Islamic culture and European Renaissance

Dear forumers, I'd like to know more about islamic cultural influence on the  European Renaissance. As I learnt from our history books (Chinese though) that the influence is very strong. Just to name a few, Medicine came from the name of Avin cina. Algebra came from Al Jabr, Algorithm came from Al hworazmi etc. However, in one discussion on cartoon thing one of our knowledgable friend Maju wrote the following:

"Most of Renaissance influences came from Byzantium. There the only role that Islam played was that of scaring the refugees westward.

There were other points of contact but let's not exaggerate. "

So I decided to open this thread, Can you share your knowledge on this? Thanks.

Not long ago, googling for another research, I found this:

http://www.columbia.edu/~gas1/project/visions/visions.html

I don't agree totally with the author, but it worth reading.

I disagree a lot with you.

Just a sample:

Algebra, Optics and Chemistry were not invented by the Arabs. They existed before. Ancient mesopotamians knew algebric algorithms for solving first and second grade equations. The foundations of Optics were set by greek mathematicians (Euclid, Ptolemy, Hero) and "Chemistry" probably derives from the greek "chemeia".

Arabs and other muslim peoples developed a lot the sciences they got from previous civilizations but they never ignited a scientific revolution comparable with the European one (Copernic, Galilei, Kepler, Newton).

Certainly, during the Crusades and many other different points of interaction, Europeans took a lot from Muslims, such as gunpowder, compass etc., and all those knowledge learned had been a pioneer towards the European Renaissance of the future.So, the effect of Islamic world in the Renaissance can't be neglected.

The Muslim world, who were far away in areas like science,culture,philosophy and many other subjects once upon a time, later unfortunately missed the European Renaissance and couldn't proceed in its development, it is a sad fact either.

Too concise

All that is written above about the contribution of Islamic sciences is true. Nevertheless I would like to add that the transfer of knowledge occurred through universities of Arab Spain  which triggred the renaissance in Europe.

http://web.umr.edu/~msaumr/reference/articles/science/contri bution.html

Islamic civilisation has advanced sciences quite a bit. It was in no way 'just a preserver'.

Western orientalists argued for centuries that ancient Greeks, invented everything, partly because they learned about those things from Greek sources, and partly because they were desperate to 'prove' 'Western' superiority. This attitude is still alive in the West.

Ancient Greeks have indeed advanced the sciences, but they have taken a vast amount of knowledge from older civilisations, particularly Egypt. Same thing with Islam, it has taken a lot from the Greeks and Persia (and others), but it also added its own contribution on top.

One very important contribution is the use of experimentation by Islamic scientists. Ancient Greeks considered experiments lowly. Physical work was for slaves, whereas philosophers were just thinkers. Islamic scientists actually conducted experiments to test their theories. That is a very important step towards modern scientific method.

Many of Islamic (or Chinese, for that matter) contributions are simply not known by Western historians. For instance, a friend of mine has this history of science book, a big, shiny, new reference book from a respectable source. I was looking at it and randomly I came across the claim that the circulation of blood was discovered by Harvey, in the 17th century (or was it 18th?). But I know that it was being taught in Syrian medrassas in the 11th century...

Islamic countries (or China) do not have the academic capabilities of the West, they don't know their own history that well. This may change in time. Until that time, take Western claims of 'discovery' with a pinch of salt.

I have to say that: first your post is not strictly on topic and second that your statement that there was no experimental science in hellenistic times is simply false. I might recommend you to read the book of a Italian scientist and scholar, Lucio Russo, The Forgotten Revolution, How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why it Had to Be Reborn:

The "philosophers", both ancient and modern, generally don't perform experiments, so you are searching in the wrong place

Were there "scientists" in the modern sense of the term in ancient times? Lucio Russo, in his cited book, brings a huge documentation in support of his statement that the science, as we call it also today, was born in hellenistic world, more or less in 300 B.C. and it ended a first time with the fall of the last hellenistic kingdoms, more ore less in 0 B.C.

I can't sum up Russo's book now, you have to read it if you are interested in this matter .

Surely his thesis is controversial and not generally full accepted yet, but the simple statement that there was some kind of experimental science in hellenistic world is far less controversial.

Nota bene: when we talk of hellenistic world the term "hellenistic" is used in a cultural not ethnic sense. There were "hellenistic" scientists from all over hellenistic kingdoms and from any ethnical group.

Finally this is a very short and incomplete list of hellenistic scientists well known to have performed some kind of experiments: Herophilus and Erasistratus in medicine, Archimedes, Hipparchus and Ctesibius in Phisics, Hero in Optics.