Metanexus: Views. 2002.11.04. 3605 words Today we begin a new series on Metanexus Online concerning the relationship between Islam, Science, and Contemporary Society. And where else to begin but with a bit of background history? Or, as today's columnist Hilldale Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin David Lindberg phrases it: "If we are to make any headway, we must begin by acquiring a basic understanding of the origins of the scientific tradition to which both medieval Islam and medieval Christendom contributed. The intellectual legacy of ancient Greece survived in the form of texts, handwritten books containing the accumulated learning of Greek antiquity. Included among these texts were the philosophical works of Plato and Aristotle (the latter occupying some 2500 packed pages in a leading modern translation, including coverage of such topics as cosmology, meteorology, matter theory, motion, light, sensation, psychology, and biological phenomena of all kinds); also works by the mathematician Euclid, the astronomer Ptolemy, the physician Galen, and others. These works make up the scientific portion of the 'classical tradition.'" And why is knowledge of this predominantly Greek, "classical tradition" so important? According to Lindberg "The most important point to be made about medieval Islamic and medieval Christian science is that both were imports--not indigenous to those two religious cultures, but introduced from outside. It is true that Christendom had access to a thin version of the classical tradition from the beginning, but that version was thin enough to justify interpreting the massive translation movement of the twelfth century as an act of importation. Yet it is crucial for us to understand that in both the Islamic and the Christian case the imported classical tradition was received not as a finished product but as a work in progress. Muslim and Christian scholars with an interest in the natural sciences accepted the basic framework and broad outlines of the classical scientific tradition as received and took, as their task, its assimilation, clarification, criticism, correction, and extension." Please read on further to find out about the implications of this assimilation, clarification, criticism, correction, and extension. Today's author, David Lindberg, is Hilldale Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin. He is past president of the History of Science Society and recipient of its Sarton Medal for lifetime scholarly achievement. He is author of half-a-dozen books, including The Beginnings of Western Science (1992), and editor of half-a-dozen more, including (with Ronald L. Numbers) God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science (1986); and (with Numbers) Science and the Christian Tradition: Twelve Case Histories (forthcoming 2003). -Stacey E. Ake =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Subject: Islam, Christendom, and Natural Science in the Middle Ages From: David Lindberg Email: The Classical Tradition I have been invited to address the relationship between Islam and the natural sciences during the Middle Ages, and to do so by comparing the Islamic experience with the (perhaps) analogous case of the natural sciences in medieval Christendom. I must acknowledge at the outset that I am a consumer, rather than a producer, of scholarship on medieval Islam. Medieval Christendom, on the other hand, is the area to which I have devoted more than forty years of scholarly effort. This inequality will explain various imbalances and disanalogies in the treatment of the two scientific traditions, below. If we are to make any headway, we must begin by acquiring a basic understanding of the origins of the scientific tradition to which both medieval Islam and medieval Christendom contributed. The intellectual legacy of ancient Greece survived in the form of texts, handwritten books containing the accumulated learning of Greek antiquity. Included among these texts were the philosophical works of Plato and Aristotle (the latter occupying some 2500 packed pages in a leading modern translation, including coverage of such topics as cosmology, meteorology, matter theory, motion, light, sensation, psychology, and biological phenomena of all kinds); also works by the mathematician Euclid, the astronomer Ptolemy, the physician Galen, and others. These works make up the scientific portion of the "classical tradition." Transmission to Islam By a slow process, beginning with the Asian campaign of Alexander the Great and continuing for about 900 years, the classical tradition was transmitted eastward into western and central Asia. The mechanisms of this diffusion were conquest, colonization, commerce, and (most importantly) persecution of Greek-speaking Christians who were the losers in a variety of theological battles and declared heretics. Several of these heretical groups (Nestorians were the most influential) fled eastward into Persia, bringing with them books, learning, and schools. The payoff of this diffusion, for our purposes, was the Hellenization of western and central Asian elites--the depositing of Greek language and learning in regions that were to be subsequently conquered by Islam. After Muhammad's death in 632, Islamic armies conquered the Hellenized regions described just above. The process of Hellenization was repeated, as Islamic elites became fascinated by Greek learning and sought to obtain it for themselves through translation. Translations were made by bilingual or trilingual people in many places and under a variety of circumstances, but the new capital of Baghdad was the major center of activity. There a translator's institute called the "House of Wisdom" was established, where Hunayn ibn Ishaq (a Nestorian Christian) and a crew of assistants turned an astonishing variety of Greek scientific and philosophical books into Arabic. By about the year 900, a relatively complete version of the classical scientific tradition was available in good Arabic translations. The Islamic Response How did Islam respond to the "foreign learning" (as it was frequently characterized) of the classical tradition? Islam had neither a centralized religious authority nor a centralized educational system, from which it follows that any kind of uniform or universal reaction was out of the question. The response depended, certainly, on the character of Islamic religion and theology and the broader culture in which they were situated. But it also depended on local circumstances--on political realities, patronage, the character and social standing of the Islamic elites who took an interest in the new books, the local climate of opinion, and much more. It appears that receptivity to the classical scientific tradition was strongest in the relatively secularized environment of several courts: Baghdad in the eighth and ninth centuries, where the _Abbasid dynasty ruled, Cordoba in the tenth century under the Umayyads, and Granada in the twelfth century under the Almohades. And finally, we must never forget that the classical tradition was a highly diverse body of texts, and not all of them elicited the same response. Several scholars have pointed to Islamic skepticism or hostility toward aspects of the classical tradition that threatened conservative Islamic belief. Al-Ghazali (d. 1111), for example, lashed out at the Neoplatonism of al-Farabi (d. 950) and Ibn Sina (d. 1037). But, of course, this example illustrates not only the hostility of al-Ghazali toward this aspect of the classical tradition, but also its approval by al-Farabi and Ibn Sina. The classical tradition in its Islamic incarnation met with a mixed reception--repudiated (or at least worried about) at one end of the spectrum, enthusiastically promoted at the other. The natural sciences were never institutionalized in Islam and were therefore heavily dependent on individual initiative. The practitioners included teachers, physicians, astrologers, mathematician-engineers, and muwaqqits (timekeepers in mosques); patronage, courtly or from a wealthy individual, could also be an important factor in the promotion of the sciences. Utility was also a consideration, for Islamic ideology offered little or no encouragement to the idea of knowledge for its own sake. It should come as no surprise, then, that the most important achievements of Islamic science were in medicine and the mathematical sciences (especially astronomy and its sibling, astrology). Islamic medicine was built on a mastery of the Greek medical tradition and the assimilation of its aims and much of its content. Galen was the principal source. However, the Galenic corpus did not constrain Islamic medical thought and practice, but rather provided a foundation on which a dynamic Islamic medical tradition could build. Medical practitioners produced a wide variety of original medical works, many of which were subsequently translated into Latin and powerfully shaped European medicine for centuries. The same may be said of the mathematical sciences, where the classical tradition provided the conceptual framework and defined the central problems and methodology to be employed in their solution. However, Islamic mathematicians carried Greek achievements well beyond their ancient Greek level. The greatest of the Islamic mathematical scientists was Ibn al-Haytham (d. ca. 1040), whose great optical text (in Latin translation) had an influential 400-year European career. Christian Europe would not produce a mathematician of equal quality before the 17th century. The period of Islamic preeminence in natural science endured for close to 500 years. But historians of Islamic science are generally agreed that it was in decline by the middle of the fourteenth century. There is less agreement on the causes. Among those frequently cited are the growth of conservative religious forces within Islam and a general decline in the fortunes of Islam, including loss of the prerequisites for a flourishing scientific enterprise--peace, prosperity, and patronage--owing to internecine warfare within and attack by Mongol armies in the east and by Christian armies in the west. The Natural Sciences in Christian Europe I believe that a useful comparison between the medieval Islamic and medieval Christian achievements in the natural sciences is impossible, given the current state of scholarship. Indeed, it may never be possible, given the complexity of the question, and I intend no such comparison in this essay. However, we need to recognize that Christendom offered two important advantages. (The successes of Islamic science suggest that Islam offered its own set of advantages, but the ones that I am about to describe were unique to Christendom.) First, Christian theology had developed within a culture already familiar (and to a considerable extent, comfortable) with the fruits of Greek philosophy. The classical tradition had been there from the beginning. When the natural sciences of the classical tradition presented themselves for approval, some of their conclusions were undoubtedly troubling; but their philosophical underpinnings and methodology were familiar, and the making of peace was accomplished without great difficulty. In short, they did not have the status of "foreign sciences," as they did in medieval Islam. Second, in the long run Christendom saw the development of an institution, the university, where the natural sciences were nurtured and protected--an advantage that Islamic science never enjoyed. The church fathers of the Patristic period had access only to a thin version of the classical tradition. Portions of this were problematic, as Tertullian's (ca. 160-ca. 220) tirade against it illustrates. But Tertullian's opinion was extreme, and the more typical attitude was a cautious willingness to borrow those portions of the classical tradition that could be made to serve theology and the church. St. Augustine (354-430) most influentially defined the proper Christian attitude when he pointed to the irrelevance of most of the classical tradition to the central concerns of Christendom, but countered with the acknowledgement that portions of that tradition (especially the natural sciences) were not only useful but positively indispensable. The classical tradition, in his influential formulation, could be made to serve as the handmaiden of theology and religion. It was not to be loved, but it could legitimately be used. And Augustine himself used it very substantially in his Literal Commentary on Genesis. Augustine's influential writings shaped attitudes toward the natural sciences during the intellectually perilous times of the early Middle Ages. The natural sciences were not heavily cultivated within the monastic tradition, but portions (botany and astronomy, for example) were available and were put to use when they could be made to serve practical or religious purposes. The writings of Cassiodorus in the sixth century, Isidore of Seville in the seventh, and the Venerable Bede in the eighth are good illustrations. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Christian Europe began to emerge from centuries of social and economic chaos, depopulation, deurbanization, and educational decline. Order and economic opportunity were gradually restored, and Europe was about to embark on a dramatic population explosion that would double, triple, or perhaps quadruple the European population within a 200-year period. Schools multiplied and expanded, literacy was on the rise, and educational opportunity was growing. The first university was founded at Bologna in the twelfth century; more followed in the thirteenth century (most prominently at Paris and Oxford), and serious scholarship was beginning to appear. Bits and pieces of the classical tradition had been translated from Greek to Latin over the centuries, but the total collection of such works constituted an exceedingly "thin" version of the classical scientific tradition, markedly inferior to the "thick" version available in contemporary Islam. In the tenth century, Gerbert (845-1003), a monk from Aurillac, made a pilgrimage across the Pyrenees to Muslim Spain, where he made contact with Islamic science. He returned to France as an apostle of the mathematical sciences, which he continued to promote all the way to the papacy (he died as Pope Sylvester II). News of the rich learning available in Islam continued to percolate into European cultural centers (the borders between Islam and Christendom were highly permeable), and in the twelfth century a full-fledged movement of translation got under way. Christian scholars, motivated by widely different goals and funded by a variety of patrons, found their way to cities such as Toledo in central Spain, learned Arabic if they didn't already know it, and began to translate both Greek originals and the Arabic works inspired by them from Arabic to Latin. Simultaneously, translation directly from the Greek was also undertaken. By about the year 1200, most of the Greek and Arabic scientific works available to us today (the thick version of the classical tradition) were available in Latin translations in the major European intellectual centers. The new translations constituted a deluge of new learning, overwhelming in breadth, depth, and complexity. The new books were, of course, of pagan authorship, written by the likes of Aristotle, Ptolemy, Galen, Ibn al-Haytham, Ibn Sina, and many more. And lurking within them were theologically dangerous teachings. Aristotle, for example, taught the eternity of the world, both past and future, portrayed a deterministic universe in which there was no room for miracles, cast doubt on the immortality of the individual soul, and taught that knowledge was to be gained only through experience and reason, thereby ruling out any possibility of divine revelation. Under the circumstances, we might expect the medieval church to have stamped out such pagan learning--the good with the bad. And there is a very durable myth that maintains that this is exactly what the church did. The truth, however, is otherwise. There were indeed local struggles, especially at Christendom's leading university, the University of Paris, where the writings of Aristotle were banned in 1210 and again in 1215; a famous condemnation of Aristotelian doctrines was also issued at Paris in 1270, greatly expanded in 1277. But these were fairly narrow in their ideological focus, applied only to a limited geographical region, and were only temporarily effective. Indeed, by 1255 Aristotelian philosophy had become the core of the Parisian curriculum. In the end, Christendom made peace with this newly acquired classical tradition. Dangerous doctrines promoted by Aristotle and his commentators could be repudiated or reinterpreted, and much of the rest was theologically neutral or benign. Technical treatises on medicine, the biological sciences, mathematics, astronomy, optics, meteorology, matter theory, and much more were superior to anything previously available in medieval Christendom on those subjects. They were methodologically sophisticated and convincingly argued, and they were judged too useful to be dismissed. These new classical sciences won a place in European intellectual life because their explanatory power made them indispensable. Who were the practitioners of these natural sciences? Literacy, of course, was a prerequisite. With rare exceptions, all would have received advanced education; and after the founding of the universities, that advanced education would have been a university education. Indeed, in the later Middle Ages most contributors to the natural sciences were university professors. Others belonged to religious orders--the Dominicans and Franciscans, for example. Many of these, too, were university professors. And a small number of practitioners could be found at court--royal, imperial, episcopal, or papal. What did the practitioners do? The primary function of those who worked in a university setting was teaching. And much of the research consisted of producing commentaries in which they expounded, criticized, or extended the texts that formed the classical scientific tradition. Critics of the Middle Ages have made great sport of this commentarial tradition. Although much of it was undoubtedly pedestrian (as is much modern science teaching), it also produced many remarkable theoretical achievements, as brilliant minds were turned loose on the ancient Greek, medieval Islamic, and the immediately preceding medieval Latin scientific traditions. Did they perform experiments? If the question is whether they engaged in the regular, controlled experimentation of the modern physical and biomedical sciences, the answer is, of course, negative. But they observed nature, sometimes with instruments or under artificially contrived conditions, and they were well aware that theoretical conclusions must be consistent with observational experience. Still, the major achievements were assimilation, critique, and dissemination of the inherited scientific traditions, and medieval scholars were surely correct in seeing these as the first orders of business. These are, it should be noted, also central functions of the scientific community in the twenty-first century. Did the Christian context in which medieval science was practiced make a difference? Yes. Christian theology did not furnish fundamental assumptions without which modern science could not have emerged, as some Christian apologists have maintained. Nor did it suppress productive scientific work, as critics have argued. It did provide a belief system and a set of values and priorities that influenced the practice of science and occasionally its theoretical conclusions--sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. The handmaiden status applied to the natural sciences by St. Augustine continued to play a role in the choice of research topics, if not in the theoretical conclusions that emerged from that research. In sciences such as cosmology, astrology, and psychology (the theory of the soul), which impinge on theological or world-view issues, Christian theology frequently shaped the investigation and sometimes dictated the answer. In more mathematical or technical disciplines, such as medicine, natural history, astronomy, optics, the science of motion, and meteorology, the Christian context often motivated the research but seldom influenced the conclusions reached. Conclusion The most important point to be made about medieval Islamic and medieval Christian science is that both were imports--not indigenous to those two religious cultures, but introduced from outside. It is true that Christendom had access to a thin version of the classical tradition from the beginning, but that version was thin enough to justify interpreting the massive translation movement of the twelfth century as an act of importation. Yet it is crucial for us to understand that in both the Islamic and the Christian case the imported classical tradition was received not as a finished product but as a work in progress. Muslim and Christian scholars with an interest in the natural sciences accepted the basic framework and broad outlines of the classical scientific tradition as received and took, as their task, its assimilation, clarification, criticism, correction, and extension. They were contributing members of a scholarly tradition that had a continuous history from Greek antiquity to at least the seventeenth century. The religious cultures within which they lived and worked cannot be credited as the ground or source from which their scientific achievements emerged (as apologists for both religions have frequently claimed). Rather, what those religions offered was a cultural and intellectual context within which scientific investigations rooted in the classical tradition could take place: sometimes nurtured, sometimes neglected or opposed, but in either case noticeably shaped by the institutions, values, and beliefs of that culture. Finally, we must never forget that the doing of science was always a human and a local event, influenced not merely by global forces of religion and ideology, but also by human interests and local culture and circumstance. The behavior of a specific Muslim scholar in eleventh century Cairo is no more indicative of a universal Islamic attitude toward the natural sciences than is the work of a particular Franciscan friar at the University of Paris in the thirteenth century representative of all medieval Christian science. This is not a plea for the abolition of generalizations (I have generalized with a vengeance, above) but for thoughtful generalization, grounded in an understanding of myriad individual events, situated in the real world of time and place. Suggestions for Additional Reading: Ferngren, Gary B. et al., eds. The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 2000. Chap. 46: David Lindberg, "Early Christian Attitudes toward Nature"; chap. 47: Alnoor Dhanani, "Islam"; and chap. 48: Lindberg, "Medieval Science and Religion." Grant, Edward. God and Reason in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Lindberg, David C. The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 500 B.C. to A. D. 1450. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), chaps. 7, 8, 10. Sabra, A. I. "The appropriation and Subsequent Naturalization of Greek Science in Medieval Islam: A Preliminary Statement," History of Science, 25 (1987), 223-43. von Grunebaum, G. E. Islam: Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1961), chap. 6: "Muslim World View and Muslim Science," pp. 111-26. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This publication is hosted by Metanexus Online . The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Metanexus or its sponsors. To comment on this message, go to the browser-based forum at the bottom of all postings in the magazine section of our web site. Metanexus welcomes submissions between 1000 to 3000 words of essays and book reviews that seek to explore and interpret science and religion in original and insightful ways for a general educated audience. Previous columns give a good indication of the topical range and tone for acceptable essays. 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