第一章x我- muslimphilosophy（ chapter l x i i i- muslimphilosophy）.docVIP

Chapter LXIIIMATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMYAINTRODUCTION It is generally recognized that human knowledge took its organized and systematic form with the Greeks. It is equally well known that the Greeks inherited a considerable body of knowledge from their Eastern predecessors, especially the Egyptians, Babylonians, Chinese, and Indians. The histories of science and culture, written by some Western writers, however, show a gap between the period of the Greeks and the Renaissance. They give the impression that the history of science was blank for nearly one thousand years, and scientific knowledge made a sudden leap, taking a millennium in its stride. These histories ignore the fact that the intervening ages from the first/seventh to the eighth/fourteenth century constituted the era of the Arab and other Muslim peoples. The latest researches of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars are bringing to light the work of the Muslims in the various branches of knowledge throughout the Middle Ages. These researches are, however, scattered in various journals and books which are not easily accessible to the average educated person. Two good works of reference published are the Encyclopaedia of Islam and George Sartons Introduction to the History of Science. On a thorough study of the information available on the subject, one is struck by the magnitude as well as importance of the contributions made by the Muslims to the various branches of science, especially to mathematics and astronomy. The magnitude of these achievements is so vast that it is giving rise to another tendency among the historians of science. It is incomprehensible to them that the Arabs who were so backward and ignorant in the centuries preceding the advent of Islam could have become so enlightened and scholarly in such a short time after adopting the new faith. One of the great exponents of this line of thought is Moritz Cantor who has written an encyclopedic history of mathematics in the German language. The chapter