Scientific Discoveries of Islam
The Dark Ages were not at all dark for some. Islamic scientists were busy gathering, synthesizing, and making progress on the science other cultures across the Eastern hemisphere had already done. The Greek and Roman empires had crumbled and while most of the world was busy picking up the pieces, Islamic scientists were beginning their golden age of discovery.
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Types
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Worldwide scientific endeavors by Islam's inception in the early seventh century focused on seven disciplines: astronomy, medicine, mathematics, geometry, physics, alchemy, and biology. Islamic scholars advanced detailed subcategories within these fields, notably adding algebra and trigonometry to mathematics, and optics to physics.
Key Scientists
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Two key Islamic scientists called what is now Iraq home. Alhazen, born in 965, was responsible for a major shift in the field of optics. According to National Geographic, Alhazen discovered that light and vision interact by reflection and refraction. This breakthrough contrasted deeply with the Platonic and Euclidian theories that posited the eye as light's source. Alhazen's work was taken up during the Renaissance by Roger Bacon. Another Iraqi, Al-Khwarizmi, shares the title "Father of Algebra" with the Alexandrian Diophantus. Al-Khwarizmi's contributions include fundamentals like linear and quadratic algebraic equations; algorithms; synthesizing Greek and Hindu mathematical knowledge; and discovering differentiation in calculus. These advances revolutionized mathematics, geometry, astronomy, and physics.
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Effects
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Islamic scientists are rarely given with much space in the pages of history books, though their impact was monumental. In his book, "The Day the Universe Changed," James Burke mentions how shocked Christian invaders were to find such an academic powerhouse in Toledo, Spain, after it had been under Muslim rule for 200 years. Burke says, "The intellectual community which the northern scholars found in Spain was so far superior to what they had at home that it left a lasting jealousy of Arab culture which was to colour Western opinion for centuries." Islamic scientists preserved the otherwise lost ancient academic texts, and introduced the "rationalism and the secular, investigative approach typical of Arab natural science," which would spur much change during the European Renaissance.
Considerations
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George Beshore, in his book "Science in Early Islamic Culture," makes the connection between the conquering nature of early Islam and the vast amount of scientific knowledge Islamic scientists were able to examine. Muslim armies conquered Babylonian, Persian, Asian, African, and European lands, and were consequently privy to the scientific advancements made by each of these groups. Early Muslims were quite purposeful in obtaining scientific and literary documents from the peoples they ruled.
Numbers
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The numerals we use today (1, 2, 3, 4, and so on) are called "Arabic Numerals." Islamic scientists did not actually invent this number system, rather they adopted it from scientists in India. Islamic scholars can be credited, though, with bringing this system to the rest of the world, thereby jettisoning the terribly cumbersome number systems used earlier by the Greeks and Romans.
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