Ibn al-Haytham by Roshdi Rashed

Ibn al-Haytham by Roshdi Rashed

Ibn al-Haytham: The Emergence of Scientific Modernity offers the first comprehensive monograph on one of the most brilliant figures of the medieval intellectual world.

Spanning his groundbreaking contributions in mathematics, optics, astronomy, and natural philosophy, this book portrays Ibn al-Haytham as he was seen in his own time: a man of universal learning whose methods, sources, and intellectual reputation resonated far beyond his era. Moving beyond the familiar terrain of his Kitāb al-Manāẓir (Book of Optics), it places his achievements in a much wider context, examining his lesser-studied writings on geometry, mechanics, and scientific method. Through a systematic analysis of these works, the book demonstrates how Ibn al-Haytham’s experimental rigor, mathematical formalism, and critical engagement with earlier Greek and Arabic sources foreshadowed core principles of the European Scientific Revolution. It shows how his insistence on verification through observation and reasoning forged a distinctive approach that inspired thinkers from medieval Cairo to Renaissance Europe.

An essential resource for historians of science, Islamic studies scholars, and anyone interested in the intellectual foundations of modernity, this volume restores Ibn al-Haytham to his rightful place as a pioneering figure in the history of ideas and a bridge between classical learning and the birth of modern science.

Roshdi Rashed is one of the most eminent authorities on Arabic mathematics and the exact sciences. A historian and philosopher of mathematics and science and a highly celebrated epistemologist, he is currently Emeritus Research Director (distinguished class) at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, and is the former Director of the Centre for History of Medieval Science and Philosophy at the University of Paris (Denis Diderot, Paris VII). He also holds an Honorary Professorship at the University of Tokyo and an Emeritus Professorship at the University of Mansourah in Egypt.

Translator:

J. V. Field is a historian of science and is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of History of Art and Screen Media, Birkbeck, University of London, UK.