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Some other scientific terms of arabic origin: Algebra, Zero, Cipher, Azimuth, Zenith, Nadir, Chemistry, Alkali etc.

• shmerl 14y ago
  Alchemy is a more obvious one than chemistry :)
  • rosser 14y ago
    Chemistry was alchemy until people realized that if they shared the knowledge that drinking mercury was a bad idea, fewer people would drink mercury.
    • shmerl 14y ago
      Exactly. Alchemy means "the chemistry". Alchemists were true experimentalists and researchers and discovered many chemical reactions, elements as well as invented various tools. They focused on mystical application of this knowledge in a sense of drawing parallels between processes in the soul to chemical processes. Only later this distinction between "chemistry" and "alchemy" appeared, when interest in mysticism stopped being part of this field of study.
• redwood 14y ago
  What we forget is much of the knowledge we attribute to the Arabs actually came from the Indian Subcontinent. It's just that Arabs, sitting neatly between Europeans and the Subcontinent, became the conduit for the knowledge to reach Europe.
  • chewxy 14y ago
    This is correct. Zero for example, definitely came from India. The root word is Sunyata in Sanskrit, which rather means "noneness" There is also the claim that most of these discoveries weren't actually Arabian discoveries, rather Assyrian ones, co-opted by the Arabs. Interesting read: http://www.ninevehsoft.com/fiorina.htm http://www.ninevehsoft.com/fiorina.htm
    • shmerl 14y ago
      Concept of zero is not specific to Indian mysticism though. As well as its correlation with infinity.
    • userulluipeste 14y ago
      Zero may have originated in India, but it indeed was preserved and then transmitted further not by Indians. It's not hard to understand Peter BetBasoo's feelings toward Arabs/Muslims, but it's improbable that the Muslim progress stopped because "the Christian Assyrian community was drained of its population through forced conversion to Islam" and "it ceased producing the scholars that were the intellectual driving force of the Islamic civilization". Mr. Muhammad al-Khwarizmi (who's name is bared by the "Algebra") was a prominent scholar born in a traditional Persian family (not Arabian but Muslim nevertheless). I agree with mda (a post in the same level as yours) - it is unfair to reduce everything as just "sitting neatly between".
  • reyan 14y ago
    Your comment reminded me of Russel's opinion on Arabic philosophy (notice the term Arabic not Islamic). Thanks to this link [1] I found the passage: Arabic philosophy is not important as original thought. Men like Avicenna and Averroes are essentially commentators. Speaking generally, the views of the more scientific philosophers come from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists in logic and metaphysics, from Galen in medicine, from Greek and Indian sources in mathematics and astronomy, and among mystics religious philosophy has also an admixture of old Persian beliefs. Writers in Arabic showed some originality in mathematics and in chemistry; in the latter case, as an incidental result of alchemical researches. Mohammedan civilization in its great days was admirable in the arts and in many technical ways, but it showed no capacity for independent speculation in theoretical matters. Its importance, which must not be underrated, is as a transmitter. Between ancient and modern European civilization, the dark ages intervened. The Mohammedans and the Byzantines, while lacking the intellectual energy required for innovation, preserved the apparatus of civilization, books, and learned leisure. Both stimulated the West when it emerged from barbarism; the Mohammedans chiefly in the thirteenth century, the Byzantines chiefly in the fifteenth. In each case the stimulus produced new thought better than that produced by the transmitters -- in the one case scholasticism, in the other the Renaissance (which however had other causes also). -- A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1945), p. 427 [1] http://maverickphilosopher.blogspot.com/2004/12/bertrand-russell-on-arabic-philosophy.html http://maverickphilosopher.blogspot.com/2004/12/bertrand-rus...
  • kamaal 14y ago
    I think these days its almost pointless to talk about 'I got there first' topics. We shouldn't take this as A came from B or B came from from A. All knowledge is building on top something, somebody has already done.
  • mda 14y ago
    Well, Muslim scientists definitely used existing/forgotten knowledge of older Indian and especially Greek scientists but calling it "sitting in between and being counduit of knowledge" is extremely unfair to their work. We are talking about a process of at least 400 years (700Ad. to 1100Ad.) in multiple disciplines.