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Basically nobody invents anything from scratch. It would be a pity if we have to rediscover everything all over again, every time there is a major change in a r

• rramadass 4y ago
  The point was that the achievements of civilizations predating Islam have been given short shrift.
  • AdamN 4y ago
    I can't think of anybody giving short shrift to the achievements of civilizations predating Islam: Rome, Ancient Greece, Ancient China, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and many more civilizations are all commonly referred to as having made major achievements.
    • rramadass 4y ago
      I thought it was obvious but apparently not; my other comment clarifies it as; >What is being pointed out is the achievements of civilizations predating Islam in those countries which are today Islamic.
      • AdamN 4y ago
        Oh yeah - that's a big issue. Lots of big civilizational achievements were happening in what became the Islamic world before Islam became dominant.
        • rramadass 4y ago
          My strong contention is that much of the credit for the "Golden Age of Islam" should go to these pre-Islamic civilizations whose achievements were forcibly appropriated by the Arabs under their "Islamic" conquest.
          • jkepler 4y ago
            Perhaps Indian author Vishal Mangalwadi's example of the mathematical theory behind the mechanical clock would illustrate the flow of ideas well. He wrote (I'm going my memory here, so I don't have his exact dates) that an Indian mathematician came up with the theory for a mechanical clock in the early 11th century, but didn't try to build one; 50 years later middle eastern Muslim scholars were debating and studying the theory, but didn't try to build one; another half-century later the idea had come to Europe, and it was there in the early 12th century that the bishop of Paris suggested to his monks that building a mechanical clock would improved their ability to organized their communal work and worship in their monastic communities. Mamgalwadi also asks the question of why neither the Indian nor Islamic cultures tried to build a mechanical clock when they knew of the theory. He suggests that the Indian Hindu belief that reality is /maya/ or illusion (and one meditates to escape the illusion) prevented them from trying to make a clock; in the middle-east, he suggests that the Islamic rejection of possibility of God becoming incarnate in the person of Jesus prevented them from trying to flesh out the theory, while in Christian medieval Europe their belief in incarnation primed the culture for trying to work the theory out in practice.
            • teleforce 4y ago
              I think you've missed Al-Jazari who's well regarded as the father of modern robotics several hundred years before Leonardo da Vinci [1]. Some historians even suggesting that some of the da-Vinci inventions were copycats and derivatives of the Al-Jazari's more than hundred of inventions but he's not properly credited by da Vinci [2]. FYI, of al-jazri most famous invention is the elephant clock [3]. [1]Ismail al-Jazari: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismail_al-Jazari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismail_al-Jazari [2]Ismail al-Jazari: The Muslim inventor who may have inspired Leonardo da Vinci: https://www.europeana.eu/en/blog/ismail-al-jazari-the-muslim-inventor-who-may-have-inspired-leonardo-da-vinci https://www.europeana.eu/en/blog/ismail-al-jazari-the-muslim... [3]al-Jazari's Clocks: Perhaps the Earliest Programmable Analog Computers: https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=2341 https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=2341
          • teleforce 4y ago