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#1747529
The 'first true scientist'

By Professor Jim Al-Khalili
University of Surrey


Isaac Newton is, as most will agree, the greatest physicist of all time.

At the very least, he is the undisputed father of modern optics, or so we are told at school where our textbooks abound with his famous experiments with lenses and prisms, his study of the nature of light and its reflection, and the refraction and decomposition of light into the colours of the rainbow.

Yet, the truth is rather greyer; and I feel it important to point out that, certainly in the field of optics, Newton himself stood on the shoulders of a giant who lived 700 years earlier.

For, without doubt, another great physicist, who is worthy of ranking up alongside Newton, is a scientist born in AD 965 in what is now Iraq who went by the name of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham.

Most people in the West will never have even heard of him.

As a physicist myself, I am quite in awe of this man's contribution to my field, but I was fortunate enough to have recently been given the opportunity to dig a little into his life and work through my recent filming of a three-part BBC Four series on medieval Islamic scientists.

Modern methods

Popular accounts of the history of science typically suggest that no major scientific advances took place in between the ancient Greeks and the European Renaissance.

But just because Western Europe languished in the Dark Ages, does not mean there was stagnation elsewhere. Indeed, the period between the 9th and 13th Centuries marked the Golden Age of Arabic science.

Great advances were made in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, chemistry and philosophy. Among the many geniuses of that period Ibn al-Haytham stands taller than all the others.
Ibn-al Haytham conducted early investigations into light


Ibn al-Haytham is regarded as the father of the modern scientific method.

As commonly defined, this is the approach to investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge, based on the gathering of data through observation and measurement, followed by the formulation and testing of hypotheses to explain the data.

This is how we do science today and is why I put my trust in the advances that have been made in science.

But it is often still claimed that the modern scientific method was not established until the early 17th Century by Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes.

There is no doubt in my mind, however, that Ibn al-Haytham arrived there first.

In fact, with his emphasis on experimental data and reproducibility of results, he is often referred to as the "world's first true scientist".

Understanding light

He was the first scientist to give a correct account of how we see objects.

It is incredible that we are only now uncovering the debt that today's physicists owe to an Arab who lived 1,000 years ago

Prof Jim Al-Khalili



He proved experimentally, for instance, that the so-called emission theory (which stated that light from our eyes shines upon the objects we see), which was believed by great thinkers such as Plato, Euclid and Ptolemy, was wrong and established the modern idea that we see because light enters our eyes.

What he also did that no other scientist had tried before was to use mathematics to describe and prove this process.

So he can be regarded as the very first theoretical physicist, too.

He is perhaps best known for his invention of the pinhole camera and should be credited with the discovery of the laws of refraction.

He also carried out the first experiments on the dispersion of light into its constituent colours and studied shadows, rainbows and eclipses; and by observing the way sunlight diffracted through the atmosphere, he was able to work out a rather good estimate for the height of the atmosphere, which he found to be around 100km.

Enforced study

In common with many modern scholars, Ibn-al Haytham badly needed the time and isolation to focus on writing his many treatises, including his great work on optics.

He was given an unwelcome opportunity, however, when he was imprisoned in Egypt between 1011 and 1021, having failed a task set him by a caliph in Cairo to help solve the problem of regulating the flooding of the Nile.

While still in Basra, Ibn al-Haytham had claimed that the Nile's autumn flood waters could be held by a system of dykes and canals, thereby preserved as reservoirs until the summer's droughts.

But on arrival in Cairo, he soon realised that his scheme was utterly impractical from an engineering perspective.

Yet rather than admit his mistake to the dangerous and murderous caliph, Ibn-al Haytham instead decided to feign madness as a way to escape punishment.

This promptly led to him being placed under house arrest, thereby granting him 10 years of seclusion in which to work.

Planetary motion

He was only released after the caliph's death. He returned to Iraq where he composed a further 100 works on a range of subjects in physics and mathematics.

While travelling through the Middle East during my filming, I interviewed an expert in Alexandria who showed me recently discovered work by Ibn al-Haytham on astronomy.

It seems he had developed what is called celestial mechanics, explaining the orbits of the planets, which was to lead to the eventual work of Europeans like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton.

It is incredible that we are only now uncovering the debt that today's physicists owe to an Arab who lived 1,000 years ago.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7810846.stm


Most people in the West will never have even heard of him.


Most people have never heard of Srinivasi Aiyangri Ramanujan either, who discovered much of number theory erroneously credited to much later mathematicians.

History has been written by the victors (until the age of the internet).
User avatar
By Oxymoron
#1747535
AD 965 in what is now Iraq who went by the name of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham.


Having access to huge Roman/Greek archives had nothing to do with it I'm sure.
User avatar
By Thunderhawk
#1748118
Oxy wrote:Having access to huge Roman/Greek archives had nothing to do with it I'm sure.


Lets not forget India and China.
By guzzipat
#1748696

AD 965 in what is now Iraq who went by the name of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham.


Having access to huge Roman/Greek archives had nothing to do with it I'm sure.





The West could easily have had access to the same archive, but they chose to sack Bysantium, burn the books and slaughter Orthodox clergy during the 4th crusade.
In fact we owe the Muslims a great dept, it was their preservation of Greek science and philosophy discovered in Cordoba, that in part, led to the end of the dark ages and the foundation of modern medcine. In particular the writings of Aristotle were treasured by the Muslims.
User avatar
By Nets
#1749947
Aristoteles was a worthless charlatan.

Anyways, the Muslim/Persian scholars of the 9th-12th centuries CE are incredible. Muḥammad al-Karajī (953-1029) is hands down my favorite. One of the first abstract algebrists IMO.

But to be fair, like Newton, they were able to see so much because they were standing on the shoulders of giants, giants like Diophantos, Euklides, Apollonios and Brahmagupta. Yes, the Muslim/Arab/Persian scholars of that time discovered much, but like Newton et al., they alse copied and rediscovered quite a bit of previous knowledge themselves. Hell, the Babylonians knew how to complete the square in 2000 BCE and Mohammad al-Khwārazmī still devoted almost his entire Al-jabr w'al muqabala book to the method.

This does not diminish their achievement in any way.
User avatar
By Oxymoron
#1750120
Image

Talk about innovation, who ever burned the library at Alexandria should rot in Hades.
By guzzipat
#1750573

Talk about innovation, who ever burned the library at Alexandria should rot in Hades.




There are at least 4 possibilities for the culprit;
1.Julius Caesar's Fire in The Alexandrian War, in 48 BC
2.The attack of Aurelian in the Third century AD;
3.The decree of Theophilus in 391 AD;
4.The Muslim conquest in 642 AD or thereafter

The question isn't helped by some historians confusing the Greek for "a collection of books" for a physical library building. It is possible that the books survived the destruction of the library for many years. Who actually desroyed them will probably never be known.
User avatar
By Nets
#1751205
One thing I will definitely give the Muslim Golden Age scholars credit for is being far less pretentious than the Greeks.

With the Greeks, every mathematical treatise turns into a long drawn out philosophical production where they stop every now and then to congratulate themselves.

The Muslim period mathematicians just got down to it and did the research, no frills. I like it.
User avatar
By U184
#1751215
OK. Point taken.

However, with out the philosophical ramblings indicative of their nature it is unlikely they would have made the progress that they did.

I mean can you give a time line correlation of achievements that shadow the achievements of any of the Europeans?

Just curious as I have not ran across many great Muslim scholars, Indian yes, but not Muslim.
User avatar
By noemon
#1751443
Nets wrote:One thing I will definitely give the Muslim Golden Age scholars credit for is being far less pretentious than the Greeks.

With the Greeks, every mathematical treatise turns into a long drawn out philosophical production where they stop every now and then to congratulate themselves.

The Muslim period mathematicians just got down to it and did the research, no frills. I like it.


You have a history of bigotry towards the Greeks, and this is no different. Your recent urge to want to bomb Athens, have Greece return to the Turks, and make other disparaging comments for Hellenic civilization in general has been noted several times.

And lastly i highly doubt, that you have ever in your lifetime read, any original Greek mathematical treatise.

Would you like to cite some evidence of Greek pretension and self-congratulation in our mathematical treatises?

Please, I would be interested to hearing to your theory.

I congratulate Islamic civilization for becoming a center of research, and for despite their Islamic roots and references towards infidel literature and scholars, they were keen to translate Greek mathematical, philosophical and other documents that they received from the Greek communities when they took over major Greek cities, and for allowing Greek scholars, religion and communities to flourish(and at various conflictual times the decency to exist) under their regimes.

Nets wrote:Hell, the Babylonians knew how to complete the square in 2000 BCE and Mohammad al-KhwārazmÄ« still devoted almost his entire Al-jabr w'al muqabala book to the method.


The references to Babylonians only serve the history of mathematics in an abstract sense, while Newton quoted the Greek texts, and referenced them just as the Muslims and all other Europeans did for the most part, and which the Hindus reached to the point of calling for the reverence of Greek astronomers and mathematicians as Gods. Noone has ever quoted a Babylonian text. And as such there is no direct linear link to it. There is only assumption and possibility, but there is no evidence to suggest that others did not develop the same methods entirely by themselves. In addition, the Greek mathematics differ fundamentally from earlier mathematics as they use axioms and deductive reasoning, instead of mere rules of the thumb.
User avatar
By Nets
#1752478
You have a history of bigotry towards the Greeks, and this is no different


Weak.

Your recent urge to want to bomb Athens

In a completely jocular thread about cities you want to see destroyed. I listed Athens along with a bunch of other Western European capitals. A claim of being anti-European is barely indicated here, anti-Greek isn't. And you wanted to see Athens flooded you Greek hater you!

have Greece return to the Turks

How exactly do preferences over political boundaries demonstrate bigotry towards an ethnic group? I'm dying to hear this. I respect what the Ottoman Empire achieved, what of it?

and make other disparaging comments for Hellenic civilization in general has been noted several times.

Such as?

And lastly i highly doubt, that you have ever in your lifetime read, any original Greek mathematical treatise.

I've read chunks of Diophantos' Arithmetica, Apollonios' Conics, parts of Eukleides' Elements, as well as others in the course of my research into a term paper on the history of solutions of cubic and quartic equations.

Would you like to cite some evidence of Greek pretension and self-congratulation in our mathematical treatises?
Please, I would be interested to hearing to your theory.


Platon: "Whatever we Greeks recieve, we improve and perfect"
Archimedes: "every kind of art which is connected with daily needs is ignoble and vulgar”
From Cajori, Florian. A History of Mathematics. 2nd ed. New York, NY: MacMillan
& Co., 1919.

I don't have time to dig for others.

The references to Babylonians only serve the history of mathematics in an abstract sense, while Newton quoted the Greek texts, and referenced them just as the Muslims and all other Europeans did for the most part, and which the Hindus reached to the point of calling for the reverence of Greek astronomers and mathematicians as Gods. No one has ever quoted a Babylonian text. And as such there is no direct linear link to it. There is only assumption and possibility, but there is no evidence to suggest that others did not develop the same methods entirely by themselves. In addition, the Greek mathematics differ fundamentally from earlier mathematics as they use axioms and deductive reasoning, instead of mere rules of the thumb.


Give me a break. Early Greek mathematicians such as Thales, Democritus, Miletus and Platon all studied Egyptian geometry and basic arithmetic in Egypt, who in turn codeveloped with the Babylonians. The entire Ionic school of Greek mathematics is indebted to Egypt. Look, I am not knocking Greek mathematics, but to suggest it developed in a vacuum and did not continue the early discoveries of Babylonia and Egypt is silly. Pythagoras (who came a bit after the Ionic scholars) also studied in Egypt. You are telling me these Greek mathematicians went to study in Egypt, and then left to independently discover results already known to Egypt and Babylon?

As for the axiomatic approach; this had its benefits and costs. The Greek geometric base for their algebraic studies severely hindered them from investigating polynomials greater than degree three; their geometric arguments forbade them from adding "areas" to "volumes" etc stifling their methods of solution, and their skepticism of irrational numbers only worsened this. (Eudoxos came close to a theory of real numbers but his influence with regards to this is mixed). Anyways, my favorite Greek mathematician, Diophantos, wrote in a style far more alike to the Babylonians/Egyptians than to the Greeks with respect to algebra. Remember, Diophantos was likely the most important Greek influence on Muslim age mathematicians.

I do find it amusing though how you say its plausible that the Greeks independently discovered all of their results, but that Muslim period mathematics flows directly from Greece. Muslim treatment of negative numbers (in their calculations, not as objects in themselves) as well as their knowledge of trigonometric tables come from India, and not Greece (not to mention zero and the positional decimal system).

Al-Khwārazmī, often called the "Father of Algebra" is much closer to Hindu scholars than Greek ones. Van der Waerden writes that "“we may exclude the possibility that al-Khw¯arazm¯ı’s work was much influenced by classical Greek Mathematics.....his Algebra strikes impresses us as a protest against the Eukleides translation and against the whole trend of the reception of Greek sciences”*

*Van der Waerden, Bartel L. A History of Algebra : From al-Khw¯arazm¯ı to
Emmy Noether . New York: Springer London, Limited, 1985.

Noemon, I still don't understand how you translated my dislike of Greek mathematical style towards bigotry towards Greeks. It's like saying a dislike a of Russian literature makes one a Russophobe. Lastly, you near-constant Greek supremacism on these boards is tiresome.
Last edited by Nets on 09 Jan 2009 06:40, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
By U184
#1752489
That's OK I guess my question can be overrun, ignored, trampled...I can just hope you can come back to me when you two are done.
User avatar
By Nets
#1752766
Just curious as I have not ran across many great Muslim scholars, Indian yes, but not Muslim.


Al-Karaji, Al-Khwarizmi, Omar Al-Khayyam, ibn Shuja, Tabit ben Qurra, Abu Kamil, al-Hajjaj, al-Sama'wal, Abu al-Wafa

The period 800-1200 CE, roughly during the Abbassid Caliphate, Mesopotamia (and to a lesser extent Egypt and Persia) were ground zero for mathematics and science in general.
User avatar
By noemon
#1753216
Nets wrote:In a completely jocular thread about cities you want to see destroyed. I listed Athens along with a bunch of other Western European capitals. A claim of being anti-European is barely indicated here, anti-Greek isn't. And you wanted to see Athens flooded you Greek hater you!


With the main difference that I am Greek, while you 're not, and I have aesthetic reasons, your choice of European cities was not for aesthetic reasons, towards their urban sprawl such as mine, but for other reasons, most probably connected with the people of the cities themselves. This is flat out bigotry. And jocular sarcasm contains more truth, than the lack of it.

Nets wrote:How exactly do preferences over political boundaries demonstrate bigotry towards an ethnic group? I'm dying to hear this. I respect what the Ottoman Empire achieved, what of it?


The fact that you "would pay to see Greece return to the Ottomans." Speaks of itself.

Nets wrote:Platon: "Whatever we Greeks recieve, we improve and perfect"
Archimedes: "every kind of art which is connected with daily needs is ignoble and vulgar”
From Cajori, Florian. A History of Mathematics. 2nd ed. New York, NY: MacMillan
& Co., 1919.


:lol: You might as well quote Aristotle, for saying that the barbarians ought to be Greek slaves.

I find it quite hilarious that you would even consider that this constitutes evidence to your theory:

Nets wrote:With the Greeks, every mathematical treatise turns into a long drawn out philosophical production where they stop every now and then to congratulate themselves.


You did not quote any mathematical treatise where this happens. Archimedes is not congratulating himself in your quote. And this does not come from Plato's mathematical treatises. The Greek mathematics you claim to have read, contain no such attitudes as you are most certainly aware, yet you did say, what you said.

Quote a mathematical treatise, where the author pauses to congratulate himself, and where there is pretense, not anecdotal sayings of Greek philosophers.

Nets wrote:Give me a break. Early Greek mathematicians such as Thales, Democritus, Miletus and Platon all studied Egyptian geometry and basic arithmetic in Egypt, who in turn codeveloped with the Babylonians. The entire Ionic school of Greek mathematics is indebted to Egypt. Look, I am not knocking Greek mathematics, but to suggest it developed in a vacuum and did not continue the early discoveries of Babylonia and Egypt is silly. Pythagoras (who came a bit after the Ionic scholars) also studied in Egypt. You are telling me these Greek mathematicians went to study in Egypt, and then left to independently discover results already known to Egypt and Babylon?


As I said:

noemon wrote:The references to Babylonians only serve the history of mathematics in an abstract sense, while Newton quoted the Greek texts, and referenced them just as the Muslims and all other Europeans did for the most part, and which the Hindus reached to the point of calling for the reverence of Greek astronomers and mathematicians as Gods. Noone has ever quoted a Babylonian text. And as such there is no direct linear link to it. There is only assumption and possibility, but there is no evidence to suggest that others did not develop the same methods entirely by themselves.


Nets wrote:As for the axiomatic approach; this had its benefits and costs...


This whole paragraph can only be regarded as a desperate attempt to obscure(the axiomatic mathematics) the purpose for what it was written in the first place. Moreover, Diophantos' Arithmetica constitutes evidence contrary to what you just wrote, as you are well aware, and hence why you dismiss it as more "Babylonian" than Greek, to remove the Greekness of his very being which constitutes hearsay and is quite laughable indeed, since even if his style did resemble something that could be defined as a Babylonianism as opposed to a very wide and diverse Hellenism, rendering the whole juxtaposition moot, that would still not make his work, Babylonian derived. But still, not even that is the case, see [citation needed] and [weasel words].

Nets wrote:I do find it amusing though how you say its plausible that the Greeks independently discovered all of their results, but that Muslim period mathematics flows directly from Greece. Muslim treatment of negative numbers (in their calculations, not as objects in themselves) as well as their knowledge of trigonometric tables come from India, and not Greece (not to mention zero and the positional decimal system).


For the Muslims it is certain that it flows directly from Greece, as all their mathematics, developed in Greek cities after they took them over, and it is no secret anywhere. For the Greeks it is possible and probable to have been influenced by Egypt but uncertain to degree and extent, also taking into account how Greek mathematics are fundamentally different from Egyptian and Babylonian and also taking into account how many of these dependency attributes are legends found in popular propaganda, and shrouded in myth, the mention of it falls under the same category:

Dr Mary Lefkowitz-Not out of Africa wrote:“The Jews shared the Egyptians’ patronizing attitude towards the dominant Greek culture. Jewish historians were determined to show that although the Jewish people were now subject to Greeks, they not only understood Greek culture… but these writers sought to show that Greek religion and philosophy had been inspired by Hebrew ideas… But an even more definitive assertion of the derivative nature of Greek culture was made by an Alexandrian Jew called Aristobulus in the second century BCE. Aristobulus did not hesitate to invent information, or to report information invented by others… He said that Greek philosophers Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato knew and studied the books of Moses… Of course, no scholar today would take seriously that claim… It was a way of asserting the importance of their culture, especially in a time when they had little or no political power… But the fate of Jewish ethnic historians like Aristobulus offer a warning to modern day advocates of Greek cultural dependency. How many people have ever heard of Aristobulus? And, more importantly, who believes him?”


Nets wrote:Noemon, I still don't understand how you translated my dislike of Greek mathematical style towards bigotry towards Greeks. It's like saying a dislike a of Russian literature makes one a Russophobe. Lastly, you near-constant Greek supremacism on these boards is tiresome.


The fact that bigotry is at play here, speaks on itself, as for my love for Greece, it only becomes present when bigots appear. You will not find me ranting about Greece and Greeks, without responding to somebody else's myths. And your failure to qualify the petty and bigoted statements you made, does not illustrate Greek supremacy on my part.

Lastly, either qualify your myth:

Nets wrote:With the Greeks, every mathematical treatise turns into a long drawn out philosophical production where they stop every now and then to congratulate themselves.


Or stop being tiresome.
User avatar
By Paradigm
#1783008
Nets wrote:Anyways, the Muslim/Persian scholars of the 9th-12th centuries CE are incredible.

I think it's a sad irony that Medieval Muslim scholars discovered natural selection almost a millennium before Darwin, yet Muslims today are much more likely to be creationist than Christians.
User avatar
By noemon
#1783212
What do you think are the causes for that?
User avatar
By peter_co
#1791683
At the very least, he is the undisputed father of modern optics, or so we are told at school where our textbooks abound with his famous experiments with lenses and prisms, his study of the nature of light and its reflection, and the refraction and decomposition of light into the colours of the rainbow.

I hate how the author begins the article with this imaginary strawman. Isaac Newton's most prominent contributions have been in the areas of mechanics and mathematics, and his contributions to optics are not by a long shot either his most important work or the work by which he is most recognized (if anything has become ingrained in the public imagination, it is the image of the apple falling on his head as a silly anecdote for his works on celestial mechanics). The only reason Mr. Khalili invented that image was to create a foil for the tragically neglected Haytham. And there he certainly has a point, Haytham was certainly a great scientist who probably has the strongest claim to the title of the "father of modern optics." But the deceitful way in which Khalili broaches the subject just discredits him as a nostalgic grumbler who feels the need to attack a man who has achieved infinitely more than he ever will, just so he can cling more closely to an age that ended a millennium ago.
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