Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science
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Review
A fascinating and user-friendly guide to this whole scientific movement (Noel Malcolm Seven, Sunday Telegraph )
Brings alive the bubbling invention and delighted curiosity of the Islamic world … his command of Arabic mathematical physics invests his story with sympathy as well as authority (Tim Radford Guardian )
Jim Al-Khalili has a passion for bringing to a wider audience not just the facts of science but its history … Just as the legacy of Copernicus and Darwin belongs to all of us, so does that of Ibn Sina and Ibn al-Haytham. To think otherwise, as this book so powerfully reveals, is to do disservice to the tradition to which they belong (Kenan Malik Independent )
Spry, informative and timely … Al-Khalili takes the reader through a brisk survey of the highlights of the period (Stuart Kelly Scotland on Sunday )
A fascinating introduction to a neglected area. His approachable style and ability to distil extensive knowledge into simple narrative makes Pathfinders an absorbing read (Siobhan Murphy Metro )
Enjoyable and informative … provides ample evidence for the compatibility of Islam and science (Sameer Rahim Daily Telegraph )
Brings alive the bubbling invention and delighted curiosity of the Islamic world … his command of Arabic mathematical physics invests his story with sympathy as well as authority (Tim Radford Guardian )
Jim Al-Khalili has a passion for bringing to a wider audience not just the facts of science but its history … Just as the legacy of Copernicus and Darwin belongs to all of us, so does that of Ibn Sina and Ibn al-Haytham. To think otherwise, as this book so powerfully reveals, is to do disservice to the tradition to which they belong (Kenan Malik Independent )
Spry, informative and timely … Al-Khalili takes the reader through a brisk survey of the highlights of the period (Stuart Kelly Scotland on Sunday )
A fascinating introduction to a neglected area. His approachable style and ability to distil extensive knowledge into simple narrative makes Pathfinders an absorbing read (Siobhan Murphy Metro )
Enjoyable and informative … provides ample evidence for the compatibility of Islam and science (Sameer Rahim Daily Telegraph )
Product Description
For over 700 years the international language of science was Arabic. In Pathfinders, Jim al-Khalili celebrates the forgotten pioneers who helped shape our understanding of the world.
All scientists have stood on the shoulders of giants. But most historical accounts today suggest that the achievements of the ancient Greeks were not matched until the European Renaissance in the 16th century, a 1,000-year period dismissed as the Dark Ages. In the ninth-century, however, the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad, Abu Ja'far Abdullah al-Ma'mun, created the greatest centre of learning the world had ever seen, known as Bayt al-Hikma, the House of Wisdom. The scientists and philosophers he brought together sparked a period of extraordinary discovery, in every field imaginable, launching a golden age of Arabic science.
Few of these scientists, however, are now known in the western world. Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, a polymath who outshines everyone in history except Leonardo da Vinci? The Syrian astronomer Ibn al-Shatir, whose manuscripts would inspire Copernicus's heliocentric model of the solar system? Or the 13th-century Andalucian physician Ibn al-Nafees, who correctly described blood circulation 400 years before William Harvey? Iraqi Ibn al-Haytham who practised the modern scientific method 700 years before Bacon and Descartes, and founded the field of modern optics before Newton? Or even ninth-century zoologist al-Jahith, who developed a theory of natural selection a thousand years before Darwin?
The West needs to see the Islamic world through new eyes and the Islamic world, in turn, to take pride in its extraordinarily rich heritage. Anyone who reads this book will understand why.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
A stupendous piece of work by the author and a fascinating read once you get into it. And by putting the work of the scientists of this period into perspective the book also brings out and explains many of the basic scientific issues that have intrigued our species. It also illuminates historical aspects of the relationship between the Islamic world and "the west". I just wish the author had got stuck into the subject matter more quickly and saved us his personal history and photos of himself in Baghdad!
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
It makes a refreshing change to read a history book written by a scientist. It is quite clear the difference between fact, speculation and personal opinion, something not always the case when a traditional historian writes.
I half expected a book full of excessive gushing praise for the Arab scientists in this period in history but that does not do the writer justice. The book is very clear when the scientists miss the mark but provides sound reasoning for why we should be considering some of these people on a par with the well known greats from Greek and later European history.
Quite hard going at times with rereads needed occasionally but well worth it and necessary to give a sound understanding of not just the work of the scientists but their place in history as of that of their benefactors. Yet another example in history showing the benefits of investment in science and technology to the progress of a civilisation, current leaders in the West should take note!
I half expected a book full of excessive gushing praise for the Arab scientists in this period in history but that does not do the writer justice. The book is very clear when the scientists miss the mark but provides sound reasoning for why we should be considering some of these people on a par with the well known greats from Greek and later European history.
Quite hard going at times with rereads needed occasionally but well worth it and necessary to give a sound understanding of not just the work of the scientists but their place in history as of that of their benefactors. Yet another example in history showing the benefits of investment in science and technology to the progress of a civilisation, current leaders in the West should take note!
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Pathfinders: The golden age of Arabic science, by Jim al-Khalili, Allen Lane, 2010, 336 ff.
The origins of western science
By Howard Jones
In 2002, in her book Ornament of the World, Maria Rosa Menocal gave us an insight into the debt we owe the Islamic civilization of al-Andalus, which from 750 to 1492 did so much to shape the western culture of the post-Renaissance. We tend to think of western science as essentially beginning with Copernicus, with a nod in the direction of some of the ancient Greek philosophers, such as Aristarchus for the heliocentric theory; or Leucippus and Democritus for the atomic theory. Bertrand Russell portrayed the Islamic scholars as doing little other than transcribe the scientific philosophy of ancient Greece. Menocal showed us how Christian, Jewish and Islamic scholars worked together in harmony not only to render ancient Greek ideas into Arabic, Hebrew and Latin, but also to create much that was new. Al-Khalili adds to this source of original knowledge.
Jim al-Khalili presents another side of this story, but his book focuses on the 9th century Abbasid caliphate of Abu Ja'far Abdullah al-Ma'mum that was centred on Baghdad. It was called Bayt al-Hikma, the House of Wisdom. Jim al-Khalili is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Surry and has already written one of the more accessible books on quantum physics. There were scholars in Baghdad in many of the scientific disciplines. The names of some of these have emerged in the west over recent decades, like al-Khwarizmi whose book, the title of which is abbreviated to al-Jebr, gave us our algebra; al-Biruni, who was a contemporary of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and debated the philosophy of science with him. Our word `alchemy' is from the Arabic `al-kimiya', `the art of transmutation'; and there are many other words in everyday use, such as alkali and algorithm, that have an Arabic origin.
Most of the other scholars whose work al-Khalili describes were quite new to me. There is something of the general history of the period in this book; but for the most part it focuses on cosmology, arithmetic, algebra, physics, philosophy and medicine in separate chapters, and the contribution of the Arabian scholars. We must remember that this is only two centuries after the life of The Prophet and the social system that his vision inaugurated. So the progress made in learning was considerable and rapid. Of course, the Islamic scholars were also busy translating Greek and Roman texts, but this book puts into perspective the derivative work with the original.
This is a fascinating book, full of scholarship and original historical material, and absolutely no symbolic mathematics to deter the reader. It puts the ancient scholars of Baghdad and their contribution to our heritage into a very human context, though perhaps we could have done with less personal material. There are several pages of Notes, a Glossary of scientists, and an Index at the end. This would make an excellent complement to the books by Menocal and that on the history of western ideas by Richard Tarnas.
Dr Howard A. Jones is the author of The Thoughtful Guide to God (2006) and The Tao of Holism (2008), both published by O Books of Winchester, U.K.; and The World as Spirit published by Fairhill Publishing, Whitland, West Wales, 2011.
The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
The Passion Of The Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View
The origins of western science
By Howard Jones
In 2002, in her book Ornament of the World, Maria Rosa Menocal gave us an insight into the debt we owe the Islamic civilization of al-Andalus, which from 750 to 1492 did so much to shape the western culture of the post-Renaissance. We tend to think of western science as essentially beginning with Copernicus, with a nod in the direction of some of the ancient Greek philosophers, such as Aristarchus for the heliocentric theory; or Leucippus and Democritus for the atomic theory. Bertrand Russell portrayed the Islamic scholars as doing little other than transcribe the scientific philosophy of ancient Greece. Menocal showed us how Christian, Jewish and Islamic scholars worked together in harmony not only to render ancient Greek ideas into Arabic, Hebrew and Latin, but also to create much that was new. Al-Khalili adds to this source of original knowledge.
Jim al-Khalili presents another side of this story, but his book focuses on the 9th century Abbasid caliphate of Abu Ja'far Abdullah al-Ma'mum that was centred on Baghdad. It was called Bayt al-Hikma, the House of Wisdom. Jim al-Khalili is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Surry and has already written one of the more accessible books on quantum physics. There were scholars in Baghdad in many of the scientific disciplines. The names of some of these have emerged in the west over recent decades, like al-Khwarizmi whose book, the title of which is abbreviated to al-Jebr, gave us our algebra; al-Biruni, who was a contemporary of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and debated the philosophy of science with him. Our word `alchemy' is from the Arabic `al-kimiya', `the art of transmutation'; and there are many other words in everyday use, such as alkali and algorithm, that have an Arabic origin.
Most of the other scholars whose work al-Khalili describes were quite new to me. There is something of the general history of the period in this book; but for the most part it focuses on cosmology, arithmetic, algebra, physics, philosophy and medicine in separate chapters, and the contribution of the Arabian scholars. We must remember that this is only two centuries after the life of The Prophet and the social system that his vision inaugurated. So the progress made in learning was considerable and rapid. Of course, the Islamic scholars were also busy translating Greek and Roman texts, but this book puts into perspective the derivative work with the original.
This is a fascinating book, full of scholarship and original historical material, and absolutely no symbolic mathematics to deter the reader. It puts the ancient scholars of Baghdad and their contribution to our heritage into a very human context, though perhaps we could have done with less personal material. There are several pages of Notes, a Glossary of scientists, and an Index at the end. This would make an excellent complement to the books by Menocal and that on the history of western ideas by Richard Tarnas.
Dr Howard A. Jones is the author of The Thoughtful Guide to God (2006) and The Tao of Holism (2008), both published by O Books of Winchester, U.K.; and The World as Spirit published by Fairhill Publishing, Whitland, West Wales, 2011.
The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
The Passion Of The Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View
Most Recent Customer Reviews
good but price?
The book itself is very good and informative, but why is the kindle edition £20 when the paperback is 6?
Published 4 months ago by Mr N. M. Bates
Impressive
This was bought as a present, I haven't read it myself yet. But I've read the reviews and it sounds very impressive.
Published 17 months ago by L. Maciver
Inspiring
An inspiring book and reminds us all of the importance of history and the scholarly works of the the Arabic scientific community that have been overlooked.
Published 19 months ago by Snake
Historical Interest
Some recent television documentaries have implied that without Arabic/Islamic science Europe would not have emerged from the dark ages. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Dr. Philip A. Shand
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