scale. Arab and Muslim scholars scored achievements in every field of science: mathematics, astronomy, medicine, optics, and philosophy. Al Razi’s (Rhazes) and Al-Khwarizmi’s seminal work in the 9th and 10th centuries laid the foundation for modern clinical medicine and mathematics (the word “algorithm” derives from the name Al Khwarizmi). This thirst for knowledge was soon transferred to other parts of the Islamic empire, and AlAndalus soon competed with Baghdad as the cultural hub for Arabs and Muslims. Of equal importance to the influence of the Arab-Islamic scientific discoveries on the European Renaissance was the reintroduction of ancient Greece’s natural philosophy to medieval Europe by way of translations by Islamic scholars. The historian James Burke identifies several knowledge shocks that ignited the Renaissance. One was delivered by Ibn-Sina (Avicenna, 980 to 1037), whose Kitab Al-Shifa (“The Book of Healing”) introduced medieval Europe to the principles of logic and their use to gain knowledge, and placed science and religion on equal terms as sources of knowledge and understanding of the universe. Another major shock was delivered by Ibn-Rushd* (Averroes, 1126 to 1198), whose writings and commentaries reintroduced to medieval Europe the Aristotelian approach to studying nature by observation and reasoning. From that point on, the scientific paradigm of knowledge production advanced relentlessly throughout Europe. At the same time, the Arab-Islamic civilization and its contributions to science and knowledge started its long decline with Ibn-Khaldun (1332 to 1395), who established in his ESSAY