European science in the Middle Ages

Scientific activities were carried on throughout the Middle Ages in areas as diverse as astronomy, medicine, and mathematics. Whereas the ancient cultures of the world (i.e. those prior to the fall of Rome and the dawn of Islam) had developed many of the foundations of science, it was during the Middle Ages that the scientific method was born and science became a formal discipline separate from philosophy. The historical term "Middle Ages" developed within the context of European historiography. In this article it's scope is restricted to Western Europe, the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world.

In the Middle Ages the Byzantine Empire, which had inherited the sophisticated science, mathematics, and medicine of classical antiquity and the Hellenistic era, soon fell behind the achievements of Western Europe and the Islamic world. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the decline in knowledge of Greek, Christian Western Europe was cut off from an important source of ancient learning. However, a range of Christian clerics and scholars from Isidore and Bede to Buridan and Oresme maintained the spirit of rational inquiry which would later lead to Europe's taking the lead in science during the Scientific Revolution.

Western Europe

Science, and particularly geometry and astronomy, was linked directly to the divine for most medieval scholars. Since God created the universe after geometric and harmonic principles, to seek these principles was therefore to seek and worship God.

As Roman imperial authority effectively ended in the West during the 5th century, Western Europe entered the Middle Ages with great difficulties that affected the continent's intellectual production dramatically. Most classical scientific treatises of classical antiquity written in Greek were unavailable, leaving only simplified summaries and compilations. Nonetheless, Roman and early medieval scientific texts were read and studied, contributing to the understanding of nature as a coherent system functioning under divinely established laws that could be comprehended in the light of reason. This study continued through the Early Middle Ages, and with the Renaissance of the 12th century, interest in this study was revitalized through the translation of Greek and Arabic scientific texts. Scientific study further developed within the emerging medieval universities, where Greek texts were studied and elaborated, leading to new insights into the phenomena of the universe. These advances are virtually unknown to the lay public of today, partly because most theories advanced in medieval science are today obsolete, and partly because of the caricature of Middle Ages as a supposedly "Dark Age" which placed "the word of religious authorities over personal experience and rational activity."

Early Middle Ages (AD 476–1000)

See also: Medieval medicine and Medieval philosophy

In the ancient world, Greek had been the primary language of science. Even under the Roman Empire, Latin texts drew extensively on Greek work, some pre-Roman, some contemporary; while advanced scientific research and teaching continued to be carried on in the Hellenistic side of the empire, in Greek. Late Roman attempts to translate Greek writings into Latin had limited success.

As the knowledge of Greek declined during the transition to the Middle Ages, the Latin West found itself cut off from its Greek philosophical and scientific roots. Most scientific inquiry came to be based on information gleaned from sources which were often incomplete and posed serious problems of interpretation. Latin-speakers who wanted to learn about science only had access to books by such Roman writers as Calcidius, Macrobius, Martianus Capella, Boethius, Cassiodorus, and later Latin encyclopedists. Much had to be gleaned from non-scientific sources: Roman surveying manuals were read for what geometry was included.

Deurbanization reduced the scope of education and by the sixth century teaching and learning moved to monastic and cathedral schools, with the center of education being the study of the Bible. Education of the laity survived modestly in Italy, Spain, and the southern part of Gaul, where Roman influences were most long-lasting. In the seventh century, learning began to emerge in Ireland and the Celtic lands, where Latin was a foreign language and Latin texts were eagerly studied and taught.

In the Early Middle Ages, scientific study was concentrated at monasteries

The leading scholars of the early centuries were clergymen for whom the study of nature was but a small part of their interest. They lived in an atmosphere which provided little institutional support for the disinterested study of natural phenomena. The study of nature was pursued more for practical reasons than as an abstract inquiry: the need to care for the sick led to the study of medicine and of ancient texts on drugs, the need for monks to determine the proper time to pray led them to study the motion of the stars, the need to compute the date of Easter led them to study and teach rudimentary mathematics and the motions of the Sun and Moon. Modern readers may find it disconcerting that sometimes the same works discuss both the technical details of natural phenomena and their symbolic significance.

Around 800, Charles the Great, assisted by the English monk Alcuin of York, undertook what has become known as the Carolingian Renaissance, a program of cultural revitalization and educational reform. The chief scientific aspect of Charlemagne's educational reform concerned the study and teaching of astronomy, both as a practical art that clerics required to compute the date of Easter and as a theoretical discipline. From the year 787 on, decrees were issued recommending the restoration of old schools and the founding of new ones throughout the empire. Institutionally, these new schools were either under the responsibility of a monastery, a cathedral or a noble court.

The scientific work of the period after Charlemagne was not so much concerned with original investigation as it was with the active study and investigation of ancient Roman scientific texts. This investigation paved the way for the later effort of Western scholars to recover and translate ancient Greek texts in philosophy and the sciences.

High Middle Ages (AD 1000–1300)

The translation of Greek and Arabic works allowed the full development of Christian philosophy and the method of scholasticism

See also: Renaissance of the 12th century, Latin translations of the 12th century, and Medieval technology

Beginning around the 1050, European scholars built upon their existing knowledge by seeing out ancient learning in Greek and Arabic texts which they translated into Latin. They encountered a wide range of classical Greek texts, some of which had earlier been translated into Arabic, accompanied by commentaries and independent works by Islamic thinkers.

Gerard of Cremona is a good example: an Italian who came to Spain to copy a single text, he stayed on to translate some seventy works. His biography describes how he came to Toledo: "He was trained from childhood at centers of philosophical study and had come to a knowledge of all that was known to the Latins; but for love of the Almagest, which he could not find at all among the Latins, he went to Toledo; there, seeing the abundance of books in Arabic on every subject and regretting the poverty of the Latins in these things, he learned the Arabic language, in order to be able to translate."

Map of Medieval Universities. They started a new infrastructure which was needed for scientific communities.

This period also saw the birth of medieval universities, which benefited materially from the translated texts and provided a new infrastructure for scientific communities. Some of these new universities were registered as an institution of international excellence by the Holy Roman Empire, receiving the title of Studium Generale. Most of the early Studia Generali were found in Italy, France, England, and Spain, and these were considered the most prestigious places of learning in Europe. This list quickly grew as new universities were founded throughout Europe. As early as the 13th century, scholars from a Studium Generale were encouraged to give lecture courses at other institutes across Europe and to share documents, and this led to the current academic culture seen in modern European universities.

The rediscovery of the works of Aristotle, alongside the works of medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophers (such as Avicenna, Averroes and Maimonides) allowed the full development of the new Christian philosophy and the method of scholasticism. By 1200 there were reasonably accurate Latin translations of the main works of Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy, Archimedes, and Galen, that is, of all the intellectually crucial ancient authors except Plato, and many of the crucial medieval Arabic and Jewish texts, such as the main works of Jābir ibn Hayyān, al-Khwarizmi, al-Kindi, Rhazes, Alhazen, Avicenna, Avempace, Averroes and Maimonides. During the thirteenth century, scholastics expanded the natural philosophy of these texts by commentaries (associated with teaching in the universities) and independent treatises. Notable among these were the works of Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, John of Sacrobosco, Albertus Magnus, and Duns Scotus.

Scholastics believed in empiricism and supporting Roman Catholic doctrines through secular study, reason, and logic. The most famous was Thomas Aquinas (later declared a "Doctor of the Church"), who led the move away from the Platonic and Augustinian and towards Aristotelianism (although natural philosophy was not his main concern). Meanwhile, precursors of the modern scientific method can be seen already in Grosseteste's emphasis on mathematics as a way to understand nature and in the empirical approach admired by Roger Bacon.

Grosseteste was the founder of the famous Oxford franciscan school. He built his work on Aristotle's vision of the dual path of scientific reasoning. Concluding from particular observations into a universal law, and then back again: from universal laws to prediction of particulars. Grosseteste called this "resolution and composition". Further, Grosseteste said that both paths should be verified through experimentation in order to verify the principals. These ideas established a tradition that carried forward to Padua and Galileo Galilei in the 17th century.

Optical diagram showing light being refracted by a spherical glass container full of water. (from Roger Bacon or Robert Grosseteste)

Under the tuition of Grosseteste and inspired by the writings of Arab alchemists who had preserved and built upon Aristotle's portrait of induction, Bacon described a repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and the need for independent verification. He recorded the manner in which he conducted his experiments in precise detail so that others could reproduce and independently test his results - a cornerstone of the scientific method, and a continuation of the work of researchers like Al Battani.

Bacon and Grosseteste conducted investigations into optics, although much of it was similar to what was being done at the time by Arab scholars. Bacon did make a major contribution to the development of science in medieval Europe by writing to the Pope to encourage the study of natural science in university courses and compiling several volumes recording the state of scientific knowledge in many fields at the time. He described the possible construction of a telescope, but there is no strong evidence of his having made one.

Late Middle Ages (AD 1300–1500)

The first half of the 14th century saw the scientific work of great thinkers. The logic studies by William of Occam led him to postulate a specific formulation of the principle of parsimony, known today as Occam's Razor. This principle is one of the main heuristics used by modern science to select between two or more underdetermined theories.

As Western scholars became more aware (and more accepting) of controversial scientific treatises of the Byzantine and Islamic Empires these readings sparked new insights and speculation. The works of the early Byzantine scholar John Philoponus inspired Western scholars such as Jean Buridan to question the received wisdom of Aristotle's mechanics. Buridan developed the theory of impetus which was a step towards the modern concept of inertia. Buridan anticipated Isaac Newton when he wrote:

Galileo's demonstration of the law of the space traversed in case of uniformly varied motion. It's the same demonstration that Oresme had made centuries earlier.

...after leaving the arm of the thrower, the projectile would be moved by an impetus given to it by the thrower and would continue to be moved as long as the impetus remained stronger than the resistance, and would be of infinite duration were it not diminished and corrupted by a contrary force resisting it or by something inclining it to a contrary motion

Thomas Bradwardine and his partners, the Oxford Calculators of Merton College, Oxford, distinguished kinematics from dynamics, emphasizing kinematics, and investigating instantaneous velocity. They formulated the mean speed theorem: a body moving with constant velocity travels distance and time equal to an accelerated body whose velocity is half the final speed of the accelerated body. They also demonstrated this theorem—essence of "The Law of Falling Bodies" -- long before Galileo is credited with this.

In his turn, Nicole Oresme showed that the reasons proposed by the physics of Aristotle against the movement of the earth were not valid and adduced the argument of simplicity for the theory that the earth moves, and not the heavens. Despite this argument in favor of the Earth's motion Oresme, fell back on the commonly held opinion that "everyone maintains, and I think myself, that the heavens do move and not the earth."

The historian of science Ronald Numbers notes that the modern scientific assumption of methodological naturalism can be also traced back to the work of these medieval thinkers:

By the late Middle Ages the search for natural causes had come to typify the work of Christian natural philosophers. Although characteristically leaving the door open for the possibility of direct divine intervention, they frequently expressed contempt for soft-minded contemporaries who invoked miracles rather than searching for natural explanations. The University of Paris cleric Jean Buridan (a. 1295-ca. 1358), described as "perhaps the most brilliant arts master of the Middle Ages," contrasted the philosopher’s search for "appropriate natural causes" with the common folk’s erroneous habit of attributing unusual astronomical phenomena to the supernatural. In the fourteenth century the natural philosopher Nicole Oresme (ca. 1320–82), who went on to become a Roman Catholic bishop, admonished that, in discussing various marvels of nature, "there is no reason to take recourse to the heavens, the last refuge of the weak, or demons, or to our glorious God as if He would produce these effects directly, more so than those effects whose causes we believe are well known to us."

However, a series of events that would be known as the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages was under its way. When came the Black Death of 1348, it sealed a sudden end to the previous period of massive scientific change. The plague killed a third of the people in Europe, especially in the crowded conditions of the towns, where the heart of innovations lay. Recurrences of the plague and other disasters caused a continuing decline of population for a century.

Renaissance of the 15th century

Main article: History of science in the Renaissance

Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man

The 15th century saw the beginning of the cultural movement of the Renaissance. The rediscovery of Greek scientific texts, both ancient and medieval, was accelerated as the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Turks and many Byzantine scholars sought refuge in the West, particularly Italy. Also, the invention of printing was to have great effect on European society: the facilitated dissemination of the printed word democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of new ideas.

When the Renaissance moved to Northern Europe that science would be revived, by figures as Copernicus, Francis Bacon, and Descartes (though Descartes is often described as an early Enlightenment thinker, rather than a late Renaissance one).

Byzantine world

Main article: Byzantine science

Byzantine science played an important role in the transmission of classical knowledge to the Islamic world and to Renaissance Italy, and also in the transmission of medieval Arabic knowledge to Renaissance Italy. Its rich historiographical tradition preserved ancient knowledge upon which splendid art, architecture, literature and technological achievements were built.

Mathematics

Byzantine scientists preserved and continued the legacy of the great Ancient Greek mathematicians and put mathematics in practice. In early Byzantium (5th to 7th century) the architects and mathematicians Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles used complex mathematical formulas to construct the great “Agia Sophia” temple, a magnificent technological breakthrough for its time and for centuries afterwards due to its striking geometry, bold design and height. In late Byzantium (9th to 12th century) mathematicians like Michael Psellos considered mathematics as a way to interpret the world.

Islamic interactions

The Byzantine Empire initially provided the medieval Islamic world with Ancient Greek texts on astronomy and mathematics for translation into Arabic as the Empire was the leading center of scientific scholarship in the region in the early Middle Ages. Later as the Muslim world became the center of scientific knowledge, Byzantine scientists such as Gregory Choniades translated Arabic texts on Islamic astronomy, mathematics and science into Medieval Greek, including the works of Ja'far ibn Muhammad Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi, Ibn Yunus, al-Khazini (a Muslim scientist of Byzantine Greek descent), Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī and Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī among others. There were also some Byzantine scientists who used Arabic transliterations to describe certain scientific concepts instead of the equivalent Ancient Greek terms (such as the use of the Arabic talei instead of the Ancient Greek hososcopus). Byzantine science thus played an important role in not only transmitting ancient Greek knowledge to Western Europe and the Islamic world, but in also transmitting Islamic knowledge to Western Europe, such as the transmission of the Tusi-couple, which later appeared in the work of Nicolaus Copernicus. Byzantine scientists also became acquainted with Sassanid and Indian astronomy through citations in some Arabic works.

Islamic world

Main article: Science in medieval Islam

See also: Timeline of Muslim scientists and engineers, List of Muslim scientists, Islamic Golden Age, and Islamic contributions to Medieval Europe

Sample of Islamic medical text

Overview

In the Middle East, Greek philosophy was able to find some short-lived support by the newly created Islamic Caliphate (Islamic Empire). With the spread of Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries, a period of Islamic scholarship lasted until the 15th century. In the Islamic World, the Middle Ages is known as the Islamic Golden Age, when Islamic civilization and Islamic scholarship flourished. This scholarship was aided by several factors. The use of a single language, Arabic, allowed communication without need of a translator. Translations of Greek texts from Egypt and the Byzantine Empire, and Sanskrit texts from India, provided Islamic scholars a knowledge base to build upon.

In earlier Islamic versions of the scientific method, ethics played an important role. Islamic scholars used previous work in medicine, astronomy and mathematics as bedrock to develop new fields such as algebra, chemistry, clinical pharmacology, experimental physics, sociology, and spherical trigonometry.

Scientific method

Muslim scientists placed far greater emphasis on experiment than had the Greeks. This led to advances of scientific method in the Muslim world, where significant progress in methodology was made, beginning with the experiments (he calls them "demonstrations") of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) on optics, in his Book of Optics circa 1021. The most important development of the scientific method was the use of experiments to distinguish between competing scientific theories set within a generally empirical orientation, which began among Muslim scientists. Ibn al-Haytham is also regarded as the father of optics, especially for his empirical proof of the intromission theory of light.

Alchemy and chemistry

Main article: Alchemy and chemistry in Islam

Muslim chemists and alchemists played an important role in the foundation of modern chemistry. Scholars such as Will Durant and Alexander von Humboldt regard Muslim chemists to be founders of chemistry, particularly Jābir ibn Hayyān, who was a pioneer of chemistry, for introducing an early experimental scientific method within the field, as well as the alembic, still, retort, and the chemical processes of pure distillation, filtration, sublimation, liquefaction, crystallisation, purification, oxidisation and evaporation.

The study of traditional alchemy and the theory of the transmutation of metals were refuted by al-Kindi, followed by Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, Avicenna, and Ibn Khaldun. Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī described a version of the concept of conservation of mass, noting that a body of matter is able to change, but is not able to disappear.

Applied sciences

Main articles: Inventions in the Islamic world, Muslim Agricultural Revolution, and Timeline of Muslim scientists and engineers

In the applied sciences, a significant number of inventions and technologies were produced by medieval Muslim scientists and engineers such as Abbas Ibn Firnas, Taqi al-Din, and particularly al-Jazari, who is considered a pioneer in modern engineering. According to Fielding H. Garrison, the "Saracens themselves were the originators not only of algebra, chemistry, and geology, but of many of the so-called improvements or refinements of civilization, such as street lamps, window-panes, firework, stringed instruments, cultivated fruits, perfumes, spices, etc."

During the Muslim Agricultural Revolution, Muslim scientists made significant advances in botany and laid the foundations of agricultural science. Muslim botanists and agriculturists demonstrated advanced agronomical, agrotechnical and economic knowledge in areas such as meteorology, climatology, hydrology, soil occupation, and the economy and management of agricultural enterprises. They also demosntrated agricultural knowledge in areas such as pedology, agricultural ecology, irrigation, preparation of soil, planting, spreading of manure, killing herbs, sowing, cutting trees, grafting, pruning vine, prophylaxis, phytotherapy, the care and improvement of cultures and plants, and the harvest and storage of crops.

Astronomy and mathematics

Main articles: Islamic astronomy and Islamic mathematics

See also: Maragheh observatory

In astronomy, Al-Battani improved the measurements of Hipparchus, preserved in the translation of the Greek Hè Megalè Syntaxis (The great treatise) translated as Almagest. Al-Battani also improved the precision of the measurement of the precession of the Earth's axis. Astronomical instruments such as the universal latitude-independent astrolabe and the equatorium were developed by al-Zarqālī. Al-Biruni conducted elaborate experiments related to astronomical phenomena. Ibn al-Shatir produced a model of lunar motion which matched observations of the moon's apparent diameter, as well as a solar model which eliminated epicycles in order to match observations. This and other developments in planetary models by Al-Battani, Averroes, and Maragha astronomers such as Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (Tusi-couple) and Mo'ayyeduddin Urdi (Urdi lemma) are believed to have been used by the Renaissance astronomer Copernicus in his heliocentric model. The Earth's rotation and heliocentrism were also discussed by several Muslim astronomers such as Biruni, Al-Sijzi and Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, while Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī criticized Ptolemy's claim that observational evidence disproved the earth's possible rotation and al-Birjandi developed an early hypothesis on "circular inertia." Natural philosophy was also separated from astronomy by Alhazen, Ibn al-Shatir, and al-Qushji.

In mathematics, Al-Khwarizmi gave his name to the concept of the algorithm, while the term algebra is derived from his publication Al-Jabr. He recognized algebra as a distinct field of mathematics. What is now known as Arabic numerals originally came from India, but Muslim mathematicians made several refinements to the number system, such as the introduction of decimal point notation. Other achievements of medieval Muslim mathematicians included the development of spherical trigonometry, the discovery of all the trigonometric functions besides sine, al-Kindi's introduction of cryptanalysis and frequency analysis, al-Karaji's introduction of algebraic calculus and proof by mathematical induction, the development of analytic geometry and a general formula for infinitesimal and integral calculus by Ibn al-Haytham, the beginning of algebraic geometry by Omar Khayyam, refutations of Euclidean geometry and the parallel postulate by Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī and an attempt at a non-Euclidean geometry by Sadr al-Din, and the development of symbolic algebra by Abū al-Hasan ibn Alī al-Qalasādī.

Earth sciences

Main articles: Islamic geography and Muslim Agricultural Revolution

Muslim scientists made a number of contributions to the Earth sciences. Alkindus introduced experimentation into the Earth sciences. About 900, Al-Battani improved the precision of the measurement of the precession of the Earth's axis, thus continuing a millennium's legacy of measurements in his own land (Babylonia and Chaldea- the area now known as Iraq). Biruni is considered a pioneer of geodesy for his important contributions to the field. Avicenna hypothesized on two causes of mountains in The Book of Healing. In cartography, the Piri Reis map drawn by the Ottoman cartographer Piri Reis in 1513, was one of the earliest world maps to include the Americas, and perhaps, Antarctica. His map of the world was considered the most accurate in the 16th century.

The earliest known treatises dealing with environmentalism and environmental science, especially pollution, were Arabic treatises written by al-Kindi, al-Razi, Ibn Al-Jazzar, al-Tamimi, al-Masihi, Avicenna, Ali ibn Ridwan, Abd-el-latif, and Ibn al-Nafis. Their works covered a number of subjects related to pollution such as air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination, municipal solid waste mishandling, and environmental impact assessments of certain localities.

Medicine

Main article: Islamic medicine

See also: Ophthalmology in medieval Islam and Bimaristan

Muslim physicians made a number of significant contributions to medicine. They set up the earliest dedicated hospitals in the modern sense of the word, including psychiatric hospitals and medical schools which issued diplomas to students qualified to become doctors of medicine.

Al-Kindi wrote the De Gradibus, in which he demonstrated the application of quantification and mathematics to medicine and pharmacology, such as a mathematical scale to quantify the strength of drugs and the determination in advance of the most critical days of a patient's illness. Abu al-Qasim (Abulcasis) helped lay the foudations for modern surgery, with his Kitab al-Tasrif, in which he invented numerous surgical instruments. Avicenna helped lay the foundations for modern medicine, with The Canon of Medicine, which was responsible for the introduction of experimental medicine, clinical trials, randomized controlled trials, efficacy tests, and clinical pharmacology. Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar) was the earliest known experimental surgeon. Ibn al-Nafis laid the foundations for circulatory physiology, as he described the pulmonary circulation and the capillary and coronary circulations.

Physics

Main article: Islamic physics

Experimental physics had its roots in the work of the 11th-century Muslim polymath and physicist, Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), who is considered the "father of modern optics" and one of the most important physicists of the Middle Ages, for having developed the earliest experimental scientific method in his Book of Optics. Alhazen combined all three fields of optics (theories of philosophical or physical optics, physiological theories of the eye, and geometrical optics) into an integrated science of optics. This was, however, not just a work of synthesis, as he made original contributions to the field. Whereas the Greeks had merely assumed the linear propagation of light, Alhazen proved it with empirical experiments. His Book of Optics has been ranked alongside Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica as one of the most influential books in the history of physics for initiating a revolution in optics and visual perception.

Another important medieval Muslim physicist and polymath who contributed towards experimental physics was Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, who developed the earliest experimental method for mechanics in the 11th century. Al-Biruni and Al-Khazini also unified statics and dynamics into the science of mechanics, and combined hydrostatics with dynamics to create the field of hydrodynamics. The concept of inertia was theorized in the 11th century by the Islamic scholar Avicenna, who also theorized the idea of momentum. In the 12th century, Avempace developed the concept of a reaction force,ref name=Pines-1964>Shlomo Pines (1964), "La dynamique d’Ibn Bajja", in Mélanges Alexandre Koyré, I, 442–468 [462, 468], Paris
(cf. Abel B. Franco (October 2003), "Avempace, Projectile Motion, and Impetus Theory", Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (4): 521–546 [543])</ref> and Abu’l Barakat developed the concept that force applied continuously produces acceleration. Galileo Galilei's mathematical treatment of acceleration and his concept of inertia was influenced by the works of Avicenna, Avempace and Jean Buridan.

Other sciences

Main articles: Islamic psychological thought and Early Muslim sociology

Muslim polymaths and scientists made advances in a number of other sciences. Some of the most famous among them include Jābir ibn Hayyān (polymath, pioneer of chemistry), al-Farabi (polymath), Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi or Abulcasis (pioneer in surgery), Ibn al-Haytham (polymath, father of optics, pioneer of scientific method, pioneer in psychophysics and experimental psychology, and experimental scientist), Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī (polymath, father of Indology and geodesy, and the "first anthropologist"), Avicenna (polymath, pioneer of medicine and momentum concept), Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī (polymath), and Ibn Khaldun (forerunner of social sciences such as demography, cultural history, historiography, the philosophy of history, and sociology).

See also

• Medieval European scientists
• History of science

References

• Crombie, A. C. (1969) [1952]. Augustine to Galileo: The History of Science A.D. 400 - 1650 (Revised ed.). Penguin. ISBN 0-14-055074-7. OCLC 668995 669000. {{cite book}}: Check |oclc= value (help)
• Grant, Edward (1996). The foundations of modern science in the Middle Ages: their religious, institutional, and intellectual contexts. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56762-9.
• Grant, Edward (1974). A source book in medieval science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-82360-5.
• Lindberg, David C. (1992). The Beginnings of Western Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-48230-8. OCLC 185636619 231454251 24590464. {{cite book}}: Check |oclc= value (help)
• Lindberg, David C. (1978). Science in the middle ages. Chicago: University of Chicago P. ISBN 0-226-48233-2.
• Parkinson, Claire (1985). Breakthroughs. A chronology of great achievements in science and mathematics. Mansell. ISBN 0-7201-1800-X.
• Shank, Michael H. (2000). The scientific enterprise in antiquity and the middle ages: readings from Isis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-74951-7.
• Walsh, James (2003). Popes and Science the History of the Papal Relations to Science During the Middle Ages and Down to Our Own Time. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 0-7661-3646-9. Reviews: The Popes and Science,
  Walsh, James J. (1909). "The Popes and Science". Ann Surg. 49 (3): 445–7. doi:10.1097/00000658-190903000-00030. PMC 1407075. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help).
• Restivo, Sal P. (2005). Science, technology, and society: An Encyclopedia. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514193-8.
• Huff, Toby E. (2003). The rise of early modern science: Islam, China, and the West. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-52994-8.

External links

• Medieval Science, the Church and Universities by James Hannam
• Medieval astrology - a learning resource from the British Library
• Ibn Sina Academy of Medieval Medicine and Sciences - a rich source of collection on medieval medicine and sciences
• MacKinney Collection of Medieval Medical Illustrations