OBAMA DIRECTS NASA TO REACH OUT TO MUSLIMS

Charles Bolden, NASA administrator, was charged by Obama to: "One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering” (http://www.sfexaminer.com/politics/NASA_s-new-mission_-Building-ties-to-Muslim-world-97817909.html#ixzz0tcyLPn8p).

Since the Democrats and Obama are wondering how to save money, I thought I would decrease their budget by a few billion dollars by listing all of the Islamic contributions to science, math and engineering. This should save NASA and Bolden the time and money needed to rediscover all of Islam’s historic contributions.


ARAB CONTRIBUTIONS TO MATHEMATICS

• Developed solutions to quadratic equations – year 850.
• Introduced the first use of tangent function. Developed tables of sines and tangents at 15 minute intervals – 940-998.
• Gave numerical solutions to certain higher order equations – around 11th century.
• Discovered a geometrical solution of solving cubic equations – 1048-1122.
• Calculated the value of pi to sixteen decimal places – 1390-1450.
• After this time, the Arab world was closed to mathematics. Historical data taken from http://www.math.tamu.edu/~dallen/history/arab/arab.html.

If you wish to read an exaggerated view of Arab mathematics see http://worldupdates.tripod.com/newupdates10/id142.htm.

The Arabs claim they invented the ZERO. The number zero was invented in India and by the Maya. In India they used an empty space and later a dot for the zero symbol. This was around the third century BC. The Maya invented the number zero for their calendars in the third century AD. The number zero (0) was first used in the seventh century AD. The Arabs introduced the zero into Europe after 800 AD. The name zero comes from the Arabic word sifr
(http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/gen99/gen99535.htm). I guess maybe they did discover the number zero since they developed a word for it “sifr”.

ARAB CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCIENCE

The Islamic Golden Age occurred between the eighth and thirteenth centuries. There were advances in alchemy, astronomy, medicine etc. Individual items are too numerous to mention in such a short article, so I’ll just give a summary of what some of the scholars of our time think of the Arabic contributions. Bertrand Russell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A History of Western Philosophy) suggests that Islamic Science was not innovative but communicated ancient knowledge to medieval Europe. Others say that Muslim scientists did help in defining experimental science and a quantitative approach to experimental study and this is probably true. Huff says that they did not bring about a modern scientific revolution (Huff, Toby E. The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p87.)

The Islamic Arabs did make one notable contribution: Ibn al-Haytham was regarded as the "father of modern optics" for his influential Book of Optics written between 1011 and 1021 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Optics). The sixth ruler of the Fatmid Caliphate ordered him to control the flooding of the river Nile. He realized the impossibility of such a task and fearing for his life, he feigned madness. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest doing scientific studies.

ARAB CONTRIBUTIONS TO ENGINEERING

The Arab website (http://www.adc.org/index.php?id=247) defines the extent of their engineering contributions: “Concerning Arab contributions to engineering, one can look to the water wheel, cisterns, irrigation, water wells at fixed levels, and the water clock. In 860, the three sons of Musa ibn Shakir published the Book on Artifices, which described a hundred technical constructions.” Does anybody have use for a water clock lately?

SO WHY DID THE ISLAMIC GOLDEN AGE END IN THE 13TH CENTURY?

The Islam Awareness web page (http://www.islamawareness.net/Maths/science4.html) perhaps summarizes it best:

“1. Internal Pressures (From Inside the Empire): the End to Scientific Progress

With the end of the Abbasid Caliphate and the beginning of the Turkish Seljuk Caliphate in 1057 CE, the centralized power of the empire began to shatter. Religious differences resulted in splinter groups, charges of heresy, and assassinations. Aristotelian logic, adopted early on as a framework upon which to build science and philosophy, appeared to be undermining the beliefs of educated Muslims. Orthodox faith was in decline and skepticism on the rise.
The appeal made by theologian … al-Ghazali turned the religious tide back to orthodox (traditional) belief. In a masterful philosophical argument, most clearly stated in his book, The Destruction of Philosophy, al-Ghazali declared reason and all its works to be bankrupt. Experience and the reason that grew out of it were not to be trusted; they could say nothing meaningful about the reality of Allah. Only direct intuition of God led to worthwhile knowledge. Philosophy was a snare, leading the unwary to the pits of Hell. By the time of his death in 1111, free scientific investigation and philosophical and religious toleration were phenomena of the past. Schools limited their teaching to theology (religion and the nature of God). Scientific progress came to a halt.

2. External Pressures (From Without)

During this same period, the European Crusades (1097-1291) weakened the Islamic Empires' powers from without. Cordoba fell to Spanish Christians in 1236. When the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1256 the Islamic Empire never recovered. Trade routes became unsafe. Urban life broke down.
Individual communities drew in upon themselves in feudal isolation. Science and philosophy survived for a while in scattered pockets, but the golden age of Islamic culture was at an end.”

SO WHAT DID THE ARABS CONTRIBUTE AFTER THE ISLAMIC GOLDEN AGE?

In 2007, Nobel Prize recipient, physicist Steven Weinberg, stated that Islamic science never achieved much of importance since the twelfth century and quoted a Nature magazine (italics are my inclusion) survey that identified just three areas of science in which Islamic countries excel: desalination, falconry and camel reproduction” (http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2008/01/islamic-science.html). Try Googling for info on important advances in science by the Muslims since the Golden Age. I could only find some scant info for the last ten years. Islam had done its job and Obama should be proud.