That crosses into some sort of racial (or whatever) flamewar. Please don't. It leads to destructive dynamics that are just what we're trying to avoid here.
If we navigate the flamewar this is still an interesting point.
"Essay on the Computation of Casting and Equation" at least was written in arabic. It was long long time ago but its impact is still noticeable.
What are they doing more recently? I can see femtochemistry, improving robots and inventing critical parts of the litium battery for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_Arab_scientists...
Earlier in the 20th century, German was the language of engineering. Before that, French. Before that, Latin. Before that, something else. Languages and their significance in different fields wax and wane.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Greek_Cl...
I've just been on a holiday in Venice and Florence, which made me question that standard wisdom, as I learnt more about Venice and Constantinople.
The most important effect of those texts, I guess, was the Italian Renaissance. Petrarch seems to have found his books by hunting through old piles in attics, and the Venetians got (looted?) theirs directly from the Byzantines. It isn't clear to me that the Arabs had a major role.
The Spanish got their classical books from the Moors. But what did they do with those books, and why does that matter?
Arguably, had a huge affect in kicking off the Renaissance
I wish this was not the case.
I do not care who produces the science, we all are one and the same. Science benefits all.
That's what happened during the Mongol Conquests. The fall of Baghdad alone caused at least several hundred thousand people to be killed. The main library, which had collected countless works over the centuries, was gone.
Baghdad was rebuilt, of course. Economically and politically it bounced back since it was still right on the silk road. But scientific study never really recovered there.
[1] Initially listed his brother Batu, rather than Berke, the first Muslim Khan.
And even further west Andalusia was still chugging along. That was definitely an important source of knowledge for the first universities in the rest of Europe.
But your same logic applies to any non major Western European language too. But past 150 years -> don't think any major scientific discovery was done in the Japanese/Korean/Chinese language. All of them was first written down and communicated and published first in the English language.
The height of Arabic intellectualism was short lived, basically the early middle ages, not even into the Renaissance, let alone the enlightenment.
However PC it is or not - it's true that not much has been done in the Arab world for a long time, say 700 years. Muslim Golden Age: "This period is traditionally said to have ended with the collapse of the Abbasid caliphate due to Mongol invasions and the Siege of Baghdad in 1258 AD" from Wikipedia.
Up until 1950, something like 5% of the Arab world was literate. Very sparse population, very little industry. Without Oil ... most of us would know nothing about 'Arab' - it'd be on our radar as much as Morocco is today (a nominally Arab country without Oil) which is to say not at all. Basically not hugely important to us.
English as the dominant language in Science is a new thing, just 100 years ago it was German.
Have a look at a map.
In theory, you can invent the wheel and use Arabic for programming. Good luck finding resources and finding users who are willing to use your new programming language that uses Arabic alphabet and use your Arabic javadoc.
Using multiple languages to achieve the same goal is stupid. Pure overhead. English dominates the world, end of story.
I am also unclear what you mean by "especially". Are you saying that there was actually more scientific output in Arabic before 1400 years ago?
> nothing with importance is being produced in Arabic, especially in the last 1.4k years.
Poetry is important.