This is a study of science in Muslim society from its rise in the 8th century to the efforts of 19th-century Muslim thinkers and reformers to regain the lost ethos that had given birth to the rich scientific heritage of earlier Muslim civilization. The volume is organized in four parts; the rise of science in Muslim society in its historical setting of political and intellectual expansion; the Muslim creative achievement and original discoveries; proponents and opponents of science in a religiously oriented society; and finally the complex factors that account for the end of the 500-year Muslim renaissance. The book brings together and treats in depth, using primary and secondary sources in Arabic, Turkish and European languages, subjects that are lightly and uncritically brushed over in non-specialized literature, such as the question of what can be considered to be purely original scientific advancement in Muslim civilization over and above what was inherited from the Greco–Syriac and Indian traditions; what was the place of science in a religious society; and the question of the curious demise of the Muslim scientific renaissance after centuries of creativity. The book also interprets the history of the rise, achievement and decline of scientific study in light of the religious temper and of the political and socio-economic vicissitudes across Islamdom for over a millennium and integrates the Muslim legacy with the history of Latin/European accomplishments. It sets the stage for the next momentous transmission of science: from the West back to the Arabic-speaking world of Islam, from the last half of the 19th century to the early 21st century, the subject of a second volume.

This is a study of science in Muslim society from its rise in the 8th century to the efforts of 19th-century Muslim thinkers and reformers to regain the lost ethos that had given birth to the rich scientific heritage of earlier Muslim civilization. The volume is organized in four parts; the rise of science in Muslim society in its historical setting of political and intellectual expansion; the Muslim creative achievement and original discoveries; proponents and opponents of science in a religiously oriented society; and finally the complex factors that account for the end of the 500-year Muslim renaissance. The book brings together and treats in depth, using primary and secondary sources in Arabic, Turkish and European languages, subjects that are lightly and uncritically brushed over in non-specialized literature, such as the question of what can be considered to be purely original scientific advancement in Muslim civilization over and above what was inherited from the Greco–Syriac and Indian traditions; what was the place of science in a religious society; and the question of the curious demise of the Muslim scientific renaissance after centuries of creativity. The book also interprets the history of the rise, achievement and decline of scientific study in light of the religious temper and of the political and socio-economic vicissitudes across Islamdom for over a millennium and integrates the Muslim legacy with the history of Latin/European accomplishments. It sets the stage for the next momentous transmission of science: from the West back to the Arabic-speaking world of Islam, from the last half of the 19th century to the early 21st century, the subject of a second volume.

This 2003 study examines the long-standing question of why modern science arose only in the West and not in the civilizations of Islam and China, despite the fact that medieval Islam and China were more scientifically advanced. To explain this outcome, Tony E. Huff explores the cultural - religious, legal, philosophical, and institutional - contexts within which science was practised in Islam, China, and the West. He finds in the history of law and the European cultural revolution of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries major clues as to why the ethos of science arose in the West, permitting the breakthrough to modern science that did not occur elsewhere. This line of inquiry leads to novel ideas about the centrality of the legal concept of corporation, which is unique to the West and gave rise to the concepts of neutral space and free inquiry.

Science and Islam provides a detailed account of the relationship between Islam and science from the emergence of the Islamic scientific tradition in the eighth century to the present time. This relationship has gone through three distinct phases. The first phase began with the emergence of science in the Islamic civilization in the eighth century and ended with the rise of modern science in the West; the second period is characterized by the arrival of modern science in the Muslim world, most of which at that time was under colonial occupation; and the third period, which began around 1950, is characterized by a more mature approach to the major questions that modern science has posed for all religious traditions. Based on primary sources, the book presents a panorama of Islamic views on some of the major issues in the current science and religion discourse. Written in accessible language, Science and Islam is an authentic account of the multi-faceted and complex issues that arise at the interface of Islamic intellectual tradition and science. Rich in historical details, the book is a fascinating survey of the interaction of Islamic beliefs with the enterprise of science.

Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the major role played by the early Muslim world in influencing modern society, Lost History fills an important void. Written by an award-winning author and former diplomat with extensive experience in the Muslim world, it provides new insight not only into Islam's historic achievements but also the ancient resentments that fuel today's bitter conflicts. Michael Hamilton Morgan reveals how early Muslim advancements in science and culture lay the cornerstones of the European Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and modern Western society. As he chronicles the Golden Ages of Islam, beginning in 570 a.d. with the birth of Muhammad, and resonating today, he introduces scholars like Ibn Al-Haytham, Ibn Sina, Al-Tusi, Al-Khwarizmi, and Omar Khayyam, towering figures who revolutionized the mathematics, astronomy, and medicine of their time and paved the way for Newton, Copernicus, and many others. And he reminds us that inspired leaders from Muhammad to Suleiman the Magnificent and beyond championed religious tolerance, encouraged intellectual inquiry, and sponsored artistic, architectural, and literary works that still dazzle us with their brilliance. Lost History finally affords pioneering leaders with the proper credit and respect they so richly deserve.

The rise and fall of the Islamic scientific tradition, and the relationship of Islamic science to European science during the Renaissance. The Islamic scientific tradition has been described many times in accounts of Islamic civilization and general histories of science, with most authors tracing its beginnings to the appropriation of ideas from other ancient civilizations—the Greeks in particular. In this thought-provoking and original book, George Saliba argues that, contrary to the generally accepted view, the foundations of Islamic scientific thought were laid well before Greek sources were formally translated into Arabic in the ninth century. Drawing on an account by the tenth-century intellectual historian Ibn al-Naidm that is ignored by most modern scholars, Saliba suggests that early translations from mainly Persian and Greek sources outlining elementary scientific ideas for the use of government departments were the impetus for the development of the Islamic scientific tradition. He argues further that there was an organic relationship between the Islamic scientific thought that developed in the later centuries and the science that came into being in Europe during the Renaissance. Saliba outlines the conventional accounts of Islamic science, then discusses their shortcomings and proposes an alternate narrative. Using astronomy as a template for tracing the progress of science in Islamic civilization, Saliba demonstrates the originality of Islamic scientific thought. He details the innovations (including new mathematical tools) made by the Islamic astronomers from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, and offers evidence that Copernicus could have known of and drawn on their work. Rather than viewing the rise and fall of Islamic science from the often-narrated perspectives of politics and religion, Saliba focuses on the scientific production itself and the complex social, economic, and intellectual conditions that made it possible.

Hailed in The New York Times Book Review as "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies," Bernard Lewis has been for half a century one of the West's foremost scholars of Islamic history and culture, the author of over two dozen books, most notably The Arabs in History, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, The Political Language of Islam, and The Muslim Discovery of Europe. Eminent French historian Robert Mantran has written of Lewis's work: "How could one resist being attracted to the books of an author who opens for you the doors of an unknown or misunderstood universe, who leads you within to its innermost domains: religion, ways of thinking, conceptions of power, culture--an author who upsets notions too often fixed, fallacious, or partisan." In Islam and the West, Bernard Lewis brings together in one volume eleven essays that indeed open doors to the innermost domains of Islam. Lewis ranges far and wide in these essays. He includes long pieces, such as his capsule history of the interaction--in war and peace, in commerce and culture--between Europe and its Islamic neighbors, and shorter ones, such as his deft study of the Arabic word watan and what its linguistic history reveals about the introduction of the idea of patriotism from the West. Lewis offers a revealing look at Edward Gibbon's portrait of Muhammad in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (unlike previous writers, Gibbon saw the rise of Islam not as something separate and isolated, nor as a regrettable aberration from the onward march of the church, but simply as a part of human history); he offers a devastating critique of Edward Said's controversial book, Orientalism; and he gives an account of the impediments to translating from classic Arabic to other languages (the old dictionaries, for one, are packed with scribal errors, misreadings, false analogies, and etymological deductions that pay little attention to the evolution of the language). And he concludes with an astute commentary on the Islamic world today, examining revivalism, fundamentalism, the role of the Shi'a, and the larger question of religious co-existence between Muslims, Christians, and Jews. A matchless guide to the background of Middle East conflicts today, Islam and the West presents the seasoned reflections of an eminent authority on one of the most intriguing and little understood regions in the world.

Analyzes Muslim countries' contemporary problems, particularly violence, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment, comparing their historical levels of development with Western Europe.

For centuries, laymen and priests, lone thinkers and philosophical schools in Greece, China, the Islamic world and Europe reflected with wisdom and perseverance on how the natural world fits together. As a rule, their methods and conclusions, while often ingenious, were misdirected when viewed from the perspective of modern science. In the 1600s thinkers such as Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Bacon and many others gave revolutionary new twists to traditional ideas and practices, culminating in the work of Isaac Newton half a century later. It was as if the world was being created anew. But why did this recreation begin in Europe rather than elsewhere? This book caps H. Floris Cohen's career-long effort to find answers to this classic question. Here he sets forth a rich but highly accessible account of what, against many odds, made it happen and why.

For all the discussion in the media about creationism and 'Intelligent Design', virtually nothing has been said about the evidence in question - the evidence for evolution by natural selection. Yet, as this succinct and important book shows, that evidence is vast, varied, and magnificent, and drawn from many disparate fields of science. The very latest research is uncovering a stream of evidence revealing evolution in action - from the actual observation of a species splitting into two, to new fossil discoveries, to the deciphering of the evidence stored in our genome. Why Evolution is True weaves together the many threads of modern work in genetics, palaeontology, geology, molecular biology, anatomy, and development to demonstrate the 'indelible stamp' of the processes first proposed by Darwin. It is a crisp, lucid, and accessible statement that will leave no one with an open mind in any doubt about the truth of evolution.