My BBC4 series Science and Islam is being repeated. Episode Two (The Empire of Reason) was screened on Monday 26 July 2010 and is currently available on iPlayer.
Episode Three (The Power of Doubt) is on next Monday, 2 August. 2010.
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Dear Prof. Al-Khalili,
Thank you very much for your beautiful programme “Science and Islam”, but there are some mistakes in this movie.
First, writing something in Arabic does not proof any relation to Islam. Language is something like tools for stating something.
In the movie you tell the story in the way that audiences consider all these scientists as Arabic scientists, but we know that most of them are Iranian. The main problem is that at that era, Persian scientists had been written in Arabic in order to communicate with other peoples and transfer it to Europe.
We can talk about it more in future.
Thank you very much,
Best regards,
Arash
Thank you for your comment Arash. I take your point. But firstly, I am not trying to prove any relation between science and Islam beyond how the Islamic Empire at that time fostered a spirit of rational enquiry. Many of the scientists were Christian, Jewish and Sabian, as well as Muslim. As for the ‘Arabic scientists’ comment, I think you will find I never refer to them as Arabic. It is the science itself that is labelled as Arabic because, as you say, that was the language of the texts, even if the authors were Persian. Of course Khwarizmi, Ibn Sina, Biruni, Tusi etc were all Persian, but all wrote in Arabic and that is how historians refer to the science of this period. If you have a better suggestion for a name I would like to hear it.
Jim
Hi,
If we look at the countries that you mentioned; Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Iran, all are, somehow, the origin of the civilization and it is not strange that they follow up their enthusiasm for science.
At the beginning, Islam was only religion, but after Prophet Mohammad Islam gradually mixed up with politics and the result becomes something like “Islamic Renaissance” which lasts up to now.
I do not like to relate these scientific progresses to Islam; instead I would like to say this is the result of the interaction between different cultures. Before Islam, the cultural exchange was limited, but after that it covers from Spain, North Africa, Middle East and even India. For such a vast cultural interaction we should expect a huge development in science. And you mentioned it in your movie when you talked about the numeral system which is the outcomes of such interaction.
Islam facilitated the interaction.
Thanks,
Arash
For example we can mention burning the librarian books in Iran (Jundi-shapur) and Egypt after Islamic attack which shows that potentially Islam did not pay any attention to science at first interaction.
To call this programme “Science and Islam” I think was misleading.
There were people living under Islamic law who were Muslims and those who were not. Naming this “Islam and science” implies that Islam was a contributing factor to these scientific discoveries.
I would concede that after lots of war having an ultimate victor then brought peace, and from that peace came the ability for intelligent people to spend more time pondering their curiosities; but this peace could have come in many forms such as overall Jewish control, Christian control, Roman control, or just peace for the sake of peace. It was peace that helped bring about the environment to discover and not Islam itself.
For example, your account of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham describes someone who pondered the nature of light whilst being imprisoned for 10 years. It was his inquisitive mind, his intelligence, and his ability spend time thinking which lead him to his conclusions.
I protest simply because people use programmes like this in order to convince others they have proof that their religion is the right way for humanity to live and that we as a species make so much progress when we follow their religious doctrine; when the reality is that religion stifles any scientific progress which could possibly endanger its teachings such as the Heliocentric solar system, and even today people of creationist religions being taught that the scientific theory of the evolution of species through natural selection is false.
Criticism of the title over, I did thoroughly enjoy this programme. I also enjoyed your programmes on Chemistry and Chaos. I think you put across the subject material very well and choose fascinating subjects too.
I hope there will be many more!
Doing Magnificent Work
thanking you
Assalamu A’laikum Prof. Jim Al-Khalili
Your programmes are excellent, hope more is coming soon; infact when is the next series coming out.
Thanks
&
Assalamu A’laikum
Always hugely enlightening watching any of your programs.
Hi
I made some notes at the time of showing concerning the experiments to determine the diameter of the Earth. Tried to go through it with my son this w/e but unfortunately couldn’t fully remember your explanation. Searched the internet but couldn’t find any website that dealt with this method. Is there a link that would give access to your commentary for the series?
Regards
Mark