The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance Paperback – Illustrated, 27 Mar. 2012

I had always understood from my school history lessons that the boom in scientific knowledge came from the age of enlightenment, the Renaissance. This one book blows that idea right out of the water and fills in what happened for about 1500 years before that when the West was in the Dark Ages. Jim Al Khalili is a good writer and his words flow effortlessly off the page - a very easy read. I was left with the impression that our history lessons need to be updated to include this information. I was always left with a feeling that something was missing and now I know what it was. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Jim Al-Khalili is a brilliant and gifted scientist and communicator. Indeed I regard his TV documentaries on a variety of scientific subjects to be outstanding. With regard Arabic science his own Middle Eastern background gives him a valuable perspective which is both refreshing and challenging, giving valuable insight into the scientific contribution that Islamic scholars contributed to the making of the modern world.But at the heart of this story is the issue of why after such a brilliant start it all faltered. In seeking to provide an explanation Jim Al-Khalili also falters.The watershed period seems to be the twelfth century. From a list of 72 great Islamic scholars provided almost half were from the two centuries immediately after the Arab conquests and only ten lived after the twelfth century. So why was this?The authoritative work of Nobel prizewinning physicist Steven Weinberg, in 'To Explain the World; The Discovery of Modern Science' leaves us in no doubt that the key figure is that of the theologian and philosopher al- Ghazali (born 1058) whom Jim Al-Khalili mentions only in passing. Understanding not only the man but the issue at the heart of the controversy which he represents is essential as it would also be replayed a century later in the universities of medieval Europe (particularly Paris and involving the clash between Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, Dominicans and Franciscans)but with a very different outcome, and consequently different future history.As Weinberg notes, the issue was over the possibility of a Natural Order: "Other religions, such as Christianity and Judaism, also admit the possibil;ity of mirtacles, departures from the natural order, but here we see that al-Ghazali denied the significance of any natural order whatsoever." Al-Ghazali's attack on science took the form of 'occasionalism' - the doctrine that whatever happens is a singular occasion, governed not by any laws of nature but directly by the will of God. And he went further, denouncing those who thought otherwise to be like alcoholics (also forbidden by Islam) with dangerous and pernicious minds.This hostility culminated in al-Ghazali’s famous denunciation in his Incoherence of the Philosophers. This was a full-on broadside against “The heretics of our times” who “have been deceived by the exaggerations made by the followers of these philosophers” (Socrates, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc.), so that “their excellent intelligence justifies their bold attempts to discover the Hidden Things by deductive methods; and … they repudiated the authority of religious laws.” For al-Ghazali this was blasphemous, implying as it did restrictions to God’s omnipotence; for since God could do whatever he wanted, there was really no such thing as a ‘natural’ order. Neither was there any point in imagining the existence of ‘laws’ that needed investigating, for everything depended on the divine will. Such ‘consequentialism’ was devastating to the development of such concepts as natural order or scientific thinking. Purely scientific speculation was at best unnecessary.Such intolerance became the norm. One indication of the growing hostility to science came in 1013, when the fanatical Almoravids from North Africa (think Isis or Boko-Haram) destroyed the great library and palace at Medinat al-Zahra outside Cordoba, one of the greatest centres of Islamic scholarship. Later, in 1194 the ulama (religious scholars) of Cordoba, burned all the medical and scientific books they could find.In the very year books were being torched in Cordoba, jihadists at the other end of the Islamic world entered India under the direction of Sultan Muhammad of Ghor – celebrated as Jahanzos or ‘World Burner’ – where they systematically destroyed the greatest seat of learning in Asia, the Buddhist Mahavihara or ‘Great Monastery’ at Nalanda. It was burnt to the ground and contemporary observers reported that for a period of months the smoke from burning manuscripts hung like a pall over the low hills of Bengal. So much for learning that was not based on the Qur'an.In other words, whatever one may think of the concept of ‘Islamic science’, the evidence clearly shows that it was frustrated and ultimately overwhelmed by the zealots of Islam itself, which became increasingly intolerant of learning based on reason and empirical analysis: No voices or movements like those in Europe proved capable of challenging ‘orthodoxy’; and as a result Islam never progressed in its thinking as did the Christian culture of Europe, particularly after the sixteenth century.This evaluation of the consequences of al'Ghazali had been previously discussed by the celebrated French philosopher Etienne Gilson in his great work 'The Unity of Philosophical Experience' (1937) in which the implications of certain philosophical and theological assumptions are shown to be the same, regardless of time and place. Assumptions that religious fundamentalists of all faiths still make whilst trying to deny the consequences.

Item arrived in excellent condition and as described.

This promises to be a fascinating Read,a follow up to Pathfinders,his previous book on the same subject.

For all those of us who were taught the Renaissance began in Italy in the 15th Century, this is a must to read. It made me realize how much of history given to us in Europe and the West is intensely Eurocentric, with an emphasis that civilization as we understand it, began around the Mediterranean (Ancient Egypt and Greece). This book opens up a much wider view of the development of knowledge, which has shaped the world we know today.

Extremely well written and a mine of information about history of the area of the "Land between the Rivers" apart frominteresting facts about Arabic Science.

A fine addition and support to the argument put forward by Edward Said in his "Orientalism"; a readable history and with the insights of a practising physicist.

This was my first encounter with that period in science hystory. I found it well narrated, thourough and objective. The language is easy. This book encouraged me to take interest in similar fields more deeply.