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- WDT Weekly Discussion Thread
Greek Alphabet:
Α α, Β β, Γ γ, Δ δ, Ε ε, Ζ ζ, Η η, Θ θ, Ι ι, Κ κ, Λ λ, Μ μ, Ν ν, Ξ ξ, Ο ο, Π π, Ρ ρ, Σ σ/ς, Τ τ, Υ υ, Φ φ, Χ χ, Ψ ψ, Ω ω
Hebrew Alphabet:
א ב ג ד ה ו ז ח ט י כ/ך ל מ/ם נ/ן ס ע פ/ף צ/ץ ק ר ש ת
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¬ → ⇒ ⇔ ∀ ∂ ∃ ∅ ∇ ∈ ∉ √ ∞ ∧ ∨ ∩ ∪ ⊕ ∫ ≈ ≠ ≡ ≤ ≥ ⊆ ⊂ ⊃ ⊄ ° ± · × ⟌ ÷ ⌊ ⌋ ⌈ ⌉ ➀ ℤ ℕ ℙ ℚ ℝ ℂ ℍ ℭ
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[–] Shekelstein6M 2 points 0 points 2 points (+2|-2) ago (edited ago)
It's actually demonstrably true. The Islamic golden age coincided with the largest extent of the islamic caliphate. Not including the ottomans, their scientific advancements slowed down and essentially stopped by the time they started losing territory.
The ottomans lasted longer, because they came later and conquered Constantinople. But after they stopped conquering they fell behind very quickly and in a mater of decades were no longer competitive.
Most of it comes from Persia actually. Your own wiki link has mostly Persians in there. Arabs mostly didn't invent shit, apart from what they could steal and claim as their own.
Most of "arabic knowledge" came from people hailing from the Scythian and Roman (Byzantine) Empires. No one can say for certain what their religion was (to represent oneself as anything but a muslim in those times was a bad idea) but they certainly were not mostly arabs.
Furthermore, we do not know how many slaves captured by the arabs were actually intellectuals, and how much of their knowledge was stolen and claimed as their own by their masters.
What I do know, through my own research of history, is how muslims operated at the time, and how the places they conquered looked before and after. To me, it's very easy to see why their "golden age" ended when it did.
[–] TheBuddha [S] 2 points 0 points 2 points (+2|-2) ago
Yeah - we're talking past each other, I think. You seem to think I believe stuff I don't.
Their "golden age" wasn't really all that golden. However, put in perspective with the rest of the planet, they were doing pretty good for that time frame. The truth is, they were mostly a bunch of thugs who raped, murdered, pillaged, and burned. What sets them apart is that they still allowed some academic freedom and still encouraged science to progress - specifically in math and astronomy.
They weren't some bullshit high minded society that some of folks glorify or romanticize about. But, they didn't halt the progress of science (which was your claim). In fact, they did great things with regards to cataloging everything and translating older texts into Arabic - which is good, 'cause it preserved some knowledge.
I don't think they were all that and a bag of chips - they were violent barbarians who imposed order with religion. At the same time, science didn't stop - it did pretty well in their empire. Shit, Baghdad used to be the place to go if you wanted to research something, surpassing even Alexandria (which had come under rather brutal Catholicism at the time).
And, lest you think I'm just a horrible idiot, science actually did better under the Roman Catholic Church than many people give it credit for. Fuck, they did quite a bit of good science - we have our modern science due to a religious fell named Francis Bacon. His name escapes me at the moment (it'll come to me in a moment) was not put under house arrest because he looked at the stars and theorized we went around the Sun, arguing against heliocentric beliefs, but because he was a dick and needled the pope in his writing - after being warned not to. Ah! Galileo was his name.
My only contention is that you seem to think progressed stopped and that they didn't advance the arts. They did - this is pretty certain. Was it all that and a bag of chips? Nope. Was it the peaceful and enlightened society that some folks on the left would have you believe? Not a chance. Did they do all that they get credit for? There's some doubts with some of the claims - others have no previous historical record and there's evidence like notations in the original scrolls where they continued to add to the existing body of knowledge. That's pretty hard to argue against.
Again, I don't think they were the greatest thing ever. In fact, they were assholes. However, in the context of the age, they did pretty well and we should be able to acknowledge their contribution.
My contention was with your statements of absoluteness - that they did nothing, that it stopped, and that their advancements didn't happen. They did. They weren't all that the political left might have you believe, but I believe in scholarship - not politics. I'm quite willing to admit they were barbarians who stole the basis of what they worked on. Fuck, I've read the accounts - they were pretty violent assholes.
[–] Shekelstein6M 2 points 0 points 2 points (+2|-2) ago
No, that's not what I said at all. I said that they got most of their progress from the lands they conquered. Scientific progress didn't stop, but it sure didn't come from arabs.
If arabs never became muslims and went on a conquest spree, the Byzantine and Scythian scholars would have done far far more for science than when they were conquered. Arab contributions to science were miniscule. Like I said before, even in your own link, most of the people aren't arabs.
I'd say they did far more harm to the scientific progress than good. Same as the Germanic, Slavic and Hunic tribes btw. Had they not conquered the Roman Empire, who's science rivaled even western scientific knowledge of 19th century, and who's industrial output was 4x that of China and was only surpassed in Europe by the 17th century, things would have developed much faster.