Islamic Contributions to Western Thought


BaalChatzaf

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While the people in Europe were covered mostly with shit

Ba'al Chatzaf

You have no data to support this shit.

--Brant

my ancestors were mostly covered in fur (I have photographs)

Most of Aristotle's work had been lost to Europeans until they were recovered from the scholars in the Muslim domains.

When Islam conquered Byzantium, the Muslim scholars learned about Aristotle and co-opted his work to support the principle of Islam. Jews did it to. R. Moshe ben Miamon wrote "Guide to the Perplexed" to justify Judaism and a century later Aquinas did the same to justify Catholicism. All this was made possible by the Muslim scholars (particularly those in Persia) who "rescued" Aristotle and others when the Eastern Roman Empire disintegrated.

As for Muslim or "Arabic" (that was their primary language because the Q'ran and Hadith were in Arabic) scholars they had a brilliant period until their light went out (sometime in our 13 th century). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_science

If it were not for Muslim scholarship (to which Jews made a substantial contribution) there would have been no Renaissance in Europe.

There was a 500 year period in Islamic history when Muslims did more than strap on explosives (so to speak) and chop off heads. Among other things they saved the best that Greece had to offer and invented a lot of new stuff. (I should mention that during the time of the Gupta dynasty in India, the Indian scholars were making great contributions which diffused into the Islamic and western domains. We got our positional notation for numbers from India by way of Islam)

Our Ms. Rand paid very little attention to that.

I, on the other hand, did pay attention. Since I am a mathematician first and anything else second, I am very well aware of the Islamic contribution to my trade. I was and am saddened by the intellectual decline in the Islamic world which started when al Ghazali trashed the philosophers and the logicians. After this negative reaction to ideas that originated in Greece (mostly) the lights started to go out in the Islamic domain and they have been dimmed since.

P.S. to MSK. Would you please move this posting to a new thread and entitle it Islamic contributions to western thought.

Thank you kindly.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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While the people in Europe were covered mostly with shit

Ba'al Chatzaf

You have no data to support this shit.

--Brant

my ancestors were mostly covered in fur (I have photographs)

Most of Aristotle's work had been lost to Europeans until they were recovered from the scholars in the Muslim domains.

When Islam conquered Byzantium, the Muslim scholars learned about Aristotle and co-opted his work to support the principle of Islam. Jews did it to. R. Moshe ben Miamon wrote "Guide to the Perplexed" to justify Judaism and a century later Aquinas did the same to justify Catholicism. All this was made possible by the Muslim scholars (particularly those in Persia) who "rescued" Aristotle and others when the Eastern Roman Empire disintegrated.

As for Muslim or "Arabic" (that was their primary language because the Q'ran and Hadith were in Arabic) scholars they had a brilliant period until their light went out (sometime in our 13 th century). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_science

If it were not for Muslim scholarship (to which Jews made a substantial contribution) there would have been no Renaissance in Europe.

There was a 500 year period in Islamic history when Muslims did more than strap on explosives (so to speak) and chop off heads. Among other things they saved the best that Greece had to offer and invented a lot of new stuff. (I should mention that during the time of the Gupta dynasty in India, the Indian scholars were making great contributions which diffused into the Islamic and western domains. We got our positional notation for numbers from India by way of Islam)

Our Ms. Rand paid very little attention to that.

I, on the other hand, did pay attention. Since I am a mathematician first and anything else second, I am very well aware of the Islamic contribution to my trade. I was and am saddened by the intellectual decline in the Islamic world which started when al Ghazali trashed the philosophers and the logicians. After this negative reaction to ideas that originated in Greece (mostly) the lights started to go out in the Islamic domain and they have been dimmed since.

P.S. to MSK. Would you please move this posting to a new thread and entitle it Islamic contributions to western thought.

Thank you kindly.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Well said, Ba'al.

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Interesting, but who our ancestors really were were individuals allowed to thrive. Some of them were, as you point out, Muslims. Those not allowed to thrive were the ancestors--rather near and very far--of today's Arab Muslims. The Persians are in a terrible ambiguous situation and extremely dangerous to all and sundry consequently. The rise of the West co-ops all the productive and most of the moral good in the world regardless of being eaten up somewhat by internal contradictions and even a bloody past. Even the irredemably evil Hitler couldn't stop this and the Muslims will fail too; it's called progress. The war on the Jews is the war on progress. The progress will continue even if the Jews are wiped out to the shame of those who could have prevented such a calamity, some of them Jews.

--Brant

Iran, not the Muslim religion, is Israel's greatest existential threat and the greatest remaining threat to Israel is Israel itself--the Muslim religion is Israel's greatest ally for it is the religion of impotence, the two main factions of which would rather tear out the throat of the other than make war on Israel--the war on Israel by the Arabs is just frosting on the cake of conflict (Hitler lite) and they'd soon stop eating the frosting if there were no cake under it, but if you can't produce you mooch or fight or expire totally as walking, talking whatevers, aka depression even suicide (this is why Hamas fights Israel--it has no cake at all--inside it is all frosting--Hamas is secular at the core--and it's frosting fighting frosting only Israel ain't actually frosting [it's progress]--and Hamas will soon cease to exist thanks to adult-onset diabetes)

Progress is the (rational) religion of the West with a Judea-Christian overlay for morality--if the--or an--Objectivist (secular) ethics displaces it it will still be the default reset if some nutjobs go too far and turn political-social-economic rationality into gross insanity--and irrationality or rationalization is called "reason"

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Forget Aristotle and the Greeks... it was the astrolabe. Perhaps a copy of the ancient "clock of Geminos" or the "Antikythera device" or just based on them, the pocket astrolabe was a wonder to Europe. Polymaths disassembled originals and made their own. The astrolabe told the priest astronomers of the high Middle Ages that their Easter calendar was slipping...

Optics.

Ali ibn-Hasan (commonly called "Alhazan") on a Iraq 10,000 dinar note before the regime change

ali-hasan_new1.jpg

Iraqi half dinar celebrated the astrolabe

Iraq%20Half%20Dinar%201980.300dpi.jpg

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the irredemably evil Hitler

I never understood why people attribute such tremendous power to a doofus who was enabled by Hindenburg and Ludendorff.

Because he got the power. It doesn't matter how. Once he got it he got it more until there was no more power to get. Of course, his own stupidity brought him down. Along with the whole damn country.

--Brant

don't attack Russia

don't declare war on the United States (unless you want foreign aid)

don't don't retreat--ever (unless your armies are liabilities, for you soon won't have them)

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the irredemably evil Hitler

I never understood why people attribute such tremendous power to a doofus who was enabled by Hindenburg and Ludendorff.

Because he got the power. It doesn't matter how.

Huh? ... he was a broke nobody lifted from obscurity by Krupp and Thyssen.

"When interrogated in 1945 under Project Dustbin,11 Thyssen recalled that he was approached in 1923 by General Ludendorf at the time of French evacuation of the Ruhr. Shortly after this meeting Thyssen was introduced to Hitler and provided funds for the Nazis through General Ludendorf. "

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the irredemably evil Hitler

I never understood why people attribute such tremendous power to a doofus who was enabled by Hindenburg and Ludendorff.

Because he got the power. It doesn't matter how.

Huh? ... he was a broke nobody lifted from obscurity by Krupp and Thyssen.

Doesn't matter. To repeat myself. He could order 2 million men to invade Russia and did. That he couldn't do that ten years before is besides the point. You are talking about getting power and I'm talking about having power. Once he had X amount, courtesy of others, he took 5X too boot. Of course hoi polloi helped him and obeyed him as well as politicos and industrialists, but they all became as nothing in his hand. It was disowned power concentrated in him, but it was still power. The nature of power from the individual to the ruling collective is to become purely destructive.

--Brant

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the irredemably evil Hitler

I never understood why people attribute such tremendous power to a doofus who was enabled by Hindenburg and Ludendorff.

Because he got the power. It doesn't matter how.

Huh? ... he was a broke nobody lifted from obscurity by Krupp and Thyssen.

Doesn't matter... You are talking about getting power and I'm talking about having power.

Uh-huh. Cause and effect. Arguably, Hitler was created by English champagne socialists who backed Marx and Engels.

Engels's personality was one of a "gregarious", "bighearted", and "jovial man of outsize appetites", who was referred to by his son-in-law as "the great beheader of champagne bottles." His interests included poetry, fox hunting, and hosting regular Sunday parties for London's left-wing intelligentsia where, as one regular put it, "no one left before two or three in the morning." His stated personal motto was "take it easy", while "jollity" was listed as his favorite virtue. [Wikipedia]

Ludendorff and German industrialists were alarmed by revolutionary communists, so they bankrolled Hitler to hire thugs.

Under the leadership of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the KPD [Communist Party of Germany] was committed to a violent revolution in Germany, and during 1919 and 1920 attempts to seize control of the government continued. Germany's Social Democratic government, which had come to power after the fall of the Monarchy, was vehemently opposed to the KPD's idea of socialism. With the new regime terrified of a Bolshevik Revolution in Germany, Defense Minister Gustav Noske formed a series of anti-communist paramilitary groups, dubbed "Freikorps", out of demobilized World War I veterans. [Wikipedia]

Cause and effect...

3285246451_5473342186.jpg

Marx's monument and tomb, Highgate Cemetery, London

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Forget Aristotle and the Greeks... it was the astrolabe. Perhaps a copy of the ancient "clock of Geminos" or the "Antikythera device" or just based on them, the pocket astrolabe was a wonder to Europe. Polymaths disassembled originals and made their own. The astrolabe told the priest astronomers of the high Middle Ages that their Easter calendar was slipping...

Optics.

Ali ibn-Hasan (commonly called "Alhazan") on a Iraq 10,000 dinar note before the regime change

ali-hasan_new1.jpg

Iraqi half dinar celebrated the astrolabe

Iraq%20Half%20Dinar%201980.300dpi.jpg

Those were days, were they not? Al Hazan and all the inventions. They were the Children of Archimedes, (not Aristotle). Archimedes was killed by a Roman Legionare after the Romans took Syracusa (in Sicily). General Marsellus wanted to find Archimedes and bankroll him (rather than than take revenge on him) but the Legionare prevented that. Archimedes never founded a school and we had to wait until the 14 th and 15 th century in Europe before the glimmerings of science began to morph into the Renaissance.

You can read the sad story of what befell Archimedes in Plutarch's "Lives". In the article on Marsellus.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Ba'al your history needs some refinement. I agree with the big picture; everyone does. Your painting splotched a few brushstrokes. On another large canvas we would have to include other inputs to Europe at least as far away as India. Zero and the absolute negative both came from India. Admittedly, the Arabs transmitted the knowledge, but that does beg the question: why do societies flourish?

In the case of the Islamic world, first, they absorbed a huge Greek cultural milieu. Then, once established, various Islamic rulers were more - or less - open to learning, culture, ideas, and knowledge. Baghdad of Harun al-Rashid (786-809) could have been the paradigm, but the Umayyads of Spain (711 CE forward) also incorporated existing cultures. That inclusion is likely a driving engine for cultural prosperity. When the Jews were dispersed, many went to Spain where their Semitic and Carthaginian cousins had long been established. Come the Romans; come the Germans; come the Arabs. If everyone gets along, everyone does better.

Most of Aristotle's work had been lost to Europeans until they were recovered from the scholars in the Muslim domains.

When Islam conquered Byzantium, the Muslim scholars learned about Aristotle and co-opted his work to support the principle of Islam. Jews did it to. R. Moshe ben Miamon wrote "Guide to the Perplexed" to justify Judaism and a century later Aquinas did the same to justify Catholicism. All this was made possible by the Muslim scholars (particularly those in Persia) who "rescued" Aristotle and others when the Eastern Roman Empire disintegrated.

As for Muslim or "Arabic" (that was their primary language because the Q'ran and Hadith were in Arabic) scholars they had a brilliant period until their light went out (sometime in our 13 th century).

Constantinople fell in 1454. In the centuries before, Petrarch and Dante had been searching monasteries for ancient scrolls. When Petrarch found the Iliad, he wept because he knew what he had but he could not read it. So, Greek was re-imported to medieval western Europe, via scholars from Constantinople, having been rare to unknown from about the 500s CE.

BTW, as we know, the Romans established an eastern capital near the place of the old Greek city of Byzantium ("Puzantion" etc.). However, in Constantinople, they always called themselves Romans. The label "Byzantine" was slapped on the 17th-century Ottoman Empire by the French encyclopedists who sought to deny them a continuity of culture. Moreover, the philosophes supported the drive for independence by the former Wallachians and Dacians who now called themselves "Romanians." If you look for "Rum" (or with the circumflex Ru^m) you will find remnants of Rome in eastern Turkey as late at the 1300s CE. (Sultanate of Ru^m http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuk_Sultanate_of_Rûm). More important, though, Clinton R. Fox's essay, "What if anything is a Byzantine?" has been reproduced on several sites. http://www.romanity.org/htm/fox.01.en.what_if_anything_is_a_byzantine.01.htm

The point is that the Arabs had been absorbing Greek ideas from Syria (the Antiochenes) and Egypt (the Ptolemies) and even the Indo-Greeks of Baktria. In fact, the Greeks had an entrepot on the Arabian peninsula at the Red Sea. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periplus_of_the_Erythraean_Sea) Thus, it is no surprise that the Seven Voyages of Sinbad are only the Adventures of Odysseus retold.

As for Aristotle, his works were banned at first. (Condemnations of 1210-1277 in Wikipedia.) It took a lifetime for scholars to come around. Ayn Rand may have been precisely correct that the final inclusion of Aristotle into the medieval university did bring about the Renaissance. Allow me to suggest that it was not so much the actual texts and teachings, but the debates about them that spurred learning.

Rather than Thomas Aquinas, we should look to Adelard of Bath for bringing Greek learning into the West via the Arabs. (More on that perhaps later.)

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Allow me to suggest that it was not so much the actual texts and teachings, but the debates about them that spurred learning.

Same thing. Like religions per se, texts are inert. And teachers are only brokers of texts; there is only learning, not teaching. This statement is not literally true, of course; it is only teacher propaganda to lighten the teacher workload and responsibility by pushing as much off on the students as possible. It may be ironical that this leaves the teacher more time to teach more students or a psychotherapist like Nathaniel Branden in the 1970s to "treat" or "teach" scores of clients each week.

--Brant

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I don't think I have or have read one of his books. I believe one of his first was on individual rights. Since I was conversant on the subject and didn't have much money I decided not to pay it when I saw the high price tag. It's also why I didn't buy many of Szaz's books in spite of his brilliant analytics--too expensive and too much deduction sans real data. I avoided most of Hospers because of price, too. If you write for college students--Machan and Hospers--you do not write for me.

--Brant

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Ba'al your history needs some refinement. I agree with the big picture; everyone does. Your painting splotched a few brushstrokes. On another large canvas we would have to include other inputs to Europe at least as far away as India. Zero and the absolute negative both came from India. Admittedly, the Arabs transmitted the knowledge, but that does beg the question: why do societies flourish?

In the case of the Islamic world, first, they absorbed a huge Greek cultural milieu. Then, once established, various Islamic rulers were more - or less - open to learning, culture, ideas, and knowledge. Baghdad of Harun al-Rashid (786-809) could have been the paradigm, but the Umayyads of Spain (711 CE forward) also incorporated existing cultures. That inclusion is likely a driving engine for cultural prosperity. When the Jews were dispersed, many went to Spain where their Semitic and Carthaginian cousins had long been established. Come the Romans; come the Germans; come the Arabs. If everyone gets along, everyone does better.

Most of Aristotle's work had been lost to Europeans until they were recovered from the scholars in the Muslim domains.

When Islam conquered Byzantium, the Muslim scholars learned about Aristotle and co-opted his work to support the principle of Islam. Jews did it to. R. Moshe ben Miamon wrote "Guide to the Perplexed" to justify Judaism and a century later Aquinas did the same to justify Catholicism. All this was made possible by the Muslim scholars (particularly those in Persia) who "rescued" Aristotle and others when the Eastern Roman Empire disintegrated.

As for Muslim or "Arabic" (that was their primary language because the Q'ran and Hadith were in Arabic) scholars they had a brilliant period until their light went out (sometime in our 13 th century).

Constantinople fell in 1454. In the centuries before, Petrarch and Dante had been searching monasteries for ancient scrolls. When Petrarch found the Iliad, he wept because he knew what he had but he could not read it. So, Greek was re-imported to medieval western Europe, via scholars from Constantinople, having been rare to unknown from about the 500s CE.

BTW, as we know, the Romans established an eastern capital near the place of the old Greek city of Byzantium ("Puzantion" etc.). However, in Constantinople, they always called themselves Romans. The label "Byzantine" was slapped on the 17th-century Ottoman Empire by the French encyclopedists who sought to deny them a continuity of culture. Moreover, the philosophes supported the drive for independence by the former Wallachians and Dacians who now called themselves "Romanians." If you look for "Rum" (or with the circumflex Ru^m) you will find remnants of Rome in eastern Turkey as late at the 1300s CE. (Sultanate of Ru^m http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuk_Sultanate_of_Rûm). More important, though, Clinton R. Fox's essay, "What if anything is a Byzantine?" has been reproduced on several sites. http://www.romanity.org/htm/fox.01.en.what_if_anything_is_a_byzantine.01.htm

The point is that the Arabs had been absorbing Greek ideas from Syria (the Antiochenes) and Egypt (the Ptolemies) and even the Indo-Greeks of Baktria. In fact, the Greeks had an entrepot on the Arabian peninsula at the Red Sea. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periplus_of_the_Erythraean_Sea) Thus, it is no surprise that the Seven Voyages of Sinbad are only the Adventures of Odysseus retold.

As for Aristotle, his works were banned at first. (Condemnations of 1210-1277 in Wikipedia.) It took a lifetime for scholars to come around. Ayn Rand may have been precisely correct that the final inclusion of Aristotle into the medieval university did bring about the Renaissance. Allow me to suggest that it was not so much the actual texts and teachings, but the debates about them that spurred learning.

Rather than Thomas Aquinas, we should look to Adelard of Bath for bringing Greek learning into the West via the Arabs. (More on that perhaps later.)

I believed I mentioned the mathematics of the Gupta dynasty in India (it was a brilliant period). We got zero and positional numbers from them by way of the Islamic scholars.

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I believed I mentioned the mathematics of the Gupta dynasty in India (it was a brilliant period). We got zero and positional numbers from them by way of the Islamic scholars.

You did, indeed. I appreciate the departure from the Islamophobia that is so prevalent among conservatives. On that track, it is important to underscore true innovators such as Ibn Khaldun and Al-Hasan. The transmission of Greek texts was significant but was, after all, only a transmission; and ultimately, many of those same texts were later found in monasteries and other "lost" archives. If you read the Introduction to a Loeb Classic Library edition of Aristotle or Plato or Xenophon (or Caesar or Cicero), they tell you where they found the scrolls, and which ones they used for their edits.

Islam had its periods of xenophobia; and this is one of them. It was not always so in every time and place; and those times and places prospered. Also, it is fundamental to Islam to accept "people of the Book" i.e., Jews and Christians. That they had to pay a tax is secondary to me. It is better than losing your life for your beliefs, which was the norm among Christians in most times and most places. (The Puritans of Massachusetts finally had their fill of three Quaker missionaries and hanged them. (Boston Martyrs on Wikipedia.) )

As I have mentioned more than a few times, among the places where toleration paid dividends was Cairo 1600. Making Big Money in 1600: The Life and Times of Isma'il Ibn Taqiyya by Nellie Hanna is reviewed on my blog. It was pretty much an example of Hong Kong's "benign neglect." The sultan in Constantinople was far away. In any dispute the preferred course was for Jews to try Jews, Christians each other; and Muslims had four different schools of law to choose courts from. It was laissez-faire in a way that the "anarcho-objectivists" remain ignorant of.

But you have to dig down past the literal law and into the culture from which it grows. I have in mind an essay about the Cult of Ayn Rand called "Three Jews, One Opinion" a play on the old one-liner. So, as an offshoot of Abrahamic silliness, the problem with Islam is not so much the Book, but the people who read it. ... but you could say that about Christians... and (hey!) Objectivists....

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