Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance by George Saliba

Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance by George Saliba

The rise and fall of the Islamic scientific tradition, and the relationship of Islamic science to European science during the Renaissance.

The Islamic scientific tradition has been described many times in accounts of Islamic civilization and general histories of science, with most authors tracing its beginnings to the appropriation of ideas from other ancient civilizations--the Greeks in particular. In this thought-provoking and original book, George Saliba argues that, contrary to the generally accepted view, the foundations of Islamic scientific thought were laid well before Greek sources were formally translated into Arabic in the ninth century. Drawing on an account by the tenth-century intellectual historian Ibn al-Naidm that is ignored by most modern scholars, Saliba suggests that early translations from mainly Persian and Greek sources outlining elementary scientific ideas for the use of government departments were the impetus for the development of the Islamic scientific tradition. He argues further that there was an organic relationship between the Islamic scientific thought that developed in the later centuries and the science that came into being in Europe during the Renaissance.

Saliba outlines the conventional accounts of Islamic science, then discusses their shortcomings and proposes an alternate narrative. Using astronomy as a template for tracing the progress of science in Islamic civilization, Saliba demonstrates the originality of Islamic scientific thought. He details the innovations (including new mathematical tools) made by the Islamic astronomers from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, and offers evidence that Copernicus could have known of and drawn on their work. Rather than viewing the rise and fall of Islamic science from the often-narrated perspectives of politics and religion, Saliba focuses on the scientific production itself and the complex social, economic, and intellectual conditions that made it possible.

Saliba, George: - George Saliba is Chairman of the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University in the city of New York, and Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science at the same institution. He works mainly on the history of Arabic astronomy, with a special interest in the development of planetary theories. He has won many grants and awards from various organizations including the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His current research involves the extension of the survey presented in History of Arabic Astronomy to include the centuries before the eleventh and after the fifteenth.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780262516150
ISBN 10	0262516152
Title	Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance
Author	George Saliba
Series	Islamic Science And The Making Of The European Renaissance
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	MIT Press Ltd
Year published	2011-01-21
Number of pages	360
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.