"Aladdin's Lamp" is the fascinating story of how ancient Greek
philosophy and science began in the sixth century B.C. and, during
the next millennium, spread across the Greco-Roman world, producing
the remarkable discoveries and theories of Thales, Pythagoras,
Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, Galen, Ptolemy,
and many others. John Freely explains how, as the Dark Ages
shrouded Europe, scholars in medieval Baghdad translated the works
of these Greek thinkers into Arabic, spreading their ideas
throughout the Islamic world from Central Asia to Spain, with many
Muslim scientists, most notably Avicenna, Alhazen, and Averroes,
adding their own interpretations to the philosophy and science they
had inherited. Freely goes on to show how, beginning in the twelfth
century, these texts by Islamic scholars were then translated from
Arabic into Latin, sparking the emergence of modern science at the
dawn of the Renaissance, which climaxed in the Scientific
Revolution of the seventeenth century.
Here is early science in all its glory, from Pythagorean "celestial
harmony" to the sun-centered planetary theory of Copernicus, who,
in 1543, aided by the mathematical methods of medieval Arabic
astronomers, revived a concept proposed by the Greek astronomer
Aristarchus some eighteen centuries before. When Newton laid the
foundations of modern science, building on the work of Copernicus,
Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, and others, he said that he was
"standing on the sholders ["sic"] of Giants," referring to his
predecessors in ancient Greece and in the Arabic and Latin worlds
from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance.
Caliph Harun al-Rashid was one of the Muslim rulers who first
promoted translating Greek texts into Arabic. His Baghdad is the
setting for "The" "Thousand and One" "Nights, " in which
Scheherazades's "Tale of Aladdin and His Magic Lamp" reflects the
marvels of the new science and the amazing inventions it was said
to produce. John Freely's "Aladdin's Lamp" returns us to that time
and brings to light an essential and long-overlooked chapter in the
history of science.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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