Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī -- Medieval Islamic Scientist, quite a read...
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Islam greatly accelerated scientific development in the region. Muslims traveling to Mecca brought local discoveries with them, which were shared and quickly spread throughout as they returned. Also, the emphasis on reading the Quran in its original Arabic, rather than translations, ensured that the travelers had a language in common. Not to take away from several real geniuses, but it didn't hurt to have the region so well-networked. This rapid spread of knowledge gave the intellectual centers in the region a wealth of resources to draw from.
Probably not...
Both environments seem like great examples of a general formula for encouraging a renaissance: create an environment that is attractive to geniuses and take care of anything that could distract them from bouncing ideas off each other. That sounds like good example of the sort of thing you can learn by studying history.
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/08/13/taner_edis/ind...
He thinks Islam-science scholars are selective in their representation of medieval Islamic science, and overemphasis their similarities with us.
It is a real shame even some "modern day scientists" don't share his particular views on scientific method.
Today, even to become a decent mathematician is not an easy job!
Half a millenium ago, I could probably know everything about the cutting edge of physics, astronomy, math, chemistry and optics in my head at once. 500 years ago, calculus had yet to be invented, fire was still thought to be "somehow" composed of phlogistons, and scientists were jsut coming to grips with the idea that the earth circled the sun.
Even 200 years ago, the knowledge encompassed by science was tiny compared to what we know today.
If you never, in your entire life, have to worry a second if you can feed yourself and your family and keep a roof over your head, you're probably slightly more keen to see what a life of sitting down and wondering might lead to.
As a matter of fact, that was not the case in the Islamic empire - the government had encouraged independent research and learning and funded it quite extensively, which is the biggest reason it was such a scientific boom period. It's quite astonishing how far they've fallen, because at the peak of the European medieval times, the Islamic Empire had been encouraging this sort of scientific research and study like crazy. Perhaps most famous of all are the scientific libraries of Baghdad which once held volumes of literature and research pertaining to medicine, literature, physics, chemistry, and biology; and were made available (mostly) to all.
Invasions and wars in the region, along with the decline & fall of the Islamic Empire brought an end to that golden age of science and knowledge which is really sad because in that short period of time a lot of knowledge was discovered and contributed, lending to the future discoveries by European scientists in Calculus, Chemistry, Medicine, and more.
The Mongol invasion was the beginning of the end, to use a cliche. The Islamic Empire was indeed "borrowing" the talents of the people they conquered, but (the majority of) the accomplishments only took place after the conquest by the Islamic empire. More importantly than who did the thinking (it was basically a mixture of different cultures and races, the majority of which were not native Arabs) is the fact that that sort of scientific expeditioning was not discouraged and that the scientists were given as close to free reign as possible.
Contrasted with the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church's aversion to scientific discovers (Galileo anyone?) you can see that the Islamic Empire played the role of encouraging godfather quite well. Obviously it's not the government nor the religion that makes brilliant people, rather it just sets the stage for the accomplishments to take place.
It's a common misconception that the Islamic Empire == Arabian Empire, since the empire dictated that anyone to enter the folds of Islam would be considered the same "class" of citizen regardless of race or culture (and history can attest to the enactment of these beliefs) - it was the non-muslims that were considered to be second-tier citizens with respect to certain freedoms. Keeping that in mind, Persian or Arab or Kurd doesn't really matter.....
But anyway, here are just a couple of famous Arab-Muslim scholars: Ibn al-nafis, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Battuta, Al-Kindi, Ibn Al-Haythan, Averroes/Ibn Rushd, Ibn Yunus, Ibn Al-baitar, al-idrisi, hunnayn bin ishaq, jabbir bin hayyan.......
Full list is here, you can click through to see the ethnicity of these scholars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_scientists
Take a look at the creator of cryptanalyis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Kindi
He was an arab philosopher, scientist, astrologer, astronomer, cosmologist, chemist, logician, mathematician, musician, physician ...
This notion of course goes against the mainstream interpretation of the hacker persona (the geeky, socially recluse male that is more familiar with computers than he is with his own body). But if you peruse the articles here at Hacker News, it encompasses a very diverse range of subjects (anything from health, math, science, business, charisma, etc.) that are not doubt, interesting to hackers.
I would go a step further and say that what hackers today have in common with Bīrūnī is that the diverse subjects he was most interested in were somehow overlapping with one another.
You could, but that would sound really narcissistic.
Membership of a category does not imply the greatness of other members of that category.
Germans might be proud of Goethe, but only a misguided German would take that to imply his or her own greatness.
Personally, I'm happy to see more science history stuff on the main page, rather than just tech/programming and startup/business stuff. (I was a history student, though, and I'm particularly interested in the history of science and medicine.)
Go the extra mile, though! There are much, much better sources for everything than Wikipedia.
Arabs also were very well traveled individuals due to their commerce. They went from place to place, spending time with different communities and keeping notes. This is why they had a vast knowledge.
Arabs loved knowledge. They were great scholars. One of the teachings of the prophet of Islam was that Muslims are recommended to travel all the way to China to acquire knowledge. Back then traveling to China was probably like asking someone to bike from San Diego to Canada going through the mountains and desert.
Although he may be Persian, you can most definitely be sure that he was deeply influenced by the Arabic tradition and culture.
Saying Muslims did not inherit a big portion of their tradition and culture from Arabs is like saying Africans did not inherit tradition and culture from colonials.
Now, I am both African and Muslim since birth. If you look at my username it says Rokhaya which is 100% Arabic and Kebe which is a common last name in West Africa.
Out of the 9 main languages in my country you will find plenty Arabic words in each one of them, yet you will not find as much of one language in another.
Secondly we are thought to memorize everything in academia and that we are able to do mostly because before going to school we spent our early days memorizing the Koran. Not understanding, not even being able to read in some cases, but memorizing the parchments.
Can you please explain further your statement and give some examples, and I will be able to go even further.
"This is probably why he was able to accumulate a deep knowledge in so many fields. Muslims have inherited this from Arabs."
There are more than a billion muslims in the world. They span from Indonesia to East Africa to the Western Coast of Africa through to the the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Accumulating deep knowledge in a field is not something that was inherited from the Arabs. It is something that comes from the local culture and the local traditions. Some muslim societies value deep knowledge, some do not. Islamic societies have a common bond, but they are still VERY different.
You are over-generalising, and I am pointing out that the role of religon on the many different cultures has not been estabished.
http://aa.trinimuslims.com/showthread.php?t=2757
this is from a pool of 1.4 Billion Muslims. On the other hand 151 Jews have been awarded Nobel prizes from a pool of 12 million. http://www.science.co.il/Nobel.asp
http://israelist.blogspot.com/2005/09/jewish-muslim-nobel-pr...
Do you think that Islam over time has affected intellectual output, or that Jews have an advantage because of the religion? What do you think?
Compare that to a person born into a culture where intellectual ability is encouraged and paid for by the community and network, and where he is going to be actively sought out to go into research laboratories and so on.
Things have not changed. What has changed is that the balance of the world has moved over to one group of people, and those that are within the group wonder why nobody else seems to be showing up for the party.
I've travelled the world, from China through Africa, over Europe and the U.S, and the difference and the opportunities available are not just large, they are almost insurmountable.
The ability is there in all of us, but the opportunity is often not.
With regards to religion and science, I don't think you can consider the major religions or cultures by themselves as having much of an effect. It's all over the map... It varies with time, adminstration, fashion, the existence of certain schools. In the fifteenth century Catholics were far ahead in science, in the 11th, Muslims, during the 8th and 9th, the Chinese, at the beginning of the century, especially during the 1920's, Germany, then it was completely squashed by the Nazi's, then Hungarian Jews had a great run, spurring an American scientific dynasty of many ethnicities, and now it's fairly diffuse.
There is one major character to Jewish populations that seems to help them in science. Wherever they go, they seem to keep their culture intact. Since they're quite reverent towards education, it's traditionally meant that when the going got tough, the Jews were still studying.
What about Ashkenazi-Jewish IQ?
http://www.vdare.com/rushton/080616_lynn.htm
seven studies of Jews in Britain yield a median IQ of 110. ... In Canada too, there is an IQ hierarchy: Jews (109), ... These results are remarkably consistent over time, place, and situation ...
in How to explain high Jewish achievement: The role of intelligence and values, an article published in Personality and Individual Differences, by Lynn and Satoshi Kanazawa (PDF), we showed that only IQ had predictive value when pitted against values theories.
Cite: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/12/17/07121...
They are not hard to find.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_Global_Inequality finds an average British-relative IQ of 95 for Israel, from several studies.
Appendix 1 of the 2002 book "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" cites two IQ studies of Israel:
Around 1975, norms for the American Lorge-Thorndike Test were collected for 180 10- to 12-year-olds by Miron (1977). The mean IQ was 100. In order to adjust for the 11-year interval between the two standardizations, this needs to be reduced to 98. In relation to a British IQ of 100, this needs to be reduced by one further point to 97.
Around 1989, data for the Standard Progressive Matrices for 1,740 9- to 15-year-olds were collected by Kaniel and Fisherman (1991). In relation to the British 1979 standardization sample, their IQ was 92. To adjust for the 10-year interval between the two years of data collection, this needs to be reduced to 90. The average of the results gives an IQ of 94 for Israel.
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although for some reason the authors of the Bell Curve were very willing to color in those lines.
There is no mention of Israel in The Bell Curve (other than a single instance indirectly in a summation of a competing theory from John Ogbu who notes that, in Israel, Sephardic jews have lower attainment than Ashkenazic jews). What do you mean by "color in those lines"?
Here is Rushton summarizing Lynn's 2006 explanation of the Israel anomaly:
http://www.vdare.com/rushton/060322_iq.htm
Another anomaly: the average IQ of Israel is only about 95—substantially higher than the median IQ of 85 found elsewhere in the region, but much lower than the average IQ of Jews outside of Israel, estimated at between 108 and 115.
Lynn breaks the Israeli IQ into three components: 40 percent Ashkenazim (European Jewish) with a mean IQ of 103; 40 percent Sephardim (Oriental Jewish) with a mean IQ of 91; and 20 percent Arab with a mean IQ of 86, which is virtually the same as that of Arabs elsewhere. Lynn suggests these differences could have arisen from selective migration (more intelligent Jews emigrated to Britain and the USA), intermarriage with different IQ populations (those in Europe versus those in North Africa), selective survival through persecution (European Jews were the most persecuted), and the inclusion of ethnic non-Jews among the Ashkenazim in Israel as a result of the immigration of people from the former Soviet Bloc countries who posed as Jews.
How you control for values? If I value taking peoples money by force because I feel like it my intelligence will negate that values effect on my life outcome?
Here is the full-text (free of charge) PDF of the 2007 Lynn/Kanazawa paper:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/MES/pdf/PAID2008.pdf
The cultural values of the respondents are measured by their responses to a question on the values parents would most like in their children. The survey gives 13 values and asks respondents to identify the one that they would most like their children to have, and also the three they would most like their children to have.
These were the values surveyed:
Success
Studiousness
Amicability
Cleanliness
Considerateness
Control
Honesty
Interest
Judgment
Manners
Obedience
Responsibility
Sex role
Table 2 gives similar results for values being one of the three most important that the respondents would most like their children to have. ... There are eight values in which Jews are significantly different from others. Jews attach less importance to cleanliness, honesty, manners and obedience, but they attach more importance to considerateness, interest in how and why things happen, judgment and responsibility. ...
the results do not provide any evidence for the theory that Jews attach more importance to success or to studiousness than non-Jews. In fact Jews attach less importance to success and to studiousness than non-Jews in the results set out in both Tables 1 and 2, although the differences between Jews and non-Jewish are not statistically significant. ...
Jews do attach more importance to four values than non-Jews. These are considerateness, interest in how and why things happen, judgment, and responsibility, but it is not easy to see how these would contribute to the success of Jews in virtually all walks of life.
This is not controlling for values taken as a given, as it is worded as most like. E.g., if my son excels in soccer there would be no desire on my part for increased aptitude in sports.
also wondering how he got the funds to dedicate his life to science. was he a heir? or he was sponsored by kings and sultans?