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Comment by ElFitz | Hacker News Reader

Medieval Europe absorbed a great deal of philosophy, mathematics, medicine and science through the Islamic world. Including from Arabic translations of and comments on Ancient Greek texts. Meaning even some of that Greek lineage was mediated and influenced by the Islamic world. And all of which had a significant influence on the Renaissance.

Similarly, the Greeks are thought to have borrowed more than a little from Ancient Egypt and other neighboring civilizations.

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I think “great deal” is an overstatement. The US has borrowed a lot of work done by Chinese mathematicians and scientists. But would you say we have “absorbed a great deal” of Chinese culture? Japanese video games and anime are immensely popular in the US. But would you say we have “absorbed a great deal” of Japanese culture?

It's absurd to claim that there wasn't a enormous Arabic influence on European science. There's a reason that algebra, alchemy, algorithm, alcohol and alkaline all start with "al" because "al" is Arabic for "the" and all of those words are borrowed from Arabic.

There are many others that don't have that prefix but are nonetheless derived from Arabic like zero, cipher, azimuth, nadir, zenith and many others.

Our numerals are "Arabic numerals" because we got them from Arabic.

European science barely existed until Europeans started reading Arabic writings and ancient writings that were preserved in Arab libraries.

As another commenter said, I wouldn’t compare the Islamic world’s influence on Europe to China’s or Japan’s on the US.

One invaded what became a major power, stayed there for centuries, and up to nearly a third of a second one, staying there for decades.

The others are on the other side of an ocean.

There’s a reason we study it in junior high school, at least in some Western European countries.

Look at the volume of quotations of Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd) by medieval philosophers as a counterpoint.

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