9 ms·

Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī -- Medieval Islamic Scientist, quite a read...

55 points by DaniFong 18y ago

michael_dorfman 18y ago
A real renaissance man, avant la lettre.
- fiaz 18y ago
  You could say that he was a hacker ;) This notion of course goes against the mainstream interpretation of the hacker persona (the geeky, socially recluse male that is more familiar with computers than he is with his own body). But if you peruse the articles here at Hacker News, it encompasses a very diverse range of subjects (anything from health, math, science, business, charisma, etc.) that are not doubt, interesting to hackers. I would go a step further and say that what hackers today have in common with Bīrūnī is that the diverse subjects he was most interested in were somehow overlapping with one another.
  - jfarmer 18y ago
    "You could say that he was a hacker ;)" You could, but that would sound really narcissistic.
    - wynand 18y ago
      "You could say that he was like me" would be narcissistic. Membership of a category does not imply the greatness of other members of that category. Germans might be proud of Goethe, but only a misguided German would take that to imply his or her own greatness.
      - gdee 18y ago
        An inverse stereotype. Poor stereotypes then, common or inverse... always wrong. ;)
reazalun 18y ago
It makes me wonder how can he did very well as a scientist, a physicist, an anthropologist, a comparative sociologist, astronomer, a chemist, a critic of alchemy and astrology, an encyclopedist and historian, a geographer and traveller, a geodesist and geologist, a mathematician, a pharmacist and psychologist, an Islamic philosopher and a theologian. Today, even to become a decent mathematician is not an easy job!
- sharjeel 18y ago
  back in the golden age people had true thirst for knowledge ithout any greed for materialistic gains.
  - mseebach 18y ago
    He's a brilliant mind, no doubt about that. But those who ventured into science, basically up until 150 years ago, were usually royalty or similar, with incomprehensible wealth, and obedient (and often violently oppressed) subjects. If you never, in your entire life, have to worry a second if you can feed yourself and your family and keep a roof over your head, you're probably slightly more keen to see what a life of sitting down and wondering might lead to.
    - ComputerGuru 18y ago
      But those who ventured into science, basically up until 150 years ago, were usually royalty or similar, with incomprehensible wealth, and obedient (and often violently oppressed) subjects. As a matter of fact, that was not the case in the Islamic empire - the government had encouraged independent research and learning and funded it quite extensively, which is the biggest reason it was such a scientific boom period. It's quite astonishing how far they've fallen, because at the peak of the European medieval times, the Islamic Empire had been encouraging this sort of scientific research and study like crazy. Perhaps most famous of all are the scientific libraries of Baghdad which once held volumes of literature and research pertaining to medicine, literature, physics, chemistry, and biology; and were made available (mostly) to all. Invasions and wars in the region, along with the decline & fall of the Islamic Empire brought an end to that golden age of science and knowledge which is really sad because in that short period of time a lot of knowledge was discovered and contributed, lending to the future discoveries by European scientists in Calculus, Chemistry, Medicine, and more.
silentbicycle 18y ago
The history of science and medicine in the Islamic world is very interesting. I don't remember any particularly good secondary sources offhand, but reading about the House of Wisdom in Baghdad is probably a good starting point. Islam greatly accelerated scientific development in the region. Muslims traveling to Mecca brought local discoveries with them, which were shared and quickly spread throughout as they returned. Also, the emphasis on reading the Quran in its original Arabic, rather than translations, ensured that the travelers had a language in common. Not to take away from several real geniuses, but it didn't hurt to have the region so well-networked. This rapid spread of knowledge gave the intellectual centers in the region a wealth of resources to draw from.
- DaniFong 18y ago
  The region had Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī, and Avicenna as contemporaries, and then Omar Khayyam soon after. Persia in that era was like Florence in the fifteenth century. Something in the water? Genetic fluke? Probably not...
  - silentbicycle 18y ago
    I was going to make the same comparison. Both had a culture that encouraged scientific inquiry (within certain constraints), some fantastic libraries, rich local patrons that were willing to support research, and social and geographic circumstances that meant new ideas could spread relatively quickly. Both environments seem like great examples of a general formula for encouraging a renaissance: create an environment that is attractive to geniuses and take care of anything that could distract them from bouncing ideas off each other. That sounds like good example of the sort of thing you can learn by studying history.
- danw 18y ago
  This wikipedia page seems like a good link rich start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
  - yters 18y ago
mtw 18y ago
I am trying to imagine what a conversation between him and Leonardo da Vinci would be like. also wondering how he got the funds to dedicate his life to science. was he a heir? or he was sponsored by kings and sultans?
- ComputerGuru 18y ago
  Sponsored by the Empire. See my other comment for the long version.
petercooper 18y ago
I suspect the upvotes on this post answer this genuinely-asked question, but.. is it considered okay to post links to random interesting Wikipedia articles on HN? There are a lot of good ones.
- alex_c 18y ago
  To be honest, I'd rather have links to random interesting Wikipedia articles - knowing that there's a high probability that they've been selected by people with similar interests to me, but that I might not have found them on my own - than links to random blog posts about tech stuff that probably won't even matter half a year from now.
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  Good question. If the scoring system works as intended, they will either lead to enough interesting discussion to merit upvoting (as with this one) or fade away. Personally, I'm happy to see more science history stuff on the main page, rather than just tech/programming and startup/business stuff. (I was a history student, though, and I'm particularly interested in the history of science and medicine.) Go the extra mile, though! There are much, much better sources for everything than Wikipedia.
- DaniFong 18y ago
  My personal interpretation of Hacker News is it's news that's news to hackers...
froo 18y ago
I'm quite fond of that drawing in the article on phases of the moon. Theres just something about it that appeals to me, I can't put my finger on it though. It is a real shame even some "modern day scientists" don't share his particular views on scientific method. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wppjYDj9JUc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wppjYDj9JUc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40Q8p3GqPqQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40Q8p3GqPqQ
rokhayakebe 18y ago
No surprise. Arabs back in those days have been known to have an excellent memory. At a very young age, Arab kids were able to memorize hundreds if not nearly a thousand of mid sized poems. This is probably why he was able to accumulate a deep knowledge in so many fields. Muslims have inherited this from Arabs. I have several friends who have memorized the entire Koran to the point where you open a page, start to read and they take it from there. Arabs also were very well traveled individuals due to their commerce. They went from place to place, spending time with different communities and keeping notes. This is why they had a vast knowledge. Arabs loved knowledge. They were great scholars. One of the teachings of the prophet of Islam was that Muslims are recommended to travel all the way to China to acquire knowledge. Back then traveling to China was probably like asking someone to bike from San Diego to Canada going through the mountains and desert.
- rsheridan6 18y ago
  This guy was a Persian. They are a different ethnic group with a different language and history.
  - rokhayakebe 18y ago
    Persian and Arabs share a whole lot of similarities. I lived with a Persian family for nearly 6 months so I have experienced it. On the other hand I lived 12 years across the street from a Arab family and I went to school with a few Arabs as well. I know Arabs, Persian, Assyrian..
    - fharper1961 18y ago
      Yeah, just don't tell any Persians that they're similar to Arabs; unless you wan them to feel insulted that is. Suppose you're from the USA, how would you feel if someone says you're similar to Mexicans?
      - deleted 18y ago
        [deleted]
yamil 18y ago
You can tell the difference between reddit and hacker news just by reading the comments when the subject is related to "Islam".
- asdflkj 18y ago
  HN would be a lot better if people didn't high-five each other so much over how great this community is and how much everyone else sucks.
  - jm4 18y ago
    Agreed. Coincidentally, that's the sort of thing I used to see on Reddit shortly before it turned into some monstrous Digg/Youtube hybrid.
adrianwaj 18y ago
Danielle, things have changed in recent times. There have only been 9 ever Nobel laureates who are Muslim. http://aa.trinimuslims.com/showthread.php?t=2757 http://aa.trinimuslims.com/showthread.php?t=2757 this is from a pool of 1.4 Billion Muslims. On the other hand 151 Jews have been awarded Nobel prizes from a pool of 12 million. http://www.science.co.il/Nobel.asp http://www.science.co.il/Nobel.asp http://israelist.blogspot.com/2005/09/jewish-muslim-nobel-prizes.html http://israelist.blogspot.com/2005/09/jewish-muslim-nobel-pr... Do you think that Islam over time has affected intellectual output, or that Jews have an advantage because of the religion? What do you think?
- DaniFong 18y ago
  You can't count technological advance by Nobel prizes: they only started being relevant a century ago, and even then they're a poor proxy, and often decided by politics. With regards to religion and science, I don't think you can consider the major religions or cultures by themselves as having much of an effect. It's all over the map... It varies with time, adminstration, fashion, the existence of certain schools. In the fifteenth century Catholics were far ahead in science, in the 11th, Muslims, during the 8th and 9th, the Chinese, at the beginning of the century, especially during the 1920's, Germany, then it was completely squashed by the Nazi's, then Hungarian Jews had a great run, spurring an American scientific dynasty of many ethnicities, and now it's fairly diffuse. There is one major character to Jewish populations that seems to help them in science. Wherever they go, they seem to keep their culture intact. Since they're quite reverent towards education, it's traditionally meant that when the going got tough, the Jews were still studying.
  - DabAsteroid 18y ago
    There is one major character to Jewish populations that seems to help them in science. ... they're quite reverent towards education What about Ashkenazi-Jewish IQ? http://www.vdare.com/rushton/080616_lynn.htm http://www.vdare.com/rushton/080616_lynn.htm seven studies of Jews in Britain yield a median IQ of 110. ... In Canada too, there is an IQ hierarchy: Jews (109), ... These results are remarkably consistent over time, place, and situation ... in How to explain high Jewish achievement: The role of intelligence and values, an article published in Personality and Individual Differences, by Lynn and Satoshi Kanazawa (PDF), we showed that only IQ had predictive value when pitted against values theories.

55 points by DaniFong 18y ago

michael_dorfman 18y ago

A real renaissance man, avant la lettre.

fiaz 18y ago
You could say that he was a hacker ;) This notion of course goes against the mainstream interpretation of the hacker persona (the geeky, socially recluse male that is more familiar with computers than he is with his own body). But if you peruse the articles here at Hacker News, it encompasses a very diverse range of subjects (anything from health, math, science, business, charisma, etc.) that are not doubt, interesting to hackers. I would go a step further and say that what hackers today have in common with Bīrūnī is that the diverse subjects he was most interested in were somehow overlapping with one another.
- jfarmer 18y ago
  "You could say that he was a hacker ;)" You could, but that would sound really narcissistic.
  - wynand 18y ago
    "You could say that he was like me" would be narcissistic. Membership of a category does not imply the greatness of other members of that category. Germans might be proud of Goethe, but only a misguided German would take that to imply his or her own greatness.
    - gdee 18y ago
      An inverse stereotype. Poor stereotypes then, common or inverse... always wrong. ;)

reazalun 18y ago

It makes me wonder how can he did very well as a scientist, a physicist, an anthropologist, a comparative sociologist, astronomer, a chemist, a critic of alchemy and astrology, an encyclopedist and historian, a geographer and traveller, a geodesist and geologist, a mathematician, a pharmacist and psychologist, an Islamic philosopher and a theologian. Today, even to become a decent mathematician is not an easy job!

sharjeel 18y ago
back in the golden age people had true thirst for knowledge ithout any greed for materialistic gains.
- mseebach 18y ago
  He's a brilliant mind, no doubt about that. But those who ventured into science, basically up until 150 years ago, were usually royalty or similar, with incomprehensible wealth, and obedient (and often violently oppressed) subjects. If you never, in your entire life, have to worry a second if you can feed yourself and your family and keep a roof over your head, you're probably slightly more keen to see what a life of sitting down and wondering might lead to.
  - ComputerGuru 18y ago
    But those who ventured into science, basically up until 150 years ago, were usually royalty or similar, with incomprehensible wealth, and obedient (and often violently oppressed) subjects. As a matter of fact, that was not the case in the Islamic empire - the government had encouraged independent research and learning and funded it quite extensively, which is the biggest reason it was such a scientific boom period. It's quite astonishing how far they've fallen, because at the peak of the European medieval times, the Islamic Empire had been encouraging this sort of scientific research and study like crazy. Perhaps most famous of all are the scientific libraries of Baghdad which once held volumes of literature and research pertaining to medicine, literature, physics, chemistry, and biology; and were made available (mostly) to all. Invasions and wars in the region, along with the decline & fall of the Islamic Empire brought an end to that golden age of science and knowledge which is really sad because in that short period of time a lot of knowledge was discovered and contributed, lending to the future discoveries by European scientists in Calculus, Chemistry, Medicine, and more.

silentbicycle 18y ago

The history of science and medicine in the Islamic world is very interesting. I don't remember any particularly good secondary sources offhand, but reading about the House of Wisdom in Baghdad is probably a good starting point. Islam greatly accelerated scientific development in the region. Muslims traveling to Mecca brought local discoveries with them, which were shared and quickly spread throughout as they returned. Also, the emphasis on reading the Quran in its original Arabic, rather than translations, ensured that the travelers had a language in common. Not to take away from several real geniuses, but it didn't hurt to have the region so well-networked. This rapid spread of knowledge gave the intellectual centers in the region a wealth of resources to draw from.

DaniFong 18y ago
The region had Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī, and Avicenna as contemporaries, and then Omar Khayyam soon after. Persia in that era was like Florence in the fifteenth century. Something in the water? Genetic fluke? Probably not...
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  I was going to make the same comparison. Both had a culture that encouraged scientific inquiry (within certain constraints), some fantastic libraries, rich local patrons that were willing to support research, and social and geographic circumstances that meant new ideas could spread relatively quickly. Both environments seem like great examples of a general formula for encouraging a renaissance: create an environment that is attractive to geniuses and take care of anything that could distract them from bouncing ideas off each other. That sounds like good example of the sort of thing you can learn by studying history.
danw 18y ago
This wikipedia page seems like a good link rich start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
- yters 18y ago

mtw 18y ago

I am trying to imagine what a conversation between him and Leonardo da Vinci would be like. also wondering how he got the funds to dedicate his life to science. was he a heir? or he was sponsored by kings and sultans?

ComputerGuru 18y ago
Sponsored by the Empire. See my other comment for the long version.

petercooper 18y ago

I suspect the upvotes on this post answer this genuinely-asked question, but.. is it considered okay to post links to random interesting Wikipedia articles on HN? There are a lot of good ones.

alex_c 18y ago
To be honest, I'd rather have links to random interesting Wikipedia articles - knowing that there's a high probability that they've been selected by people with similar interests to me, but that I might not have found them on my own - than links to random blog posts about tech stuff that probably won't even matter half a year from now.
silentbicycle 18y ago
Good question. If the scoring system works as intended, they will either lead to enough interesting discussion to merit upvoting (as with this one) or fade away. Personally, I'm happy to see more science history stuff on the main page, rather than just tech/programming and startup/business stuff. (I was a history student, though, and I'm particularly interested in the history of science and medicine.) Go the extra mile, though! There are much, much better sources for everything than Wikipedia.
DaniFong 18y ago
My personal interpretation of Hacker News is it's news that's news to hackers...

froo 18y ago

I'm quite fond of that drawing in the article on phases of the moon. Theres just something about it that appeals to me, I can't put my finger on it though. It is a real shame even some "modern day scientists" don't share his particular views on scientific method. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wppjYDj9JUc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wppjYDj9JUc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40Q8p3GqPqQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40Q8p3GqPqQ

rokhayakebe 18y ago

No surprise. Arabs back in those days have been known to have an excellent memory. At a very young age, Arab kids were able to memorize hundreds if not nearly a thousand of mid sized poems. This is probably why he was able to accumulate a deep knowledge in so many fields. Muslims have inherited this from Arabs. I have several friends who have memorized the entire Koran to the point where you open a page, start to read and they take it from there. Arabs also were very well traveled individuals due to their commerce. They went from place to place, spending time with different communities and keeping notes. This is why they had a vast knowledge. Arabs loved knowledge. They were great scholars. One of the teachings of the prophet of Islam was that Muslims are recommended to travel all the way to China to acquire knowledge. Back then traveling to China was probably like asking someone to bike from San Diego to Canada going through the mountains and desert.

rsheridan6 18y ago
This guy was a Persian. They are a different ethnic group with a different language and history.
- rokhayakebe 18y ago
  Persian and Arabs share a whole lot of similarities. I lived with a Persian family for nearly 6 months so I have experienced it. On the other hand I lived 12 years across the street from a Arab family and I went to school with a few Arabs as well. I know Arabs, Persian, Assyrian..
  - fharper1961 18y ago
    Yeah, just don't tell any Persians that they're similar to Arabs; unless you wan them to feel insulted that is. Suppose you're from the USA, how would you feel if someone says you're similar to Mexicans?
    - deleted 18y ago
      [deleted]

yamil 18y ago

You can tell the difference between reddit and hacker news just by reading the comments when the subject is related to "Islam".

asdflkj 18y ago
HN would be a lot better if people didn't high-five each other so much over how great this community is and how much everyone else sucks.
- jm4 18y ago
  Agreed. Coincidentally, that's the sort of thing I used to see on Reddit shortly before it turned into some monstrous Digg/Youtube hybrid.

adrianwaj 18y ago

Danielle, things have changed in recent times. There have only been 9 ever Nobel laureates who are Muslim. http://aa.trinimuslims.com/showthread.php?t=2757 http://aa.trinimuslims.com/showthread.php?t=2757 this is from a pool of 1.4 Billion Muslims. On the other hand 151 Jews have been awarded Nobel prizes from a pool of 12 million. http://www.science.co.il/Nobel.asp http://www.science.co.il/Nobel.asp http://israelist.blogspot.com/2005/09/jewish-muslim-nobel-prizes.html http://israelist.blogspot.com/2005/09/jewish-muslim-nobel-pr... Do you think that Islam over time has affected intellectual output, or that Jews have an advantage because of the religion? What do you think?

DaniFong 18y ago
You can't count technological advance by Nobel prizes: they only started being relevant a century ago, and even then they're a poor proxy, and often decided by politics. With regards to religion and science, I don't think you can consider the major religions or cultures by themselves as having much of an effect. It's all over the map... It varies with time, adminstration, fashion, the existence of certain schools. In the fifteenth century Catholics were far ahead in science, in the 11th, Muslims, during the 8th and 9th, the Chinese, at the beginning of the century, especially during the 1920's, Germany, then it was completely squashed by the Nazi's, then Hungarian Jews had a great run, spurring an American scientific dynasty of many ethnicities, and now it's fairly diffuse. There is one major character to Jewish populations that seems to help them in science. Wherever they go, they seem to keep their culture intact. Since they're quite reverent towards education, it's traditionally meant that when the going got tough, the Jews were still studying.
- DabAsteroid 18y ago
  There is one major character to Jewish populations that seems to help them in science. ... they're quite reverent towards education What about Ashkenazi-Jewish IQ? http://www.vdare.com/rushton/080616_lynn.htm http://www.vdare.com/rushton/080616_lynn.htm seven studies of Jews in Britain yield a median IQ of 110. ... In Canada too, there is an IQ hierarchy: Jews (109), ... These results are remarkably consistent over time, place, and situation ... in How to explain high Jewish achievement: The role of intelligence and values, an article published in Personality and Individual Differences, by Lynn and Satoshi Kanazawa (PDF), we showed that only IQ had predictive value when pitted against values theories.