Comment by skeuomorf
10 years ago
Cite? Cause Al-Hassan Ibn Al-Haytham (Arab muslim), Al-Biruni (Persian muslim) and Ibn Sina (Persian muslim) among others played a big role in the development of the scientific method.[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method#E...
The development of science is rooted in the works of Aristotle, Galileo, Bacon, and Newton. In order to succeed in the West it had to break the stranglehold of Christianity on the intellectual scene (thanks to Aquinas).
Further, science has nothing to do with religion in general, and the Moslem religion in particular. On the contrary, Islam is radically opposed to reason, and the few science-minded intellectuals, inspired by Ancient Greek texts, that lived undr Islam rule a thousand years ago were persecuted whenever they attempted to uphold reason over faith.
Parts of the growth of mathematics in the West, from time of the Renaissance, was inspired by the rediscovery of Ancient Greek texts. The Western mathematicians who looked at what Moslems had done with this were mostly revulsed, especially by their bad transaltions, and hence returned to the study of the original texts and problems, such as the Diophantine equations.
Religious flamewars are not welcome on Hacker News.
OK. I thought one could point out that science and mathematics do not belong to the religious realm because they are rooted in reason and the evidence of the senses, not faith.
I highly recommend "The Aristotle Adventure: A Guide to the Greek, Arabic, & Latin Scholars Who Transmitted Aristotle's Logic to the Renaissance" -- http://amazon.com/dp/0964471493
I also think the history of the Diophantine equations is fascinating, all the way to their rediscovery during the Renaissance, and the impact this had on the modern development of analysis, symbolic notation, geometry, and complex numbers. It took more than one thousand years to go from Diophantus to suddenly Bachet, Fermat, and Descartes.