5 ms·

A few years ago I took biology courses at the local university. One emeritus professor told us that nothing happened in medicine between antiquity and the 1500'

A few years ago I took biology courses at the local university. One emeritus professor told us that nothing happened in medicine between antiquity and the 1500' when smart guys (from his French hometown) taught the world the marvels of anatomy. I asked what he thought of what happened in the Arabic and Iranian regions during that time, he replied: Nothing significant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world#Medical_contributions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_in_the_medieval_Islam...

willis936 4y ago
The simple narrative taught in every history class is demonstrably false and pedagogically classist. https://youtu.be/oDQXFNWuZj8 https://youtu.be/oDQXFNWuZj8
- mtmail 4y ago
  Video shows a comedian playing piano and singing to a sock. Am I missing an important point?
  - aaaronic 4y ago
    But the sock puppet sings exactly the quoted line...
- honkdaddy 4y ago
  I've always wondered what narrative Bo is actually referring to here, I feel like the joke's maybe 25 years too late. What's the classist big lie that kids are learning these days? I'm sure it varies around the nation, but the history I see young people learning now is generally pretty reconciliatory and balanced. Kids aren't learning "Columbus discovered America and had Thanksgiving at Plymouth Rock with the Indians" anymore, I like to think children's history education's grown some nuance since Bo went to school in the 90s.
throw0101a 4y ago
> I asked what he thought of what happened in the Arabic and Iranian regions during that time, he replied: Nothing significant. If a tree in falls in the forest, and no hears it, does it really matter? There were many curious minds that made useful discoveries, but by ~1200 CE the general zeitgeist was to discourage scientific inquiries: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_the_Philosophers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_the_Philoso... Further, I don't think there was a 'critical mass' of people exploring and exchanging ideas (either because of a too-small population, or difficulties in communication), and so if you did just happen to make discoveries… there was no one to tell, and your book simply languished on a shelf somewhere unnoticed, as from your link: > Ibn al-Nafis discovered that the blood in the right ventricle of the heart is instead carried to the left by way of the lungs.[70] This discovery was one of the first descriptions of the pulmonary circulation,[70] although his writings on the subject were only rediscovered in the 20th century,[71] and it was William Harvey's later independent discovery which brought it to general attention.[72] If a tree in falls in the forest, and no hears it, does it really matter?
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  > If a tree in falls in the forest, and no hears it, does it really matter? But people DID hear it, just not in big parts of Europe where most of "our" history is taught / comes from. It's very eurocentric to assume that just because "we" didn't hear about it, it didn't exist. Civilization was miles ahead outside of Europe for a long time.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Indeed, and if not for the Enlightenment it would still be. That's what made room for science on a much larger scale and in contradiction with lots of things that were considered established knowledge than ever before. The power of science is such that a resource poor part of the world managed to overtake the rest in many ways in a couple of centuries.
    - NoGravitas 4y ago
tick_tock_tick 4y ago
That's harsh, I don't know much on the subject but I assume Wikipedia is missing a lot or at-least glosses over it? It almost seems impossible they'd have accomplished so little in that field.
mrwnmonm 4y ago
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18822953/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18822953/
- kspacewalk2 4y ago
  What else of that calibre?
  - mrwnmonm 4y ago
    You are missing the point, I am not trying to say that Muslims achieved more in empirical science than Europe, I would be an idiot to suggest that. I am saying, it is pathetic for a winner to feel the need to say a lot of nonsensical stuff about other people.
  - mcguire 4y ago
    To disprove a universally quantified statement, only a single counter-example is necessary.
kspacewalk2 4y ago
>I asked what he thought of what happened in the Arabic and Iranian regions during that time, he replied: Nothing significant. >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world#Medical_contributions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_in_the_medieval_Islam... I mean... based on that article alone, that seems to be substantially true, if overly harsh? Half of it are "discoveries" which were lost or disregarded and had to be "re-discovered", and IMO those are not discoveries at all since they change or affect nothing. The Book of Optics seems to be the only notable exception in that contributions section.
- belugacat 4y ago
  > substantially true, if overly harsh That tracks with the professor being French.
- ineedasername 4y ago
  There is a difference to be made between specific discoveries and overall progress as a world civilization. It seems strange to say that nothing was discovered simply because it didn't have a lasting impact. It may be accurate to say the Western world hadn't discovered it, or learned of that discover by others, or that the discovery was lost, but not that it wasn't actually discovered. It's the pinnacle of "Not Invented Here" Discovery and influence or impact simply aren't the same things.
- gilleain 4y ago
  How were they lost or rediscovered? "Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (Latinized: Rhazes) (born 865) was one of the most versatile scientists of the Islamic Golden Age ... Many of his books were translated into Latin, and he remained one of the undisputed authorities in European medicine well into the 17th century." "Ibn Sina, more commonly known in west as Avicenna was a Persian polymath and physician of the tenth and eleventh centuries. He was known for his scientific works, but especially his writing on medicine." "Ibn Buṭlān, ... was an Arab physician who was active in Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age.[64] He is known as an author of the Taqwim al-Sihhah (The Maintenance of Health تقويم الصحة), in the West, best known under its Latinized translation, Tacuinum Sanitatis (sometimes Taccuinum Sanitatis)." More than this, a lot of the scholarship in the Islamic world preserved discoveries by the Greeks: "Galen is one of the most famous scholars and physicians of classical antiquity. Today, the original texts of some of his works, and details of his biography, are lost, and are only known to us because they were translated into Arabic" Or did the Greeks not 'actually' discover anything, either?

willis936 4y ago

The simple narrative taught in every history class is demonstrably false and pedagogically classist. https://youtu.be/oDQXFNWuZj8 https://youtu.be/oDQXFNWuZj8

mtmail 4y ago
Video shows a comedian playing piano and singing to a sock. Am I missing an important point?
- aaaronic 4y ago
  But the sock puppet sings exactly the quoted line...
honkdaddy 4y ago
I've always wondered what narrative Bo is actually referring to here, I feel like the joke's maybe 25 years too late. What's the classist big lie that kids are learning these days? I'm sure it varies around the nation, but the history I see young people learning now is generally pretty reconciliatory and balanced. Kids aren't learning "Columbus discovered America and had Thanksgiving at Plymouth Rock with the Indians" anymore, I like to think children's history education's grown some nuance since Bo went to school in the 90s.

throw0101a 4y ago

> I asked what he thought of what happened in the Arabic and Iranian regions during that time, he replied: Nothing significant. If a tree in falls in the forest, and no hears it, does it really matter? There were many curious minds that made useful discoveries, but by ~1200 CE the general zeitgeist was to discourage scientific inquiries: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_the_Philosophers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_the_Philoso... Further, I don't think there was a 'critical mass' of people exploring and exchanging ideas (either because of a too-small population, or difficulties in communication), and so if you did just happen to make discoveries… there was no one to tell, and your book simply languished on a shelf somewhere unnoticed, as from your link: > Ibn al-Nafis discovered that the blood in the right ventricle of the heart is instead carried to the left by way of the lungs.[70] This discovery was one of the first descriptions of the pulmonary circulation,[70] although his writings on the subject were only rediscovered in the 20th century,[71] and it was William Harvey's later independent discovery which brought it to general attention.[72] If a tree in falls in the forest, and no hears it, does it really matter?

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
> If a tree in falls in the forest, and no hears it, does it really matter? But people DID hear it, just not in big parts of Europe where most of "our" history is taught / comes from. It's very eurocentric to assume that just because "we" didn't hear about it, it didn't exist. Civilization was miles ahead outside of Europe for a long time.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Indeed, and if not for the Enlightenment it would still be. That's what made room for science on a much larger scale and in contradiction with lots of things that were considered established knowledge than ever before. The power of science is such that a resource poor part of the world managed to overtake the rest in many ways in a couple of centuries.
  - NoGravitas 4y ago

tick_tock_tick 4y ago

That's harsh, I don't know much on the subject but I assume Wikipedia is missing a lot or at-least glosses over it? It almost seems impossible they'd have accomplished so little in that field.

mrwnmonm 4y ago

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18822953/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18822953/

kspacewalk2 4y ago
What else of that calibre?
- mrwnmonm 4y ago
  You are missing the point, I am not trying to say that Muslims achieved more in empirical science than Europe, I would be an idiot to suggest that. I am saying, it is pathetic for a winner to feel the need to say a lot of nonsensical stuff about other people.
- mcguire 4y ago
  To disprove a universally quantified statement, only a single counter-example is necessary.

kspacewalk2 4y ago

>I asked what he thought of what happened in the Arabic and Iranian regions during that time, he replied: Nothing significant. >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world#Medical_contributions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_in_the_medieval_Islam... I mean... based on that article alone, that seems to be substantially true, if overly harsh? Half of it are "discoveries" which were lost or disregarded and had to be "re-discovered", and IMO those are not discoveries at all since they change or affect nothing. The Book of Optics seems to be the only notable exception in that contributions section.

belugacat 4y ago
> substantially true, if overly harsh That tracks with the professor being French.
ineedasername 4y ago
There is a difference to be made between specific discoveries and overall progress as a world civilization. It seems strange to say that nothing was discovered simply because it didn't have a lasting impact. It may be accurate to say the Western world hadn't discovered it, or learned of that discover by others, or that the discovery was lost, but not that it wasn't actually discovered. It's the pinnacle of "Not Invented Here" Discovery and influence or impact simply aren't the same things.
gilleain 4y ago
How were they lost or rediscovered? "Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (Latinized: Rhazes) (born 865) was one of the most versatile scientists of the Islamic Golden Age ... Many of his books were translated into Latin, and he remained one of the undisputed authorities in European medicine well into the 17th century." "Ibn Sina, more commonly known in west as Avicenna was a Persian polymath and physician of the tenth and eleventh centuries. He was known for his scientific works, but especially his writing on medicine." "Ibn Buṭlān, ... was an Arab physician who was active in Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age.[64] He is known as an author of the Taqwim al-Sihhah (The Maintenance of Health تقويم الصحة), in the West, best known under its Latinized translation, Tacuinum Sanitatis (sometimes Taccuinum Sanitatis)." More than this, a lot of the scholarship in the Islamic world preserved discoveries by the Greeks: "Galen is one of the most famous scholars and physicians of classical antiquity. Today, the original texts of some of his works, and details of his biography, are lost, and are only known to us because they were translated into Arabic" Or did the Greeks not 'actually' discover anything, either?