Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science
| Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Roshdi Rashed |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Publication date | May 1996 |
| ISBN | 0415020638 |
| OCLC Number | 185762373 |
| Dewey Decimal | 509/.17/4927 21 |
| LC Classification | Q127.A5 E53 2000 |
The Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science is a three-volume encyclopedia covering the history of Arabic contributions to science, mathematics and technology which had a marked influence on the Middle Ages in Europe. It is written by internationally recognized experts in the field and edited by Roshdi Rashed in collaboration with Régis Morelon.[1]
Volume one covers "Astronomy--Theoretical and applied". Volume two covers "Mathematics and the Physical Sciences". Volume three covers "Technology, Alchemy, and the Life Sciences".
Contents |
[edit] Reviews
Len Berggren (author of Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam) writes in his review:[1]
"Although many able authors have contributed valuable articles, the work as a whole is flawed, to such an extent that one hesitates to recommend it as a general reference on the subject for non-specialists [because of the] virtual exiling of a series of recent authors and their pertinent works. [...] While oversight and carelessness could still account for the above lapses, the situation becomes more serious when one turns to the editor's own account of the history of Diophantine equations and finds that there is no reference to Sesiano's English translation of the Arabic text of the lost Greek books of Diophantus' Arithmetica. The editor's own French translation is, of course, cited, but there is no citation, in a work clearly aimed at an English readership, of an excellent English translation of a key source. Nor is there, in the editor's treatment of combinatorial problems in Islamic mathematics, any reference to the extensive work of A. Djebbar on the history of this topic in Andalusia and the Maghreb. This is, given the editor's known propensity for selective citation, hardly surprising [...] Specialists will, of course, know what's going on and will not be fooled, but encyclopedias are not written for them, and a policy of systematic exclusion of the works of certain authors ill serves the readers for whom encyclopedias are intended."
[edit] Contributors
A partial list of contributors include:
- Volume 1
- R. Morelon and George Saliba (Arabic astronomy)
- David A. King (astronomy in Islamic society)
- Edward Stewart Kennedy (mathematical geography)
- J. Vernet and J. Samsó (Arabic science in Andalusia)
- H. Grosset-Grange (Arabic nautical sciences)
- Volume 2
- A. S. Saidan (numeration and arithmetic)
- Boris A. Rosenfeld and A. P. Yushkevich (geometry)
- J.-C. Chabrier and M. Rozhanskaya (music and statics)
- M.-Th. Debarnot (trigonometry, algebra)
- Roshdi Rashed (geometrical optics)
- G. Russell (physiological optics)
- Volume 3
- Donald Routledge Hill (engineering)
- A. Miquel (geography)
- Toufic Fahd (botany and agriculture)
- G. Anawati (Arabic alchemy)
- E. Savage-Smith (medicine)
- F. Micheau (scientific institutions in the medieval Near East)
- J. Jolivet (classifications of the sciences)
- M. Mahdi (historiography)
- B. Goldstein (heritage of Arabic science in Hebrew)
- H. Hugonnard-Roche, A. Allard, D. Lindberg, R. Halleux, and D. Jacquart (Western reception of various Arabic sciences)
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- J. L. Berggren. "Reviewed work(s): Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science by Roshdi Rashed". Journal of the American Oriental Society. Vol. 120, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 2000), pp. 282-283.
- Sonja Brentjes. "Reviewed work(s): Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science by Roshdi Rashed". Technology and Culture. Vol. 40, No. 2 (Apr., 1999), pp. 399-401.
- Charles Burnett. "Reviewed work(s): Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science by Roshdi Rashed; Régis Morelon". The British Journal for the History of Science. Vol. 31, No. 1 (Mar., 1998), pp. 72-73.
