Science and Islam

Did European learning really crawl straight out of the glum ooze of the so-called Dark Ages and into the light of the Renaissance? According to Ehsan Masood, between 700 and 1400 CE while European scholarship slumbered, Islamic countries were having their own scientific revolution—an era to which European science owes much. But why has this history been underplayed in so many western accounts of the development of science?

In Science and Islam, Masood carefully picks his way through a tangle of fact and mythology, to argue that by rights, names like Abbas ibn-Firnas, ibn al-Nafis, and Jabir ibn-Hayyan should be as familiar to the world as Leonardo da Vinci and Robert Boyle.

In the bustling streets of the ancient city of Baghdad, knowledge was in fashion. Under the encouragement of the ruling religious leaders in the ninth century, the city's elite paid handsomely for translations of the writings of Galen and Aristotle. Islamic scholars were drawn to the city's burgeoning libraries and debating salons, and this gathering of intellect proved fruitful. Abbas Ibn-Firnas, for example, created lenses to magnify objects and correct light, as well as experimenting with Da Vinci style flying machines.

This flourishing marriage between science and Islam came to fruition in medicine. Wealthy people donated money or time to the study of medicine for religious or cultural motives. One 11th-century Islamic scientist, ibn-Sina (or Avicenna) made legendary contributions to philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Among his astonishingly varied insights were that light and heat were just different forms of energy; that diseases can spread through water; and that nerves transmit pain. In the 13th century, ibn al-Nafis, a physician from Cairo, discovered pulmonary circulation.

So why are Islamic countries today not the hotbed of scientific learning and progress they once were? In medicine at least, the explanation lies partly in the influence of Prophetic Medicine, which advocated a faith in traditional practices to be found in the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad over experimental science. And, as the Islamic empire began to crumble in the 16th century, European nations embarked on their eager colonisation of the world.

Authoritarian Islamic rule that shuts out new knowledge is a popular trope to explain why even the richest Islamic countries are not on a par scientifically with the USA or UK. But Masood notes that Islamic countries with the best science such as Iran, Malaysia, and Turkey have leaders as authoritarian as any from the early days of Islam. What Islamic countries need now, he says, is an environment in which both science and religion are given room to breathe: just as religion must not suffocate scientific learning, nor should science attempt to extinguish religious faith.

sumber dari: thelancet.com