I am sure many of you know that we have trying to find guest speakers for the course, and in doing so we have been able to speak to many knowledgable scholars. Today I had the oppurtunity to speak to Dr.Alnoor Dhanani, a scholar from Harvard  University. He specializes in the fields of the history of Islamic science, philosophy and relious thought. Speaking with him gave me an interesting perspective on many issues relavent to our course and he also brought up some ambiguous, but noteworthy questions that we could discuss in our “Islam and Modern Science,” section. Some of our discussions we have had in the past few weeks would have also benefitted from his insight.

Nonetheless he brought up a few key points. One of which is that in studying the hitory of science in any civilization, it must be understood in a local and temporal context. This means, how did scientisits view their work, why did they do it and how was it received by the society that existed at the time? It is very complicated to study historical sciences under Islam through the lens of modern science. This also brings up another point which is the fact that it is tough to draw similarities in abstract discoveries of the past to finding in the present. This will be very interesting to discuss in class. One last thing that stuck with me, is that many of the “great discoveries” we will see over the next few weeks in our presentations were not highlly revered in Muslim societies. An example of this is that Ibn Al-Haytham’s work on Optics was more widely read in some Latin circles than it was by some Muslims. I am sure why this is the case.

Anyways he sent me a chapter he wrote in a textbook, which would have probably been more useful earlier in the course as a reading, but it is still very well written, informative and interesting.  I will attach it to the media tab.

Raheem

Posted: 02|3|10 at 10:49 pm. Filed under: Uncategorized.
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