PREFACE

Preface ~ 8 ~ Thus began a new era of freedom to investigate nature. The slow, thousand-year process of maturation finally culminated (towards the end at an ever-accelerating pace) in modern science and technology. Modern science is wholly the gift of the Islamic revolution – directly in its initial stages, and indirectly in its later stages. This truth has been generally acknowledged in one way or another. A number of books which have come out in modern times, with titles like The Scientific Achievement of the Arabs, or The Muslim Contribution to Civilization, testify to its general acceptance. Scholars are in agreement that modern industrial progress owes its existence to Arabo-Muslim influences. A. Humboldt writes: “It is the Arabs who should be regarded as the real founders of physics.”1 Philip Hitti writes in his book, History of the Arabs (1970): “No people in the Middle Ages contributed to human progress so much as did the Arabians and the Arabic-speaking peoples.”2