I asked what he thought of what happened in the Arabic and Iranian regions during that time, he replied: Nothing significant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_in_the_medieval_Islam...
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_in_the_medieval_Islam...
I mean... based on that article alone, that seems to be substantially true, if overly harsh? Half of it are "discoveries" which were lost or disregarded and had to be "re-discovered", and IMO those are not discoveries at all since they change or affect nothing. The Book of Optics seems to be the only notable exception in that contributions section.
"Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (Latinized: Rhazes) (born 865) was one of the most versatile scientists of the Islamic Golden Age ... Many of his books were translated into Latin, and he remained one of the undisputed authorities in European medicine well into the 17th century."
"Ibn Sina, more commonly known in west as Avicenna was a Persian polymath and physician of the tenth and eleventh centuries. He was known for his scientific works, but especially his writing on medicine."
"Ibn Buṭlān, ... was an Arab physician who was active in Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age.[64] He is known as an author of the Taqwim al-Sihhah (The Maintenance of Health تقويم الصحة), in the West, best known under its Latinized translation, Tacuinum Sanitatis (sometimes Taccuinum Sanitatis)."
More than this, a lot of the scholarship in the Islamic world preserved discoveries by the Greeks:
"Galen is one of the most famous scholars and physicians of classical antiquity. Today, the original texts of some of his works, and details of his biography, are lost, and are only known to us because they were translated into Arabic"
Or did the Greeks not 'actually' discover anything, either?
It seems strange to say that nothing was discovered simply because it didn't have a lasting impact. It may be accurate to say the Western world hadn't discovered it, or learned of that discover by others, or that the discovery was lost, but not that it wasn't actually discovered.
It's the pinnacle of "Not Invented Here"
Discovery and influence or impact simply aren't the same things.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5723183/#:~:tex....
Surely the relevant consideration should be how much the discovery affected people at the time, not whether the discovery was eventually lost and needed to be re-discovered. Consider that all discoveries we have made could eventually be lost. It certainly doesn't diminish the historical significance of the discovery of penicillin if that discovery is lost in the population bottleneck caused by the 2095 A.I. War and only re-discovered 100 years after that.
That tracks with the professor being French.
If a tree in falls in the forest, and no hears it, does it really matter?
There were many curious minds that made useful discoveries, but by ~1200 CE the general zeitgeist was to discourage scientific inquiries:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_the_Philoso...
Further, I don't think there was a 'critical mass' of people exploring and exchanging ideas (either because of a too-small population, or difficulties in communication), and so if you did just happen to make discoveries… there was no one to tell, and your book simply languished on a shelf somewhere unnoticed, as from your link:
> Ibn al-Nafis discovered that the blood in the right ventricle of the heart is instead carried to the left by way of the lungs.[70] This discovery was one of the first descriptions of the pulmonary circulation,[70] although his writings on the subject were only rediscovered in the 20th century,[71] and it was William Harvey's later independent discovery which brought it to general attention.[72]
If a tree in falls in the forest, and no hears it, does it really matter?
But people DID hear it, just not in big parts of Europe where most of "our" history is taught / comes from. It's very eurocentric to assume that just because "we" didn't hear about it, it didn't exist. Civilization was miles ahead outside of Europe for a long time.
I'm genuinely curious as I feel like this touches on something broader. I think about this with literature and poetry. There's a wonderful effect as you read through time where there are various dialogues happening. People sort of reacting to each other and speaking across generations and cultures. Ginsberg reads differently when you understand his relationship with the Greek epics and other poets before him. I guess my point is, and I may have bungled it spectacularly and just get told I'm an ass, something might not be insignificant unless evaluated as part of a larger context and historic dialog.
edit: removed my ignorant line about the book of optics.
Not sure how you reached that conclusion. Perhaps it would be helpful to search for 'Latin' in that wiki page. There's a reason why so many of these Islamic figures had Latinised names - Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi -> 'Rhazes' or Ibn al-Haytham -> 'Al-hazen'. Their works, as with other scholars, were translated into Latin so that they could be read in Europe.
There's a reason why the word 'Algorithm' starts with 'Al' - the etymology comes from the name 'Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm#History
Yes, and what happened to it? It withered after flourishing. Almost all of discoveries made anywhere else in the world were meaningless because they ended up not changing anything.
Astronomy was practiced in all the major civilizations. The telescope just happened to be invented in Europe in ~1600, and it brought to Mughal India and Imperial China (and spread by 'osmosis' to the Ottomans): they were not interested in it.
Certain individuals took it up, but as a whole those other societies disregarded it.
Just like today? How many people today own a telescope? It's a niche tool useful to some but irrelevant to most.
Yes. Yes it does.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_in_the_medieval_Islam...
What difference did his discovery make in the development of medicine? Who built on it? Which therapies were invented? If his writings sat on a shelf, read by no one, why did they matter?
Contrast that with the various works from the Muslim world on optics that did contribute the building of understanding in the greater world.
The first video I didn't watch fully (because it's 50 min long), but seems to be an analysis of Al-Ghazali's work in general. Are we supposed to make our own links to the point your parent poster was making? Maybe you can provide a timestamp for the relevant part?
The second one is just an argument for the existence of god, and I don't see what it has to do with this argument.
The second link I find to be a little bit ironic, is that one of the top Christian American scholars borrow a good argument to respond to atheists "IN THAT BOOK" that his civilization (in the colonial days) used against Muslims. (Of course, all respect to him to be honest about the source)
Muslim Philosophers were using Greek philosophy to deny some things in Islam, and Al-Ghazali proved they were wrong. These attacks happened from all sides all the time, most people are not aware of that.
But what do you think Muslims should feel about that accusation?
As I said in another comment, Europe had already won in empirical science, why do they need to spread these kind of lies?
What's the classist big lie that kids are learning these days? I'm sure it varies around the nation, but the history I see young people learning now is generally pretty reconciliatory and balanced. Kids aren't learning "Columbus discovered America and had Thanksgiving at Plymouth Rock with the Indians" anymore, I like to think children's history education's grown some nuance since Bo went to school in the 90s.