Muslim science

[parallaxicality]

Pope Benedict's comment that there is no tradition of reason or philosophy in Islam has galvanised me to find sources for Muslim contributions to science. But I don't know where to look. The one thing I know is that "algorithm" comes from the name of the Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. Thanks to the 10,000 Iraqi dinar note, I also know that Abu Ali Hasan Ibn al-Haitham was one of the first optical theorists. I'd like to find the sources for all the other al- words (algebra, alchemy, alcohol, alkali), not to mention all the star names (about 90 percent of them are Arabic).

[hhEb09'1]

Pope Benedict's comment that there is no tradition of reason or philosophy in Islam has galvanised me to find sources for Muslim contributions to science.Which comment was that?[/url] But I don't know where to look. The one thing I know is that "algorithm" comes from the name of the Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. Thanks to the 10,000 Iraqi dinar note, I also know that Abu Ali Hasan Ibn al-Haitham was one of the first optical theorists. I'd like to find the sources for all the other al- words (algebra, alchemy, alcohol, alkali), not to mention all the star names (about 90 percent of them are Arabic).[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Persian_origin]List of English words of Persian origin (http://romancatholicblog.typepad.com/roman_catholic_blog/2006/09/faith_reason_th.html)

[parallaxicality]

The Pope gave a speech yesterday about reason in faith, and claimed that Islam had no tradition akin to the western practice of combining ancient Greek philosophy with religion. Since the western world wouldn't even HAVE ancient Greek texts today if they hadn't been preserved by Arab scholars, this comment raised my hackles as a historian, if nothing else.

[kylenano]

There's Avicenna (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna), who, according to this article has a crater on the Moon named after him!

[hhEb09'1]

The Pope gave a speech yesterday about reason in faithDo you have a link?

[Tog_]

Do you have a link?
I have one, but it sort of violates the no religion rule. I googled for Pope speech muslim science and the complete speech was about the fourth one down.

[hhEb09'1]

I have one, but it sort of violates the no religion rule. I googled for Pope speech muslim science and the complete speech was about the fourth one down.I've seen all sorts of versions of the comments. None of them seem to support the OP, but I haven't read everything.

[Tog_]

I've seen all sorts of versions of the comments. None of them seem to support the OP, but I haven't read everything. I searched that speech for the word Science and all I can find are places where he describes what science is, and that philosophy is not a real science. It does say at the top that the speech was delivered slightly different than it appears, but there is no indication I can see that explaons the differences. I have seen that there are a number of violent protests in respose to this speech however. Regardelss of the point he was trying to make, there are poorly chosen phases in there.

First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology, and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point... that second point is a bit too grey area here I think.

[hhEb09'1]

I searched that speech for the word Science and all I can find are places where he describes what science is, and that philosophy is not a real science.I'm no big fan of the Ratz, but I'd like to see some support for the comments, especially in such an inflammatory subject as this.

[parallaxicality]

I don't want this to turn into a "religion thread," but...

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.

This is, I think, the crux of the issue as regards my original post.

[hhEb09'1]

This is, I think, the crux of the issue as regards my original post.How does that become "Pope Benedict's comment that there is no tradition of reason or philosophy in Islam"?

You make it seem as if the pope is not aware of al-Khwarizmi. That's not likely.

I don't mind a discussion of one particular people's contribution to science--I even provided a link--but I think the religion line was crossed in the OP.

[parallaxicality]

It seemed unlikely to me too. I don't understand how the Pope can say that Islam as a religion precludes rationality, when there is self-evidently a vast tradition of Islamic science and rational enquiry.

Still, this thread's probably going to get closed now. I was hoping I could skirt the religion issue but I guess I couldn't do it.

[hhEb09'1]

I don't understand how the Pope can say that Islam as a religion precludes rationality, when there is self-evidently a vast tradition of Islamic science and rational enquiry.Did he say that? Where?

[parallaxicality]

But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.

Am I reading this wrong? I may be.

[hhEb09'1]

Am I reading this wrong? I may be.Isn't that a comment about (Muslim teaching about) God, not humans?

[parallaxicality]

That particular quote was about God, but the speech itself was mainly about science. This is his conclusion, which I am sure will cheese off a sizeable portion of the posters on this board:

The scientific ethos, moreover, is - as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.
Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought - to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss". The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures.

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

It Seems Liike a Kinda Back-Handed Insult ...

Similar Tactics as Employed By The Psuedo-Science Crowd I HATE to Say ...

Invite The Other Siide to a Discussion that Is Actually a Debate, And Which you've Already Decided you Are Going to Win, All Because Some Power Tells you you're Riight!

:think:

[antoniseb]

I'm closing this thread.