GREEK SCIENCES
The modern age of progress began in Europe between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. This age is generally referred to as the Renaissance, which means revival, or rebirth. The Europeans associate this age of renaissance with Greece, a European country. They present the modern age of Europe as being, in fact, a revival of the ideas of Greek antiquity. But the truth is that Europe went through a period of awakening, rather than of rebirth or revival. And this was the first time in the history of Europe that this had happened. Now scholars have accepted that the Renaissance of the West is a direct gift from the Arabs. Briffault writes:
The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries of revolutionary theories. Science owes a great deal more to Arab culture. It owes its existence.
He goes on to say:
It is highly probable that but for the Arabs, modern industrial civilization would never have arisen at all.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1984) says that libraries formed important features of Islamic society. There were a number of institutions, which possessed more than one lakh books. Most of the classical literature that spurred the European Renaissance was obtained from translations of Arabic manuscripts in Muslim libraries.
To some, the achievement of the Arabs is at best their transmission of the Greek sciences to Europe through translations. Professor Hitti puts it in these words:
This stream (of Greek culture) was redirected into Europe by the Arabs in Spain and Sicily, whence it helped create the Renaissance of Europe.
Such an assertion is not, however, correct, for what the Arabs had received from Greek philosophers was not experimental knowledge but theoretical argument. In other words, what they received from the Greeks was not science but philosophy. Science, as we now understand it had never existed in Greece. Science, or knowledge based on experimentation, is the invention of the Muslims. It was the Muslims who first attained to knowledge through observation, and then communicated it to other nations, particularly those situated in Europe.
Bertrand Russell has rightly said:
Science, ever since the time of the Arabs, has had two functions: (1) to enable us to know things and (2) to enable us to do things. The Greeks, with the exception of Archimedes, were only interested in the first of these ... interest in the practical uses of science came first through superstition and magic.
He goes on to say:
To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives’ mouths.
Citing further examples of this nature, Russell observes that Aristotle made many assertions about things without ever observing them, and that his adherents continued to repeat them without putting them to the test of observation.
It is essential for scientists to observe and experiment on things in depth to have a correct knowledge of their nature. But an atmosphere conducive to such procedures did not exist among the Greeks or in other ancient nations. Because objects other than God had sacredness attributed to them, they developed an aura of mystery and became sacrosanct in the eyes of the peoples. This resulted in magic, superstition and the worship of non-gods becoming widely prevalent.
These grave misconceptions stood in the way of scientific enquiry into the nature of things. When people believe that events take place by magic, or that natural phenomena have divine properties of a mystical nature, no thinking can develop which will lead to research on the nature of these things. In such an atmosphere, it is but natural that such a mentality will develop as will grovel to magic and superstition.
The Arabs of ancient times had similarly been held in thrall by superstition. For them too, as in other nations, it had become a mental block. But when an intellectual revolution was brought about amongst them by Islam, this mental block very soon evaporated. Now they began to look at things as they were, whereas prior to this revolution they had viewed the same objects as sacred and mysterious. It is this intellectual revolution, which produced among Arabs scientific thinking for the first time in human history. By developing this line of thought, they became the giver people; they gave to the whole world what in modern times, is called science.
