ISLAM’S CONTRIBUTION TO MODERN SCIENCE

This flood of scientific progress entered Europe and culminated in the modern scientific age. Dr. Donald Campbell, a reputed British scientist in his book ‘Arabian Medicine and its Influence on the Middle Ages’ writes: “When Europe was lying torpid in the depth of intellectual obscurity and gloom in the dark ages, culture and civilization were spread in the Islamic States under the high patronage of the Caliphs of Baghdad and Cordova, and at a time, when the Barons and Ladies of Medieval Europe could not even sign their names, almost every adolescent boy and girl in Islam could read and write freely and with ease.” An article in The Guardian dated February, 2010 begins with these insightful words: (…..) Science is the most universal of human activities. But the means to facilitating scientific advances have always been dictated by culture, political will and economic wealth. What is only now becoming clear (to many in the west) is that during the dark ages of medieval Europe, incredible scientific advances were made in the Muslim world. Geniuses in Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus and Cordoba took on the scholarly works of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, India and China, developing what we would call “modern” science. The Quran lays great emphasis on acquisition of knowledge that is based on observation, experiment and the inferences drawn from them. In fact, the faith based upon discovery is given a status much higher than faith based upon tradition. With its unambiguous segregation of the Creator from the created, Islam made the entire universe an object of investigation. Fuelled by the zeal to conquer nature, the chief subjects that excited the interest and exercised the ingenuity of the Arabian scholars were astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. The practical phases of all these subjects were given particular attention. Mathematics It is well-known that the so-called Arabian numerals date from this period. The revolutionary effect of these characters, as applied The Quran lays great emphasis on acquisition of knowledge that is based on observation, experiment and the inferences drawn from them. In fact, the faith based upon discovery is given a status much higher than faith based upon tradition.