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Darrera modificació: 2012-12-19
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Freely, John, Light From the East: How the Science of Medieval Islam Helped to Shape the Western World, Londres, I. B.Tauris, 2010, xiii + 238 pp.
- Resum
- Long before the European Renaissance, while the Western world was languishing in what was once called the “Dark Ages,” the Arab world was ablaze with the knowledge, invention, and creativity of its Golden Age. Through the astrologers, physicians, philosophers, mathematicians, and alchemists of the Muslim world, this knowledge was carried from Samarkand and Baghdad to Cordoba and beyond, influencing Western thinkers from Thomas Aquinas to Copernicus and helping to inspire the cultural phenomenon of the Renaissance. John Freely's spellbinding story is set against a background of the melting pot of the cultures involved and concludes with the decline of Islam's Golden Age, which led the West to forget the debt it owed to the Muslim world and the influence of medieval Islamic civilization in forging the beginnings of modern science. -- John Freely was born in New York in 1926 and joined the US Navy at the age of seventeen, serving during the last two years of World War II. He has a PhD in physics from New York University and didpost-doctoral studies in the history of science at Oxford. He is professor of physics at Bosphorus University in Istanbul, where he has taught physics and the history of science since 1960. He has also taught in New York, Boston, London and Athens. He has written more than forty books, including works in the history of science and travel. His most recent book in the history of science is Aladdin's Lamp, How Greek Science Came to Europe Through the Islamic World (2009). His recent books on history and travel include The Grand Turk, Storm on Horseback, Children of Achilles, The Cyclades,The Ionian Islands, Crete, The Western Shores of Turkey, Strolling through Athens, Strolling through Veniceand the bestselling Strolling through Istanbul.
Contents:
* Prologue: The Scriptorium at the Süleymaniye ix
* 1 Science Before Science: Mesopotamia and Egypt 1
* 2 The Land of the Greeks 9
* 3 The Roads to Baghdad 23
* 4 'Abbasid Baghdad: The House of Wisdom 36
* 5 'Spiritual Physick' 48
* 6 From Baghdad to Central Asia 59
* 7 The Cure of Ignorance 70
* 8 Fatimid Cairo: The Science of Light 81
* 9 Ayyubid and Mamluk Cairo: Healing Body and Soul 91
* 10 Ingenious Mechanical Devices 103
* 11 Islamic Technology 113
* 12 Al-Andalus 122
* 13 From the Maghrib to the Two Sicilies: Arabic into Latin 133
* 14 Incoherent Philosophers 146
* 15 Maragha and Samarkand: Spheres Within Spheres 155
* 16 Arabic Science and the European Renaissance 164
* 17 Copernicus and his Arabic Predecessors 172
* 18 The Scientific Revolution 181
* 19 The Heritage of Islamic Science 194
- Matèries
- Història de la ciència
Arabisme
- Notes
- Fitxa de l'editor: http://www.ibtauris.com
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