[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by Y3a

Yep, wars cause lots of innovations.

For someone completely racist towards Muslims and claims to be an astronomy buff, perhaps you should show a little more consideration towards the people who helped form the foundation of modern mathematics and astronomy.

Just a thought.

[Y3a]

Y3a Said " Yep, wars cause lots of innovations. "

Originally Posted by olePigeon

For someone completely racist towards Muslims and claims to be an astronomy buff, perhaps you should show a little more consideration towards the people who helped form the foundation of modern mathematics and astronomy.

Just a thought.

Can you show all of us WHERE you got that from my general statement??? Jeez!
Do you see the word "Muslim" ANYWHERE in the statement?

In fact it WAS a general statement, and not directed at any specific group but at mankind itself.

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by Y3a

Can you show all of us WHERE you got that from my general statement??? Jeez!
Do you see the word "Muslim" ANYWHERE in the statement?

In fact it WAS a general statement, and not directed at any specific group but at mankind itself.

First of all, your bias against Islam in general is pretty prevalent.

Secondly, Muslims are people who practice Islam.

Third, don't give me that bullsh*t about a general statement. This thread is about Islam and its contributions to the Renaissance. You then said "yep," in agreement, then appended your statement about war doing the contributions. By correlation, you stated that Islam in general is warlike and that its contributions to the Renaissance could only have been as a result of war. Obviously you were trying to draw parallelisms between the topic of this thread and current U.S. politics, as well as feed on the misinformation and phobia regarding Islam and Muslims derived from your own racist beliefs.

[Y3a]

NO, WRONG AGAIN!!!

My point is that wars have always caused improvements in technology, NOT JUST BECAUSE OF ANY MUSLIM INFLUENCE. Technology was being developed waaaay before the Muslims, or Christians.

Thats why it's a general statement.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

I like the way you're now using "technology." Wasn't this thread about the Renaissance? Weiiiiiiird. Where did technology get brought into this?

Total agreement, olePigeon. It's a complete backtrack. Y3a has spent quite some time in other threads, which were ongoing at the same time as this one, noting how the Muslim culture is extremely warlike (or spreads disrest). To post that comment in this thread and pretend it's not about the same is pretty lame, especially when it has been proven quite wrong. Therefore, the statement is completely irrelevant to the thread - wars had nothing to do with Islam's Renaissance in the context of this thread, or of Y3a's comment.

But, I'm guessing there'll be another return argument about semantics that will have to be disproven.

greg

[Taliesin]

Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton

I like the way you're now using "technology." Wasn't this thread about the Renaissance? Weiiiiiiird. Where did technology get brought into this?

Eventhough I agree that Y3a is a light version of an anti-Islam-demagogue, I must give him partial right in the case of technology.
It was me that brought technology into this thread right in the original posting. While Europe's renaissance had not much to do with technology, the golden age of Islam that inspired and made possible Europe's renaissance had quite a lot to do with technology.

That was the main-difference to Greek's ancient philosophies of Platon and Aristotle. Both were basically idea-philosophers, the one preferring the deductive method, the other the inductive method, but neither was interested in experiments to verify or falsify their ideas.

But that was the major new contribution of islamic science, to question, verify, falsify and expand theories, preferrably theories developed through the inductive method, but not only.

The other new contribution was that islamic natural philosophers also acted as engineers using their gained and experimentally tested knowledge to create technologies. This was espescially practiced in astronomy, chemistry, agriculture and physics.

And maybe the last new contribution was to publicise the findings and developments, including proper citation, for peer-review...

Actually I think, had not the invasion of the tartars happened and the destruction of Bagdad as well as the century-long occupation, that ultimately led to the revival and victory of islamic orthodoxy in the political arena, the islamic world might well have developed quite differently.

This is a rare happening, that I defend Y3a, but considering the hand-in-hand-development of technology with natural philosophy in the islamic world, he has a small point when saying that war helps along, although the islamic technology at that time had nearly nothing to do with wars.

Taliesin

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Ahhh, sorry, didn't see your post. Do you study history, by the way? You know quite a bit about it.

While I did mention that the Islamic world was far more pragmatic than other scientific traditions, I don't think historians would agree that there was any "hand-in-hand development of technology with natural philosophy". While it's certainly true that Islam saw unprecedented practical application of natural philosophy, "technology and industry in medieval Islam gave as little to and received as little from the realm of science as they had in the Greco-Roman world" (James McClellan III and Harold Dorn, Science and Techology in World History: An Introduction). They note that while Islam embraced Greek learning, they used mostly Roman technology, such as the arch and hydraulic engineering. They note that the Islamic irrigation repetoire "were the feats of craftsmen and artisans divorced from the bookish worlds of theology and science."

I'm using this (fairly basic) text as an example because I happen to be reading it at the moment, but I could cite others: one of my current profs notes that "scholarship and courtly behaviour [ed: such as poetry/music/philosophy/riding/swordplay] were intimately linked in the lives of Islam's greatest natural philosophers" and their more materially oriented and technically advanced society (combined with "a less intellectualized concept of the aquisition of natural philosophic knowledge") gave them greater initiative to test observations/nature. Their extremely proficient artisan class was surpassed perhaps only by China, and stuff like glass-making allowed Islamic scholars to better investigate alchemy and optics (Andrew Ede and Lesley Cormack, A History of Science in Society). However, again, there is little knowledge of "creating technologies" as you say...creating more scientific thought, yes, but technologies?

I don't know of any indication that Islamic natural philosophers acted as engineers, as you say. Most of the greatest Islamic natural philosophers were educated as physicians, which again gets back to practical application. I fail to see how an engineer could get anything out of astronomy (besides instruments to study it), which is one of your examples. It's quite true that Islamic scientists turned out tons of treatises on agriculture, irrigation, and animals that were important for Islamic rulers and farmers, but again – this is practical application, not a marriage of natural philosophy and technology.

Do you have any literature to cite that outlines your idea that Islam's renaissance "had quite a lot to do with technology"? Frankly, I don't see that supported in anything I've read or been taught about that period.

greg

[ShortcutToMoncton]

As a side note, I was looking for an article this morning for a paper on Islamic science I'm writing, and came across this interesting piece of work.

An interesting perspective...I like how he uses some extensive sourcing there. I emailed it to a prof to see what she'd say about it.

greg

[goMac]

Originally Posted by f1000

In the map above, you can see how the Muslim world was enveloped by the Mongol hordes whereas Europe was mostly spared.

You DO realize most of Europe was Muslim at the time, right? Same with Africa.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

That certainly isn't true.

greg

[goMac]

Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton

That certainly isn't true.

greg

It sure is. Islamic nations took over Spain and then spread out from there. They crossed over from Africa, which was mostly Islamic also.

[Taliesin]

Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton

As a side note, I was looking for an article this morning for a paper on Islamic science I'm writing, and came across this interesting piece of work.

An interesting perspective...I like how he uses some extensive sourcing there. I emailed it to a prof to see what she'd say about it.

greg

It's mostly bs.

I espescially liked this part:

The caption of a picture of Avicenna in the article in Science says that he helped bring about the Renaissance by

“advocating the use of reason and logic as the way to gain knowledge.”

If this means that Avicenna believed that reason and logic were the way to gain knowledge, he was not a Muslim.

The author of the article pretty much starts with the assumption that Islam is discouraging independent thought and rationality, and then tries to explain away the scientific, philosophical and engineering-achievements of the islamic world as being done by people that were nominally muslims but really neo-platonists, as if a real muslim can't also be an aristotelian or a platonist.

The only real information this article has lies in the notion that a majority of the translators from greek to arabic to latin were jews or christians, but ignores the scientific, philosophical and engineering-work that is done by muslims after the translations to arabic were made, and from which its fruits were then translated to latin by christians or jews.

Another considerable misconception that the author suffers under is that he thinks that it was just the preservance of the greek literature that ignited the european renaissance. That's wrong on numerous fronts: First, greek literature was already preserved by the Byzantine empire before Islam came up and it was studied in christian monasteries and catholic schools, but it ignited nothing at all.
What ignited the renaissance was the approach of the islamic world towards the knowledge of the world, ie. a secular approach with which the islamic scientists digested, verified, falsified, corrected greek theories, and then built upon them, expanded them, adapted them, by conducting experiments, and ultimately recorded the results and insights and offered them up for peer-review.

It was this secular/rational/inductive-approach, and the use of the results in engineering, espescially in agriculture, astronomy and other branches, as well as the teaching of them in schools and universities for secular people... that made the difference.

Many historians focus on the classic greek literature and acknowledge the islamic editing of them as making them compatible with the christian mindset, but usually ignore the rest. Considering the european-centric-view of most historians and the lack of many recordings from the islamic world, due to the invasions of the numerous east-asiatic war-tribes, as well as the inquisition in Spain, it is somewhat understandable.

Fortunately though we have the pioneering work of Donald Hill regarding islamic technology, which I can highly suggest and recommend.

Taliesin

P.S.: Totally off topic, but I have always wondered: Why is Europe identified as a separate continent?

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Originally Posted by goMac

It sure is. Islamic nations took over Spain and then spread out from there. They crossed over from Africa, which was mostly Islamic also.

No, it's not. Only North Africa was Muslim. Similarly, Spain was mostly Muslim and other areas of southeastern Europe.

Areas of Europe and Africa were Muslim. I don't think "most" of them were.

greg