Did Roger or Francis Bacon Really Discover The Scientific Method ?
Source: Briffault's "Making of Humanity "
Here u go :
Note that the author mentions the "Arabic civilization or Arabic science " instead of saying the islamic ones : Arabs were in the minority concerning the latters
Excerpt from "The Reconstruction of Religious Thought " by Sir Dr.Muhammad Iqbal u can download for free here below , quoting Briffault : chapter 5 : The spirit of muslim culture :
(....Europe has been rather slow to recognise the islamic origin of her scientific method .But full recognition of the fact has at last come .Let me quote one or two passages from Briffault's making of Humanity :
Quote :
"....It was under their succesors at that Oxford school that Roger Bacon learned Arabic & Arabic science .Neither Roger Bacon nor his later namesake has any title to be credited with having introduced the experimental method.Roger Bacon was no more than one of the apostles of muslim science & method to christian Europe, and he never wearied of declaring that a knowledge of Arabic & Arabian science was for his contemporaries the only way to true knowledge.Discussions as to who was the originator of the experimental method are part of the colossal misrepresentation of the origins of European civilization. The experimental method of the Arabs was by Bacon's time widespread & eagerly cultivated throughout Europe . -pp.200-01-
Science is the most momentous contribution of Arab civilization to the modern world ,but its fruits were slow in ripening .Not until after long Moorish culture had sunk back into darkness did the giant to which it had given birth rise in his might .It was not science which brought Europe back to life .
Other and manifold influences from the civilization of islam communicated its first glow to European life.
For although there is not a single aspect of European growth in which the decisive influence of the islamic culture is not traceable,nowhere is it so clear& momentous as in the genesis of that power which constitutes the paramount distinctive force of the modern world and the supreme force of its victory -natural science & the scientific spirit.
The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories, science owes a great deal more to Arab culture , it owes its existence .
The ancient world was , as we saw , pre-scientific .
The astronomy & mathematics of the Greek were a foreign importation never thoroughly acclimatized in Greek culture .The Greeks systematized, generalized & theorized , but the patient ways of investigation , the accumulation of positive knowledge ,the minute methods of science,detailed & prolonged observation, experimental inquiry ,were altogether alien to the Greek temperament .
Only in Hellinistic Alexandria was any approach to scientific work conducted in the ancient classical world, what we call science arose in Europe as a result of a new spirit of inquiry , of new methods of investigation ,of the method of experiment ,observation, measurement, of the development of mathematics in a form unknown to the Greeks .
That spirit & those methods were introduced to the European world by the Arabs -p.191-" end quote
The first important point to note about the spirit of muslim culture then is that ,for purposes of knowledge,it fixes its gaze on the concrete, the finite .
It is further clear that the birth of the method of observation and experiment in islam was due not to a compromise with Greek thought but to a prolonged intellectual warfare with it .In fact ,the influence of the Greeks who,as Briffault says ,were interested chiefly in theory ,not in fact ,tended rather to obscure the muslims ' vision of the Qur'an ,and for at least two centuries kept the practical Arab temperament from asserting itself & coming to its own .I want therefore to definitely eradicate the misunderstanding that Greek thought , in any way, determined the character of muslim culture.....)
Source : The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam by Sir Dr. Muhammad Iqbal , chapter 5 : the spirit of muslim culture :
Download the book for free :
http://www.maroc.nl/forums/nieuws-de...ml#post4903943
Further more , see in the above mentioned book of Iqbal how muslims were the first ever to discover evolution itself & much much more
see this 3-part docu on the matter too while u are at it , presented by a an Iraki-British scientist on the field :
Bladwijzers