The 'first true scientist'

[n2doc]

By Professor Jim Al-Khalili
University of Surrey


Isaac Newton is, as most will agree, the greatest physicist of all time.
At the very least, he is the undisputed father of modern optics, or so we are told at school where our textbooks abound with his famous experiments with lenses and prisms, his study of the nature of light and its reflection, and the refraction and decomposition of light into the colours of the rainbow.
Yet, the truth is rather greyer; and I feel it important to point out that, certainly in the field of optics, Newton himself stood on the shoulders of a giant who lived 700 years earlier.
For, without doubt, another great physicist, who is worthy of ranking up alongside Newton, is an Iraqi scientist born in AD 965 who went by the name of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham.
Most people in the West will never have even heard of him.
As a physicist myself, I am quite in awe of this man's contribution to my field, but I was fortunate enough to have recently been given the opportunity to dig a little into his life and work through my recent filming of a three-part BBC Four series on medieval Islamic scientists.

more:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7810846.stm

[Xipe Totec]

1. They guy who discovered oysters are edible n/t

[Xipe Totec]

2. On a more serious note, I knew of Avicenna

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna

and Averroes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroes

Then again, I was schooled in Mexico.

[cpamomfromtexas]

Glad you posted this

I'm preparing lesson plans for a day camp for about 300 boys in June and this will help.

[Catshrink]

3. I'm interested in learning more about Islamic chemistry.

and I look forward to seeing this program. Any idea when it will air in the US? It says Jan 5, 12, & 19th in the UK.

[Boojatta]

7. Is Newtonian physics a branch of Christian science?

[Catshrink]

9. Hmmm

Did I express myself incorrectly? I guess I should have said I'm interested in the contributions of Islamic scientists to the field of chemistry.

I'd hate to think of "Christian Science." Makes me think of creation "science" or "intelligent" design.

[TechBear_Seattle]

18. "Christian Science" makes me think of medical quackery

"Your appendix isn't really going to burst; you are just a sinner. Repent, and God will miraculously heal you."

[HeresyLives]

4. Isaac Newton is the father of

western science, but many more were before him in India, China and the Middle East.

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. Well, I think Galileo was, wasn't he? Though your point is valid.

[HeresyLives]

8. Or Giordano Bruno.

It depends on the criteria you use. The honour is usually given to Newton because of Principia Mathematica and the influence it had.

Bruno was burned at the stake, and Galileo was put under house arrest.

[Joe Chi Minh]

10. I didn't think Bruno's stature as a theoretical physicist begins to compare

with Galileo's.

The Physics section under "Galileo Galilei" in Wikipedia summarises the matter in its opening words:

"Galileo's theoretical and experimental work on the motions of bodies, along with the largely independent work of Kepler and René Descartes, was a precursor of the classical mechanics developed by Sir Isaac Newton."

Here is a more pertinent and succinct article:

http://www.lucidcafe.com/lucidcafe/library/96feb/galileo.html

[HeresyLives]

11. None of them were 'theoretical physicists'

:rofl:

Why not Copernicus while you're at it?

We are discussing the earliest beginnings of western science and thought, which is not remotely comparable to today.

I'm particularly fond of Vanini myself, but he doesn't compare with Darwin, and certainly not with present day evolutionists.

And all of them, in whatever field, stood on the shoulders of earlier ME and Eastern scientists.

Honor all of them for what they did to advance human reason, but there's no need to get into a points contest over it. They were all brilliant in their time, and we should be grateful for every one of them.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[HeresyLives]

14. I'm sorry, that's just absurd.

Honor all early scientists, and stop trying to 'rate' them.

This isn't some TV show.

[Joe Chi Minh]

22. Ah.. I should have heeded your avatar. A secular fundamentalist. Keep things r-e-e-el simple.

[HeresyLives]

23. Sorry, but there is no such thing.

[Joe Chi Minh]

25. There, there.... Of course, there isn't. Perhaps, your thought-processes are not

sophisticated enough to be categorised. That'll be it.

[HeresyLives]

26. I don't know what your problem is,

but you can take the chip on your shoulder somewhere else.

I like Galileo as well as the next person, but there is no need for an argument about Galileo vs Newton over a title already awarded.

Fundamentalism means a strict adherence to a text. There is no atheist text to adhere to. We are all different.

My avatar and slogan, like my name, simply means I support heresy. Heresy is what they called science and knowledge in the Dark Ages.

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[HeresyLives]

31. Um...I think you're lost buddy.

This is a thread in the SCIENCE forum, not the religious forum.

The OP said nothing about God or spiritual matters, he was posting about Isaac Newton and al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham.

How this has suddenly turned into some drivelly beliefs about Einstein and religion, and an attack on me, only you know.

[Orrex]

13. Bruno was burned for his rejection of the Trinity, not for his views on science

Not that the flames burn any cooler, but still...

[HeresyLives]

15. So says the church.

But a belief in multiple worlds was heresy as well.

[Orrex]

16. Sure, but

They had no reason to lie about why they were burning him. It's not as though some other agency was going to swoop in and take the church to task for suppressing science, after all.

If they say that they burned him for failing to embrace the Trinity (which is IMO a pretty weirdo doctrine in any case) then I say that's why they burned him.

[HeresyLives]

17. Well they claim Galileo

wasn't persecuted for 'science' or the pursuit of knowledge either.

Same with Vanini. He said men came from apes, and the church only promoted another view because they wanted power and money.

That's not the technicality they burned him on though - after cutting out his tongue.

[eppur_se_muova]

20. Newton was turned into a cookie. nt

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. Saw a fascinating series on Light on UK TV almost a year ago now, I suppose,

in which al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham figured prominently.

[hunter]

19. Isaac Newton was a very odd duck...

Isaac Newton's occult studies -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton's_occult_studies

I don't doubt that our understanding and definition of science is still evolving, and that there are things about science today that will be seen as hocus-pocus-woo-woo by scientists of the future.

Humans have notorious difficulty seeing beyond their core world-views.

[Joe Chi Minh]

21. Absolutely. I think Newton was into alchemy.

[HeresyLives]

24. As compared to who?

Everyone has their quirks and foibles, their hobbies and hobby horses. No one is 'normal.'

[scubadude]

27. So we can infer that Newton knew of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham's studies?

nt

[HeresyLives]

28. Well he did say

'If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants,' so he was certainly aware of past work in his field

[scubadude]

29. Yes, that he did say.

I recently made a trip to the Oriental Institute in Chicago. It has a fabulous collection of artifacts dating from the dawn of mankind's invention of mathematics and written language. Of course most of the objects were collected in the near east. The last exhibit as you wind your way through the museum is of the destruction that we are responsible for in Iraq. Sandbags made for US fortifications literally filled with the historical remains of ancient archaeological sites. The disgusting results of an unjust war waged on the birthplace the means by which Newton and all of us stand on the shoulders of giants.

There is no doubt that Arab scholars were way ahead of their European counterparts early on. I once held in my hands an Arabian astronomical instrument marked out in Latitude and Longitude. It was made centuries before Europeans discovered the earth was round...

Scuba

[NNadir]

32. He was primarily speaking of Archimedes, who was most likely smarter than Newton.

Much of Archimedes work was lost, but many surviving methods of his anticipate calculus.

I would bet that shoulder to shoulder, Archimedes was the greatest scientist of all time.

[HeresyLives]

33. We don't know that.

In fact there's a great deal of evidence that Newton was fully aware of what was coming from China, India and the ME.

Greeks were, in fact, late-comers.

[NNadir]

34. What "evidence" are you talking about?

It is well known that Newton could speak and read greek, since he annotated works in Greek as part of his other obsession, religion.

http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/prism.php?id=83&qu=yahuda*&qt=3&sr=26

There is no evidence on the other hand that he spoke either Chinese, Sanskrit, or Arabic, although all European mathematicians owed their access to Greek mathematics to Arabic scholars - who were aware of Greek work, including the work of Archimedes.

Gauss is said to have remarked that the three greatest mathematicians were Archimedes, Newton and Eisenstein: http://www.maa.org/reviews/archim.html

Indian mathematicians made many great contributions to mathematics in antiquity, as did I'm sure some Chinese, but there is no evidence of a Archimedes. I note that when Ramanujan wanted to find access to the mathematical world of letters, he wrote to Hardy at Oxford.

[HeresyLives]

35. There were many scientists

and inventors in the world before Newton, and before the Greeks. It's just that western 'history classes' start with Greece, and ignore anything previous to that.

Translation wasn't difficult. ME scholars translated many things in many languages.

Ramanujan wasn't exactly a worldly guy.