ISLAM: THE LIBERATOR OF THE MIND

~ 69 ~ These brief references are actually very misleading. For example, the saying of the earliest known philosopher, Thales, “All is water,” would appear to be a scientific sentence. But when taken as a whole-”All is water, and the world is full of gods,”30 it assumes a superstitious character. (Thales was a philosopher who lived in the sixth century B.C. None of his writings or contemporary source materials survive. His name is included in the canon of the legendary seven wise men.) The truth is that for both Greeks and Romans, there was only one barrier obstructing the path of science, and that was their polytheistic thinking. This indeed was what had robbed them of the realistic bent of mind, which is so essential to scientific investigation. There was, therefore, no question of their ever making any progress in this field. JOURNEY TOWARDS PROGRESS Many great scientific minds were born in ancient times in the European country of Greece, one of them being Archimedes, who made great strides in hydrostatics, even inventing a simple machine—the