Islamic Science

I'm reposting an old post from CHF here.
This is a 3 episode BBC documentary on Islamic science between 8th and 14th century. It's available on youtube now. I'm not someone total blind to the great scientific development of this time period, but there are still plenty of eye openers.

The first on Islamic contribution of arithmetic and algebra, esp the contribution of al-Khwarizmi. 'The common perception of the period of 1000 years or so between the ancient Greeks and the European Renaissance is that little happened in the world of mathematics except that some Arabic translations of Greek texts were made which preserved the Greek learning so that it was available to the Europeans at the beginning of the sixteenth century.' Few mathematical historians hold that view now. If one really wants to appreciate the importance of arithmetic and Arabian numbers, he just has to do 132 * 154 in Roman numerals for once. It's not fun! But more importantly, al-Khwarizmi and his followers systematically apply arithmetic to algebra, algebra to arithmetic, both to trigonometry, algebra to the Euclidean theory of numbers, algebra to geometry, and geometry to algebra. Thus started many mathematical research directions that later continued in Europe.
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Arabic_mathematics.html

It's only by comparing the development of mathematics in China, that we can fully appreciate why these Islamic contributions were critical.

The second was about medicine and physics. Ibn al-Haytham and his Book of Optics were the star. He was the first person to apply mathematics to physics research and verify his theory with systematic repeatable experiments. I think Ibn al-Haytham should be called the first scientist in every sense of the word.

The most interesting discovery of the third episode was Copernicus owed a lot of his revolutionary idea to the Arabian astronomers. De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium gavve outward reference to Al-Battani's observational data in his Book of Stars. There are also clues that Copernicus also used other Arabian resources, like the Tusi couples. The diagram in Revolutionibus was almost identical to another diagram in Al-Tusi's Tadhkirah Al-Hay Fi'ilm Sl-hay'ah. The similarity was down to letters, like both used D at the center of circle. His idea about planetary motion was also remarkably similar to that of a 14th century Syrian called Ibn Al-Shatir. Ibn al-Haytham was also the first to doubt Ptolemy's equant idea. It's fair to say Copernicus' work was built on several centuries work of Arabian astronomers.

One of the reasons of the great development of Islamic science was their geological location. The Arabian Empire was in a unique position to be adjacent to all major civilizations of the time. That includes Greece, India, Persia and China. So the Islamic scientists were in a unique position to integrate and generalize the scientific knowledge of these civilizations. There are still debates about whether these developments should be called a scientific revolution. First of all, I don't think it was proper to divide science development as pre and post scientific revolution. Which invention was more revolutionary? Calculus, algebra, or digital numbers? It's difficult to say. Second, I don't think there is a scientific method. It was more a matter of money IMO. Many Chinese physics students studied theoretical physics or mathematics in China but became experimental physicist after they went to the States. Is it because they couldn't have the ideas when they were back in China? I think more likely after they went to the states they got the physical conditions necessary.