Although Islamic scholars made substantial contributions to mechanics, astronomy, and especially optics along the road from the Greek ta physika to modern physics, it was in the realm of mathematics that they made what was probably their greatest contribution to the development of that discipline.  Greek science was to a great extent dominated by geometry, first and foremost the work of Euclid but also that of Apollonius and Archimedes. This continued to be the case during the Middle Ages and Greek geometry also loomed large in Islamic scientific culture. However, one characteri ..read more

It is quite common that people get asked what they think is the most import development in technology or the most significant technological invention in human history. Apart from the ubiquitous wheel, which is almost certainly the most common answer, unless they are historians, they will almost always name something comparatively modern and usually big and impressive–the steam engine, the automobile, the airplane, the computer or whatever. However, having been at one time in my life, for a number of years, an archaeologist, I am very much aware of the massive impact that seemingly everyday thi ..read more

In a recent excellent video on Hypatia – Myths and History, Tim O’Neill  correctly pointed out that the claim that Hypatia created the astrolabe was rubbish, going on to claim that it had existed for at least five centuries before she lived. Tim’s second claim is in fact wrong but is just one of many commons claims about the ancient origins of the astrolabe. I have decided to give a brief sketch of what we actually know about the origins of this multipurpose astronomical instrument.  NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH In 694 ah (1294–95 ce), Mahmud ..read more

Some of you will remember that back in November I announced that I would be taking a break from writing my blog in order  to get some medical rehabilitation for my fucked spine (official medical terminology). You might also remember that this turned into a farce when on entering the clinic I almost immediately acquired a dose of the dreaded Covid. Having successfully jumped over all the bureaucratic hurdles, I’m now due to restart my medical rehabilitation on next Monday, 25 March, meaning there will be no new blog posts during the next three weeks. Here’s hoping that I don’t develo ..read more

During the Middle ages Islamicate scholars analysed, studies, criticised and developed a wide range of academic disciples that they had adopted from their Greek, Persian, Chinese, and India predecessors before passing them back into Europe during the twelfth-century Scientific Renaissance. One of the disciples where their endeavours had the biggest impact was in the science of optics.  As we saw in an earlier episode, as opposed to the popular cliché, the Ancient Greeks propagated a wide range of theories of vision ranging from the Atomist intromission theory, over the Platonist combined ..read more

As I explained in episode XII of this series where I introduced the work of the ancient Greek engineers and their machines, the discipline mechanics derives its name from the study of machines. Greek μηχανική mēkhanikḗ, lit. “of machines” and in antiquity it is literally the discipline of the so-called simple machines: lever, wheel and axel, pulley, balance, inclined plane, wedge, and screw.  Just as some scholars during the ‘Abbāsid  Caliphate studies, absorbed, criticised, and developed the works of Aristotle and John Philoponus on motion ..read more

Roland Jackson is a historian of nineteenth-century science in Great Britain, who is the author of a highly praised biography of John Tyndall, The Ascent of John Tyndall: Victorian Scientist, Mountaineer, and Public Intellectual (OUP, 2018), which given the nature of some of Tyndall’s research work established Jackson as an expert on the early history of the very actual climate debate. He has, also, in this capacity published some very sensible work on the, somewhat heated, “did Tyndall steal from Eunice Newton Foote” discussion. Tyndall also features in Jackson’s newest book, a ..read more

As astrology was one of the very first scientific disciplines to be adopted by the ‘Abbāsid in their assimilation of Persian cultural it followed automatically that that they also adopted astronomy; you need astronomy in order to do astrology. Also, the practice of Islam itself required both the determination of the times for the five daily prayers as well as the qibla the geographical direction of the Kaaba in the Sacred Mosque in Mecca both astronomical problems.  Pre-Islamic Arabic society already possessed a fairly simple astronomy based on observation but not an advanced ma ..read more

Although people who compile such lists very often ignore it, there can be no doubt that William Gilbert’s De Magnete must be listed amongst the most important science books published in the Early Modern Period. It is the first printed book entirely dedicated to the study of the magnet, magnetism, and the magnetic compass and following Petrus Perigrinus de Maricourt’s Epistola de magnete only the second tome dedicated exclusively to the topic at all. It is a presentation of systematic, detailed, empirical, experimental science published thirty-eight years before Galileo’s&nb ..read more

Over time, the translation movement stated by the ‘Abbāsid Caliph al-Manṣūr (714–775) translated a large part of the works of Aristotle into Arabic. His philosophy was warmly welcomed by the Islamic philosophers, who didn’t just read it but analysed it with great care and wrote long and deep commentaries on it. The works of Aristotle were from this source reintroduced into Europe in the twelfth century, together with the, often critical, commentaries of the Islamic scholars, this time translated from Arabic into Latin, sometimes via Hebrew. This led, thanks largely to the work of Alb ..read more